"A Caste of Helot Labourers"

I have put up another older published piece of mine up on my academia.edu site. This one is from 2007. You can now go and read, "A Caste of Helot Labourers: Special Settlers and the Cultivation of Cotton in Soviet Central Asia: 1944-1956" there.  I figure if I am going to take the time to write these things that somebody somewhere should eventually read them. Unlike most US academics I don't care very much who constitutes my reading audience. In fact the whole idea of narrow specialists only writing for other narrow specialists is one of the major problems of academia.I have always been too much of a populist to fit into American academia.  Populism is much more accepted in Africa. At any rate I hope by putting this link here that I can garner at least one more reader for this particular piece of writing. If not then at least enjoy the awesome cartoon in the right hand corner.

"Suffering in a Province of Asia"

I have put up a piece of mine from several years ago on ethnic Germans in Kazakhstan. You can find "Suffering in a Province of Asia: The Russian-German Diaspora in Kazakhstan" on my academia.edu page. It is rather short, but contains ideas that are extremely unorthodox in the field of Soviet history. Please feel free to comment on it either there or here in the comments.

Trying to do Modern African History

I am currently finishing up footnotes on what will be my fourth short piece dealing with Africa in some way. As long as I am in the history department here at University of Ghana it seems that such opportunities, usually book chapters, come about once a year. To date the chapter I am currently finishing is the only one to focus on Ghana. The others have focused on Togo, South Africa, and the Black Diaspora. Officially the Black Diaspora is one of the six regions of Africa according to the African Union, although much of it including the part I wrote about isn't very African. One of the problems with writing about Ghana is that I am far more interested in the early independence era than I am in the colonial era. Yet, almost all of the archives for the post-colonial era still remain completely off limits. The fact that Ghana has been independent for over fifty seven years now hasn't done anything to speed up the declassification process. I was told by K.B. Asante that it is unlikely that Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents regarding events in 1963 will be available before 2043. So while the current piece I am working on is about 1966, the local archival source base for Ghanaian history is largely limited to the years 1874 to 1957 when it was officially a British colony. That puts a lot of restrictions on the type of history that can be written using the archives here as a source. I am not sure what it is like in other African states. Do any of them have archives dealing with the post-colonial era that are open to historical researchers? Are they all like Ghana and basically only allow access to documents pertaining to the years that they were under European rule?

Writing project on 24 February 1966 coup

Yesterday I finished a rough draft of my book chapter on the role of the CIA and other US government institutions during the Johnson administration in supporting the 24 February 1966 coup against Nkrumah. I linked the pattern used by the US to support the military overthrow of the Ghanaian government to the those used earlier in 1965 in Indonesia against Sukarno and later in 1973 in Chile against Allende. True it is a rather minor insight, but given the present day deification of LBJ by radical left wing US academics I don't think it is something that could currently be published in the US. They would undoubtedly insist that it was all the fault of Republicans and that LBJ should only be praised because he signed the CRA and VRA. Fortunately, the book will be published in Germany where left wing academics have yet to establish a cult of personality around LBJ.

More Links Between Soviet and South African Apartheid

The Russian-Germans deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan in 1941 were released from special settlement restrictions on 13 December 1955 by a decree of the Presidium  of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.  This decree, however, explicitly barred the ethnic Germans freed from the special settlement restrictions from either recovering property confiscated during the deportations or returning to the areas they had previously inhabited (Auman and Chebatoreva, p. 177). In practice after 1955 the Soviet government continued to confine the vast majority of ethnic Germans in the USSR east of the Urals in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia. The pardon of 1955 was followed by a partial rehabilitation on 29 August 1964 which formally lifted the charges of treason levelled against the Russian-Germans on 28 August 1941. It did not, however, remove the continuing restrictions on choosing their place of residence. Instead it noted that they had become "rooted" in their new places of settlement (Auman and Chebatoreva, pp. 178-179). Despite the continued ban on Russian-Germans from returning to their previous places of settlement, a number managed to move to other European territories under Soviet rule, most notably Estonia and Latvia. Technically, this was not a violation of the 1955 decree since almost none of the ethnic Germans coming from Kazakhstan and Central Asia to the Baltic had lived there previously. The MVD of the Estonian SSR thus issued a protocol, "It is prohibited to issue residency permits for the republic to people of German ethnicity, coming in from other republics." (Ziben, p. 39). Three days later on 25 March 1972, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia issued a decree prohibiting the issue of residency permits to ethnic Germans (Ziben, p. 40). The Soviet government only restored the formal equal right of ethnic Germans in the USSR to choose their place of residency on 3 November 1972 (Auman and Chebotareva, p. 179). This decree came just a year before the UN passed the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. This convention was passed by the UN General Assembly on 30 November 1973. The resolution was cosponsored by the USSR and Guinea and prohibits among other things imposing restrictions on the right of "racial groups" to choose their place of residence (Tilley et al, pp. 295-300). Under the definition of the International Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 the restrictions prohibiting ethnic Germans in the USSR from choosing their place of residency constituted racial discrimination. It appears that the blanket legal ban on ethnic Germans choosing their place of residency was repealed at least in part so that the USSR could cosponsor the anti-apartheid convention without facing charges of hypocrisy.

Sources:

 V.A. Auman and V.G. Chebatoreva, Istoriia rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh (1763-1992),(Moscow: MIGP, 1993).

Virginia Tilley et al, Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law. (Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council, 2009).

V. Ziben, "Nemtsy v Estonii posle vtoroi mirovoi voiny, 1956-1991 gg." in A.A. German (ed.), Nemetskoe naselenie v poststalinskom SSSR, v stranakh SNG i Baltii (1956-2000 gg.) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi souiz nemetskoi kul'tury, 2003).

LBJ was a criminal who caused massive suffering in Africa and Asia

Right now all the "progressives" are rallying around the altar to worship LBJ, a US president who contributed greatly to the repression and murder of millions of people in Africa and Asia. What is worse they are doing so by portraying this monster as the greatest hero Black people have ever had in the world. The worst thing to ever happen to Ghana since it achieved independence from the UK on 6 March 1957 was the 24 February 1966 coup overthrowing Nkrumah. That coup was only successful because it had the full support of the US government under LBJ. The declassified CIA documents are pretty clear on the fact that the desire to remove Nkrumah emanated from Johnson personally. The coup set back political and economic advancement in Ghana and all of Africa by decades. LBJ was also responsible for making sure that Mobutu was made absolute dictator of Congo for decades to come. This of course does not even touch on his policies in supporting the massacres and coup by Suharto in Indonesia which followed the same logic as his backing of the coup in Ghana. Then of course there is the whole escalation of the war in Vietnam. But, evidently signing the Voting Rights Act completely wipes out all of the tortured, dead, imprisoned, and displaced people whose suffering Johnson caused in Ghana, Congo, Indonesia, and Vietnam. I do not understand "progressives." Dear God, please give me the old hippie leftists of yore back.

African Lives Matter Too (Baga Massacre)

While the world has been focused on the horrible murder of 16 people in Paris, Boko Haram has murdered as many as 2,000 people this last week in an attack that nearly wiped out an entire town. I don't expect this to get nearly as much attention as the events in Paris despite it being a much greater number of people. African lives have never been as valued as European lives by most people in the US. The people murdered in Nigeria were not cartoonists, their murder was not for anything they did, but instead a massacre by Boko Haram to disrupt the current presidential elections. They were murdered not for drawing offensive cartoons, but merely for existing.

In Lieu of Concrete New Years Resolutions

Again I am trying to be aspirational here. So this year I am going to try and read more, write more, and think about negative things less. I need to do things for their own sake and not for their consequences. I am a lot more content if I let the completion of things be their own reward rather than worry about external justifications. Most of all I think I need to proceed on a track that basically ignores most of the so called "First World." Nobody in Africa can be successful if they are obsessed with an American centered or European centered view of the world. Such a path is impossible. People in Africa including myself need to work in such a way that we can be successful in terms that matter for us here not what happens among people in the US or Europe. This is sometimes hard to do because of the historical cultural dominance of Obrunistan including in the sphere of academia. This dominance has been especially oppressive in global academia in the last couple of decades. But, I can't help thinking that there are other and better ways than slavishly following the intellectual fads popular in North America. Rather than following their established paradigms what if I and other people in the former second and third worlds just ignored their rules and established a parallel body of research? I am thinking especially about the field of history here.  This has been done before and it had considerable success. It certainly can't be less successful than the current path. Any and all thoughts, comments, and criticisms are welcome.

New Years Thoughts: Doors of Opportunity

Like the picture to the right here I like to be aspirational. So I am hoping that this New Year is better than last year. I think the key thing is to avoid panic and to just get a little bit done every day. After all Africa wasn't victorious in its struggle for liberation in a day. The other thing is that I am thinking I should be looking for parallel and alternative routes for getting recognition for my ideas. I am not exactly sure how to do that, but if anybody reading this (again I like to be aspirational) has any suggestions please let me know. My first thoughts are that both new tactics and new targets are needed. Entering unlocked rooms is always easier than trying to assault iron walls with your bare head. Of course finding those unlocked doors is the hard part. There don't seem to be any maps available marking out where they lie. But, just because the only door that comes into my vision first is the locked drawbridge across from a moat filled with piranhas doesn't mean that there are not easier entrances I just have not noticed. I just need to find the doors. Consider this open thread on possible doors of opportunity.

Happy New Year from Africa

Today in Legon

Most of the university is deserted now for winter break. Although the vital services and merchants I needed today were still at work. I had to go to the bank to get my new ATM card. On Saturday the machine told me my old one was "invalid." I also needed to buy a new pair of Chinese counterfeit Converse All Stars shoes from the guy under Legon Annex. They cost me a whopping 25 Ghana Cedis. Which is dirt cheap, but unfortunately they only last about two months before I need to again replace them. I also had to go to the Lebanese grocery store to buy more Colombian counterfeit Sriracha sauce. It is interesting that the South Americans are pirating the one item that actually should be manufactured in Asia. While I was there I went to the book store which was having a 20% off sale and purchased a modern history of Korea and a Norwegian mystery novel. I also got some work done on my book chapter manuscript on the role of the US government in overthrowing Nkrumah in 1966. Although I did not get as much written today on the manuscript as I had initially hoped.

Seventy One Years Since the Deportation of the Kalmyks

On 27 December 1943 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz 115/144 ordering the deportation of all Kalmyks from the Kalmyk ASSR and the liquidation of the administrative territory. Known as "Operation Ulusy" the NKVD forcibly resettled over 90,000 Kalmyks on 28-29 December 1943 from their home on the shores of the Caspian Sea to Siberia. In less than five years some 17,000 of these deportees had perished from a lack of material goods. They lacked proper food, housing, and clothing. The Soviet government imposed special settlement restrictions upon the deported Kalmyks that severely limited their freedom of movement and residency. In 1948 the Stalin regime declared that the exile of the Kalmyks along with other deported nationalities was to be "forever." After Stalin died on 5 March 1953 things improved gradually for the Kalmyks. On 17 March 1956 the Soviet government released them from the special settlement restrictions and after 1957 they were allowed to return to their ancestral homeland. On 11 February 1957 the Soviet government recreated the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast. They upgraded this territory to the Kalmyk ASSR on 29 July 1958.

Winter Writing Project - The 24 February 1966 Coup

I just got an e-mail from Germany reminding me I have until the end of January to write a book chapter for a project I had completely forgotten about. So I guess I know what my writing project for this winter break will be focused on. In a way it is a good thing. It gives me an opportunity to write about a purely African and indeed Ghanaian topic. The topic is the role of the US government in the 24 February 1966 coup against Nkrumah. Upon receiving the e-mail I went digging through the pile on my desk to find my copy of The Great Deception which has many of the important CIA and State Department Documents on the coup in it. I am firmly in the camp that the US involvement was probably necessary for the coup's success. But, I won't be entering any more new evidence into the debate. Instead I will be framing the coup in the broader context of the Cold War between the US and the USSR and how this led to a shift in Ghanaian policies under Nkrumah that met with disapproval from the US government. A lot of the literature unfortunately focuses too narrowly on the purely Ghanaian factors without taking sufficient heed of the fact that non-alignment was bringing the position of Accra much closer to the USSR than the US on issues like European colonialism and apartheid.

Soviet Arrests from 1936-1938 and Diaspora Nationalities

Nationality    Number arrested from 1936-1938   Under/Over-representation

Russians        657,799                                                 -23.6%
Ukrainians     189,410                                                 -19.4%
Poles              105,485                                             +1850%
Germans           75,331                                              +662.5%                                      
Belorussians     58,702                                              +132.2%
Jews                 30,542                                              +116.7%
Latvians           21,392                                             +1500%
Iranians            14,994                                             +5500%
Estonians         11,002                                               +800%
Finns                10,678                                               +700%
Total            1,420,711                                                 100%

Source: Victor Krieger, Bundesbuerger russlanddeutscher Herkunft: Historische Schluesselerfahrungen und kollektives Gedaechtnis (Lit Verlag; Muenster, 2013), table no. 1, p. 151.

As can be seen from this table Soviet arrests during the Great Terror disproportionately targeted diaspora nationalities in contrast to Russians and Ukrainians. The percentage of arrested that were ethnically Russian was 23.6% less than their proportion of the Soviet population as a whole. Ukrainians were also underrepresented. The largest over representation in terms of percentage was among the small Iranian population of the USSR. They only made up 0.2% of the Soviet population, but a full 1.1% of arrests. The next most overrepresented nationality were Poles followed by Latvians. The only nationality with a full SSR to be overrepresented were Belorussians at 132%.

Azerbaijani Political Prisoner Leyla Yunus is Dying due to Denial of Medical Care

I met Arif Yunusov, an historian from Azerbaijan at a conference on Meskhetian Turks at METU (Middle East Technical University) in Ankara Turkey almost exactly 14 years ago. He was not only a valuable participant in the conference, but he was also an affable person and enjoyable partner for conversation, dinner, and drinking. Both he and his wife, Leyla Yunus, are also among other things long time human rights activists. On 30 July 2014 Leyla Yunus was arrested in Azerbaijan on charges of "high treason" and placed in pre-trial detention. On 5 August 2014 the Azerbaijani authorities also arrested Arif Yunusov on charges of "high treason" and placed him in pre-trial detention. The Azerbaijani security services claim that Arif and Leyla were engaged in espionage on behalf of Armenia.  Of course contacts between Azerbaijani and Armenian human rights and peace activists are not treason and the position of the government in Baku is typical of many authoritarian post-Soviet regimes such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Belarus. Currently Leyla Yunus is being denied needed medical attention and is as a result dying.  This type of barbarism should have ended in Azerbaijan when the USSR collapsed.

Elections in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is still ruled by the same man who was in charge of the Uzbek SSR before the Soviet Union collapsed, Islam Karimov. Since the collapse of the USSR and the creation of an independent Uzbek state he has ruled it in a completely authoritarian manner. This isn't surprising for Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan is the only state in the region that has ever had any success with democratic procedures and institutions. But, what strikes me as hilarious is that just as during the Soviet era that the regime in Uzbekistan feels the need to go through the charade of elections that it pretends are democratic. The news is reporting an 88% voter turn out for the its parliamentary elections yesterday. Furthermore the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) and Commonwealth of Independent States are certifying that the elections were free, fair, and democratic. The SCO consists of such "democratic" states as Kazakhstan, China, and Russia. Right now I can't stop laughing, but when I do I have some Ghanaian bridges to sell to anybody who believes that Uzbekistan really had free, fair, and democratic elections yesterday.

African Lives Matter

As can be seen from this map some parts of Africa such as Ghana are considered free while other parts like Gabon are not. Indeed most of Central Africa is in the not free category. Saturday there were demonstrations against the Gabonese regime with the result that at least one protester was killed by security forces. The current ruler took power in 2009. His father was the previous dictator of Gabon and came to power in 1967. There have been similar demonstrations without any effect in Togo. The current ruler of Togo also inherited his post from his father who like in Gabon originally seized power in 1967. The most recent demonstration in Togo took place on 29 November 2014 and before that 21 November 2014. On the other hand there was a change in rulers in Burkina Faso in response to protests earlier this year. Although it is doubtful that the new government in Burkina Faso will result in any actual policy changes. These mass struggles against corrupt dictators in French speaking Africa get very little press attention even in neighboring states such as Ghana. Of course in the US you will never see any "progressives" opposing the use of violence including lethal violence by the security forces of Togo and Gabon. US Black Lives matter to them, but African Lives do not when the people doing the killing are African governments backed by the "progressive" and "socialist" government of France. It is considered far more important by US "progressives" that France provides free health care to rich white people than it is that France backs brutal and corrupt regimes in Africa that kill people.

Number of Men Mobilized into the Labor Army during Winter 1942

Mobilization of Russian-German men into the labor army according to GKO Order no. 1123 of 10 January 1942 and GKO Order no. 1281 of 14 February 1942.

Sviashsk-Ulianovsk (Railroad Construction) - 17,823
Bakalstroi (Construction of an iron and steel factory complex) - 26,490
Ivdellag (Cutting down trees) - 12,899
Sevuralllag (Cutting down trees) - 8,441
Usollag (Cutting down trees) - 4,940
Viatlag (Cutting down trees) - 6,845
Kraslag (Cutting down trees) - 5,423
Bogoslovlag (Construction of an aluminum factory complex) - 12,311
Sevzheldorstroi (Railroad Construction) -5,653
Solikambumstroi (Construction of a paper and cellulose factory complex) - 2,537
Tavdinlag (Cutting down trees) - 1,918
Tagilstroi (Construction of an iron an steel factory complex) - 3,371
Umlatstroi (Transport construction work) -952
Total - 109,593

Source: Viktor Krieger, Bundesbuerger russlanddeutscher Herkunft: Historische Schluesselerfahrungen und kollektives Gedaechtnis (Muenster: Lit Verlag, 2013), table no. 1, p. 48.

Number of Russian German Deportees in 1941

Number of Russian Germans deported by the NKVD to Siberia and Kazakhstan during fall 1941.

Volga German ASSR -365,764
Saratov Oblast - 46,706
Stalingrad Oblast - 26,245
Rostov Oblast - 38,742
Krasnodar Krai - 37,733
Ordzhonikidze Krai - 99,990
Total for R.S.F.S.R. - 666,818
Zaporozhia Oblast - 31,320
Voroshilovgrad Oblast - 12,488
Stalin Oblast - 35,925
Total for Ukrainian SSR - 82,983
Georgian SSR - 20,423
Azerbaijan SSR - 23,593
Armenian SSR - 212
Total for USSR - 794,069

Source: Viktor Krieger, Bundesbuerger russlanddeutscher Herkunft: Historische Schluesselerfahrungen und kollektives Gedaechtnis (Muenster: Lit Verlag, 2013), table no. 1, p. 30.

The Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco, the Institute of African Studies, and the History Department

Today I went to see the ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco give a donation to the Institute of African Studies for a project that is clearly focused on historical research. This is something that has occurred repeatedly. The Institute of African Studies has regularly gotten huge donations from various donors including corporations like Guinness while the History Department has gotten absolutely nothing, not a single peswa since I have been here. All of the money for history research gets sent to the historians working in the Institute of African Studies and none goes to the historians in the History Department. I am not sure why this extreme imbalance of funding exits. But, if you are interested in historical projects refusing to provide any funds to the History Department and the lecturers that work there does not seem like the most logical strategy. On the other hand success which is only measured in terms of money in today's global capitalist economy attracts more money and monopolizes it. So it appears we are locked into a typical neo-colonial pattern whereby all the donations by foreign governments, corporations, and rich individuals for historical projects all go to the Institute of African Affairs forever and none will ever go to the History Department.