The occasional reader survey

It has been a while since I had a reader survey. I am not sure I have very many human readers left since this blog seems to be dying. It is well over a hundred in blog years after all. However, I still find it useful as a reference source to myself. I am also reluctant to let it completely cease to exist for purely sentimental reasons. The Golden Age of blogging has long passed and so has the Silver Age. At best we are now in the Iron Age. This blog has always occupied a very small niche, but lately I have been feeling I have come close to exhausting its potential, at least for now.  So blogging will probably continue to be slow for a while. On the other hand this thing has survived four continents. 

71 Years Since the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

Today is the 71st anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland on the Black Sea to the deserts of Uzbekistan and wet forests of the Urals. I don't have anything new to write about this tragic event today. But, for those that are interested I have linked to my previous years posts regarding this massive crime against humanity.The link from 2010 is a short article, "The False Charges of Treason Against the Crimean Tatars."

2014

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2012

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2010

2009

2008

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2006

Герои Советского Союза немецкой национальности

This is a great short film on Russian-German Heroes of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Социальная реклама

This film from Kazakhstan on the deportation of ethnic Germans from western regions of the USSR is quite good. Although in reality the Kazakhs were not always welcoming of the deported Germans. Also the figure 440,000 German deportees mentioned in the clip says it is for Kazkahstan and Siberia. In the Soviet archival documents the figure 440,000 German deportees is for Kazakhstan alone. A roughly equal number of deportees ended up in Siberia in 1941 for about 800,000 deported ethnic Germans.

The end of the semester again

Classes are over for the semester. Now I just have to give and grade final exams. Over all I think the students did well this semester. My graduate course on ethnicity and race which had five students has already finished their take home exam, but I still have not gotten their historiographical papers to grade. Over all I think this semester went fairly well. I managed the department seminar, teaching three classes, and submitted one book chapter. I also had two journal articles published.

Two new publications

Recently two pieces of my writing were published. The first to appear in print was "Soviet Ethnic Cleansing of the Crimean Tatars" in International Crimes and History, no. 15, 2014. They seem to be running a bit behind as it is now 2015. The second piece was "Scourging the Caucasus: The Soviet Deportation of the Karachais, Chechens, Ingush, and Balkars in 1943-1944" in the Forum of EthnoGeoPolitics, vol. 3, no. 1 (spring 2015). With the Russian occupation of Crimea I am hoping that there is a renewed interest in some of these historical issues.

Big Men

Yesterday I saw the movie Big Men. Now I too want to be a Big Man. But, to be a Big Man you need Big Money and in West Africa the biggest money is oil. In Nigeria corrupt officials have stolen over $440 billion dollars of oil money meant for the people of Nigeria since 1960. That is some serious corruption. Ghana is just starting along this path. So far the Jubilee oil field has yielded $2 billion of revenue of which $440 million went to the Ghanaian government and the rest to Kosmos Energy based in Dallas Texas. None of the $440 million cut taken by the Ghanaian government seems to have trickled down to either education where I am a public employee or health care. While the Ghanaian government at one time discussed following the Norwegian model for administering its oil revenues it seems that it is instead moving in the direction of emulating the Nigerian model. The Niger River Delta of Nigeria where much of the oil is extracted is a truly distopian nightmare. Despite the incredible amount of oil wealth generated in Nigeria, the majority of the population of the country are now on average poorer and worse off than before it began the massive extraction and export of oil. Corruption extends down from the rotten head of the Federal Government in Abuja all the way down to individual oil workers illegally siphoning off semi-refined petrol for sale on the black market. Despite producing oil since 2010 the currency of Ghana has gotten much weaker. The cedi fell from 1.6 to the dollar in 2011 to 4 to the dollar in summer of 2014. A massive infusion of two multi-billion dollar loans brought it back up to 3 to the dollar. But, the currency has again fallen to 4 to the dollar and there is no end in sight and it appears no possibility of any more IMF or Cocoa Board Loans to bring it back up like last year. At the same time we have constant black outs. We now have black outs extending in Greater Accra from my flat in the Adenta to the north to the university in Legon. These black outs last 24 hours and occur every other day. Supposedly University of Ghana is a world class university. But, what world class university has no electricity all day and night between three and four times a week? The power outages are wrecking an already weak economy and the production of oil has done nothing to alleviate it. Indeed just as in Nigeria things have gotten worse in the wake of the commercial extraction of oil here in Ghana.

Culinary Links Between Ghana and Brazil

It turns out that most of the foods we eat here in Ghana originally came here from the Western hemisphere, particularly from Brazil via the Portuguese. Among staple foods in Ghanaian cuisine that have their origins in the Americas are cassava, plantains, maize, chili peppers, and tomatoes. Absent the Colombian exchange we would all be eating nothing, but millet, yams, and rice. There would be no fufu, red red, banku, or kenkey. Not to mention everything would be really bland because there would be no chili peppers. In fact the cuisine must of been so radically different that I am having a hard time imagining what it actually looked like. How do you eat okra without chili peppers and banku?

Today

Today I saw a great performance of poems, songs, and dances done in Arabic, Chinese, French, Kiswahili, Russian, and Spanish put on by majors in these languages here at the University of Ghana. It was part of their celebration of Cultural Awareness Day. There was one particular male student who had absolutely stunning voice who sang in Chinese. There was also a fantastic display of salsa dancing by two students, one male and one female. The talent on display was absolutely incredible. I stumbled upon the performance accidently today due to a number of factors including one of our regular black outs. I am, however, very glad that I did stumble upon the show.

Long Overdue Update

It has been a long time since I updated this blog. Part of the reason is that I have been busy doing more important things. But, probably an even more important reason is that I haven't had anything to blog about. Things that I can blog about have been moving along at the usual pace. Classes have gone well this semester. The departmental seminar is finishing up and I managed to fill in all the holes left by cancellations. In one case by giving a half baked paper myself, but half baked is better than raw. I also met the few deadlines I had this year for journal articles and chapters in collected works. I am still finding it difficult to transition to more comparative works, but once I finish all the projects I currently have in stasis on purely Soviet history projects I will reexamine the issue.

Citations in Journalism, Social Media, and Academia

One of the things I have written about has been the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. For a long time it was a topic, like most of what I have written about, that interested very few people. But, it appears that I do seem to be getting some readers recently. In the last two days I have found this article which cites me, this tweet by a person whose identity completely eludes me, this long drawn out message board debate in Spanish about my second book, and most impressively this academic piece in Russian from a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine's Institute of History of Ukraine on the English language historiography of the Crimean Tatars under Stalin and Khrushchev. So that means that there are at least a few people that I did not know about before who have recently been reading some of the stuff I have written. I realize that I am always going to be an extremely marginal figure in the academic world. But, it is nice to know that the extremity of the marginality is just a tiny bit less than it was before. I would never have dreamed that any historians at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine would ever have heard of me yet alone considered me an important part of the English language historiography on the Crimean Tatars or anything else.

Coffee is African. So why can't I get any at the University of Ghana in Legon?

This picture actually has nothing to do with anything. I just like it. Unfortunately, there is no place on campus where you can get real coffee. All they have is that nasty Nescafe stuff that is made in a laboratory and has no real actual coffee beans in it. I am not sure why this is since Nkrumah was a strong Pan-Africanist and coffee comes from the oldest state in sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia. But, every time I bring up this argument as to why they should serve me real coffee and not Nescafe people look at me like I am the craziest obruni they have ever seen. However, I am quite positive that Ghana can not hold out forever as the only country in the world still serving horrible artificial instant coffee instead of authentic real coffee.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

71 Years since the Deportation of the Balkars

Today is the 71st anniversary of the deportation of the Balkars from their homeland in the Caucasus to Kazkhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Stalin regime falsely accused the Balkars of mass treason and used this pretext to disperse them across the vast expanse of Central Asia. In total the NKVD loaded a recorded 37,713 Balkar men, women, and children onto 14 train echelons bound east during 8-9 March 1944. Like other mass deportations, the forced eviction of the Balkars coincided with a major Soviet holiday. In this case International Women's Day. The Balkars spent the next twelve years living under the special settlement regime as second class citizens.  During the first eight years they suffered over 7,000 excess premature deaths due to the harsh material conditions of their exile. The Soviet government only released the Balkars from the special settlement restrictions on 28 April 1956. After 1957, the Soviet government finally allowed the surviving deported Balkars and their children to return home to the Caucasus.

Academic Publishing

I have reached the point where I take it as a victory if a big name academic journal sends my manuscript out to peer reviewers rather than the editor rejecting it outright for arbitrary reasons. So I have cause today for a small celebration to coincide with Ghanaian Independence Day. Of course I have no hope that the peer reviewers will approve the piece for publication. But, the last piece I sent out was a lot more controversial and the peer review reports were not hostile. I found that extremely surprising. So I am banking on that.

Happy Independence Day Ghana

62 Years Since Stalin Died and His Regime is more Popular now than anytime since 1956

It has been 62 years since Stalin died. Despite knowing now more than ever about the crimes of his regime, Stalin is more popular than at anytime since Khrushchev denounced some of his crimes at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. The Perm-36 GULag camp has now been seized by the state.  No longer is it a museum dedicated to the victims of political repression under the Stalin regime. Instead it has been converted  into one celebrating the guards and other workers in the penal apparatus. The rehabilitation of Stalin's regime in the former USSR and other places has been going on for a while now. But, if you had told me in the 1980s at a time when Europe from Berlin to Baku was eagerly shaking off the yoke of Soviet rule that Stalinism would be undergoing a full rehabilitation from Madison to Moscow I would have thought you nuts. However, it turns out that the tepid attempts by Khrushchev at destalinization completely failed to take any root in Russia or Central Asia. 

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Speech on 6th march 1957 at the independence square

Hppy Independence Day to Ghana.

Boris Nemtsov murdered in Moscow

Reports from Moscow are noting that opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has reportedly been shot and killed by four bullets to the chest while out walking. This is the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report on the murder.

RIP Leonard Nimoy

Most people will remember the late Leonard Nimoy for his iconic role as Spock in the first Star Trek franchise. Indeed, reruns of that show were where I first remember seeing Nimoy's acting. But, I think my favorite Nimoy related show might have been In Search Of one of the very first documentary series on paranormal events. Nimoy was an important cultural figure for those of us who grew up in the 1970s because despite other models of coolness there was no way you could get any cooler than Spock.