tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858950.post5360121045323426533..comments2023-05-31T14:16:36.022+03:00Comments on Otto's Random Thoughts: Victims, Perpetrators and Bystanders in Soviet Central AsiaJ. Otto Pohlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07457089758142264049noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858950.post-12276020392381146622008-06-14T11:38:00.000+03:002008-06-14T11:38:00.000+03:00Otto, thanks for directing your readers to my blog...Otto, thanks for directing your readers to my blog and for your thorough research pursuits in an area that must be difficult to find concrete, archival facts. The "white spots" in the history of Central Asia and other former Soviet Union countries have me flummoxed as a writing teacher. I'm convinced the only way that people from the western world will know how devastating this period under communism was will happen only when stories are written about it, such as in "The Silent Steppe." Some of these stories are so emotionally laden that they have already become silent with the passage of time. <BR/><BR/>Not sure if Kyrgyzstan has an equivalent biography written but the Kazakh author Mukhamet Shayakhmetov tells how confusing a period it was during the starvation years in 1932-34 and yet in order to survive he and his family had to "buy into" the communist dogma and FIGHT for their Fatherland when WWII happened.<BR/><BR/>If we, as western educators, enter Central Asia with this knowledge of their recent tragic past and their distant glorious past, we would be better equipped to help them struggle out of the confusion that seems to exist for ALL of us. <BR/><BR/>Can there be anything wrong with laying out the facts, openly exposing who the TRUE villians are? No, but I suppose some are still alive who were the perpetrators and so sadely the "silent white spots" continue to exist.Kristinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14580419350026798149noreply@blogger.com