Another UTAG update

It looks like the government has agreed to pay our arrears in four installments in April, May, June, and July. This is a little bit better than the old plan of May, July, and September, but not a whole lot better. I  had hoped for at least April, May, and June.

UTAG update

Apparently some sort of compromise on the payment schedule for arrears has been reached between the government and the UTAG leadership, but neither party has released any details of the new agreement.

The UTAG Strike is Over

The university faculty union has called off the strike after a recent meeting with the government. We did not get any of our demands met. The government still intends to pay the arrears in three installments in May, July, and September rather than in a lump sum. The strike by doctors and pharmacists at state hospitals here, however, is still going on.

Lethal Police Violence in Togo Kills a 12 Year Old Boy

Yesterday, the Togolese security forces killed a twelve year old boy in suppressing a student demonstration in Dapaong. The use of violence by the Togolese dictatorship against peaceful demonstrators has become a common occurrence in recent months, but this is the first reported fatality among protesters. Last week demonstrations by students in support of striking teachers took place in a number of locations in Togo. The regime has reportedly now temporarily closed all primary and secondary schools in Lome including private ones.

Academic Bias in the US

There is a Fulbright Scholar here who is an expert on Angolan history. I asked him today if Dr. Laumann's presentation here on Friday in which the MPLA and Cuba could do no wrong was typical of US scholars dealing with Portuguese speaking Africa. He said that it was not. But, nonetheless the fact that one can be a tenured professor in the US and essentially parrot the official Cuban line without any new original research as if it was objective scholarship still troubles me even if he is in the minority. It speaks of the double standard at US universities regarding communist regimes. No university for instance would ever hire somebody who parroted the old propaganda line of apartheid South Africa and rightfully so. The inability to properly criticize socialism, however, still seems to dominate US academia.

The Tenured Radical now claims that a powerful Palestinian Lobby in the US is trying to Silence her and other Militant opponents of making Israel accountable for the Crime of Apartheid

I see the Tenured Radical who is hell bent on making sure the radical experiment called Zionism is never undone has a blog post whining about how she and other militant opponents of BDS are being silenced by a supposedly powerful Palestinian lobby in the US. If you don't believe me go to her blog and go read it. I can't make this stuff up. If I could I would be writing fantasy novels and outselling J.K. Rowlings. The Palestinians are a stateless people living in forced dispersal and under military occupation and apartheid. Their oppressors are unconditionally supported by the US government, media, and both major political parties. In academia there are only a few tiny voices of dissent critical of Israel and they have been constantly opposed by the traditional LEFTIST support of the Zionist project as represented by the Tenured Radical and others who are opposed to Palestinian rights. I wish the people who do support Palestinian rights did have the power to silence people like the Tenured Radical, but alas the power balance is all her corner. She will never be fired for her position on Palestine. Something that has not been true for a number of people critical of Israel such as Norman Finkelstein.

There was indeed mass murder by Tito's regime in Yugoslavia (1945-1948)

Where did the myth that there was no state mass murder in Yugoslavia under Tito come from? I keep seeing descriptions of Yugoslavia under Tito on LEFTIST blogs like the Marxist Crooked Timber that describe it as some sort of Balkan Sweden. Because in order for this outright lie to be credible at all you have to completely ignore the years 1945 to 1948. Executions and deaths in concentration camps under Tito were responsible for the death of over 55,000 ethnic Germans alone, nearly 17% of the minority's population.  That is almost as many people as the number of Americans who died fighting in Vietnam and this figure does not take into account deaths among other ethnic groups such as Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, Albanians, and others. It is a whole lot more people than Pinochet killed in Chile, the Argentine Junta killed during the "Dirty War", or the South African security forces killed during apartheid. Yet none of the LEFTISTs defending Tito at Crooked Timber and other places would ever deny that the 30,000 people murdered in Argentina during the "Dirty War" constituted mass murder even though it is a much smaller number than the total number of people exterminated by Tito's forces.

Now is not a good time to get get sick in Ghana

The Ghana Medical Association the union representing doctors at state hospitals such as the one I go to for outpatient consultation along with the Government Hospital Pharmacist Association have been on strike since last Monday when they withdrew outpatient service. Now they are threatening to stop emergency services starting this Monday if the government does not pay them their outstanding arrears. Other than a few private clinics and hospitals, the only medical facilities still working in Ghana for non-emergency outpatient care are the military and police hospitals and the Cuban Doctors Brigade.

Today's presentation (Dennis Laumann)

Normally when we have outside speakers come to the department they speak on a topic related to Ghana as do the speakers from inside the department. They also are sometimes quite boring. Today Dennis Laumann from the University of Memphis spoke to the department on Cuba's role in Angola and its significance during the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond.  He was certainly not boring. Nor did he hide the fact that he was an unabashed partisan of Cuba and the MPLA before it converted from Marxism-Leninism to capitalism. He is evidently a member of the Communist Party USA which I was unaware still existed. Although if Dr. Laumann is representative of the organization today they seem to have shifted away from advocating a Soviet model to supporting a Cuban model.

Update on Book on German Colonialism in West Africa

Last night the fellows of Commonwealth Hall (Vandals) had a social get together and I ran into Wazi Apoh, one of the editors of the book in which my latest published piece appears. Apparently, I never sent him a postal address to give to Lit Verlag in Berlin. So I have now rectified that oversight and I hope to eventually get a personal copy of the book.

New Publication on German Togoland now in Print

The article I co-wrote with a PhD student here for the conference in Winneba in 2011 has now been published as a book chapter. J. Otto Pohl and Felix Y. T. Longi, "The Relative Failure of German Togoland as a Model Cotton Colony" appears in Wazi Apoh and Bea Lundt (Eds.), Germany and its West African Colonies: "Excavations" of German Colonialism in Post-Colonial Times (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2013), pp. 185-200. I still have not gotten my copy of the book, but an associate of mine with a chapter in the book showed me a copy of it yesterday so I know it has now come out in print.

Labor Unrest in Ghana

A larger and larger portion of the workforce in the state sector of the Ghanaian economy are going on strike. UTAG (University Teachers' Association of Ghana) which represents faculty at Ghana's universities is still on strike. We have now been on strike for a week. An earlier strike by primary and secondary school teachers has ended. But, yesterday doctors and pharmacists at state hospitals went on strike. They will no longer be delivering any outpatient service for the time being. Now it appears that court workers will also be going on strike as well. While the government has failed to pay arrears to public employees in education and medicine for 2012 it has at the same time given an ex-gratia payment of over 20 million dollars to 230 members of parliament, a figure over four times what it owes to university faculty. So it is not a lack of money that prevents the timely payment of arrears.

What is happening in Legon

I finally finished grading all my mid-term exams. I am going to have to do finals at a much faster rate. As soon as I get the tests I need to plow through as many as possible, say fifty or sixty a day. Finals will be in May. Right now we are still on strike which means I am not giving any lectures here in Legon. But, I still have other work related stuff to wrap up including revising a book chapter. Tomorrow one of our PhD students has his viva followed by a departmental party. This will be the first PhD produced the department since I started working here.

Why we are on Strike

Okay, the issue behind the strike are the arrears on the part of our salary called the professional allowance which is about half of what we earn. They already paid the arrears on the other half called the basic salary. The current salary we receive still has the professional allowance pegged at the 2011 level without the 2012 "Market Premium" adjustment. This adjustment was an 18% increase in public employee salaries. But, the Ministry of Finance was instructed to freeze the actual paid salaries of university faculty at the 2011 levels. The union has demanded that the government immediately start paying this increase and pay the arrears from this increase for the year 2012 immediately in one lump sum. Currently, the government owes each faculty member at the University of Ghana a net payment of about 3,000 to 4,000 cedis. UTAG already took the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission to court and won a judgement against them. But, the current government position is that they will pay the arrears in installments of three in May, July, and September. The government has not said anything about starting to pay the "Market Premium" on a regular monthly basis so that arrears do not accumulate in the future.

Improved Discipline

The union discipline in enforcing the withdrawal of teaching by faculty is much better this year than it was during last year's strike. That strike never had as great of adherence as the current one does. I am told that a big part of the reason for the better enforcement this year is that a lot of people are really angry. So there is a much greater united front in refusing to teach this year.

Union Meeting

Today there was an emergency UTAG meeting regarding the strike. We are withdrawing teaching until such time as they update our whole salary to the 2013 level and pay us the arrears due to this cut in a single lump sum. Part of our salaries are still frozen at the 2011 level. The government has said it will pay the arrears in three parts during May, July, and September. But, if they do not restore our salaries to their proper level then we will constantly be amassing arrears. So that needs to be done immediately. The union has said that the three part installment plan is unacceptable and that the government needs to pay all of the arrears in a single lump sum.

BTW: Do not expect any of the poser "progressive" LEFT-wing blogs like Lawyers, Guns, and Money who falsely claim to care about labor issues and Black people to mention anything what so ever about this strike. Even though it a very large industrial action involving eight university campuses and thousands of faculty members almost all of whom are Black it won't get a single mention by any US "progressives." They do not care about the labor rights of Black people.

A Middle Aged Man with an Old Blog

Sometimes I think this blog has lived beyond its expiration date. After all most blogs don't live even five years and this one is approaching nine. I never had a lot of readers or comments, but recently it seems like I have a lot less than I used to have. Part of the problem is that my actual life is quite boring. I know some people in the US think I have an interesting life because I spend all my time in countries that appear strange and exotic to the average American. But, really living in a country for an extended period of time is very different from coming for a few weeks as a tourist. You don't get to see new and exotic things every day for years. So I don't have a lot of interesting observations to note anymore. Maybe both the blog and myself have entered that boring stage of middle age?

Another UTAG Strike

Two days ago UTAG, our faculty union, called a strike over the issue of back pay. According to the head of the union the government owes us a total of 10 million cedis (5 million dollars) or about 3,000 to 4,000 cedis for each lecturer. The government wants to pay the money in three installments between May and September, but UTAG is insisting that the strike will continue until the arrears are all paid in a single lump sum. So with any luck I will have an extra $1,500 to $2,000 sometime soon.

Any suggestions?

Okay I am almost finished with my second article comparing Soviet treatment of the deported peoples with South African apartheid. The first one was published last year in Human Rights Review. However, given that the official academic line for most journals is that there never was any racial discrimination or "racial politics" in the USSR under Stalin (this is exactly what they write in the peer review reports) does anybody have any suggestions where I should try and get it published? This article notes the similarities in ethnos theory in the two countries as well as discriminatory practices and deals with the common influence of Shirokogorov on South African volkekundiges and Soviet ethnographers.

Russian crackdown on Twitter and Facebook

For anybody who follows the news in Russia it appears that the government is attempting to censor the content of various social media, most notably Twitter and Facebook. As far as I know they are not making any moves right now to block access to Blogger. According to my site meter I do receive a comparatively large number of hits from Russia. Although how many of these are actual readers I have no idea.

Wanted: Better Enemies

Say what you want about the Marxist-Leninists at least they had a coherent ideology. It is true that it led to millions of unnecessary deaths, but the basic idea of using the power of the state to forcibly develop the economy and improve the basic living conditions of the descendants of the surviving majority has a certain utilitarian appeal. I do not think improving the economic conditions of life for the children and grandchildren of the 90% of the Soviet population that survived Stalin's massive use of violence at all justifies his crimes. But, I can understand the logic behind it. However, today the radical LEFT in the US is focused completely and totally on justifying and supporting everything ever done by the US Democratic Party since FDR and demonizing everything ever done by the US Republican Party since Nixon. This makes me miss the communists. Because the Democrats have not had a coherent ideology of any sort for the most part other than that on the vast majority of issues since WWII they have agreed with the Republicans. The replacement of Lenin with LBJ as the new revolutionary icon just seems so wrong. I am pretty sure that Ho Chi Minh would have agreed with me on this.

Computers

Today I took my lap top into ICT to have some problems fixed. I was worried I was going to have to get a new computer soon. But, it looks like the 30 minutes or so of work the technician did will be sufficient to keep my lap top alive until the end of the year. I should have money to buy a replacement by then. I am told that I should go back to Toshiba rather than getting another Sony. Given my experience with both brands I would definitely say that Toshiba is a much better brand.

How did Ralph Nader become the number one enemy of the Radical US Left?

I do not understand the radical leftists that control US academia. According to the blogosphere or at least Lawyers, Guns, and Money which represents this elite their two greatest enemies are Glen Greenwald and Ralph Nader. I have no idea who Glen Greenwald is and do not particularly care. I know Ralph Nader is an American of Lebanese heritage who has been involved in various US political issues for a long time. I voted for him in 2000 because I was convinced that the two main parties were so closely attached to Israel that if one of them won they were going to get us involved in a war with an Arab country. I was right. George Bush went to war against Iraq. I understand that the US LEFT is strongly pro-Zionist and anti-Arab, but there has got to be a better enemy for them than Nader. How about Rashid Khalidi at the University of Columbia now that Edward Said is dead? Or maybe Chomsky? Really, I would never have pegged Nader as the arch villain of the American LEFT. It is like reading Stalinists and Maoists denounce Tito for being a "right-winger".

Sixty four years since Operation "Priboi"

The largest wave of Stalinist deportations from the Baltic States took place 25-30 March 1949. Earlier smaller waves took place in Lithuania in spring 1948 and all three Baltic States on 14 June 1941. Code named "Operation Prioboi" the March 1949 deportations were summed up on 18 May 1949 by S. Kruglov in a report to Stalin.

From the territory of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSRs were exiled 30360 families of kulaks, nationalists and bandits (94779 people), of these men - 25,708, women - 41987, children - 27084, of this number: from the Lithuanian SSR - 9518 families (31917 people), from the Latvian SSR  - 13624 families (42149 people), from the Estonian SSR -7488 families (20173 people).

Source:

N.F. Bugai (ed.), Narody stran Baltii v usloviiakh  stalinizma (1940-e - 1950-e gody):  Dokumentirovannaia istoriia  (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2005), p. 74.

Questioning the Nation State

The nation state model of organizing society in which each ethnic group as defined by language has its own state has in many ways caused more problems than it has solved. In Europe the creation of relatively homogeneous nation states came about only through the massive use of violence to remove minorities through partition, expulsion, and extermination. That is it took World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the massive expulsion of ethnic Germans from East Central Europe, and the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia during the 1990s to reach the current state of rough correspondence between states and nations. Whether the human costs involved in reaching this stage of development was worth it or not is rarely debated. It is just assumed that the nation state is natural and that events like the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia were necessary.

While in Europe the nation state has been largely achieved through the shedding of rivers of blood, in Africa the realization of the idea remains virtually non-existent. Most African states are multinational states with a large number of ethnic groups speaking different indigenous languages. These groups unlike in Europe do not each have their own exclusive state to give their nation political self determination. Instead they are forced to share state sovereignty with other ethnic groups. Ghana is not an Akan state, South Africa is not a Xhosa state, and Nigeria is not a Hausa state. The European pattern of violent partition, expulsion, and extermination to create homogeneous nation states has been avoided by most African states. The result is that these states are very different from those in Europe and much of Asia where the nation state model has triumphed.

This leads to the question of whether the existing African states should be called nations at all. If we do call them nations what do we call the various ethnic groups inside them seeking modern forms of political representation? Because when people talk about the Ghanaian nation they mean something very different from the Hungarian or Kyrgyz nation. There is no Ghanaian language or common myth of being a single extended family for one thing. There is only a common Ghanaian state founded in 1957 from the territories of the British Gold Coast colony and the British Togoland League of Nations Mandate. This state is composed of a number of ethnic groups none of which is a state bearing people. Ghana is a multi-ethnic state rather than a nation state and this pattern is widespread throughout Africa.

Lunch

Today I had kenkey and pepper for lunch at the Night Market. I passed on the dry fish. The flies seems to like the fish a bit too much and I definitely do not want to catch cholera. The kenkey and pepper cost me only 50 peswas (25 cents). So it is possible to find things even cheaper than Ramen noodles to eat. The big expense in all meals here seems to be the meat, chicken, or fish.

Comments

It always amazes me when I get a comment from a new person here. It is evidence that I have readers I did not know about. I got one the other day. I wonder if there are anymore out there?

Obituary for the Socialist Workers Party

When I did my post-graduate work to earn my MA and PhD at SOAS from 2001-2004 the Socialist Workers Party had a constant low level presence around the various University of London campuses. It was a strange Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyite entity with its own cult of personality around Tony Cliff who founded the party.  Every summer they would sponsor a conference called Marxism that would have various speakers, musicians, and a big book sale. I once saw China Mieville give a talk on zombies and Lenin at one of these conferences, I believe it was Marxism 2003. Now I am told as a result of a rape scandal that the party has basically fallen apart and is in its death throes. Of course in terms of having any real effect on British politics the SWP was a complete non-entity. But, it did attract the support of a lot of geeky London undergrads who would probably have become libertarians in the US. Its role in providing an outlet for socially awkward youth seems to have been far greater than its actual intellectual or political influence in the UK. Nonetheless, despite my ideological differences with the communists in the SWP I have fond memories of arguing with their members over issues ranging from Lenin to Palestine to Chechnya. I don't know if the radical left in the UK or anywhere else in the English speaking world will be able to find a replacement for the SWP. It was in almost all aspects a completely anachronistic organization during the years I came in contact with it. After all 2001 was not 1917. So perhaps now the era of organized Marxist-Leninist politics in the English speaking world has finally come to a fitting end.

Decline in Readership since 2009

Walt Richmond, one of the very few people to ever comment on this blog, left a comment recently stating that people do not care about Africa and Africans. I suspect that is true for most of the world outside of Africa. But, it seems particularly true regarding those who read and write blogs. I looked at some stats today that showed that my readership had declined by over 80% since 2009 when I was based in Kyrgyzstan. Now maybe these stats are wrong, but if they are true that is a pretty stunning decline. I am not sure why the decline would be so great. But, maybe there is relatively a much higher interest in reading blogs written in Central Asia than those written in Africa?

The very poor record of socialists on racial equality

It has occurred to me that despite their claims to have eliminated racism that socialist regimes were historically every bit as bad if not worse than the worst capitalist states such as apartheid South Africa in this matter. Cuba seems to be the only socialist state in which racial discrimination actually decreased rather than increased after the revolution. In the USSR there were the bloody national operations that fell heavily upon diaspora groups like the Germans, Poles, Finns, Greeks, Latvians, and Estonians during 1937-38. Then there was the wholesale internal deportation and deprivation of civil rights imposed upon the Koreans, Germans, Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, and other stigmatized groups in the 1940s. In China there was the wholesale persecution and annihilation of the cultural institutions of the Tibetans, Mongols, and Uyghers, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. In Vietnam there was the systematic mistreatment of ethnic Chinese in 1978-79. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge exterminated the majority of the country's ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese, Thais, and Cham. So it is not surprising that people who continue to spring from the same ideological base as Stalin, Mao, Le Duan, and Pol Pot continue to support policies that treat different groups of people differently and unequally on the basis of their ancestry and lineage.

On this topic I am interested in learning more about the Vietnamese government's persecution of its Chinese population during the late 1970s. It appears that the exodus of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam was in response to a campaign of racist persecution by the Vietnamese government, but that they were not actually forcibly expelled from the country. Rather after being plundered and subjected to significant harassment they were given the option of settling in New Economic Zones or leaving Vietnam, and the vast majority chose to leave. If anybody has any suggestions for reading on the subject please put them in the comments.

More on Left-Wing Racism

I see that the Left-Wing racists at Crooked Timber who strongly denounced the slight reduction in the very high standard of living of the White people in Greece are now denouncing the IMF's policies in even richer, but still White Cyprus. Policies that will also make rich White people less rich.  But, these same people have been completely silent on the recent further impoverishment by the IMF of poor Black people in Ghana and other African countries through the forced elimination of fuel subsidies. It is clear from this support of the structural racism I outlined above that the American and European LEFT does not consider Black people in Africa to be real people deserving of the same rights, opportunities, and material benefits as White people in Europe. This is a far worse form of racism than the utterance of racial slurs by powerless poor rural Whites in Mississippi.

Grading Rubric

I have some students that do very well. I have other students who do not do so well. The difference between the two groups is that the first type does the reading and pays attention in class while the second does not. There are no magic formulas for getting a good grade.

More on Togo police battle protesting journalists

Here is a fairly good summary of yesterday's protest and its suppression by the Togolese security forces.

Togo police battle protesting journalists

More Government Violence in Togo

Right across the eastern border of Ghana is the city of Lome in Togo. It is the seat of a repressive dictatorship that continues in power with the active support of the French and US governments and more importantly the passive support of racist American liberals. Today security forces used tear gas to break up a demonstration in Lome the capital of Togo. The demonstrators were protesting new restrictions on the country's media. The government can now revoke media licenses without going through the courts. Around 50 journalists were involved in the protest and 3 were injured. This is just the latest in a long string of protests by people in Togo recently against the dynastic dictatorship of Faure Gnassingbe who inherited rule of the country from his father in 2005.

You won't ever find anything about the ongoing struggle for freedom and human rights in Togo on any self proclaimed "liberal", "progressive", or "radical" blogs. This is because they do not believe that the people in Togo or anywhere else in Africa are fully human. They believe it is perfectly acceptable to reinforce international racist structures in which France and the US support the regime in Togo against the people of Togo. To absolve themselves of any wrong doing they think all they have to do is condemn poor rural whites in Mississippi who are prejudiced against Black Americans. Then they become "good people" opposed to racism.  But, it is not poor rural whites in Mississippi who are propping up the Togolese regime. It is the progressive governments of France and Obama that are keeping the current dictator in power just as his father was backed by Paris and "progressive" US presidents like Johnson and Clinton. You wouldn't see such complete silence by leftist bloggers if there was a military regime in a white country like Greece or Spain. The international left was as vocal against Franco and the Greek Colonels as they are completely silent regarding Togo.

Source: Agence France-Presse

Fiction

I do not watch television anymore. If somebody sends me a documentary on DVD I will watch it. But, other than that I only watch films on airplanes. This undoubtedly cuts me off from my indigenous Obruni culture to a large extent. I do, however, read popular fiction written in the US. I like mysteries and crime novels and the big book store across the street has a much better selection of these types of books than any book store I have ever seen in the US. Lately, I have been reading a lot of Michael Connelly novels. I know it is not high literature, but I find it far more entertaining.

We have electricity again!!!

Today after four whole days with no electricity what so ever, my office finally has power. I have no idea how long it will last, however.

What is going on at work.

Except for Wednesday which was a holiday the electricity has gone out in the history department every single day. When it went out on Thursday the electricians refused to come out and fix it. Apparently they said they were tired of coming out to fix it and so they were not ever going to solve the problem. So now the history and English departments have had no electricity at all for three whole days running and it is really hot and humid. I can stand about 30 minutes in my office in the afternoon, but not any longer, without the air conditioning and fan. Evidently the problem is that when they built our new offices last summer they forgot to add any carrying capacity to the building's wiring to allow it to run the additional air conditioning units they added. They also knew about this problem at the time and decided it was too much work and expense to do it right then. So now it looks like the history and English departments at the University of Ghana will be without electricity indefinitely. I guarantee you that this would not ever happen to the Business school.

8 March 1944

This Friday is International Women's Day. It is also the 69th anniversary of the deportation of the Balkars from their Caucasian homeland to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Balkars are not a very large nationality even by the standards of the North Caucasus. Their history is nonetheless representative of a number of small ethnic groups in the USSR. Most notably in the fact that the decision to deport the Balkars was made before the regime concocted the false charges of treason used to justify this ethnic cleansing. If you are looking for material on the Balkars or any other national group from the Northwest Caucasus some of the best writing comes from my good friend Walter Richmond. I have linked to two of his pieces above.

The Week

Tomorrow is Ghanaian independence day so I do not have to go to Accra to teach at City Campus. I do not know what I will do tomorrow. Today we had no power in the office for most of the day.

Reputations and Rankings

If I go by reputation and rankings all of the WHITE universities in the world appear much better on paper than my institution. But, we get between three and six presentations by PhD students and faculty from Europe and the  US here a semester and most of them are pretty weak. Even if they are sending us their absolute worst representatives because we are in Black Africa and not worth the effort, it indicates that their overall quality is far inferior to their reputation. However, in some cases the presenters are portrayed as the best that a certain institution in Europe or the US has to offer. In which case why are we rated so far below these institutions internationally? Our best graduate students are doing much better work and frankly I would be embarrassed to send somebody to Europe from here to give the type of mediocre presentations that they routinely send us. If anybody has any thoughts as to why this is the case I would greatly appreciate their comments.

Class today

Today in class it was clear that not a single student had done all of the assigned reading and the mid-term exam is next week. I know people tell me if I want the students to do the reading that I have to give a quiz every class. But, that is a lot more work grading for me since the class has 110 students. Should not people in their twenties be mature enough to do the reading on their own without me having to test them on it every week? Is it too much to ask that at least one student, less than 1% of the class, do all the reading for any one class session? I do not know where the habit of not doing any reading for class came from. But, it is the single greatest obstacle to the university becoming a world class institution.

Former Soviet Archives

From best I can tell the archives of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan are still both partially open with regards to researching Stalinist repression even though both states are run by dictators. Whereas those of democratic Kyrgyzstan have reclassified everything to do with Soviet violations of human rights as secret and top secret. Scholars writing on the Russian-Germans conscripted into the labor army are still citing a number of different archives from the RF and Kazakhstan. In contrast those writing about the subject on Central Asia recently only cite archives from Moscow and none from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. I know for a fact as a result of going to the TsGAKR in Bishkek last summer that these documents are indeed now off limits in Kyrgyzstan despite the fact that many of them were published earlier. I assume that those in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan have also been reclassified. But, I have no evidence other than the lack of citations in recent scholarship. Can anybody confirm the status of the archives in these three states regarding research into Stalinist repression?

Russian-German Labor Army Conscripts from Central Asia

The Soviet government mobilized about 9,000 men or about two thirds of the adult male Russian-German population of the four Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan into the labor army in early 1942 as a result of GKO Order 1281ss. They were sent out of the region to construct rail ways. As a result of this mobilization for forced labor in other parts of the USSR the Russian-German population in Central Asia plummeted. Between 1939 and 1942 the Russian-German population in Uzbekistan shrank by 2,805 (28%), Turkmenistan 1,424 (43%), Kyrgyzstan 3,305 (28%), and Tajikistan 1,076 (53%). In October 1942, the Stalin regime mobilized more Russian-Germans with GKO Order 2383ss. During this second mobilization the NKVD unmasked 1,165 "anti-Soviet elements" among the Russian-Germans living in Central Asia. This number included 456 in Uzbekistan (6.3% of their total population), 76 in Turkmenistan (4%), 431 in Kyrgyzstan (5.1%), and 202 in Tajikistan (21.3%!). A large number of these men and women were arrested, tried,  and transferred to corrective labor camps to serve sentences as prisoners. Despite their small population, many thousands of Russian-Germans from Central Asia worked as forced laborers during and after World War II in various regions of the USSR.

Source:

A.A. German and D. Inojatowa, "Deutsche Trudarmeisten in Mittelasien" in A.A. German and O. Silantjewa, (Hrsg.), "...In Arbeitskolonnen fur die gesamte Zeit des Krieges". Zeitzeugen und Forscher berichten uber die Deutschen in der Trudarmee (Moscow: IVDK-Medien, 2012), p. 280.

A.A. German and D. Inoyatova, "Nemtsy-Trudarmeisty v srednei Azii" in  A.A. German and O. IU. Silant'evoi (eds.), "...V rabochie kolonny na vse vremya voinny". Ochevidtsy i issledovateli o nemtsakh v trudovoi armii (Moscow: MSNK-Press, 2012),  p. 281.

Oscars

Reading about the Oscar's on blogs makes me feel like the US has become some sort of alien planet. I have no idea whats so ever what they are talking about. But, I am glad that I did not waste any time watching it. What passes for important discourse among my fellow Americans is truly both bizarre and trivial.

Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia

While Tito is often praised by American "liberals" as representing a humane alternative socialism to Stalinism, his regime was extremely brutal from 1945 to 1948. The ethnic German citizens of Yugoslavia were singled out for special persecution by Tito's partisans after the end of World War II. In the 1990s a census of losses from ethnic German villages during the early years of the Tito regime confirmed the shooting of 7,199 and the death in concentration camps of 48,447 ethnic German civilians in Yugoslavia. In total 16.8% of the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia died at the hands of Tito's new regime either in front of firing squads or in camps (Prauser and Sretenovic, p.57). In addition to those interned in Yugoslavia, the new communist regime also shipped 12,364 ethnic Germans to the USSR from January to March 1945 (Polian, p. 260). The horrors of the brutal internment of the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia is best documented in the film series Millions Cried...No One Listened by Ann Morrison.

Sources:

Pavel Polian, Against their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004).

Steffen Prauser and Stanislav Sretenovic, "The 'Expulsion' of the German Speaking Minority from Yugoslavia" in Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, eds., The Expulsion of the 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of Second World War (Florence, Italy: European University Institute, 2004), pp. 47-58.

An Unsurprising Silence

My good friend Walt Richmond has noted that the only article in English he could find on the Internet regarding the 69th anniversary of the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush was the one I posted on this blog. There was nothing else by anybody. None of the "anti-racist" blogs by "liberals", "progressives", or "radicals" had anything to say about the racially motivated forced removal of half a million people to desolate wastelands where a quarter of them died. This goes back to a theme that I have noted before. The US liberal media and academics despite all their claims to support diversity and champion the disadvantaged are in fact extremely parochial and in fact outright racist in their worldviews. Steven Salaita nails it regarding the "radicals", "progressives" and liberals that dominate academia and the media. They are largely posers when it comes to their supposed anti-racist positions. Or as he more articulately puts it, "We should therefore do away with the notion that liberalism automatically equates to tolerance or that liberals are dedicated anti-racists. Liberals are, and long have been, part of the same system that created the racism under discussion in this essay." (p. 19). Sure they like to condemn the alleged racism of their domestic opponents in the US. But, at the same time you have big name tenured professors like Francine Hirsch adamantly denying that the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush in 1944 constituted an act of racial discrimination. The assorted "radicals" and "progressives" with blogs like Claire Potter, Ann Little, Timothy Burke, the socialists at Crooked Timber, and others never blog about politically incorrect people like the Chechens and Ingush. Their plight does not concern them. The "anti-racist" stance of American academic "radicals" is purely a show to demonstrate their supposed moral superiority to registered Republicans in the US. It does not now and has not for a very long time had any real connection with the vast majority of people in the world. The people that Frantz Fanon called the "Wretched of the Earth" do not exist as real humans for academic liberals. At least the old colonial style racism had the honesty of its convictions. There is nothing redeeming about the far more prevalent liberal racism that dominates US academia.

Source: Steven Salaita, The Uncultured Wars: Arab, Muslims, and the Poverty of Liberal Thought - New Essays, (London: Zed Books, 2008).

The Coup of 24 February 1966

Tomorrow marks the 47th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. The coup led to a period of malaise and darkness in Ghanaian history that only decisively ended under the leadership of Rawlings many years later in the 1980s. There can be little doubt that during the nine years he was in power that Nkrumah accomplished more good for Ghana and Africa as a whole than almost any other leader. He built the dam, the harbor, and much of the other infrastructure that Ghana still relies upon today. He successfully asserted Ghana's independence as a non-aligned leader in Africa. He put Ghana on the map as a modern state. Even today most people outside of Ghana know of only three Ghanaians: Kwame Nkrumah, Kofi Annan, and Azumah Nelson.

So given the positive contributions of Kwame Nkrumah to both Ghana and to Africa as a whole why was he overthrown? It appears that the military junta that toppled Nkrumah from power while he was in China on his way to North Vietnam did so with the backing and at the behest of the UK and especially the US governments. The documentation released from the LBJ Presidential Library so far seems to be pretty conclusive that the liberal administration of Johnson helped orchestrate the coup. An African leader capable of advocating for real independence is the last thing any US liberal wants.

Source: Socialist Forum of Ghana, The Great Deception: The Role of the CIA in the Overthrow of Nkrumah (Accra, 2005).

Sixty Nine Years Ago Today - The Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush

Today is generally called Defenders Day in the former Soviet states, but it used to be Red Army Day and commemorated the foundation of the Soviet military by Leon Trotsky. Of course Trotsky himself was airbrushed out of the holiday long before his murder in 1940. But, while most people in Russia and Central Asia celebrate on 23 February each year, the Chechens and Ingush do not. On Red Army Day in 1944, the Stalin regime celebrated the occasion by forcibly deporting virtually the entire indigenous population of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Within less than a week the NKVD forcibly removed close to half a million people from their ancestral homeland. Beria the head of the NKVD kept Stalin informed daily of the operation's progress. This massive act of ethnic cleansing had striking similarities with other instances of genocide such as the US government's forced relocation of the Navajos. The Stalin regime placed the Chechens and Ingush under special settlement restrictions and on 26 November 1948 declared their exile from the Caucasus permanent. In the years after Stalin's death in 1953, however, the Soviet government freed the deported peoples from the special settlement regime and allowed many of them to return home. Only the Russian-Germans, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks remained permanently exiled. The Chechens and Ingush managed to return in large numbers to a restored Chechen-Ingush ASSR after 1957. Nevertheless the deportation and years in exile had a traumatic and still lingering effect on the Chechens and Ingush.

Who elected the IMF and World Bank the Emperors of Ghana?

Prices are already going up. Laundry was nine cedis today instead of seven last week. I am hearing predictions that across the board that prices might increase 20%. That means most everybody's purchasing power in Ghana declines by one fifth thanks to a completely arbitrary and ideologically motivated decision by the the IMF and World Bank. African politicians need to learn to just say no to IFIs.

Reduction of Fuel Subsidies in Ghana and National Sovereignty

I am hoping that the recent removal of fuel subsidies imposed upon Ghana by the IMF and World Bank does not result in a chain reaction of price increases for everything else. The fact that almost all economic policies in African states are not in fact controlled by Africans, but by completely unaccountable IFIs representing US and European interests makes democracy on the continent rather lacking in content. What good is electing a leader if he only has symbolic sovereignty over the state while all the important decisions are made by the IMF and World Bank?

Things

Blogging will probably continue to be slow. First, things have been busy around here. Teaching a graduate course in addition to my undergraduate courses eats up a lot of time. Second, I don't really have anything to blog about. Right now I am not doing much of anything other than things related to teaching and stuff needed to stay alive like eating, sleeping, and drinking water. Since Monday the only thing of note I have done is see a presentation on the history of African football players in Portugal.

This day in history

Most people celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th. But, it is also a day that commemorates a lot of other anniversaries. Some like the birth of the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the granting of statehood to Arizona can be viewed in a positive light. Others like GKO Order 1281ss and the firebombing of Dresden belong in the big book of man's inhumanity to man.

In 1818 Frederick Douglass was born.

In 1912 Arizona officially became the 48th state in the United States.

In 1942 Stalin issued GKO Order 1281ss ordering the mobilization of Russian-German men living in eastern areas of the USSR into the labor army.

In 1945 the Allies firebombed the city of Dresden.

Clair Potter - The Tenured Radical is a Liar

Clair Potter is a liar. I suppose such moral character flaws are necessary to achieve tenure at universities in the US. She is certainly representative of a strand of dominant leftists feminist historians who have an allergy to the truth and these people completely and totally dominate US academia. It is because of extremist liars like her that people like me are banned from ever even getting interviews to work in US academia. Fortunately, Africans have higher moral standards. Potter has consistently claimed that she never wrote about BDS before 2013. This is a lie. On her blog there is a post from 23 February 2009 2:06 pm on the subject.  This link will take you directly to the article unless she decides to take it down after seeing this post in order to try and cover up the fact she is a bald face liar. The url is also below.  I am sure if the post is erased somebody with more computer skills than me can recover the post from the ether. Unfortunately she is tenured so she can freely lie about anything she wants without any type of job sanction, but nobody in the world should from now on take anything she says seriously. If the state of US academia declines any further we won't have to make any improvements in Africa to overcome them.

chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2009/radical-opposes-boycotting-israeli/

Grades

I have now finished grading. Although I am still getting complaints on a regular basis from last year's students that I should have given them all As instead of the B+ which seems to be the most common grade of those that are the most insistent that I gave them a horrible grade. If I give any student a grade less than an A they will complain that they deserved an A. When I was in college nobody ever complained to the lecturer about a B+. They may have wanted an A, but there was not an expectation that their work was automatically A level and anything less was a horrible injustice inflicted by the professor. I am now thinking about telling students with above average grades who complain that they really got an A and I graded them wrong that they can go file a complaint with the Chancellor of the University, Kofi Annan.

Why I am a "Reactionary" and not a "Radical."

I see that the Tenured Radical has again officially defined the position of "radical" US academics on Palestine by writing another attack on peaceful resistance to Israeli apartheid and colonization. This is why I am a "reactionary" and not a "radical." I do not support Israel just because it calls itself a social democracy and a Jewish State.  I am not a "progressive." I am a hard line right winger and as such I support the national and human rights of the Palestinians. I believe they have the right to use not only boycotts, but also armed struggle to achieve their liberation. Of course that makes me politically incorrect and beyond the pale to all the leftists in US academia like Potter. But, so what? I live in Africa. Here there are still people alive that did fight for freedom and not all of that struggle was peaceful.

The Rehabilitation of Stalin and the Moral Responsibility of Intellectuals

The rehabilitation of Stalin has progressed from merely ignoring or denying his crimes and concentrating on his accomplishments in defeating Nazi Germany and industrializing the USSR to actively praising his repression against various internal enemy classes and especially domestic enemy nationalities. The recent celebration of the founding of the Usol'lag corrective labor camp by its former wardens is a case in point of this phenomenon. While American and European leftists have spent a great amount of time and effort to discredit the very small fringe groups that have attempted to deny, but not praise the crimes of Hitler, they have done almost nothing to oppose the political rehabilitation of Stalin. Indeed a great many of them especially in US universities have actively dismissed attempts to remember the victims of Stalin with dignity as something frivolous like Duran Duran albums and big hair and have instead portrayed communism as a "Progressive movement like Civil Rights and feminism." Indeed Stalinism was a "progressive movement" in that it sought to completely annihilate traditional peoples and their cultures in the name of modernity. Colonialism and genocide were also "progressive movements" in this sense.  But, material progress at any cost is not a value I support as politically incorrect as my "reactionary" position may be. I believe that human dignity is more important. I know that I am a member of very tiny minority of people holding both a PhD and a US passport to think that Stalin's violent repression of his perceived enemies had no possible moral justification regardless of the Soviet government's position on segregation in the US South, but so be it. Twentieth century communism did not further civil rights or feminism for that matter in the USSR or any of the other countries where it actually ruled. Indeed the Stalin regime eliminated the civil rights of a large number of racialized ethnic groups and placed them under apartheid like restrictions. These stigmatized nationalities are still politically incorrect peoples so the US left has no problem dismissing their historical plight as having no more seriousness than Duran Duran albums and big hair. But, one can only  imagine the reaction of the left if people on the right were to do the same thing to politically correct victims like the Jews under Naziism, Blacks in the US South, or women anywhere and anytime.

Usol'lag

Recently former guards of the Usol'lag Corrective Labor Camp in the Urals celebrated the 75th anniversary of the camp's founding. During WWII Stalin sent thousands of Russian-Germans to this camp as conscripts in the labor army without any criminal charges or trial. Their "crime" for which they were condemned to forced labor was their ethnic German ancestry. By April 1942 the Stalin regime had sent 4,940 Russian-Germans to Usol'lag. This number had increased to 6,004 by January 1944. Material conditions in this logging camp were awful and large numbers of those sent there died from malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion. The Memory Book for the Russian-German labor army conscripts sent to Usol'lag confirms the death of 3,508 individuals. Can you imagine if former guards of Buchenwald in Germany held a party to celebrate the founding of that camp anytime after 1945? Yet Stalinist crimes not only get a free pass, but are openly celebrated today in Russia with no protests what so ever from Western intellectuals.

Soviet apartheid article no. 2 progress report

Last night I looked over the second Soviet apartheid article I was working on last year and had put away for a while to accomplish other things. It does not appear to be as great a mess as I remember it being in 2012. It of course still needs a lot of work, but it does appear to be a solid first draft that could be made to work with enough editing. It is about 6,700 words right now and does have an introduction, a thesis, a middle, and a conclusion. As soon as I get all of the grading and class prep for this week squared away I am going to return to working on it in earnest. If anybody would like to volunteer to look over it and provide constructive criticism please let me know. Although the comparison of Soviet nationality policies to South African apartheid has been around since the 1970s when dissidents in the USSR used it as a way of noting official discrimination against groups like the Meskehtian Turks and Crimean Tatars, it has gotten little scholarly attention.

City Campus

Yesterday I spent most of the day at City Campus in Accra. Formerly known as the Workers' College, it was modeled after Birkbeck in London, but has far fewer resources. Something that is quite evident from the condition of the physical infrastructure, particularly the Old Block. At any rate I had a 200 level class followed by a long break during which I graded 14 exams and caught the first half of the Mali-Nigeria football match. I then had a 400 level class. There were three new students who were not in the antecedent class last semester. But, most of the 14 students from the last semester were also missing. I found out that one of them had been killed in a traffic accident during the break. I suppose that given the number of students I teach and the very high rate of motor related fatalities in Ghana that the event was not statistically that improbable. However, it still shocked me and it is always sad when young people die.

One Negative Effect of the War in Mali

One thing the recent military intervention in Mali does is legitimize the French military and security presence in Africa and its role in keeping dictators in power in neo-colonial states like Chad and Togo who participated in the "liberation" of Timbuktu. This is not a good long term trend. The French supported dictatorships in Chad, Togo, Gabon and other places have been far more brutal to far more people for far longer than the Islamists were in northern Mali. Providing them with enhanced international political legitimacy is a disservice to the people laboring under these repressive regimes.

What I do during the day (Ghanaian brain cultivation and other activities)

Yesterday it seems I spent the whole day running around campus. I went to the IT people three time to get my anti-virus software updated, the laundromat twice, the electrical division of the physical plant twice (I still don't have working lights in my room), as well as the bank and the library. So other than prepare for and teach one class I did not get much done on Monday. I think I may have graded one exam. Today I did considerably better on the exams, but still had a three hour graduate course and a two hour meeting eat up a big chunk of time. It also took over ten hours to download the updates for my new anti-virus software today. Tomorrow I have to go to Accra for six and a half hours to teach. But, Thursday I have completely free so I can probably finish up grading this week. The deadline is 22 February 2013. I will definitely be finished before then.

Delurk

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More Third World Problems

This week has been busy.  I taught three classes including my first graduate class. It is on ethnicity and race. I am also still finishing up grading. I hope to finish that soon. I also had some other things to do and not having power most of Monday and Tuesday made working in my office miserable. The department needs a generator as well as more printers and a scanner.

Today they fumigated our offices. So we had to leave before noon. I wish they had given us more than a one day notice. On top of that they were late. They said they would arrive at 10:00 and did not get there until 11:30. To me that is unprofessional, but what do I know.

Other than that things are going okay.

Why do US academic "progressives" lie about BDS?

I keep seeing the false claim by "progressive" North American academics on very high traffic blogs that the PACBI requires the boycott of individual Israeli scholars. This is simply not true. It is a deliberate and malicious lie spread to hamper the implementation of BDS by academics. The PACBI instead targets Israeli academic institutions not individuals. It does not differ at all from the earlier academic boycott of South Africa which all of these same "progressives" supported.

New article on Labor army now available

My article, "Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water: The Russian Germans in the Labour Army" is now available in The Eurasia Studies Society Journal , vol. 2, no. 1 2013. Go check it out and feel free to leave  any comments you have about it here.

US Establishes Drone Base in Niger

The US is now establishing a base in Niger from which to launch drones into Mali. If you had told me when I was a young man that the US would be fighting a war around Timbuktu in the Sahara against a small group of Islamist guerrillas I would have thought you mad. On the other hand I realized upon reading this news that I know very little about Niger. It is one of the African countries I still have not found any English language histories on. So if anybody has any suggestions for readings on the history of Niger please put them in the comments. If there is anything good in French it might serve as an inspiration start improving my embryonic ability to read French.

Source: Reuters

Publications on things African, German, and Soviet

Today was the first day of class and not many students showed up. But, today was hectic getting syllabi copied, dealing with a never ending stream of students, having to resubmit two different manuscripts due to technical problems, and I still have to finish grading. On the bright side it looks like my book chapter on cotton in German Togoland I co-wrote with Felix Longi will be out soon. I also have a journal article that will be published online next week I hope. The title of the article is "Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water: The Russian-Germans in the Labour Army" and it should appear in the journal of the The Eurasia Studies Society of Great Britain and Europe, vol. 2, no. 1, February 2013. Finally, my chapter on Blacks in the USSR will probably appear in print this summer. I will keep everybody updated on when and where my publications appear. I am hoping to have enough publications under my belt in the next couple of years to apply for promotion.

More on why foreign aid is bad for Africa

I am now also reading David Sogge, Give & Take: What's the Matter with Foreign Aid? (London: Zed Books, 2002). I will have a more complete analysis on this after I finish reading Sogge and Glennie. But, one thing that is apparent is that donor countries give aid to help interests in the donor countries not so much to help anybody in the recipient countries. This is particularly true of government provided assistance. There really is no such thing as international government charity. In addition to serving greater geo-political and economic interests a lot of foreign aid ends up directly in the pockets of American and European corporations. For instance food assistance is not only meant to provide help to hungry people in the underdeveloped world. It is also meant to provide assistance to farmers in the US and EU by having the donor government buy their products. In fact a lot foreign aid, not just food assistance,  has been an indirect way of providing government subsidies to US and European corporations. This has been especially true regarding military assistance. Arms sent to foreign countries means money for weapons manufacturers. This does not even delve into the economic and political dependency such aid can cause among recipient countries. But, it does serve to show that the US and Europe do not provide aid to Africa for altruistic reasons. There are always ulterior motives. What is good for politically powerful interests in the US and Europe is not always good for the people of Africa.

Africa should just say, "No".

I am reading Jonathan Glennie, The Trouble with Aid: Why Less could Mean More for Africa (London: Zed Books, 2008) now. He makes a good argument that African countries would be a lot better off rejecting foreign aid and loans and the conditions attached to them than accepting them. Often the loss of revenue from eliminating tariffs or privatizing state industries is far greater than the aid money which more often than not is a loan that has to be repaid with interest rather than a grant. The loss of tariff barriers and the privatization of state industries has led to a lot of indigenous African products being driven out of their own domestic markets by cheaper and heavily subsidized foreign products. Why is it that the Netherlands is allowed to dump subsidized chickens in Ghana, but Ghana is prohibited by the IMF and the powers standing behind it from raising tariffs on these chickens? (Glennie, p. 54). Using tax payer subsidies for the export of agricultural goods to foreign countries which is standard practice by the US and EU is not consistent with  free trade. These subsidies are a far greater interference in the world market due their large size and negative effects than any tariff or nationalization by African countries. If the political will could be found Africans would be better off rejecting most aid and its conditions and  instead crafting policies designed to boost the production of indigenous goods.

German, Austrian, and Sudeten German Communists in the USSR

The total number of foreign German communists in the USSR in 1942 that had survived arrest in 1937-1938 was rather small. The Comintern had a list of registered members for foreign communists in the USSR in 1942 which included 131 members from Germany, 74 from the Austrian party, and 44 Sudeten Germans with membership in the Czechoslovak party. Other communists from countries at war with the USSR included seven from Finland, 76 from Hungary, and 57 from Romania. The Comintern officially asked the NKVD on 20 November 1942 that these party members be excluded from service in the labor army even though some had already been mobilized by this time (Krieger, fn. 66, p. 162). A number of communists from Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland spent years in the labor army in various NKVD camps (Krieger, p. 151).  The existence and persecution of Sudeten German communists in the USSR is particularly interesting. If nothing else their existence proves that the Czech claim that all Sudeten Germans were Nazi sympathizers was simply not true. Their opposition to Naziism, however, did not spare them from persecution at the hands of Benes's Soviet ally.

Source: Viktor Krieger, "Patriots or Traitors? - The Soviet Government and the 'German Russians' After the attack on the USSR by National Socialist Germany", in Karl Schlogel (ed.), Russian-German Special Relations in the Twentieth Century: A Closed Chapter? (Berg Publishers: New York, 2006), pp. 133-163.

More German Communists in Soviet Camps

This post is a continuation on the theme of Russian-German communists in labor army contingents in NKVD camps I started yesterday. In Viatlag on 1 January 1942 the number of CPSU members numbered 122 among the ethnic Germans in the labor army with another 113 candidate members. The influx of conscripts in January 1942 under GKO order 1123ss an additional 228 members and 110 candidates arrived in the camp. By 1 October 1945, deaths, expulsions, and transfers had reduced the number of Russian-German communists to 118 CPSU members and 31 candidates. In addition there were 182 Komsomol members among the Russiang-Germans in the labor army in the camp organized into four all German Komsomol organizations (Berdinskikh, p. 426). These communists continued to hold party meetings in the camps during WWII despite their otherwise severely restricted civil rights as members of the labor army.

A number of  German communists at Viatlag were not members of the CPSU. Rather they were members of the KPD (Berdinskikh, p. 430). This was particularly true among those serving sentences as convicted prisoners rather than those conscripted into the labor army. Among the communists born in Germany and members of the KPD at Viatlag were Franz Berger, Walther Bechter, Heinrich Born, Erich Bonsak, Gustav Brun, and Georg Kern. They had earlier immigrated to the USSR sometime before 1937. All of these men were arrested and convicted of "Counter-Revolutionary" crimes during the German Operation of 1937-1938. None of these men survived their sentences to be released. All of them  were sentenced to death in the camp on 28 November 1941. By summer 1942 all of them were dead (Berdkinskikh,  pp. 439-444). The revolution truly did devour its own children.

Source: Viktor Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005).

Loyal Communists among the Russian-Germans in the Labor Army at Labor Camps in the Urals

The Stalin regime persecuted ethnic Germans because they were racially German not because of any political or security reasons. Thus loyal members of the Communist Party and Komsomol found themselves deported to Kazakhstan or Siberia or forcibly ejected from the Soviet military and then conscripted into the labor army and sent to corrective labor camps in the Urals. The following data below represents their numbers as labor army conscripts in three such camps.

Bogoslovlag had 356 members of the CPSU among the 20,711 ethnic Germans working at the camp in the labor army. This works out to 1.72% of the contingent. In addition to CPSU members there were also 96 candidate members, 786 Komsomol members, and four members of foreign communist parties among the "mobilized Germans" working in the camp. In Tagillag there were 132 CPSU members among this contingent out of 6,704 labor army conscripts or 1.97% of the total. This camp also had 39 candidate members of the party, 273 Komsomol members, and nine members of foreign communist parties among its Russian-German labor army conscripts. Finally, Bakalstroi (ChMS) had 188 CPSU members out of 11,353 ethnic Germans in the labor army at this camp, 1.66%. The numbers for candidate members reached 44, the Komsomol 520, and ethnic Germans in foreign communist parties three. All together the number of communists among ethnic Germans inducted into the labor army to work at these three labor camps totaled, 2,450 people. These were people who were part of the ruling Soviet party apparatus and thus politically dedicated to the regime. Had the real reason for anti-German actions actually been political or security related rather than racial persecution then there would have been no need to condemn loyal communists to hard labor in concentration camps without any charge or trial on the basis of their ancestral ethnicity.

Source: S.L. Razinkov, "Sotsial'nyi portret trudarmeitsev, mobilizovannykh v lageria NKVD na Urale v 1941-1946 gg.", in A.A. German (ed.), Nachal'nyi period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny i deportatsiia rossiiskikh nemtsev: vzgliady i otsenki cherez 70 let (Moscow: MSNK Press, 2011), table 6, p. 677.

Reports of Atrocities by Malian Army

There have now been reports that the Malian military has been engaged in mass summary executions as it advances with French and other African forces to reclaim the north from Islamists. They are allegedly targeting Tuaregs and Arabs claiming that they betrayed Mali and supported the Islamists. Earlier in Libya the US backed forces also rounded up and killed Black Africans under the pretext that they were mercenaries for the former regime. Although no irrefutable proof has yet been offered regarding these reports, I find the allegations of atrocities by the Malian military to be credible and not at all surprising. I would prefer that the reports of these killings not be true. But, I am guessing that further investigation results in these allegations being verified.

Institutional Racism

I am definitely of the opinion that institutional definitions of racism are more useful for scholarship than ones reducing it to an irrational and pathological hatred. However, the claim I see by certain people in the US who are more interested in activism than scholarship that only non-whites can be victims of institutional racism is ridiculous. Fortunately, I live in Africa where people have a much better understanding of racism. It is not about skin color. If nothing else the long history of European anti-semitism demonstrates that it is quite possible for white groups to be racialized as well. Institutional racism can deny equal rights and opportunities to any group perceived to be inherently different by virtue of ancestry or descent from the dominant group or groups in any given society. Hence there has existed institutional racism against white groups by other white groups as well as in some cases even institutional racism by Asians against white groups. Ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states have experienced both institutional racism from other whites, mostly Russians, and Asians, mostly Kazakhs. The racialization of groups does not have to occur along a white/non-white axis. It can occur along a number of different axes such as Aryans/Jews in Nazi Germany, Soviet People/Enemy Nationalities in the USSR, Jew/Arab in Israel, Kazakh/non-Kazakh in Kazakhstan, etc. The important similarity in all these cases is that the different groups are viewed as primordial, immutable, and based upon ancestry. It should be noted that in all these cases the victimized group includes white people. Jews, Germans, Arabs, and Russians are all white.

Germany Dissents

I see that the German government has instructed its military personnel at the joint European military air base in Eindhoven  not to allow any French arms or ammunition to be shipped to the forces fighting in Mali using German planes.

Source: ABC News

Not a good prioritization of resources

I just read that the Ghanaian government is going to send soldiers as part of the ECOWAS force fighting with the French against the Islamists in northern Mali. Can you imagine Nkrumah fighting side by side with the French in Africa? No of course not, the idea of truly independent African states providing men to support military actions in Africa by former colonial powers is ridiculous. But, real independence in Africa today is much further away than it was in 1966 before Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup backed by the "liberal" LBJ. So instead of taking care of problems in Ghana like the fact that half the population can not read, the government is going to send Ghanaian soldiers to go join the French in a counter-insurgency war in the Sahara.

Nothing New Under The Sun

From 1959 to 1979 France intervened militarily in ten Sub-Saharan African countries of which nine were former French colonies and one a former Belgian colony. Below is a list of these countries and the years of French military operations. Due to the limitations of JSTOR with regards to finding up to date material I have not yet found a list of French military interventions in Africa during the last thirty years. With the exception of Zaire where France had to share influence with Belgium and the US all of the countries below could be described as French neo-colonial states for most of the post-colonial era.

Cameroon - 1959-1964
Senegal - 1959-1960 and 1962
Congo (French) - 1960 and 1962
Gabon - 1960, 1962, and 1964
Chad - 1960-1963, 1968-1975, 1977-1980
Mauritania - 1961 and 1977-1978
Niger - 1973
Djibouti - 1976-1977
Zaire - 1977 and 1978
Central African Republic - 1979

Source: Robin Luckham, "French Militarism in Africa," Review of African Political Economy (May-Aug. 1982), table 2, p. 61.

Reading List for Graduate Seminar on the History of Ethnicity and Race

I have finally finished the syllabus for my graduate course on the history of ethnicity and race. Below I have reproduced the reading list. The sources are listed in the order we will be covering them in the seminar.

John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith, eds., Oxford Readers: Ethnicity (Oxford University Press, 1996).

Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton University Press, 1994).

Kennan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society (Houndsmills UK: Palgrave, 1996).

John Rex, Race and Ethnicity (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1986).

Eitenne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991).

George Fredrickson, The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism, Nationalism and Social Movements (Berkely, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

Peter Blitstein, "Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in its Comparative Contest," Slavic Review, vol. 65, no. 2 (summer 2006), pp. 273-293.

Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid, eds., Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe (London: University of Washington Press, 1997).

James Clifford, "Diasporas," Cultural Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 3 (August 1994), pp. 302-338.

Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (London: University of Cornell Press, 2001).

Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (London: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Stefan Prauser and Arfon Rees, eds., The Expulsion of the 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War (San Domenico, Itay: European University Institute, 2004).

Ann Morrison's film documentary Millions Cried...No one Listened.

Robert Gellately and Ben Kirnan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective  (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Tilman Dedering, "The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography?," Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (March 1993), pp. 80-88.

Virginia Tilley et al., Occupation, Colonialism and Apartheid: A re-assessment of Israel's Practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law (Cape Town: HRSC, 2009).

Oren Yiftachel, "'Ethnocracy' and its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli Polity," Critical Inquiry, vol. 26, no. 4 (2000), pp. 725-756.

Rasma Karklins, Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986). 

Valery Tishkov, The Mind Aflame: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union (London: Sage Publications, 1997).

Eric Weitz, "Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (spring 2002), pp. 1-29.

Francine Hirsch, "Race without the Practice of Racial Politics," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (spring 2002), pp. 30-43.

Amir Weiner, "Nothing but Certainty," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (spring 2002), pp. 44-53/

Alaina Lemon, "Without a 'Concept'? Race as Discursive Practice," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (spring 2002), pp. 54-61.

Eric Weitz, "On Certainties and Ambivalences: Reply to my Critics," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (spring 2002), pp. 62-65.

J. Otto Pohl, "Soviet Apartheid: Stalin's Ethnic Deportations, Special Settlement Restrictions, and the Labor Army: The case of the Ethnic Germans in the USSR," Human Rights Review, vol. 13, no. 2 (June 2012), pp. 205-224.

Lumumba

Both under Belgian colonial rule and since independence Congo has suffered greatly. It did not have to be that way. For one brief shining moment there was hope for Congo under the leadership of Patrice Lumumba. Then fifty two years ago today the US CIA and the Belgians successfully murdered Patrice Lumumba.

Imbalance

Well I see that all of the "hip" and "progressive" blogs are now only writing about the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz. None of them have anything to say about the war in Mali. Nor do they have anything else to say about Africa. It is interesting that the death of one white guy in the US is considered more important to "progressives" than the entire continent of Africa.

Another difference between Africa and Obrunistan

This morning I talked to two very prominent and famous people in the field of African history. Both of these historians are now emeritus, but it occurred to me today at lunch that no US scholar of their stature would ever deign to even say hello to me yet alone treat me as an equal. They just would not think it was worth their time or effort to acknowledge my existence. The longer I stay in Ghana and the more I read the more I have become aware that while there are a few exceptions that there is a very real difference in the way US and African academics think. Despite being of Obruni origin and living the first three decades of my life in Obrunistan I find the US academics to be far more alien to my own way of thinking than the Africans.

The War in Mali (I already told you this was a bad idea.)

Despite heavy bombing by the French since Friday the Islamists in Mali are actually gaining territory. A whole lot of innocent people are going to get killed so that all of Mali can go back to being a French neo-colony at best. It may end up completely controlled by the Islamists. I personally don't see anything good that can come out of the French led war in Mali. In fact I would feel a whole lot better if the French just completely stopped their habit of bombing African countries. While they are at it they could allow their former colonies to actually gain real independence rather than continuing to support a system of neo-colonial states that do not put the interests of their own citizens above that of French capital. Consider this an open thread on the war in Mali since no other blogs are apparently discussing it.

Another North American Academic Praising the Soviet Union

Despite what my good friend Walt Richmond says about the rarity of pro-Soviet academics at US universities I keep finding them published by scholarly presses in droves. Valentine Moghadam is an associate professor of sociology at Illinois State University. She is also director of their women's studies program there. In a recent collection of essays on revolution I purchased she states, "To me the downfall of Communism in the Soviet Union represented a tragedy of world historical proportions precisely because the US became the sole hegemonic power." (p. 127). First, the US is not the sole hegemonic power in the world. Russia has far more influence than the US in Central Asia, France continues to dominate much of West and Central Africa in a blatantly neo-colonial manner, and I suspect China prevents the US from being the "sole hegemonic power" in parts of East and South East Asia. There is also of course the fact that the collapse of the USSR represented the liberation of millions of people from police state tyranny. The end of Soviet colonial rule just in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia was a very real advancement for human freedom in the world. To this of course one must add the end of pro-Soviet dictatorships in Poland, East Germany, Hungary and other regions of Central Europe. Imagine if somebody wrote "To me the downfall of colonialism in Africa represented a tragedy of world historical proportions precisely because the US and USSR became the sole hegemonic powers." Such a statement even given the post-colonial history of dictatorship in much of Africa would be rightly condemned as a racist and insensitive remark failing to take into consideration the lives of Africans themselves. Yet, here we have a tenured academic at a major US state university making the exact same type of statement regarding Soviet colonial rule.

Source: "First Thematic Discussion: The Political Economy and Geopolitics of Globalization: What Has Changed? What does it Mean for the Future of Revolutions? 25 January 2001," in John Foran, editor, The Future of Revolutions: Rethinking Radical Change in the Age of Globalization (London: Zed Books, 2003).

France bombs another African country

I see the French are now bombing Mali. Since I have been in Africa the French have bombed Ivory Coast, Libya, and now Mali all in two years. I had to check my calender just to make sure we really are living in the year 2013. Which I think is about fifty years after the French were supposed to leave the continent and go home.

My Mother Is Always Right

I have come to the conclusion that my wiser elders including my mother are indeed right. It is time this year to finally let all the bitterness of my past go. I am much happier working in Africa than I would have been in the US and if I had not gone to Kyrgyzstan I would never have met Oksana and started a family. In fact maybe I should thank God for unanswered prayers regarding getting an academic job in the US. There is a whole world outside the US and there are billions of people living happy fulfilling lives in that world. I really should concentrate of succeeding in that world and let the past go. I am taking the first steps now.

Any Suggestions for Readings on Modern Ethiopia?

All right this is a serious post, but it is short. Are there any good histories of Ethiopia under Mengistu written in English? I would like to find a political history on the regime written using archival and oral sources. But, I am not sure where to look. Did the government that succeeded Mengistu even open up the archives? What about Eritrea, have they allowed access to archives regarding the reign of Mengistu? I know all these questions sound really basic. But, it occurred to me that Ethiopia under Mengistu was the one African state that sought to emulate the USSR under Stalin. Yet, I know very little about the actual details of the regime. Most of what I do know comes from material written during the 1980s when Mengistu was still in power and access to the archives an obvious impossibility.

Why Blogging Here is Currently Slow

I am busy working on a journal article on the labor army and I just finished editing a report for the UNDP so I have not had much time to blog. After I finish the journal article I have to finish my syllabi for next semester and grading from last semester. So I probably will not be able to put any serious blog posts up until February or so. On the other hand I may put up some shorter and less serious pieces before then.

Merry Christmas Again

For those of my readers that belong to the Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity I wish you a Merry Christmas.

The Never Ending Struggle

I have noticed a disturbing trend of "liberal" bloggers to dismiss the crimes of communism as something we should get over now that the Cold War has come to an end. Of course none of these people would suggest that we get over the crimes of Naziism now that World War II is over. At the same time as they completely ignore the millions killed by Stalin they stress the fact that the communists supported the civil rights movement in the US and  other "progressive" causes and therefore communism was overall a good thing. This is morally retarded. It is the equivalent of praising Naziism for its role in opposing British colonialism in India and totally ignoring the Holocaust. It is also racist. Nobody would ever say we should get over the crimes of Naziism because they realize that it would be insensitive to the victims of the Holocaust. But, Stalin's victims were politically incorrect people like Volga Germans, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars so the American left has no problem dismissing their suffering in a patently offensive manner. There has been a lot of hard work by a lot of people to bring to light the history of communist crimes against humanity over the decades. However, when it comes to many "liberal" American academics it apparently has all been wasted. It is a never ending struggle to keep fighting against the perpetually reoccurring amnesia regarding the crimes of Stalin and other communist dictators.

Gilbert Rist and Why "Development" Did Not Work

I have just finished reading Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith 3rd Edition, (London: Zed Books, 2008). Rist rejects the idea of "development" which he traces back to colonial policies and likens to a secular religion. Not only does he reject "development" and of course "development economics", but he rejects economics itself as currently constituted as having very little ability to explain anything.

Economic 'science' has nothing scientific. It is no more than a battle of opinions, which fluctuates according to the conjuncture in ways that enable the strongest to impose their will. It disregards the numerous practices in North and South that do not fit its constructed models. It lacks the means to factor in our dependence on finite resources. It sanctifies the 'law' of the market without imagining that economic exchange might follow different rules. It exhausts itself in a project that puts into equations ever larger areas of social reality, one that 'claims to speak of (almost) everything with the help of a method which, if taken literally, would not allow it to speak of (almost) anything.' The enterprise is one of 'mental colonization', then, from which we need to be released as quickly as possible.  (pp. 261-262).

In other words economics has even less explanatory and predictive power, not to mention prescriptive ability to improve things especially in places like Africa or Central Asia than do other quasi-religious pseudo-sciences such as juju or witchcraft some of  which at least have the advantage of being culturally rooted in the societies in which they operate. Rist makes a very compelling argument in his book that "development" has not worked because "development economics" is worthless and "development economics" is rubbish because the entire academic discipline of economics is completely irrelevant to the reality of how people actually live in most of the world.

Africa

Okay it looks like the people that care enough to comment here want me to maintain the African posts. My only claim to any expertise in Africa is that I have now lived and worked in Ghana for two years and in that time I have tried to read as much about the history of the continent as possible. I have a couple of academic publications either in print or forthcoming that deal with African themes comparatively. One of these is a comparison of Soviet policy towards ethnic Germans under Stalin and South African apartheid. Another one is a comparison of cotton cultivation in German Togoland and Russian Turkestan I co-wrote with Felix Longi that should come out any day now. Finally, I have written a piece on Blacks in the USSR and how they fit into Soviet nationality policy. This is not bad for a guy who knew almost nothing about Africa two years ago. But, unlike most Americans I had the advantage of only knowing nothing. If you watch US television coverage of Africa you will know less than nothing. You will instead acquire a lot of wrong information and distorted stereotypes that are a serious obstacle to understanding anything about Africa.

Very recently I have taken an interest in French neo-colonialism. However, if I want to pursue this interest very far I am going to definitely have to improve my ability to read French. It is at a very rudimentary level right now. It just strikes me as incredible that for decades after the whole idea of colonialism had been completely discredited that countries like Togo, Gabon, Cameroon, Chad, and others remain in essence colonies of extraction beholden and dependent upon France. Rather than being independent states they function as neo-colonial states ruled by local dictatorships, sometimes dynastic as in the case of Togo and Gabon today, that have exploited their natural wealth for the benefit of the French and the local elite. Currently we are seeing the effects of French neo-colonialism in the Central African Republic where a French imposed leader is about to fall now that the French are no longer willing to support him. It has been over 55 years since Ghana became the first Black African country to gain its independence from colonial rule. It is high time that Africa achieved real independence and got rid of rulers like Bongo and Deby.

Finally, I am personally beholden to Africa in a way very few White Americans are. Africa is the home of humanity. They say home is where they have to take you in when you have no place else to go. It was Africa that took me in and gave me a career as an academic after years of searching. Here my degree from SOAS is recognized as valuable and respected whereas it is not in the US. I never thought I would end up in Africa, but God works in mysterious ways.

Reader Feedback Wanted

It has been suggested to me that my African posts do not garner much interest compared to my posts on Russian-Germans and other deported peoples. My site counter tends to back this up. On average my recent posts on Russian-Germans have gotten twice as many hits as my posts on Africa. Nevertheless I am reluctant to cease posting  about Africa and only post on Russian-Germans, racism in the USSR, and other similar topics. However, for those of you who actually read this blog please feel free to give your input in the comments below on what topics you would like to see me write on this year.

Fulfillment of GKO Order 1123ss of 10 January 1942

GKO Order 1123ss of 10 January 1942 originally called for the mobilization of 120,000 deported Russian-German men from Kazakhstan and Siberia into the labor army to work at eight NKVD labor camps and seven NKPS rail construction projects. The eight labor camps were to receive 80,000 conscripts. However, the Soviet government only initially managed to  induct 67,691 men to work at these camps. Below are listed the eight camps as well as four camps not in the original plans. The first number is the number planned for induction and the second is the actual number initially inducted.

Sevurallag - 12,000 / 8,441 logging camp (Urals)
Ivdel'lag - 12,000 / 12,899 logging camp (Urals)
Usol'lag - 5,000 / 4,940  logging camp (Urals)
Ust'vymlag - 4,000 / 0 logging camp (Far North)
Viatlag - 7,000 / 6,800 logging camp (Urals)
Kraslag - 5,000 / 5,084 logging camp (Siberia)
Bakalstroi - 30,000 / 11,722 industrial construction (Urals)
Bogoslovstroi - 5,000 / 6,900 industrial construction (Urals)
Solikamstroi - 0 /2,396 industrial construction (Urals)
Tavdinlag - 0/1981 logging camp (Urals)
Tagilstroi - 0/2,870 industrial construction (Urals)
Sevzheldorstroi - 0/4,753 railway construction (Far North)
Total: 67,691

Sources:

N.F. Bugai, (ed.),  "Mobilizovat' nemtsev v rabochie kolonny... I. Stalin": Sbornik dokumentov (1940-e gody) (Moscow: Gotika, 1998), doc. 18, pp. 39-40, doc. 35, pp. 58-59. doc. 36, pp. 59-60, and doc. 47, pp. 70-71.

Viktor Krieger, "Einsatz in Zwangsarbeitslager" in Alfred Eisfeld, ed., Von der Autonomiegrundung zur Verbannung und Entrechtung . Die Jahre 1918 und 1941 bis 1948 in der Geschichte der Deutschen in Russland (Stuttgart: Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 2008), table 1, p. 141.

French neo-colonialism in Africa

I have started reading about French neo-colonialism and so far the love affair of American "progressives" with the European Union looks like an affair conducted at the expense of Africans. A dominant power in the European Union, France is one of those "social democratic" states that American "progressives" hold up as a model for the US. But, whatever merits French domestic policy may have regarding things like health care, the French state has consistently been more imperialist than the US. This is particularly true in Africa. American and other white "progressives" in places like Australia systematically condemn almost every single asymmetrical power relationship between the US and countries in the post-colonial world as being examples of imperialism. But, they almost never condemn French neo-colonialism. It is completely ignored. In Africa French colonial rule never really ended. The French just put puppet governments in power and granted formal and nominal independence to most of their colonies. The only real exceptions to this pattern were Guinea in 1958 and to a lesser extent Mali in 1960. Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Gabon, and other former French colonies received independence on paper, but not in substance. The French supported dictators in Africa have as a general rule amassed a very poor record on human rights and have used the natural resources of their countries to enrich themselves and the French rather than the general population. Yet because France is considered a "progressive" and "social democratic" state and thus a model of what US domestic and foreign policy should look like by many left liberals, there is almost no criticism of French neo-colonialism on blogs and other media of public discourse. Instead we are treated to a never ending litany of the evils of the US  Republican Party's policies without any recognition that conservative white Republicans are not in fact the source of all evil.

The Right of Return is Good

It looks like the Egyptians are seriously considering allowing Jews and their descendants expelled from Egypt by Nasser to return to Egypt and reclaim their lost property. Morally and strategically regarding the position of the Arab world versus Israel this is the right thing to do. The Zionists have long argued that the expulsion of Jews from Egypt and other Arab countries cancelled out the dispossession of the Palestinians. It obviously does not. Egyptian Jews should be able to return to Egypt and recover their property not take Palestinian property. Likewise the Palestinians have an inalienable right to return to their homeland and reclaim their property which the Israelis have been denying them since 1948. Now that the Egyptians are seriously contemplating solving the grievances of the Arab Jews it seriously undermines the Israeli claim that they confiscated Palestinian property to compensate Jews from Egypt and other Arab states. The Egyptians will compensate the Egyptian Jews in Egypt and it is likewise necessary for the Israelis to compensate the Palestinians in Palestine which properly defined stretches from the River to the Sea.

hat tip: JSF

Geographical Distribution of Labor Army 1 October 1945

On 1 October 1945 there were 113,946 Russian-Germans working in the labor army in the USSR in 27 different republics, autonomous republics, oblasts, and krais. The territory with the most labor army conscripts was Kemerovo Oblast in western Siberia with 16,412 such forced laborers. Siberia as a whole had a recorded 25,778  Russian-German labor army conscripts versus 12,917 for Kazakhstan, 2,045 for the rest of Central Asia, and 47,572 in the Urals. The remainder were spread out over other areas of Russia including 1,731 in Arkhangel'sk Oblast and 1,061 in the Komi ASSR.

Breakdown for Central Asia

Kazakhstan - 12,917
Kyrgyzstan - 220
Turkmenistan - 1,616
Uzbekistan - 209

Breakdown for Siberia

Kemerovo Oblast - 16,412
Novosibirsk Oblast - 4,224
Altai Krai - 2,492
Khabarovsk Krai - 1,714
Omsk Oblast - 936

Source: N.F. Bugai, Oni srazhalis' za rodinu: Predstaviteli repressirovannykh narodov SSSR na frontakh Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow: Novyi Khrongraf, 2005), p. 225.

Any suggestions for books on French neo-colonialism in West Africa?

I am looking for some good suggestions for books and articles on French neo-colonialism in West Africa. I am particularly interested in such policies regarding Togo and Burkina Faso, the eastern and northern neighbors of Ghana. If anybody has knows of any works in English that provide a good introduction to the subject I would greatly appreciate them listing the publishing details in the comments below.

Anybody ever used Howell and Prevenier?

Next semester I am teaching Historical Methods. It is a 200 level class and the follow on to the Historiography class I taught last semester. I intend to assign two texts. For the first half of the class which will concentrate on written documents I am assigning Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (London: Cornell University Press, 2001). The second half of the class will concentrate on oral history and use Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History Third Edition, (Oxford University Press, 2000). Has anybody had any success using these texts in an historical methods class? If so could they tell me the results in the comments below? I am a bit wary about the Howell and Prevenier even though it is short because it is very Eurocentric. None of its examples come from Africa, although it does have a number from the US, Middle East, and Russia. On the other hand, there really is nothing on historical methodology for undergraduates that uses mostly African examples. I may have to write my own undergraduate textbook on historiography and historical methods for African undergraduates.

Central African Republic

Africa is a big continent. It is too big to pay attention to the whole thing all the time even when you live here. As a result I often do not catch big stories until long after they get underway if at all. At any rate it is only in the last couple of days that I have become aware of the ongoing events in the Central African Republic. Apparently for the last three weeks rebels have been rapidly advancing towards the capital. If anybody has anything not reported by AP or Reuters to add please put it in the comments.