Love your mama not MAMA

Robert Young has a great acronym in his book White Mythologies. It is MAMA (Male Anglo-Saxon Marxist Academia) which is an English translation of 'le marxisme analytique anglo-saxon' (Young, p. 3). It should of course not be confused with mama as in mother including Mother Africa, especially since MAMA almost completely ignore the contributions made by Africans to world history (Young, pp. 4-7).  You should love your mama, see the image to the right, but MAMA is a pathology that unfortunately dominates the US and a number of other countries. The extreme Eurocentrism of white English speaking Marxists even in places where they should know better such as South Africa is pretty glaring (Young, p. 8). Young is not the only scholar to note the unjustified exclusion of Africa and other parts of the world outside Europe and North America in the dominant academic discourse, a discourse largely controlled by MAMA. Reiland Rabaka has also commented on this phenomenon although unfortunately he does not use the acronym MAMA like Young does (Rabaka, pp. x-xi). As he points out the "conventional" critical theorists are predominantly "white, unmistakably Marxist and male" (Rabaka, p. xi). They are thus the MAMA that Young points out "defend the ideas of Marxist historicism without generally acknowledging the Eurocentrism of that narrative..." (Young, p. 3). He goes on to note that "a particular problem in Marxism hitherto almost invisible in Europe and North America, namely its implacable whiteness, its Eurocentrism, an orientation most clearly evident in the accounts of history offered in its name..." (Young, p. 4). One of course also sees this orientation replicated on the Internet with almost all Left wing academic blogs. The major ones all focus almost exclusively on issues relating to Europe and North America to the almost complete exclusion of Africa.

Sources:

Reiland Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition, From W.E.B. Dubois and C.L.R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, (Lanham, MD; Lexington Books, 2009).

Robert J.C. Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, second edition, (London: Routledge, 2004).

Strike Update

Apparently there is a meeting between the UTAG leadership and VC today to discuss the strike. It appears that the union may suspend the strike for a day in order to prevent 21 consecutive days of industrial action from accumulating. That would deprive the VC of the option of shutting down the university. We are supposed to know what the status of the strike is by Thursday. If it is suspended that would mean I would go and teach this Friday. But, it would also mean that the following week that the strike would resume. If this happens I am going to try and cram as much information into my two hour lecture on main campus as humanely possible. It might be possible to cover all ten weeks of lectures in one day if I really put my mind to it. However, currently I don't have any reliable information on what exactly is going to happen this week and next week regarding the ongoing strike. UTAG's stated position is that it will continue to withhold teaching of lectures until such time as all the money currently owed to its constituent members is actually paid into their bank accounts. The arrears from last year have now been paid. But, the book and research allowance is still outstanding. I have heard rumors that the government wants to eliminate the automatic payment of the allowance and make people apply for all research grants so that they can give the money to their political allies and friends. Such a position of course is completely unacceptable to the union and if the government actually goes through with it could keep us on strike indefinitely.

Decree No. 2056-93ss

The official commemoration of the deportation of the Volga Germans takes place every year on August 28th. That is the day in 1941 that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz no. 21-160. This decree which was published on 30 August 1941  falsely and unconstitutionally accused the ethnic Germans of the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast of mass treason. This decree, however, was crafted to provide a justification for the decision made two days earlier by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of People's Commissars. This earlier decree (No. 2056-93ss) which is the actual decision states no reasons for the mass deportation of the Volga Germans. Instead it merely orders that they all be resettled to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The first page of the decree is reproduced in the original Russian language in the image in the right hand corner. An English translation is available here. This decree formed the administrative basis for the massive ethnic cleansing of the Volga Germans from 3 to 20 September 1941. Ukaz no. 21-160 issued two days later by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a post-facto attempt by the Soviet government to legalize a blatantly unconstitutional decision. But, the 28 August 1941 decree was published at the time whereas the 26 August 1941 one remained secret for many decades. So the official day of commemoration for this crime against humanity is on the 28th rather than the 26th. Personally I think both days should be observed as well as the 27th which is the day Beria issued NKVD Prikaz 001158 instructing the NKVD on the proper measures to undertake this mass uprooting of humanity. Over the next couple of days I will have more posts relating to the 72nd anniversary of the deportation of the Volga and groups of Russian-Germans.

Pan-Africanism and the Arabs of Africa

Recently I have been listening to a lot of Algerian rai music. I think Algeria has my favorite music of any African country although I like Malian music a lot as well. This brings me to the point that the Arabs and Berbers despite being White are African peoples and African is a continental, not a racial identity. More Arabs live in Africa than live in Asia and Arabic is the most widely spoken language on the African continent. One of the great Pan-African leaders of the 1950s and 1960s was Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. The Pan-Africanist Casablanca group formed in 1961 originally included Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Algeria (Algeria won its independence only in 1962) as well as Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. Thus out of its seven members four were predominantly Arab. Pan-Africanists like Frantz Fanon have always stressed that there is a single African continent and that both Black Africans in the south and White Africans in the north belong to it. Indeed Algeria along with Congo was one of the two great issues that occupied the Casablanca group and its constituent members. The Casablanca group went so far as to give membership to the provisional government formed by the Algerian independence movement. Both Black African and Arab African states have shown solidarity in their opposition to European colonialism, South African apartheid, and the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I have written quite a bit recently here on Western Sahara which is an Arab inhabited territory whose liberation has been championed mainly by African states. In fact the provisional revolutionary government of the territory, the SADR (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) is a full member of the African Union. A future united Africa can not exclude its northernmost states. The Arabs and Berbers are an integral part of the African continent and the fate of countries like Egypt and Tunisia is just as important to real Pan-Africanists as Togo or Gabon.

Thank You UTAG

This morning I noticed that I had been paid about 3,000 cedis ($1,500). My understanding and it is hard to follow the exactly how the payment system here works is that this is the money that was in arrears from the 2012 market premium. That means that the book and research allowance which is supposed to be doubled from 1,800 cedis ($900) to 3,600 cedis ($1,800) is still outstanding. I got the impression from last Monday's emergency union meeting that the strike would continue until all the money owed to us was paid into our bank accounts. So I think the strike is still on. But, I will try to confirm this on Monday. I will definitely find out before Friday when I am scheduled to teach whether I am to go to class and lecture or not. At any rate I am pretty happy that at least this payment has landed in my bank account this fast. I did not expect to see this money until some time next week. I hope I get the rest of what is owed me soon. But, it is always a good start to a Saturday to find out you have a lot more money than you thought you had in your bank account.

Update: I have confirmed today with my coworkers that the 3,000 Ghana I received is the arrears I was owed, but that the book and research allowance still has not been paid. The UTAG strike will continue until we receive that payment as well. So I am still on strike until I hear otherwise.

74 Years Since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Today is the 74th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This "nonaggression" pact was actually an alliance between the USSR and Nazi Germany from 1939-1941. Its secret protocols divided the countries in between these two states into spheres of influence. In the Soviet sphere of influence fell Finland, eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Bessarabia. The Nazi sphere of influence consisted of most of western and central Poland. The alliance between the USSR and Nazi Germany led to the invasion and annexation of eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Bessarabia by the USSR. The Stalin regime instituted a brutal reign of terror in these countries. On 14 June 1941, the Soviet NKVD deported over 40,000 men, women, and children from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Siberia and northern Russia. Here is an account from an Estonian who survived the harrowing exile to Siberia. She was one of the lucky ones. Many of the deportees from the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and the areas annexed from Poland did not survive. In fact about half of them died in  a little over four years from the poor material conditions imposed upon them by the Stalin regime. The Soviet government also illegally and forcibly conscripted some 40,000 Estonian men into the Red Army of which it transferred 17,000, almost half, to forced labor detachments in Arkhangelsk Oblast. The alliance between Nazi Germany and the USSR signed 74 years ago made this brutality and many other crimes by the Soviet and Nazi regimes against the people of the Baltic states, Poland, and Bessarabia possible. As a result this day is observed as Black Ribbon Day to commemorate the victims that resulted from this pact of evil.

Today's Emergency Union Meeting (UTAG)

Today I went to a UTAG (University Teachers Association of Ghana) emergency meeting. It appears that we are on strike until such time as the government pays all of our arrears and our book and research allowance. So I won't be teaching class tomorrow morning. The union is not always very good at informing its members of when it goes on strike and when strikes end. But, now they are going to start collecting the names of faculty who continue to teach. So the union is actually serious about enforcing the strike this time. Officially the strike has been going on since the start of the semester. That means that in the first week of September that the Vice Chancellor can shut down the campus for the academic year. Currently faculty and senior staff are on strike and junior staff are set to strike in a couple of weeks if their demands are not met. I don't think that the Vice Chancellor will shut down the university. On the other hand until all of our money is actually in our bank accounts we are not going to be teaching. Already the foreign students, particularly those from the US on expensive one semester programs, have started complaining about not receiving the lectures they paid thousands of dollars for. If the strike continues or the university is shut down there is no solution for what to do with the foreign students. The university does not have the money to refund their payments or to pay faculty extra to just teach them as it did during the strike last semester. The best outcome would be for the government to pay us in full as soon as possible so we can go back to work. Otherwise it may be a real easy semester as far as teaching is concerned.

Possible Research Project Update

It turns out there has been a fair amount amount of research already on communism in the Gold Coast and other British West African colonies during the 1920s and 1930s, much of it based on archives housed at PRAAD (Public Records and Archives Department) in Accra. I have found a number of journal articles dealing with the subject through JSTOR. So this is indeed a possible research project I could pursue here.

Africa not Moscow, Havana, or Beijing

Western Sahara is the last unresolved colonial conflict in Africa. In 1975 when Spain withdrew from the territory it became occupied by Morocco in opposition to the wishes of the vast majority of the indigenous population (Zunes, p. 35). The Moroccans took over the colonial role of Spain in Western Sahara much as Indonesia did for Portugal in East Timor around the same time. Despite their small numbers the Sahrawis were able to launch and sustain an impressive military and diplomatic resistance to Moroccan rule during the 1970s and 1980s. The Moroccan occupation forces have been quite brutal in their suppression of opposition to their rule.

Both the military and diplomatic resistance of the Sahrawis to Moroccan rule has been quite different politically from most national liberation movements in Africa and the greater Arab world. The political-military movement to liberate Western Sahara from Morocco is known as the Polisario (The Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro). The government established by the Polisario in the liberated areas of Western Sahara is the SADR (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) (Zunes, p. 34). The Polisario has very little ideology apart from a desire to liberate the land of the Sahrawi people, a commitment to participatory democracy, and a "Third World" orientation particularly towards Africa and to a lesser extent towards other Arab states (Zunes, pp. 37-42). Unlike almost all other national liberation movements of the 1970s and 1980s in Africa such as the MPLA, FRELIMO, ZAPU, ANC, and SWAPO they did not closely ally themselves with the socialist bloc. In fact the Polisario never directly received any arms from the USSR, the Warsaw Pact states, Cuba, or even China (Zunes, pp. 43-44). The only European states to recognize the SADR were Yugoslavia in 1984 and Albania in 1987. (Pazzanita, p. 272).  The Soviet bloc in contrast maintained good relations with Morocco, the Soviet Union being in the 1980s Morocco's largest trade partner and Romania providing weapons to Rabat (Zunes, p. 43). Other suppliers of arms to Morocco have included the US, UK, France, Israel, apartheid South Africa, and Saudi Arabia (Bhatia, p. 292). The pro-Soviet Moroccan Communist Party was always a strong supporter of Morocco's conquest of the Western Sahara (Zunes, p. 44). Instead the Polisario and SADR found their strongest support among African states. The SADR gained membership in the OAU  (Organization of African Unity) in 1984 and had achieved diplomatic recognition from 74 states by 1990 (Pazzanita, pp. 271-272). These states included 27 in Africa and 14 in Latin America (Zunes, p. 42). Arms and logistical military support for the Polisario came mostly from Algeria with some support in the 1980s from Libya (Bhatia, p. 292). Thus the Polisario and SADR had a clear orientation towards non-aligned African and Arab states rather than the USSR and its allies in East Central Europe and Cuba.

The lack of attention paid to the plight of the Sahrawis and their national liberation front in North America and Europe is in part due to their lack of a Marxist-Leninist ideology and alliance with the USSR. Their African rather than Soviet orientation did not connect them with the global left in the industrialized North and instead left them isolated from the type of support groups like the ANC could mobilize on their behalf. At the same time their lack of connections with the USSR did nothing practical to help them in the eyes of the US which strongly backed Morocco in Western Sahara despite the fact that Moscow showed absolutely no interest in supporting the struggle of the Polisario. Nonetheless, the Pan-Africanism of the Polisario did garner them the support of most of the membership of the OAU showing that African states could act independently of the superpowers.

Non-Internet Sources Cited:

Michael Bhatia, "The Western Sahara under Polisario Control," Review of African Political Economy, vol. 28, no. 88, (June 2001), pp. 291-298.

Anthony G. Pazzanita, "Morocco vs. Polisario: A Political Interpretation," The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, (June 1994), pp. 265-278.

Stephen Zunes, "Nationalism and Non-Alignment: The Non-Ideology of the Polisario," Africa Today, vol. 34, no. 3 (1987), pp. 33-46.

The Deportation of the Volga Germans

On 26 August 1941 the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of People's Commissariats of the Soviet Union issued Decree No. 2056-933ss ordering the deportation of all Germans from the Volga German ASSR and the neighboring Saratov and Stalingrad oblasts. This order came suddenly without warning and blatantly violated the Soviet and Russian constitutions. This first decree gave no reasons for the mass deportations and remained secret until after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The next day, 27 August 1941, Beria issued NKVD Prikaz 001158 detailing the measures and instructions for executing this mass ethnic cleansing (Bugai, docs. 9-10, pp. 41-47). The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued a second deportation decree on 28 August 1941, Ukaz 21-160, which was published in Nachrichten and Bolshevik in the Volga German ASSR two days later. This second decree falsely accused the entire ethnic German population of the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast of treason without any evidence. This false accusation served as the basis for brutally punishing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. The NKVD ruthlessly carried out the deportation of 451,986 Volga Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan of which 365,764 came from the Volga German ASSR. The names of 2,979 of these exiles have been collected so far. The deportation of the Volga Germans was followed up by the deportation of almost all of the ethnic Germans in the USSR west of the Urals still under Soviet control. Their fate was particularly grim. The Soviet government abandoned them in the extreme climate of Siberia and northern Kazakhstan with insufficient food, housing, and medical facilities with the result that a very large number of them perished prematurely from malnutrition, exposure, and epidemic diseases during 1941-1948.

Non-Internet sources cited

N.F. Bugai, (ed.), Iosif Stalin-Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportirovat' ": Dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii, (Moscow: Druzhba Narodov, 1992).

The US Embassy Warning

I see that the US embassy here has issued a warning about potential violence after 29 August 2013. Thereby further demonstrating that the Obama administration and its State Department  is completely ignorant about Ghana. But, given its policies in other African states I am not surprised.

First Class of the Semester, Fall 2013

Today I had my first class of the semester. After waiting for over 30 minutes, one international student finally showed up. No Ghanaian students bothered to show up. I am hoping next week there is a greater turn out.

Possible New Research Project

Now that I know that PRAAD has nothing available after 6 March 1957, I need to formulate a new research project since obviously I can not look at the relevant Ghanaian documents dealing with the 18 December 1963 African student demonstration in Moscow. I am thinking of looking to see if there is anything in the British colonial records regarding alleged subversion by the Comintern in the 1920s and 30s. Even though the USSR really had no policy at all towards Africa until the 1950s, I am thinking that British perceptions might have been different.

African Archives

Today I had to go to Accra City Campus to pick up a check. Since it was still morning after I finished I decided to go to the PRAAD (Public Records and Archives Department) formerly NAG (National Archives of Ghana) around the corner to see what the national government archives of the Republic of Ghana had on the African student demonstration in Moscow in December 1963. It turns out that all of the national government archives in Ghana from independence in 1957 forward are still classified and are not likely to be declassified any time soon. Indeed the existing government policy seems to be that all archives of the independent state of Ghana are to be permanently classified. Only archives from the era of British colonial rule and a bit before are available.  I am wondering if any other African governments have similar policies of keeping all of their archives since independence secret and only declassifying those archives dealing with the colonial era and before. If it is in fact a wide spread policy then it is a huge obstacle to researching modern African history. The documents I wanted to look at are almost 50 years old, a time long before my birth when my parents were young, yet they are still classified along with every other central government archival document written after 6 March 1957. If anybody knows about the archival classification policies of African states other than Ghana, please leave a comment.

Bloodlands and other Readings for Hist 435

This semester I am teaching Aspects of World History, 1914-1945 again. As in semesters past I am assigning Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (London: Vintage Books, 2008) as the main text for the class. In addition I am also assigning Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London: Vintage Books, 2011) to more fully cover the history of the territory between Moscow and Berlin. I am also assigning six journal articles up from four last year on various aspects of Stalinist repression to fill out the outline presented by Gellately and Snyder. I think together Gellately and Snyder do an adequate job dealing with the Holocaust and other aspects of the history of Nazi Germany, so I don't have any additional journal articles to assign dealing with that part of the class.

I am adding the Snyder text to the class in response to suggestions I received a couple of years ago when I first started teaching the course. Because it covers a greater chronological and thematic expanse I opted instead to assign the Gellatley text. This year, however, I have decided to assign both texts which will bring the reading load for students up to about 100 pages a week. I am told this is a normal amount of reading for a 400 level class.

The six additional articles I am assigning to the class are listed below.

Elza-Bair Guchinova, "Deportation of the Kalmyks (1943-1956): Stigmatized Ethnicity" in Uyama Tomohiko, ed., Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, Slavic Eurasian Studies, no. 14 (Sapporo, Japan: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007), pp. 187-221.

Katherine R. Jolluck, "'You Can't Even Call Them Women': Poles and 'Others' in Soviet Exile during the Second World War," Contemporary European History, vol. 10, no. 3, (Nov. 2001), pp. 463-480.

James Morris, "The Polish Terror: Spy Mania and Ethnic Cleansing in the Great Terror," Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 56, no. 5, (July 2004), pp. 751-766.

J. Otto Pohl, "Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water: Russian-Germans in the Labour Army," The Eurasian Studies Society Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, (Feb. 2013), pp. 1-17.

J. Otto Pohl, Eric J. Schmaltz, and Ronald J. Vossler, "'In Our Hearts we Felt the Sentence of Death': Ethnic German Recollections of Mass Violence in the USSR, 1928-1948," Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 11, nos. 2-3, (June-Sep. 2009), pp. 323-354.

Lynne Viola, "The Other Archipelago: Kulak Deportations to the North in 1930," Slavic Review, vol. 60, no. 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 730-755.

African Slavery in the Islamic World

Slavery in Islamic Africa has been a fascinating subject to which many scholars have referred, but of which no detailed monograph has emerged. If the subject of Islamic slavery in Africa has failed to arouse the interest which has attended the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the New World, it must be said it compares with the latter in scale and scope, and outdistances the more popular subject in its length of duration. Indeed, so pervasive is the subject of slavery in African societies, that one cannot appreciate fully the social, economic or political dimensions of the African past and present without some reference to it. Moreover, slaves of African origin formed a vital thread in the living lines of economic production in the Near and Middle East and formed the cord of economic activity in Islamic Africa itself.

Quotation from the preface of John Ralph Willis, (ed.), Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, volume II, The Servile Estate, (London: Frank Cass: 1985), p. vii.

Today's Walk

This morning after my morning koko and koose I took a tro-tro down to Nkrumah Circle and walked down Nkrumah Blvd. through Makola Market. I then cut through Makola Square and walked past the post office and cut through Ussher Town. I emerged across the street from Fort Ussher. Fort Ussher was a slave fort founded by the Dutch and later taken over by the English. It is one of three slave forts in Accra all of them on the same street, the others being Fort James founded by the English which I also walked past and Fort Christensborg  founded by the Danish and taken over later by the English. After exiting Ussher Town I walked along the recently renamed John Evans Attah Mills High Street parallel to the coast which is where all the slave forts are located. Every president of Ghana since the establishment of the Fourth Republic has been named John. I walked past the James Town Palace and crossed the street at the light house. From the street I had a good view of the fishing village on the beach and the Gulf of Guinea. I then walked past Fort James and Tabon Hall (Brazil House) which is "The Cradle of Tabon People." One of our graduate students is doing an MPhil on the Tabon who were Blacks who came to Accra from Brazil. Despite the importance of the Tabon to the Black Atlantic there has not been a lot of scholarship on the group. Then my left foot which I smacked in a drainage ditch yesterday started to hurt again. So I took a cab back home for 12 cedis.

More numbers on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

I came across a good table which provides a breakdown of the importation of slaves to the Americas from 1519-1867. I have compressed and summarized the data below. The overwhelming emphasis by American Left-wing academics on the US role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the almost total exclusion of much larger importers like Brazil is completely unjustified. It would be far more justified to concentrate on tiny Barbados to the exclusion of the rest of the hemisphere than to make the US the focus of teaching and research on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as is currently the case. At 3.7% the US role merits a footnote, but not the overwhelming majority of attention that it currently receives from American Left-wing university professors to the detriment of understanding the institution as a whole with its much larger Caribbean and Brazilian components.

British Mainland North America - 360,400 or 3.7%
Jamaica - 1,077,100 or 11.2% (three times as many as the US)
Barbados - 491,000 or 5.1% (more than the US)
British Leewards - 304,200 or 3.2%
British Windwards and Trinidad and Tobago - 362,000 or 3.7% (more than the US)
Guianas - 403,400 or 4.2% (more than the US)
French Windwards - 304,200 or 3.1%
St. Domingue (Haiti) - 787,400 or 8.2% (more than twice as many as the US)
Spanish America - 427,200 or 4.4% (more than the US)
Spanish Caribbean - 791,900 or 8.2% (more than twice as many as the US)
Dutch Caribbean - 128,700 or 1.3%
North East Brazil - 898,800 or 9.3% (more than twice as many as the US)
Bahia - 1,036,100 or 10.7% (more than twice as many as the US)
South East Brazil - 2,042,300 or 21.1% (more five times as many as the US)
(Sub-Total for Brazil  - 3,977,200 or 41.1% [more than ten times as many as the US])
Other Americas - 110,400 or 1.1%
Africa - 131,200 or 1.4%
Total - 9,657,100 or 100%

Source:

David Eltis and David Richardson, "Prices of African Slaves Newly Arrived in the Americas, 1673-1865: New Evidence on Long-Run Trends and Regional Differentials," in David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kenneth L. Sokoloff,  (eds.), Slavery in the Development of the Americas  (Cambridge University Press, 2004), table 2, pp. 188-189.

The Unconstitutionality of the Deportation of the Volga Germans and the Liquidation of the Volga German ASSR

A large number of prominent scholars vehemently deny that the USSR was guilty of racial discrimination or genocide in part because the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination did not exist yet during World War II. They therefore claim it is anachronistic to hold the Soviet government accountable to these international legal standards. People like Francine Hirsch have argued that we should seek to understand what the Soviet government "thought" it was doing within its own officially stated ideological conceptions and terms and not what the objective results of its actions were as measured against later scholarly and legal understandings of the concept of racial discrimination (Hirsch, pp. 40-41). Of course nobody makes such excuses for Nazi Germany or South Africa under apartheid. It is only the USSR that is still blessed with such stalwart defenders in the western academy against the charges of racism.

There, however, can be no doubt that the Soviet deportation of the Volga Germans and the liquidation of the Volga German ASSR was illegal under Soviet constitutional law as established by the 1936 USSR, 1937 RSFSR, and 1937 Volga German ASSR constitutions regardless of the underdeveloped nature of international law at the time. Collective punishment was clearly illegal under article 102 of the 1936 constitution which assigned sole responsibility for determining the guilt of an individual to the Soviet courts rather than administrative decree. Thus Soviet constitutional law required individual charges and trials in order to make any finding of guilt regarding violations of Soviet law and the meting out of punishment. This prohibition on arbitrary administrative punishment was even more forcibly articulated in article 93 of the constitution of the Volga German ASSR which required that all punishments be sanctioned by the appropriate courts and procurators. There were no trials or individual charges brought by any procurator against the vast majority of the more than 370,000 men, women, and children forcibly expelled from the Volga German ASSR and dispersed across Siberia and Kazakhstan. Assigning collective guilt to whole nationalities as the 28 August 1941 decree by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (Ukaz 21-160) did also violated article 123 of the all union constitution which prohibited all forms of discrimination both direct and indirect on the basis of race or natsional'nost. The deportation itself with its massive confiscation of personal property clearly did not accord with article 10 of the USSR constitution which guaranteed the protection of "the right of personal ownership by citizens of the proceeds of their labor and savings, personal homes and auxiliary holdings, and objects and amenities of personal consumption." This right is reinforced in article 94 of the Volga German ASSR constitution. The special settlement restrictions contravened articles 21 and 123 of the 1936 Soviet constitution (articles 18 and 127 of the 1937 RSFSR constitution) establishing a single Soviet citizenship for all Soviet citizens in which all of them enjoyed the same civil rights regardless of geographic location or nationality. The liquidation of the Volga German ASSR on 7 September 1941 by decree from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow had no legal basis under Soviet constitutional law. Article 16 of the 1937 RSFSR constitution required that all territorial changes within it be first approved by its highest organs. Likewise article 15 of the Volga German ASSR constitution also required approval from its own organs before any changes could be made to its borders (Shadt, pp. 287-296 and Skuchaev, p. 94).

There has long been a school of thought that the systematic and blatant violations of the 1936 Soviet constitution were so great that discussion of the matter in legal terms was superfluous since the document was violated far more than it was observed. There is validity to this opinion. But,  a number of scholars argue that Stalin's mass crimes against various citizens of the USSR had not yet been outlawed by international law and were therefore legal. This argument can not be allowed to stand. Crimes such as the deportation of the Volga Germans were illegal under existing Soviet law. The position of Stephen Wheatcroft that Stalinist repression unlike Nazi killings was "legal" completely falls apart upon even the most superficial reading of the 1936 Soviet, 1937 RSFSR, and 1937 Volga German ASSR constitutions (Wheatcroft, p. 1321, p. 1335, and p. 1348). It is clear that Stalinist repression including the deportation of the Volga Germans violated a great number of articles of the 1936 Soviet and 1937 RSFSR constitutions and can in no way be deemed to have been "legal" under the fundamental laws of the USSR. If it were not for people like Wheatcroft minimizing Stalin's crimes by claiming they were "legal" we could dispense with noting the legal protections provided on paper by the Soviet, RSFSR, and Volga German ASSR constitutions were explicitly and repeatedly violated by the Soviet government. After all the moral wrongness of mass deportations, theft, denial of national self-determination, racial discrimination, and genocide do not depend on what is written in any particular document.

Sources:

Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 1936 (Moscow: CO-Operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers, 1936).

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

Konstitutsiia [Osnovnoi Zakon] Avtonomnoi Sovetskoi Sotsialicheskoi Respubliki Nemtsev Povolzh'ia 1937 reproduced in V. Auman and V. Chebatoreva, Istoriia rossiiskikh nemtsev v dokumentakh (1763-1992 gg.) (Moscow: MIGUP, 1993), pp. 141-156.

A. Shadt, "Pravoi status rossiiskikh nemtsev v SSSR (1940-1950-e), in A. German, Nemtsy v SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny: Poslevoennoe desiatletie, 1941-1955 gg. (Moscow: Gotika, 2001), pp. 287-312.

O. Skuchaev, "K voprosu o prichinakh i pravovykh osnovaniiakh deportatsii nemtskogo naseleniia iz Povolzh'ia," in A. German (ed.), Grazhdanskaia identichnost' nemtsev v gody Velikoi Otchestvennoi Voiny i v istoricheskoi pamiati potomkov (Moscow: Gotika, 2001), pp. 88-97.

Stephen Wheatcroft, "The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repressions and Mass Killings, 1930-45," Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 48, no. 8, (Dec. 1996), 1319-1353.

Putting things in perspective

In the big scheme of things the sins of the US against the peoples of Africa pale before those of Europe. People in Africa and of African descent in the Caribbean know this. It is only Western Leftists that like to pretend that the US importation of 400,000 African slaves in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is a greater sin than the European importation of 8 million slaves from Africa into Brazil and the Caribbean where many of them were worked to death growing sugar cane. It is only Western Leftists who think that asymmetrical political relations between the US and various African countries are morally identical to what the Portuguese did in Angola and Mozambique, the French did in Algeria, the Belgians did in Congo, and the British did in Kenya. The CIA's murder of Lumumba and overthrow of Nkrumah were bad, but they are not on the same moral plane as tiny Belgium's murder of 10 million people in Congo. The perverse desire of American Leftists to paint the US as the source of all evil to the exclusion of all other sources is an inverse form of chauvinism. For them the US has to be the sole focus of everything evil even when as in the case of the international slave trade  it had a  very tiny role.

More on the African Slave Trades of which 1.3% went to the US

I have discussed this with a number of Africans and citizens of Caribbean nations and the complete "hijacking" as one Ghanaian graduate student put it of the discourse on the slave trade by Americans is something they greatly resent. Over 30 million Africans were shipped out of Africa as slaves to the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and other destinations. Out of that 30 million only 400,000 ended up in the US. That is a total of 1.3%. That means 98.7% of the slaves forcibly transported out of Africa went to other countries. Yet reading the blogs of American academics you would think that 100% of the slaves shipped out of Africa were sent to the US. Ten times as many slaves were sent to Brazil as the US and a far higher percentage of them died from maltreatment. Yet you would never know this fact from reading US academic blogs. You would instead be left with the impression that no slaves were ever shipped out of Africa to any place other than the US. In reality of course less than 2% went to the US about the same number as went to Barbados and far less than went to Brazil, Jamaica, or Cuba.

An African Fall?

Recently in three authoritarian African states the ruling party has won a majority of over two thirds in parliamentary or senate elections. These three states are Togo, Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe. The same family has been in power in Togo since 1967. Zimbabwe has been ruled by Robert Mugabe and ZANU since 1980. Burkina Faso has been under the rule of Blaise Compoare since 1987 when he came to power in a coup that involved the assassination of Thomas Sankara, one of Africa's most visionary leaders. The consolidation of power by the current ruling authoritarian establishments in these elections is a clear move away from greater political liberalism and tolerance in these countries. Already there have been protests and at least 50 arrests in connection with the elections in Burkina Faso. Political repression of opponents of the existing regimes in Togo, Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe will no doubt now increase as a result of the recent election results.

Sixto Rodriguez- Cold Fact

 I saw the documentary Searching for Sugar Man on my Emirates flight from Accra to Dubai on my way to Bishkek this June. Like most Americans I had never heard of Sixto Rodriguez whose musical career was a total failure in the US despite his brilliant song writing. What makes the story so interesting is that Rodriguez became a huge hit in South Africa where his albums sold hundreds of thousands of copies without him ever having an inkling as to his popularity in that country. The South African distributors of his albums never bothered to send him any royalty checks during the 1970s and 1980s. Among many Afrikaner youth Rodriguez was considered a musical icon on the same level as Elvis or the Beatles. At any rate I really like his music. You can check it out for yourself. I have embedded his first album from 1970 here.

Back in Africa, History Department Renovations, and Another Strike

I arrived back in Legon several days ago, but the History Department was undergoing renovation. So I could not get access to my office. After a year they have finally installed sockets for the Internet in our offices. They have also put blinds in our offices. They are also supposed to give us a Polytank so that we will at long last have water in the washroom.

We are also on strike again. The government did not pay us, although they fully paid faculty at every other university in the country, all of our back pay. They paid the first two installments before I left and then stopped paying us after we had all gone on vacation and could no longer do anything. We were also supposed to get our annual research grants before August first. Last year we did not get them until December. I hear the research grant has doubled and that would be a very good thing. So until we get our arrears and our research grant we are not teaching classes again which officially begin next week. The predictions are that the government will pay us and classes will start by August twelfth.

Critique of Post-Colonialism

During my absence from the internet I read a  lot about post-colonialism. It seems to suffer from a number of problems as a coherent field and despite reading thousands of pages I still don't grasp exactly what it all means. If all it means is that the damage done to indigenous societies by colonialism did not end with formal independence and that "post-colonial" writers are people staking out a position in opposition to that damage then it is not very useful. Firstly, because while everybody agrees that despite antecedents in the work of Frantz Fanon that post-colonialism only developed in the wake of the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978. Yet, the idea that colonized societies continued to suffer the effects of colonialism after formal independence and that people in Africa and elsewhere should actively oppose these aftereffects predates Said's work by over a decade. Kwame Nkrumah's, Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage in Imperialism was published in 1965 to a very negative reaction by the Johnson administration which actively assisted his overthrow in a military coup the following year. Nkrumah's work clearly showed that the economic relations between African countries and their former colonial masters continued to exist to the detriment of Africa despite formal decolonization and nominal political independence. As a descriptive term neo-colonialism in considerably clearer than post-colonialism or postcoloniality. In line with Nkrumah's work the 1960s and 1970s saw a number of scholars unambiguously and critically write about the continued economic exploitation of Africa by the former colonial powers. This was part of a larger intellectual development that saw the emergence of dependency theory, world systems theory, and the concept of underdevelopment. Authors such as Andres Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, and Walter Rodney clearly argued that there was a continuing negative effect on international economic structures and patterns as a result of prior colonial rule. Yet with the exception of Robert Young there seems to be almost no acknowledgement of this earlier work by present day post-colonial scholars. Instead these post-colonial writers seem to have largely rejected the central importance of political economy in favor of an overwhelming emphasis on European representative culture, particularly literary culture, as the central problem facing Asia and Africa during the last couple of centuries. Of course Africa itself is greatly underrepresented by these writers who tend to be Indian and like the Palestinian Edward Said professors of literature rather than historians, political scientists, and economists. It seems to me that Rodney was correct in noting that the marginalization and exploitation of Africa was primarily a matter of the imbalance of power between Africa and Europe rather than resulting from any discourse. In other words the negative portrayals, images, and representations of of Africa in Europe and the the US have been crafted to justify inequalities and exploitation imposed by other means. They are not the cause these inequalities in themselves, but rather one of its effects.

A comparative look at the numbers in the slave trade

Despite the overwhelming attention paid to it in comparison to the role of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America the US played a comparatively small role in the international slave trade. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade to begin was considerably smaller than the combined Trans-Saharan and Trans-Indian Ocean slave trades. These far less well known slave trades lasted from about 650 to 1905 and totaled about 17 million African slaves (John Ralph Willis, fn. 2, p. x). The much shorter lived Atlantic slave trade saw the arrival of around 10 million surviving Africans in the Western hemisphere during the 16th to the 19th centuries (Polian, table 1, p. 18).Contrary to the impression given by US commentators the number of slaves sent to the US during this time was only a small fraction of these men and women.

The single largest importer of slaves shipped across the Atlantic was Brazil dwarfing the US by a factor of ten. The US ceased importing slaves by 1808 by which time the total number of imported slaves was only around 400,000 or 4% of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. In contrast Brazil imported over 4 million slaves from Africa or about 40% of the total to survive the Middle Passage (Bergad, 96). In the Caribbean even very small islands imported almost as many slaves as the US. The British shipped 387,000 slaves to tiny Barbados by 1807, almost as many as were transplanted to the US (Kiple, p. 106). Large islands received many more slaves than the US. Spanish Cuba received 780,000 slaves or almost twice as many as the US (Bergad, p. 97).  The Spanish and British imported over 1 million slaves into Jamaica (Eltis, p. 188). Brazil continued to import slaves into the 1850s and only abolished slavery in 1888, twenty three years after the US did. Yet by the 1860s there were some 4 million slaves of African descent in the US versus only 1.5 million in Brazil and 370,000 in Cuba, less than half the number originally transplanted (Bergad, p. 97). In 1834 at the time of emancipation, Barbados had a mere 82,000 surviving slaves or less than a quarter of the number imported. Deaths exceeded births by a constant 4-5% annually on the island from 1676-1725. Jamaica was slightly less deadly with an annual death rate of 3-3.5% above births during the 18th century (Kiple, p. 106). These difference were due in large part to the huge differences in mortality rates stemming from a far better diet in the US (Bergad, pp. 98-100 and Kiple, pp. 117-118). They also stem in large part from the fact that plantation owners growing sugar cane in Brazil and the Caribbean literally worked to death many of their slaves (Bergad, pp. 102-103). The far deadlier conditions suffered by slaves in Brazil and the Caribbean like the very existence of Black slaves outside the US is something that is almost never mentioned by US commentators.

The popular image of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as primarily a US crime against humanity is completely inaccurate. Around 96% of slaves imported to the Western hemisphere went to places other than the territory of the US. Brazil alone accounted for 40% of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and Jamaica 10%.  Yet it is the US rather than Brazil or Jamaica that is consistently portrayed as as the dominant country in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the popular imagination.

Sources:

Laird W. Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

David Eltis and David Richardson, "Prices of African Slaves Newly Arrived in the Americas, 1673-1865: New Evidence on Long-Run Trends and Regional Differentials," in David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, Slavery in the Development of the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Kenneth F. Kiple, The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

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

John Ralph Willis, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa: Volume II: The Servile Estate (London: Frank Cass, 1985).

Soviet Heroes: Kyrgyz, Russian, and German

One of the places I visited in Talas Oblast was the Cholponbai Tuleberdiev memorial complex. This complex is dedicated to Kyrgyz heroes military and otherwise although unfortunately it has nothing on heroes from Kyrgyzstan belonging to other ethnic groups. Kyrgyzstan was and still is to a much lesser extent a poly-ethnic state. As such many of the contributions to the construction of the Kyrgyz SSR as well as accomplishments benefiting the USSR as a whole came from ethnic minorities in the republic. This was especially true during the Second World War. In addition to ethnically Kyrgyz hereos like Cholponbai Tuleberdiev from Talas Oblast there were Russians such as Ivan Panifilov, Ukrainians, Tatars and others. Some of these heroes such as Cholponbai Tuleberdiev are well remembered even today. The Kyrgyz SSR and today the Kyrgyz Republic, however,  has not remembered all heroes equally. There is a definite emphasis today on ethnic Kyrgyz heroes and a subsequent marginalization of the role of ethnic minorities. During Soviet times there was a greater emphasis on the international composition of the military during World War II, although Russians were given far more attention and credit than they deserved in comparison to other nationalities. One nationality that had already during the war been written out of the official Soviet narrative were the ethnic Germans. I have written about the contribution of ethnic Germans to Soviet victory over Naziism in both the Red Army and in partisan units elsewhere on this blog. A large number of ethnic Germans from Kyrgyzstan were among those Soviet soldiers that fought against Nazi Germany. In February 1942, the Soviet government awarded Afanasii Kluger from the German settlement of Luxemburg near the city of Kant just outside the capital of Frunze (today Bishkek) the order of the Red Star for his earlier participation in the defense of Moscow (Krongardt, p. 235). The role of ethnic Germans from Kyrgyzstan and other areas of Central Asia in the Soviet military during World War II remains a seriously under researched topic.

Sources cited:

G.K. Krongardt, Nemtsy v Kyrgyzstane: 1880-1990 gg. Bishkek, "Ilim" 1997.

This is a statue of Cholponbai Tuleberdiev who was posthumously awarded the medal Hero of the Soviet Union after sacrificing his life in a battle on 6 August 1942  in order to save the other men fighting besides him. He was only 20 years old.

Pictures from my summer vacation in Talas Oblast Kyrgyzstan

Here are two photographs of me taken this summer at the Manas-Ordo Complex in Talas Oblast.

In Transit

For the last seven weeks I have been without access to the internet so naturally I have not posted anything here recently. I am currently in the Dubai International Airport on my way back from Kyrgyzstan to Ghana. Now that I again have access to the internet posting will resume at a more or less normal schedule.

Illegal Immigration from China is a Growing Problem in Ghana

This week the Ghanaian government detained 168 illegal Chinese immigrants operating illegal gold mines in the country. They will all be deported back to China. In March the government expelled 120 Chinese without proper documentation working on illegal gold mines. The government has vowed to continue to crack down on illegal Chinese immigration and gold mining. The Ghanaian population is not very happy at the consistent and blatant violation of its immigration and mining laws by the Chinese.

Once in a while somebody on the Left is Right

The criticisms from the right of Dr. Loomis, the poster child and new martyr for many liberal left academics in the US, are many and not very interesting. The fewer criticisms of Dr. Loomis from the left on the other hand are much fewer, more interesting, and much more accurate. I am not sure what to make of this other than I prefer honest left anarchists like Chomsky to charlatans who are handmaidens to the establishment like Loomis any day of the week. Speaking of left anarchists, the best critiques of Dr. Loomis are here and here. Although not from an anarchist this left-wing critique of Loomis is also spot on. Unfortunately, I think there are far too many people like Loomis and not enough like Chomsky in American academia today.

Malaria again

Fortunately, I have almost finished everything I need to do before my vacation starts next Saturday. Because this weekend was completely used up recovering from another bout of malaria.

Koko

I have taken a great liking to Koko for breakfast in the morning. It is basically a millet porridge laced heavily with ginger and other spices. I buy it in a bag from the market woman behind Legon annex every morning for 50 peswas. The only problems are that it is really hot, like molten lava, when you first get it and I can never get the sugar she puts at the bottom of the bag to dissolve.

Thoughts on Africa Unity Day Weekend

In many ways Africa has greatly advanced since 1963 when the OAU was founded. Except for Western Sahara there are now no more official colonies in Africa. The last European colonial powers left the continent in 1975. Namibia got its independence from South Africa in 1990. Apartheid as practiced by the White minority governments in South Africa and Rhodesia has been eradicated from the continent. Mandela was elected in 1994. So many of the key the issues that dominated the OAU in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s have now been resolved.

Other positive advances have been the development of indigenous democratic states. This has been less successful than the removal of colonialism and apartheid. So while Ghana has established a functioning two party democratic republic dictatorships still rule Togo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and other countries in Africa. There is an active freedom movement in Togo, but it gets very little attention even in neighboring Ghana and France and Germany continue to support the dictatorship in Lome. Certainly, the movements for greater democracy, transparency, and human rights in Africa still have a long way to go. 

Social and economic advancement has been highly uneven in Africa and in individual African states. Illiteracy, poverty, and poor infrastructure are still problems even in successful states like Ghana. In less fortunate states like Congo they are far worse. But, the days when all of Black Africa could be blithely written off by US commentators as a failure are over. Even if the US and Europeans wish to close their eyes to economic developments in Africa the Chinese have not. 

There is no doubt that overall things are better in Africa today than they were for most of the existence of the OAU/AU. Some of the fastest growing economies in the world are now in Africa. Cheap electronics and other consumer goods from Asia are becoming available to more and more people in Africa. I have yet to encounter anybody in Ghana who did not own a mobile phone. I purchased mine here for $20 and while cheap it was not the cheapest option available in the country. So overall life in Africa is better than it has been and will hopefully be even better in the future. 

Happy Africa Unity Day Everybody

Tomorrow is Africa Unity Day in honor of the foundation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. Because it falls on a Saturday this year Monday is a day off for all public employees such as myself.

Done Grading

I have now finished grading all 193 students I had in my four classes this semester. Next semester I only have two classes to teach so it will be a lot less work during test time. At least this year I got them done early so I am not stressing out at the last minute trying to get them all done.

Western Sahara Again

Monday was the 40th anniversary of the beginning of armed struggle for independence for Western Sahara. The struggle began against Spain on 20 May 1973 and continued against Morocco until 6 September 1991 when a ceasefire was signed between Rabat and the Polisario. Sahrawis under occupation in the towns of Smara and Bjdor organized demonstrations to commemorate the event. The demonstration in Bjdor, however, was violently dispersed by Moroccan security forces. This follows on the decision by the UN Security Council this month to reauthorize the peace keeping forces in Western Sahara, but without any mandate to monitor human rights violations. The UN peace keeping force in the Western Sahara, MINURSO (UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara) is now the only such existing force without authority from the Security Council to monitor human rights.

Source: allAfrica.com

More State Violence in Togo against Demonstrators

There have been a whole string of recent protests in Togo involving women wearing red and in some cases baring their breasts. As I mentioned earlier unlike in Europe female public nudity is not a casual affair in West Africa. Its presence means that the women are really, really, really angry. There has also been some violence by youths against property associated with some of the demonstrations. A car was lit on fire and some windows smashed. But, for the most part the protests have remained nonviolent. Yesterday, the Togolese security forces again responded to peaceful demonstrations with violence by  firing tear gas into a crowd of protesters.

More Spanish Translation

The Spanish translation of my article, "Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water: The Russian-Germans in the Labour Army" is now available here as well. You will have to scroll down a little bit to find it.

End of the semester

I am finishing things off here for the semester. I have graded all my exams and entered all my grades except for one class at City Campus that I am still waiting on. I hope the scripts arrive soon. I need to have everything wrapped up here for the semester in the next two weeks.

149 Years Ago Today in Circassia

Today is the 149th anniversary of the Battle of Qbaada Meadow (Kransaia Poliana) in which the Russian Imperial army finally defeated the Circassians and proceeded with the final mass deportation of the population into the Ottoman Empire. While many scholars place the first modern genocide in Armenia in 1915 and others in Namibia during 1904-1907, I think a good case can be argued that 1863-64 in Circassia deserves this distinction. Today is the day that Circassians around the world commemorate the massive expulsion of most of their population from their ancestral homeland in the Caucasus into the various territories of the Ottoman Empire. According to Walt Richmond out of some 1.5 million Circassians in 1860 over 600,000 or more than a third perished as a direct result of this forced dispersal.

More evidence of Soviet racism

This card used by police in the USSR to identify different nationalities by facial phenotypes is further evidence of my contention that natsional'nost in the USSR often served the exact same function as race. Indeed often as in the case of this card the only difference is the word being used. Distinguishing between groups of people based upon a perceived physical appearance inherited due to a particular ancestry is indeed a central component of racial classification. The fact that people like Francine Hirsch and Amir Weiner want to deny that this is racism by claiming that natsional'nost or ethnicity or whatever other word they use instead of race is not race does not change this fact. 

Spanish Translation

My article "Hewers of Water and Drawers of Water: the Russian-Germans in the Labour Army" has now been translated into Spanish by Jorge Bohn. The Spanish title is "Lenadores y Accareadores de Aqua: Los Ruso-Alemanes en el Ejercito de Trabajo." You can find it for download on the FB page Collctividad Wolgadeutsche - Alemanes del Volga.

Naked Women Demonstrate against the Dictatorship in Togo

Yesterday there was another demonstration in Togo against the dictatorship there. This time a number of women stripped naked as part of the protests. These were not young women, but rather mothers and grandmothers and there was nothing erotic about the brief film clip I saw of the demonstration. It as well as some still photographs can be seen at the FB page Liberte pour Togo-Freiheit fuer Togo.  In West African society female public nudity is taboo and the tactic of the naked demonstration is viewed as a way of shaming the dictatorship. I haven't been able to find any news stories on it yet so I have no idea what impact the demonstration has had. But, for a West African government to be subjected to such a demonstration is a sign of extreme discontent. Another general demonstration against the regime involving both men and women, but presumably wearing all their clothes is scheduled for 21 May 2013. The demonstrations against the regime in Togo have been getting more frequent, more extreme, and more angry.

More on the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars 69 years ago (18 May 1944)

The International Committee for Crimea has a number of my pieces on the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Among them is my very first academic conference paper which I delivered at Columbia University in 2000. It also has this timeline of the history of the Crimean Tatars from 1917-1994 and another conference paper given at Columbia in 2004 as I was finishing my dissertation. Finally, the abstract to my dissertation itself which has a lengthy section on the Crimean Tatars.

69 Years Since the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars (18 May 1944)

This Saturday is the 69th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their peninsular homeland on the Black Sea to the deserts of Uzbekistan and the wet forests of the Urals. The NKVD rounded up almost the entire population and took them to rail stations where they were stuffed like cattle into box cars. In three days over 180,000 people had been expelled from their homes and sent on a long and arduous journey eastward. The official reason for the deportation was the false charges of treason brought against the whole population by the Stalin regime. However, the number of Crimean Tatars that fought with the Germans, about 10,000, was quite small compared to a number of other nationalities that were not subject to wholesale deportation. Upon arriving in Uzbekistan and the Urals the Crimean Tatars were placed under special settlement restrictions. On 26 November 1948, the Soviet government decreed the deportations and special settlement restrictions to be forever. The death of Stalin on 5 March 1953 brought about an eventual end of the special settlement regime and on 28 April 1956 the Soviet government freed the Crimean Tatars from these restrictions. They, however, were not allowed to return to Crimea in any significant numbers until 1987 near the very end of the Soviet regime. Even today they still face obstacles to resettling in their homeland and nearly 100,000 still remain in Uzbekistan.

For further reading see this bibliography.

Great News: Dorje Gurung has been released

Dorje Gurung has been released from jail in Qatar and is finishing up the paperwork to allow him to fly home to Nepal. He should be on a plane on the way home tomorrow. I want to thank everybody who signed the petition and helped raise awareness of this case. The Grinnell alumni were very impressive in organizing on his behalf especially Scott Wittstruck. I also think this points to some deeper structural problems regarding foreign labor involved in teaching such as myself in a number of countries and not just Qatar. Fortunately, where I teach in Ghana our problems are comparatively minor. But, since education is increasingly a task performed in many countries by immigrant labor I think we should start to think about these issues.

Bleg for a fellow Grinnell Alumnus

Dorje Gurung, a former chemistry teacher at Qatar Academy and citizen of Nepal has been arrested and charged with "insulting Islam." He faces up to seven years if convicted. Here is the Washington Post article on the case. It has been a very long time since I last saw Dorje Gurung. He was at Grinnell College at the same time I was. He graduated in 1994 and I graduated in 1992. I did not know him that well, but from reading the news accounts of this incident I definitely do not believe he should spend seven years in a foreign prison for a crime I do not think he committed. Instead he should be released and allowed to return home to Nepal. I also believe that the Qatari government can be persuaded to take this particular action. Here is the online petition asking the Qatari government to release Dorje Gurung. There is also a FB page dedicated to working for his release. Please make sure that all requests to the government of Qatar and its representatives as well as public posts regarding this matter remain polite and civil. Offending the Qatari authorities will not help free Dorje.

Today's Meeting

Today we had a long departmental meeting primarily to discuss the overhaul of our graduate program. In fact it was an all day off campus retreat. It was generally agreed that there needed to be a much stronger emphasis on historiography, theory, and methodology. It was also agreed that we needed to move away from an excessive focus on Ghana to be more Pan-African in our overall orientation. So the program for the new incoming graduate students will emphasize this new direction.

Happy Victory Day

Today in 1945, the Allies finally defeated Nazi Germany. About 70,000 soldiers from Kyrgyzstan fought and died in the Soviet Red Army achieving this victory. This is considerably more men than the US military lost in Vietnam. The total population of the Kyrgyz SSR in 1939, however, was just barely over 1.5 million people.

Another reason I am glad my life is boring

Today at lunch Dr. Smith regaled me with the story of her week long experience with the Ghanaian criminal justice system helping a 22 year old white American male who was arrested for possession of cannabis, although the actual charge ended up being use of cannabis which carries only half the potential sentence. To avoid turning this blog post into an African version of War and Peace I will summarize. The kid got busted with a joint. People arrested for drug charges, armed robbery, and murder are evidently ineligible for bail in Ghana. He spent four days in jail rather than the three months the judge was initially contemplating due to Dr. Smith calling in all kinds of favors to talk to various law enforcement officials as well as getting a big name lawyer for the kid. So in the unlikely event that I ever need the services of somebody in the criminal justice system, say I get robbed and I want to recover my property, I will be contacting Dr. Smith who is evidently now good friends with the entire legal system of Ghana. My week was much less eventual. The highlight was going book shopping with the rest of the department on Friday. An event Dr. Smith missed because she was busy with the above story.

Socialized Dentistry

It turns out that Ghana not only has socialized medicine, but it also has socialized dentistry. I broke a tooth a while back and I had a filling fall out of another tooth. So I need to get those two teeth fixed. Fortunately, I can get everything except the x-rays (65 cedis) free. The last time I went to a dentist in the US the bill was $4000.

A good historical interpretation

With all the revisionist scholarship on the Stalin era out there it is always good to come across a quotation like the one below which pulls no punches.

It is our firm belief, supported by research into the history of the "German-Labor Army Conscripts" in the camps of the Urals, that these mobilized Russian Germans were not free citizens of the USSR, but people repressed  due to their nationality, and placed in special settlements. They appeared as part of the composition of the "special contingent", representing a marginal group in Soviet society employed in forced labor under conditions of strict limitations of their rights and freedoms. 

Source: V.M. Kirillov and N.V. Matveeva, "Trudmobilizovannye nemtsy na Urale: sostoyanie i novye aspekty issledovaniya problemy," in A.A. German (ed.), Nachal'nyi period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny i deportatsiya rossiiskikh nemtsev: vzglyady i otsenki cherez 70 let (Moskva: MSNK-Press, 2011), p. 627. Translated from Russian to English by J. Otto Pohl.

Walking around campus

I do my best thinking while walking around campus. However, inevitably my thinking is always interrupted by  students calling out "Dr. Pohl.". Which leads me to the conclusion that while nobody in the White world has ever heard of me I actually am known and respected by a number of people here in Legon. If you asked me  a couple years ago whether I would be known upon sight by any significant amount of people anywhere in Africa I would have thought you were crazy. But, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

May Day 1945 Karaganda

The Karaganda coal mines made extensive use of forced labor, both convicted prisoners and mobilized members of the labor army, during Stalin's lifetime. On 1st May 1945, a methane explosion in mine no. 20 in the Lenin Coal Trust in Karaganda killed 85 people including 13 Russian-Germans working as part of a labor army detachment.

Source: O.A. Jakowenko and A.A. German, "Arbeitsmobilisierte Deutsche in Kasachstan", in A. German and O. Silantjewa, "...In Arbeitskolonnen fur die gesamte Zeit des Krieges." Zeitzungen und Forscher berichten uber uber die Deutschen in der Trudarmee (Moskau: IVDK-Medien, 2012), p. 272

O.A. Yakovenko and A.A. German, "Trudmobilizovannye Nemtsy v Kazakhstane, in A. German and O. Silant'eva, "...V rabochie kolonny na vse vremya voiny." Ochevidtsy i issledovateli o nemtsev v trudovoi armii (Moskva: MSNK-Press, 2012), p. 273.

Chairman Mao, Chairman Avakian, Chairman Pohl

Tonight I acted as Chairman in the transfer ceremony of the History Students' Association of Legon (HISTAL). It felt strange to be called Chairman. But, I did promise them that unlike Chairman Mao that I would not subject them to a Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution or any long speeches.

More on why I don't mind toiling in complete obscurity anymore.

Ideally we should all just ignore gratuitous insults. But, in reality it is not always easy to do. It is perhaps best if one is never in a position where it is not an issue. Being a complete nobody means that I don't have to worry about the type of ridiculous personal attacks that more famous scholars have to endure.

A Response to Ilya Somin

For the last six years Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy has been agitating to refashion May First from a day to celebrate working men and women to a day to commemorate the victims of communism. Now I am all for commemorating the victims of communism, but I also support keeping May First as an international workers' day as well. Somin's reasoning for wanting to use May First as the day to commemorate the victims of communism is that the USSR and other communist states hijacked the holiday as a "propaganda tool." But, if that is his logic than he should advocate that Victims of Communism Day be not on May First, but on May Ninth or Victory Day. The USSR and its satellites did not receive their legitimacy and justification after 1945 from being international workers states. The main source of real legitimacy both internally and externally for these regimes was the role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany. Somehow I do not think that Somin would advocate that the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Holocaust be remembered as a day to commemorate the victims of the victorious Allies, foremost among them the USSR, but also including various communist partisan movements in East Central Europe such as those fighting under Tito in Yugoslavia. However, if the point is to target a day adopted by the USSR and other communist states to prop up their regimes then 9th May is an infinitely better day than 1st May. Even today in post-Soviet states 9th May is a huge holiday compared to 1st May and in real terms it has been for decades. I of course do not advocate that Victim of Communism Day be on 9th May either. The accomplishments of the people of the USSR in defeating Naziism were quite real and people in the former Soviet states are rightfully justified in celebrating this victory. Victims of Communism Day should be on a day that is an anniversary of one of Stalin's crimes. For instance 28th August which is the anniversary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet decree ordering the deportation of the Volga Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan. This makes a lot more sense than playing into the fiction that the USSR was actually some sort of workers' paradise and therefore the embodiment of 1st of May as an international day for working men and women.

Happy May Day!

Today is a holiday in Ghana as it is in most of the world. The First of May is traditionally Labor (or Labour in countries like the UK and South Africa) Day for just about everybody outside the US. That means as a state (public) employee I get the day off.

The advantages of not being well known

I see now that there are definite advantages to being a completely unknown nobody. They were not so apparent to me a couple days ago. It is true nobody agrees with me, but I am not important enough for anybody to bother with either. This last benefit is generally highly underrated.

Strike Results

Today I got my first of four installments of back pay for 2012 in addition to my normal pay. I got about $150 extra dollars. It is not huge, but it is a lot better than nothing.

The semester is almost done

Except for final exams the semester is pretty much over. The final exams are next month. Next semester I will have a lighter teaching load. Instead of teaching two undergraduate courses and one graduate course at main campus and two undergraduate courses at city campus I will just have one undergraduate course at each. For the second semester next year I will also have a graduate course. This will allow me to devote more time to researching and publishing.

Togolese Independence Day

Tomorrow is Togolese Independence Day. While Togo has been nominally independent since 1960, it has spent most of its existence under the French and more recently German supported dictatorships of Gnassingbe Edyadema who ruled the country from 1967 until his death in 2005 and since then his son Faure Gnassingbe. There is an active movement by Togolese civil society in opposition to the current regime  that has staged frequent large scale demonstrations against the dictatorship. Unfortunately, this movement gets very little coverage. Even in next door Ghana the freedom struggle in Togo is largely ignored.

The Struggle for Freedom in Togo Continues

Yesterday, the government of Togo reopened the primary and secondary schools that were closed a week ago in the wake of police violence against demonstrators that left two dead. In addition to the 12 year old boy shot in Dapaong, a 22 year old student died of cardiac arrest after being hospitalized for wounds sustained during the protests. Many teachers, however, have boycotted returning to work adding to their demands that the Togolese security forces responsible for the two deaths be brought to justice.

"Expertise" is part of the problem of ignorance not part of the solution

I have decided that nobody calling themselves an "expert" as opposed to being described as such by their colleagues in the field can be trusted. In fact expertise as such does not really exist I have concluded. Sure some people know more about some things than other people do. But, people who make a big production about having special knowledge and insist on sharing their "expert" opinions are often the most ignorant people on the face of the planet. It has made me fully realize that I am not now nor have I ever been an expert on anything. Although I still like to share my opinion on things as I tell my students, "question everything, especially me." After all while I have some more knowledge than them,  I am not an "expert" and I am certainly not perfect. Like all humans I am deeply flawed. The complete lack of humility even in the face of being completely wrong that accompanies most self described "experts" makes me reject the term. I had not really thought about this until recently in these terms, but the fact that so many US academics claiming to be "experts" in certain areas can be radically wrong about basic facts in the areas they claim to be "expert"s in has convinced me that the whole notion of "expert" as title is a problem. People calling themselves "experts" are more often than not a key part of the problem of ignorance and misinformation rather than a solution to it.  I hope to God that there are not too many "experts" on the Caucasus that have been teaching for more than twenty years who think that the Karbardians and Balkars are a single people. But, given the dreadful state of  academia in North America I just don't know.

If this is what most US academic specialists on the Caucasus believe why wonder the US media is confused

I see that on Ann Little's blog that a commentator called Northern Barbarian claiming to have been teaching about the Caucasus for 20 years seems to be almost as confused as the US media. Among other things he claims that there is a Karbardino-Balkar people. No, there was a Karbardino-Balkar ASSR, but the Karbardians are Circassians and related to the Cherkess and the Balkars are Turkic and related to the Karachais. He also claims that the Germans occupied  the North Caucasus during 1942-1944 and that the Soviets only retook the area in 1944. The Germans never occupied Chechnya proper and the Soviet Red Army had already recaptured the areas inhabited by the soon to be deported Karachais in 1943. In fact the mass deportations from the North Caucasus by the Soviet NKVD had already started in 1943 with the deportation of the Karachais on 2 November 1943. I don't expect the US news media to know that despite the existence of a Karbardino-Balkar ASSR in the USSR that the Karbardians and Balkars are separate and very distinct peoples who speak totally unrelated indigenous languages. But, if you claim to be a professor specializing in the history of the Caucasus and teaching classes about it for 20 years then such ignorance is completely inexcusable. How do people like this get tenure at US universities? For the record I do not claim to be an expert on the Caucasus. I only know enough to know that unlike Moshe Gammer, Walt Richmond, and Brian Williams I am not an expert. Claiming that there is a single Karbardino-Balkar people, however, is an error that no "expert" teaching the subject for 20 years should ever make.

My Random Thoughts on the Relationship between Boston and Chechnya

I am rather unimpressed with the US media coverage of the events in Boston. The level of ignorance about Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, and Islam they have in general displayed is almost as great as their lack of knowledge about Africa. There does not seem to be any connection with the terrorist attacks in Boston with Chechens, Central Asia, or Islam other than the fact they were committed by two people of Chechen descent from Kyrgyzstan. Why they committed these crimes may or may not have been motivated by factors pertaining to their ethnic and religious background. But, at this point it is impossible to know anything other than the crimes were the responsibility of two individuals and not of an entire nationality.

On the other hand I am glad to see that many bloggers seem to recognize that contrary to the claims by Francine Hirsch that racial categories can only be based upon biology and genetics that ethnicity and religion work just as well. In fact the Chechens were one of the groups racialized and subjected to genocide by Stalin. A fact vigorously denied by Francine Hirsch, a tenured professor at University of Wisconsin who has set the orthodox party line for Soviet nationality studies. I am still at a loss as to why it is only regarding the history of the USSR that there is a militant refusal to acknowledge that racial discrimination can be based upon ethnicity, nationality, and religion as well as biology.

A Brief Collection of Older Posts on Chechnya

I am not going to claim to be an expert on Chechnya. I know enough about Chechnya to know that there are very few such experts in the world and one of them, Moshe Gammer very recently died of cancer. But, I have been writing professionally about their deportation in 1944 since 1997. So despite not being an expert I do have some familiarity with the history of the nationality. Since the US media is flooded with bad commentary about Chechnya, I thought I would link to some old posts of mine providing a brief history of the Chechens. The most important event in recent Chechen history in shaping their national development was Stalin's deportation of nearly the entire population to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1944. The collective memory of this ethnic cleansing has been an important tool for political mobilization of the Chechen people and plays a similar role in their understanding of their own history as the Holocaust does for Jews and the Armenian Genocide does for Armenians. The 1944 deportation is why there are still Chechen communities in Kyrgyzstan. They are the descendants of the Chechen survivors of the deportations and special settlement regime who did not return to Chechnya during the Khrushchev era. The best short introduction to the history of the Chechens is Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule (London: Hurst and Co., 2005). If you want to know more about Chechnya and its people I suggest you check out Gammer's book and turn off your television.

Ghanaian Supreme Court starts hearing on election petition

The big news in Ghana now is the Supreme Court case by the NPP (New Patriotic Party) seeking to have 4,670,504 votes from the 2012 elections annulled due to alleged fraud and irregularities. This would be a sufficient number to throw the presidency to the NPP rather than the current ruling NDC (National Democratic Congress). The court proceedings are being broadcast live on Ghanaian television and radio.