What will happen to International Ataturk Alatoo University?

The Turkish government is going all out to persuade foreign governments to shut down schools and other institutions related to the Gulen movement. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation had earlier shut down or taken over all such entities in their states before the coup attempt. Now Ankara has called upon Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Pakistan to do likewise. Here in Bishkek there are two major Turkish universities. The first one, Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University, is affiliated with the Turkish government. The second one, International Ataturk Alatoo University, is affiliated with the Gulen movement. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the Turkish government has called upon the Kyrgyz government to close Gulenist institutions.

Suggested Readings on Kurdish History?

Since I will be living and working in Kurdistan come the end of August I have been trying to educate myself on the region and its people. So far this has largely consisted of keeping up with news stories on the region, watching a few documentaries and interviews on Youtube, and listening to a lot of Kurdish music on Youtube. Granted these are rather superficial sources. But, one has to start somewhere. So I am asking for suggested readings on Kurdish history here. Currently I am in Kyrgyzstan so unfortunately I do not have access to JSTOR and other academic databases right now. Please bear that in mind regarding accessibility.

A Sunny Saturday in Bishkek

It is a beautiful sunny Saturday in Bishkek today. The temperature is 27 C (80 F) with only 38% humidity. In previous summers, especially 2012, Bishkek has been really hot so this mild weather is a really welcome change. I think the greater than normal rainfall is responsible for it being considerably cooler this year.

Bishkek in July

This summer Bishkek has had an usually large number of rainy and cool days. Usually it is hot all the time. But, this summer has been anything other than usual.

I have been having extensive dental work done here prompted by the need for an emergency root canal. Since dental work here is very cheap and relatively good in quality I suppose it is a good thing in the long run. But, I really don't like people sticking sharp instruments in my mouth.

Next Month is the 75th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Volga Germans

Next month will mark the 75th anniversary of the deportation of the Volga Germans followed by the remainder of the Russian German population west of the Urals to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The official date of the commemoration is 28th August in accordance with the Ukaz issued by the Supreme Soviet even though the CC of the CPSU and SNK (Council of People's Commissariats) had already passed a decree ordering the deportation two days earlier. Of the nearly 800,000 ethnic Germans deported in 1941 from European areas of the USSR eastward about half came from the Volga region including Saratov and Stalingrad oblasts as well as the Volga German ASSR. The other half came from eastern Ukraine, the Caucasus, Crimea, and various areas of Russia outside the Volga region including Moscow. I have written quite a bit on this blog and elsewhere about the deportation and subsequent life of the Russian Germans under special settlement restrictions and in the labor army. You can find those pieces by searching this blog. But, this August marks the 75th anniversary and I think perhaps something more is called for to honor the memory of the victims of this crime against humanity. So if you have any suggestions leave them in the comments below.

Almaty

I just got back from two days in Almaty Kazakhstan. Due to the collapse of oil prices Kazakhstan is now cheaper than Kyrgyzstan despite the fact that Almaty has a level of development comparable to most European cities. Indeed going from Bishkek to Almaty is a lot like going from Mexico to the US in terms of architectural modernity. The cityscape of Almaty thus is in many ways much closer to that of cities in the EU and North America than it is to Bishkek. Even the old Soviet apartment blocks in Almaty look a lot newer and better maintained than those in Bishkek. The huge Megacenter mall has a lot of US franchises that I have not seen in many years including Burger King, Costas, Gloria Jean's, and Hardees. In addition to Central Asian food it has restaurants serving Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Georgian, Italian, and Croatian dishes among others. The tiny Ramstor at Vefa Center left Bishkek after 2010. But, the Megacenter has a huge and fully stocked Ramstor. Besides the Megacenter we also took the cable car ride above the city. It is like a ski lift but you take it down from the mountain and back. You get up the mountain in the first place on a minibus. I am not sure of all the reasons for the much greater development in Almaty than Bishkek. One clear reason is of course Kazakhstan's natural resources most notably oil and gas and the recent long run of high prices for these commodities. Another is undoubtedly political stability. Kazakhstan has been under the rule of the same man for its entire existence as an independent state. He was head of the Kazakh SSR for two years before that. In contrast Kyrgyzstan has had two major revolutions in recent years. They had one in 2005 and another in 2010. These two factors are undoubtedly major contributors to the much higher foreign investment Kazakhstan has received compared to Kyrgyzstan in the last decade. Finally, Almaty is a welcome relief from Bishkek and Accra in being free of NGO parasites from the EU and North America. For instance there is no Peace Corp in Kazakhstan. The absence of such organizations and their extremely corrupting influence on society undoubtedly has also played a significant role in Kazakhstan's recent social and economic development.

On the Move Again (Kurdistan)

In September I will be starting work teaching in the Social Sciences Department of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. The university and surrounding city are located in Iraqi Kurdistan. The flag to the right is the Kurdish flag. I am very excited about this opportunity although I am sad to leave Ghana. But, for a variety of reasons it is time for me to move on. Interestingly enough my PhD and MA are from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) which specializes in the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. I have taught in Central Asia and West Africa, and now I will be working in the Middle East. I have heard a lot of very good things about Kurdistan in general and Sulaimani in particular and I look forward to arriving there in person soon.

Happy Independence Day to all my American Readers

Happy Independence Day to all my American readers both in the US and abroad.

Another Walk

I went back to the Afghan War memorial in Ata-Turk Park today and noticed that there were another ten slabs with the names of dead soldiers from the Kyrgyz SSR on them on the other side of the statue. So that would bring the number of names up to about 265. The actual number of dead must be greater, however.

Ramadan in Kyrgyzstan

In many ways Bishkek in the summer seems like a city frozen in time. Sure everybody has a smart phone and there are other technological and consumer items now that did not exist during Soviet times here. But, in many ways the city still seems very Soviet. The way of life of people, the functioning of the state, and the people in control of the state haven't changed nearly as much as for instance in Estonia and other countries that had been under socialist rule. The single biggest change in fact seems not to be the introduction of consumer capitalism which resembles Soviet state socialism in a number of important ways. Rather the single biggest change and it is a fairly recent one is the revival of Islam as an actually practiced religion rather than just an assertion as part of an ethnic identity. Kyrgyzstan is still fairly secular but people even in Bishkek now actually attend Mosque, celebrate Ramadan, and have otherwise started actually acting as Muslims. Many Americans tend to freak out about any increase in Islamic piety in the world. But, given the actual existing record of radical secularism in both its Soviet and capitalist forms I don't see why this should be the case, especially in Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Central Asia.

Istanbul

I fly fairly frequently through Istanbul. For the last five years I have flown through Ataturk International Airport from Ghana to Kyrgyzstan and back. Most recently I was in the airport for the entire day of June 8th. I am scheduled to go back through the airport on August 4th.

Mission Accomplished

This morning I went to the US embassy to pick up my daughter's new passport. I have now accomplished my most important task of the summer. It was much easier to renew the passport than to get the first one.

The Cityscape of Bishkek

It is strange that the socialist part of the urban landscape of Bishkek remains constant as the capitalist part constantly change. Some businesses have some staying power. Coca-Cola has been here for 20 years and Kyrgyz Concept (a travel agency) has been in existence since 1990 even before independence. But, a lot of the cafes and stores here seem to last only one or two years before being replaced by new ventures. So there are two layers to Bishkek. An older Soviet layer of largely empty or re-purposed buildings and then newer and constantly changing businesses. It is more striking here than other places because very few of the visible symbols of Soviet rule were ever dismantled. The statue of Lenin is still standing behind the History Museum. During Soviet times it stood in front of the museum but other than that it is unchanged. The statue of Marx and Engels that Khrushchev replaced the statue of Stalin with is still just a very short walk away from the Lenin statue. Almost all the sickles and hammers on Soviet built buildings including the old Supreme Soviet which was the campus of AUCA for many years are still up. The 1963 Soviet mosaic on the Ala-Too Cinema is still the same despite showing a never ending parade of Disney movies. In short there has been almost no architectural de-Sovietization in Bishkek unlike other cities in the former USSR. On top of this is all of the new capitalist construction of the last quarter of a century.

Toktogul Statue

Bishkek is a very walkable city and the various old Soviet era buildings and statues make interesting sights while strolling. Today among other things I saw the statue to the bard Toktogul near the Opera House. Due to his cultural and historical importance during the Tsarist era including his participation in the Andijan Uprising in 1898 (at age 34) it is easy to forget that he in fact lived until 1933, well into the Soviet era. The existing literature, however, largely ignores him after 1917. The English language, A History of Kyrgyzstan (from the Stone Age to the Present) by Oskon Osmonov and Cholpon Turdalieva which came out in 2015 for instance only deals with his life during the Tsarist era and does not say anything about the last 16 years before he died.

Walking is never time wasted

Yesterday I walked through Ataturk Park and saw the Afghan War memorial. In addition to a statue it also lists the soldiers from the Kyrgyz SSR that died in the war from 1979 to 1989. At rough approximation there were 130 names on the slabs that I saw. But, I think this total must be incomplete. In many ways Afghanistan was the Soviet Union's Vietnam.

Today I walked down the Kievskaya side of Ala Too Square rather than the Chui side. Just after the statue of Chingiz Aitmatov I ran into a former student of mine. He is doing quite well. It is kind of strange to think that I have taught hundreds of Kyrgyz, thousands of Ghanaians, and only a half a dozen Americans. At this point I am sure my impact will be much greater in Africa and Asia than it will ever be in my home country.

Another Random Thought

Maybe I should convert this blog into just a listing of various foods and drinks since that seems to elicit the most comments by a huge margin. However, I have already run out of consumables to list for Kyrgyzstan. I suppose I could do a similar list for Ghana when I get back to Africa. Instead, I am just going to keep muddling on in a very random fashion as I always have for lack of any better plan. I wish some of my more academic posts got comments. But, I am pretty sure nobody other than myself reads any of those posts. So there is in fact nobody to comment on them. They exist only as notes to myself in cyberspace.

Kyrgyz Beverages

Since my food post got a comment which almost never happens I have decided to add a beverage post. So here is a list of Kyrgyz beverages I have had since I got here. Many of them I purchased from vendors off the street.

Shalap Shoro

Maksim Shoro

Kvass

Kumis

Mors

Sherbet

Ayran

Tea

Annual Kyrgyz Food Edition

The last couple of summers I have done a Kyrgyz food list. That is a list of dishes my wife has prepared for us during my stay. So far I have had the following this trip. Although some of these I had at cafes or as take out.

Oromo

Chorpo

Manti

Laghman

Shashlik

Samsa

Ganfan

Fried liver and potatoes

Hanshan

Korean salad

Crab salad

Hot Sauce Hunt

Most Kyrgyz people don't like spicy food. But, my family is an exception. So having devoured the jar of Vietnamese chili sauce I purchased last week at Beta Stores I went on a hunt for hot sauce this morning with the boy. In addition to getting a new jar of the stuff from Vietnam we also scored and almost completely finished in one sitting of manti a bottle of sweet chili sauce from Russia.

Doings in Bishkek

Yesterday I submitted the necessary documentation to the embassy to renew my daughter's passport. I also had coffee with a Portuguese colleague. It was the first time I had actually met him in person. He asked that I send him copy of my PhD dissertation which I did later that evening in pdf form. It has been raining here the last couple of days. But, rain in Central Asia is very light compared to the precipitation in West Africa.

Summer Break

Like past summers I am currently in Kyrgyzstan visiting family. Today I went to renew my daughter's passport. That was my number one goal to accomplish while I am here. I also finished peer reviewing an article manuscript that had been languishing on my desk for a long time in Ghana. Now I can devote myself to some more serious writing projects.

New Project Idea

I have been kicking around a project in my head for a while about re-evaluating the relationship of the USSR to the Third World during the 1960s and 1970s particularly with regards to the role played by Central Asia in granting the USSR membership in certain Afro-Asian organizations such as the Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organization and Afro-Asian Writers' Association. I discussed the idea with Professor Joe on Saturday morning and on Sunday afternoon I wrote 2700 words of a really rough draft. I think there is something there and it is completely different from the other writing I have been doing on Stalinist deportations. It seems to me that nobody has really explored how Central Asia made the USSR an Asian state both politically and culturally in relationship to the rest of the world and in particular with regards to Africa and Asia. But, it seems to me here there are a lot of historical connections and parallels between Central Asia and the rest of Afro-Asia from the late 1950s to the 1980s that have largely been forgotten. The entire Soviet bloc is often excluded from consideration when looking at the Afro-Asian solidarity movements of this era. However, the USSR by virtue of the inclusion of Central Asia in its union was a member and participant in many of the Afro-Asian solidarity organizations and events. Treating Central Asia as part of East Central Europe rather than Asia seems wrong not only geographically but politically and culturally as well. So I want to see if by looking at the involvement of the USSR and particularly its citizens of Central Asian nationalities and its use of cities like Tashkent and Alma-Ata to host Afro-Asian events if I can reincorporate the region into the larger Afro-Asian world. Please feel free to leave any constructive criticism in the comments down below.

Weekend

This weekend I again went to the mall on Saturday and had coffee followed by a Philly cheese steak. But, I did not see Rawlings this time. I had a bigger cheese steak with more cheese and hot stuff this time, however. Today I got to church on time due to getting a ride with a fellow worshipper. I then went to the office. For lunch I walked down to the night market to get some spicy chicken wings and plantains from Meluvs. Then it started to rain so I walked as fast as I could. I still got a little bit wet, but not soaked. I did not think there could be much water left in the air since last night it poured heavily for hours on end. As it was it did not rain very long or very hard by Ghanaian standards this afternoon.

List of my articles dealing with Crimean Tatars on the Internet

"The Deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the Context of Settler Colonialism," International Crimes and History, 2016, Issue: 16.

"Soviet Ethnic Cleansing of the Crimean Tatars," International Crimes and History, 2015, Issue: 15.

“Colonialism in one Country: The Deported Peoples of theUSSR as an Example of Internal Colonialism,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion , vol. 5,  no. 7, May 2014.

“Kirim Tatarlina Karşi Dűzmce Vatana Ihanet Suçlaamari [TheFalse Charges of Treason against the Crimean Tatars] trans. Selami Kaçamak, Emel, no. 230,  January-March 2010.

“Ethnic Erasure: The Role of Border Changes in Soviet EthnicCleansing and Return Migration” in Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann, eds., Border Changes in 20^th Century Europe, vol. 1 Tartu Studies in Contemporary History (Berlin, Germany: Lit-Verlag, 2010).

“Loss, Retention, and Reacquisition of Social Capital bySpecial Settlers in the USSR,1941-1961” in Cynthia Buckley, Blair Ruble, and Erin Trouth Hofmann, eds., Migration, Homeland and Belonging in Eurasia (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center and Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2008).

“A Caste of Helot Labourers: Special Settlers and theCultivation of Cotton in Soviet Central Asia: 1944-1956” in Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., The Cotton Sector in Central Asia: Economic Policy and Development Challenges, (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2007).

“Socialist Racism: Ethnic Cleansing and Racial Exclusion inthe USSR and Israel,” Human Rights Review, vol. 7, no. 3, April-June 2006. 

“The Deportation and Fate of the Crimean Tatars,” presented at the 5th Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Columbia University, NY, 13-15 April 2000.

Today (18-05-16)

Today I gave my last exam of the semester at 7:30 am. That meant I had to be at the university at 7:00 am. Which meant that I had to leave my flat at 6:00 am. To do that I had to get up at 5:00 am. Fortunately, I don't have to do that again at least for a couple of months. But, of course all day today I have been feeling like a zombie because I only got six hours of sleep insteard of the eight I usually get on week nights. My brain is certainly not up to doing any marking of final exams today. Tomorrow I will try and plow through as many of the 52 scripts as possible.

Remember

18 May 1944

Tomorrow is the 72nd anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland to Uzbekistan and the Urals. This year the 18th of May comes just a few short days after Jamala's victory for Ukraine in the Eurovision song contest with her song 1944 about the event. In many ways the Soviet treatment of the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean peninsula resembled better known cases of settler colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East. You can find my article, "The Deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the Context of Settler Colonialism," International Crimes and History, 2015, Issue: 16, here. Feel free to leave any comments about the article here.

Saturday at the mall (Rawlings sighting)

This weekend I was at the Accra Mall. I wanted to try the new Pizza Hut but the line was too long. I did try the new coffee shop and the new Philly cheese steak place, however. In between drinking a huge mug of Sumatran coffee and eating a cheese steak I saw J.J. Rawlings. Or at least somebody who looked almost identical to him. I was outside the mall and had just finished talking to my mother on the phone when I saw him leave the mall. He did not have any visible entourage which I found interesting. At any rate I have never been physically closer to such an historically important figure in my life. Assuming that is of course it actually was Rawlings and not a look a like.

Afro-Optimism

Somedays things look good. Today is one of those days. It didn't start out that way. But, it has evolved in that direction at least since noon. So this Friday the 13th is looking pretty lucky for me. If you want to make it even better you can put some suggestions for where to look for research grants in the comments of the previous post. So far nobody has left any recommendations of places that offer funding for academic research by scholars in Africa. However, given today's trajectory I have hope that somebody might in the next couple of days. Africa has always been the continent of eternal optimism.

End of Semester

The semester is rapidly coming to an end. I gave one final exam on Monday and have almost finished grading the exams. I have five left. My other final exam is next week. It is a larger class but grading might go faster because it is more closely related to my research fields.

As always I am on the look out for small research grants. Even a few hundred dollars helps a lot in the "Third World." So if you have any suggestions of where to apply for funds to study the type of things I write about please leave them in the comments. If you are not sure about what I write about then go see this site and scroll down. There you can see a number of my published works. My latest journal article of course is not available there. But, can be found here if you have access through a university or other institution. Needless to say acquiring primary and even secondary sources is much more difficult here in Ghana than it would be if I worked at a North American or European university in large part due to a lack of research funds.

Publication from 2014 now available online

I have a short article on Kyrgyz national identity in Civitis: Journal of Citizenship Studies that is now available online here. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments below.

Saturday Morning

This morning I had to get up early to get my final exams for Monday printed off. Despite leaving the house before eight I still did not manage to avoid the fruit vendors who have taken to knocking on my door at 6:30 am. I refuse to buy anything that early in the morning. So now that I have gotten my first exam copied I don't intend to do any more work for the rest of the day.

This Week

This week I got my final exam questions typed up and approved by the Head of the Department. I also submitted my article from The Russian Review last month for an award here at the university. Finally, I sent an abstract and grant application off for a conference in Hanoi next March. Next week final exams start.

Monday again

As far as I can tell this blog has three human readers left. That is undoubtedly more than my academic writing garners. But, still only a quarter as many readers as I had a decade ago or a 75% decline. Maybe it is because I have been in one place too long now. Out of the nearly 13 years this blog has lived a little less than one was in London but blogging was very light. Then I spent a year in northern Virginia followed by two years in Arizona, three and a half in Kyrgyzstan, and now five and a half in Ghana. So the African phase has been by far the longest. However, for better or worse it does not look like I will be moving anytime soon. So maybe I am no longer a man on the move.

Labour Day Weekend

Well moving this blog to a personal journal of my daily life in Ghana seems to have greatly reduced my already microscopic readership. At this point it doesn't really matter, however. There isn't much left of the blogging world period. Certainly very few individual blogs have continued to exist for nearly 12 years.

This Labour Day weekend I deliberately avoided doing any work. I don't do that often. I have been thinking today about actually doing this project next semester. I am not sure if I could get enough contributers together to make a go of it. But, if anybody is interested let me know.

Today's Accomplishment

Today I found a journal to send a revised copy of the paper I gave in Jerusalem. I finally found one that did not require extensive stylistic and reference revisions. So that was my big accomplishment for today. Every step closer I come to getting another publication is another tiny movement towards further promotion. I should probably be seeing about getting revised versions of all the rejected manuscripts I still have sitting around so I can move this process along a little faster.

The Middle Day

I never get as much done as I hope to in any given day. But, I do make sure to do a little bit each day. Today, I got the process to get my rent subsidy underway. I also wrote another reference letter. Finally, I finished writing a draft of a proposal for an MA sandwich program and sent it to the person who will take over as HOD in August. So I got three things accomplished. I also got to the bank to get money which always seems to take forever. However, I failed to definitively find a journal for my last conference paper. All of them are going to require significant stylistic revisions particularly regarding the citations. I hate having to redo citations. Moving from footnotes to in text citation takes forever and I don't know why so very few journals use either footnotes or end notes anymore. We have to teach our students here that the international standard for historical writing is footnotes in Chicago Style. Yet, a huge number of journals in Russian and Soviet history require in text citations in Harvard Style. The only one that uses end notes instead of in text citations is The Russian Review. So I am probably going to have to go and redo the citations on the paper before submitting it.

Ruby Tuesday

Today the first productive thing I did was drop of laundry at the laundromat. Then I made it to the office to fill out more endless letters of recommendation. I still have students who graduated in 2011 and took the first class I ever taught here coming to ask for reference letters. It seems most of my former students want to become lawyers although given the complete lack of enforcement of law here I am not sure how that will work.

Most of the day I spent working on a book chapter on the Soviet mass campaigns of arrest and expulsion of ethnic Chinese from the Soviet Far East during 1936-1938. I didn't get lunch until after three in the afternoon as a result. I had a chicken shawarma. Like all other food here it was Africanized meaning made spicy.

Munchy Monday

Today I got up and had a hearty breakfast of three bananas, a bowl of ramen noodles flavored with ketchup, soy sauce, and hot sauce, and a couple slices of bread with ketchup washed down with tea. I then took the tro tro to Madina and transferred to one going to Legon. I walked the rest of the way from Bush Canteen to my office. Once at my office I had a number of students show asking for one of two things. Either they still hadn't gotten their mid-term exam back or in two cases they wanted me to write them letters of reference for a history department scholarship that is due next week. I got both of the letters done today, but one I didn't get printed off until late because by the time the former student got to my office it was lunch time.

At lunch I first attempted to go to the housing office in the hopes I could catch them before they went to lunch. This attempt failed. I arrived at an empty office. I then ate some jollof rice and sausage and called my wife before making a second attempt. This attempt was much more successful and I found out what I need to do at least as a first step to renew my housing subsidy for next academic year. Then I walked over to the All Needs Market and purchased some beverages and an ice cream. It is both good and bad that the campus is so huge. It is good in that all the walking got me off the high blood pressure medicine and is probably lowering my cholesterol. It is bad in that it takes an incredible amount of time. Some days I walk upward of five kilometers at work.

After arriving back at the office I wrote out by hand the final exam questions for my European History class. The exam will be on May 9th. Then I did the same for half of the questions for my Aspects of World History, 1945 to Present. That exam is May 18th. I may finish them tonight. But, I got interrupted by the food lady bringing ground nut soup, tilapia, and rice. In retrospect given the size of breakfast and the fact I had both a mid-afternoon and early evening meal it is probably good that I had to walk down to housing and back twice today. Otherwise I might start looking like a moving fufu.

End of Classes for the Semester

Today and yesterday I finished teaching my last classes of the semester. Today I had a class at city campus in Accra and yesterday I had a class at the main campus in Legon or as we call it "the village." So now there are a couple of weeks until my final exams. I have one on May 9th and one on May 18th.

Some Good News

Yesterday, I know I am again behind, I got some good news. I have only ever had one PhD student in any of my classes. An African-American woman took my graduate course on race and ethnicity before leaving UG due to a number of factors. She is extremely talented academically and an excellent writer. After leaving UG to return to the US she spent some time looking for a new PhD program. I wrote six recommendation letters for programs for her plus one for a scholarship. It turns out she got into her first choice school and got the scholarship which covers three years of tuition and living expenses. So even if nobody in the US ever takes me seriously as an academic I hold out the hope that some of my students will be accorded that respect.

Yesterday

Yesterday I couldn't post this because the power went out again. So I am posting it today. But, the events all refer to Wednesday. At 9:30 am I oversaw our last departmental seminar of the semester. We had a guest lecturer from Winneba talk about pedagogy today. This provoked a lively discussion among the National Service Personnel in the audience, most of whom had been students just a year ago. This was followed by another emergency meeting in which I got stuck being seminar coordinator for next year. In fact they named me seminar coordinator for life. But, I did get rid of my seat on academic board after two years finally.

I then finished up grading my mid-terms for European history, ate some waakye provided free by the head of department, and took a walk. After that I called my wife and spoke to my five year old daughter. Her Russian has gotten really good. It is her second language. Her first language is Kyrgyz which I don't speak very much of at all. She even threw in some English phrases for my benefit. She asked about her grandparents a lot.

The rest of the afternoon I spent doing minor tasks that took way too long. One was writing a reference letter for a former student applying for funding for graduate studies. The letter itself did not take long to write. However, getting the printer to work took a long time. I had to reinstall the HP printer program because I updated to Windows 10 a while ago.

The second task I still have not finished. I am searching for a suitable journal to send a revised version of the paper I presented in Jerusalem. I originally sent it to The Russian Review but they rejected it on the basis that they had just published an article by me on ethnic Germans in the USSR during World War II which is fair enough. So far I haven't decided on where to resend the manuscript. Any suggestions are greatly welcomed and should be included in the comments.

Tuesday again

Today I had my last 7:30 am class of the semester. It had three parts. In the first part I went over the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the second part I went over what would be covered on the final exam. Finally, in the third part we discussed what the students liked about the class and their suggestions for improving the class in the future. They evidently really liked hearing about the 20th century from a living fossil that grew up during the Cold War. Their suggestions included more visual aids and slower speaking due to my thick American accent. Overall the class went well this semester. African students seem a lot more capable of learning than American ones from everything I can see on the Internet.

Just another Monday in Africa

Today I got off to a slow start again. I managed to get to the university a little before 11 am. Before I left somebody from the Adenta Municipal Assembly left a property tax notice. The flat owners owe 168 GH in taxes. I called my land lady and told her and she said to drop it by her old office. She retired from working at the university recently. Then I got a taxi to work since I was ferrying laundry to the laundromat. The university security guards don't let taxis drop passengers off by the main gate anymore so I had to walk a lot more than I anticipated.

After getting to work and dropping off laundry which has recently increased in price from 10 GH to 15 GH I checked my e-mail. I had one rejection from a journal. I need to figure someplace to resend that particular piece. I then called the immigration officer at International House and asked if he was in his office. He was. So I took my passport, a bunch of forms, and $300 US to get my work and residency permit renewed. Shortly after returning to my office the power went out as it does almost every Monday.

Lacking electricity I ate a quick lunch of jollof and cabbage, called my wife in Kygyzstan, and then walked down to a small store to buy some beverages. Then I kept walking down Danquah in the heat until I got to the Kwame Nkrumah Complex and went in to steal cool air from the Institute of African Studies. They have generators and unlimited amounts of diesel to run them unlike the history department which has nothing.

After a while I felt okay enough to make it across the field to JQB and browse in the bookstore. Prices for everything except labor have gotten really high recently. Most of the books were running between 80 and 200 GH which is equivalent to $20-$50. Since prices for everything keep skyrocketing while wages and salaries for the vast majority of the population including university lecturers remain absolutely stagnant the standard of living is dropping fast in Ghana. The middle class is evaporating much faster here than in the US.

Finally, I decided there were no books in the store worth the prices being demanded so I walked back to the history department. On the way I discovered that electricity had returned. It was only out for a couple of hours which is a big improvement from the 24 lights out followed by only 12 hours of power we had for a couple of years here.

Writing

To answer derRach's question I am currently working on a couple of projects. The one that is undoubtedly of most interest to him is a book manuscript on the history of Russian Germans in the USSR with an emphasis on Central Asia. It has been coming along slowly for a number of reasons including the fact that books count very little for promotion here. A book currently only equals three peer reviewed journal articles. I also have a couple of shorter pieces on ethnic Germans in Kazakhstan currently being considered for publication.

Coffee

It is on days like this that I wish there was still a place that served real coffee somewhere near campus. The Maxmart across the road used to have a nice cafe that served good Turkish coffee. But, now the only thing in close proximity is that awful Nescafe.

Saturday Morning

Okay this marks the finish of a week of posts on my everyday life. It did not elicit much interest so I am not sure if I am going to continue it. Life in poor countries is generally either boring or terrifying. There is very little good excitement or romantic adventure. So I am okay with the boring. But, I don't think it really makes interesting reading material for other people.

Today I went to the Mighty Jesus Supermarket to buy some stuff and found my balcony filled with the kids from across the way selling fruits and vegetables. I ended up buying two bunches of bananas and five pineapples for 30 GH to get rid of them. I successfully argued for not buying the coco yam leaves because I did not know how to cook them.

After the departure of the fruit vendors I ate a pineapple, some bananas and two slices of bread washed down with a bottle of liquid yogurt, a can of Malta, and a glass of banana and strawberry juice. Then I decided to go to campus just to get away from my flat.

Friday morning

This morning I took a while to get out of my flat. I decided to have cold pizza for breakfast before coming to campus. I purchased two from the food lady at work yesterday. There is still one in my refrigerator. After I got to the office I graded 18 mid-terms for my class at city campus which is in an hour and a half. Now I just have one more class of mid-terms to finish grading. I have gotten so I can do these things pretty fast. Most students get in the B and B+ range. Those few that stick out as exceptional get an A. Unfortunately, there is no longer a grade of A- here. Then there are those that stick out as showing little or no reading of the assignments. They get lower grades. But, fortunately I haven't had any truly bad essays yet this semester. Most students get most of the basic information down.

Thursday

Today we had a departmental meeting this morning. It  had one big surprise which I can't go into here. We also were assigned our classes for next year. I have six classes next year related in large part to the surprise alluded to above. I have a section of Early Modern European History at main campus (the village) and one at city campus in Accra. I also have Aspects of World History, 1914-1945 at both campuses. Finally, I have History of Europe 1789-1945 for distance learning. On top of these five undergraduate courses I also have a graduate course on the history of race and ethnicity again after a year long break. Fortunately, I have taught all three of these classes multiple times before so the preparation time will be limited.

This afternoon I finished up the last lecture for History of Europe, 1789-1945 for this semester. I covered World War II today. I started on 23 August 1939 with the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact and went up to 9 May 1945 with the defeat of Nazi Germany. Next week I will finish up my lectures in my two class sections on Aspects of World History, 1945 to Present Day.

Mittwoch

Today I chaired the penultimate seminar of the semester. Today the three first year MPhil students presented short introductions to their research. This year in addition to two Ghanaian students we have a post-graduate student from Slovenia. I was a little worried about time because there were three presenters. But, they managed to stay within the 90 minutes allocated weekly to the seminar.

I returned to the archives today. I found out that the faculty of science used to have a couple of big boats. It sold the last one that I know about in 1984 after somebody stole 80% of its engine parts and the entire gear box.

The food lady came around today with fried tilapia, banku, and pepper. I like the taste of this dish and I have gotten used to the fact that you can't do anything else while eating it because your right hand becomes covered in sticky banku, but I wish all fish could be like shark and be boneless.

Tuesday

Today I had to get up early to teach my 7:30 am class on the Cold War and return their mid-term exams. I covered the late Cold War period with an emphasis on the Soviet war in Afghanistan today. Next week is the last lecture where we cover the end of the Cold War the the break up of the USSR into its component republics. When I got back to the office the department head had a free meal of jollof rice, chicken, and fried plantains for me. It was an unexpected gift. But, it was mighty tasty.

Most of the afternoon I spent at the library going through university archives as part of a departmental project. I came across over 100 documents on how the university administration denied any funds for hiring new staff or promoting old members in the faculty of the sciences from 1966 to 1973. In 1968 the dean began a concerted effort to have this situation reviewed and funding provided for promotion and new hires. Only after they began to lose all of their science faculty and technicians to other institutions due to the lack of promotion at Legon did the administration finally relent and agree to provide funding to give raises. That was in 1972. The following year they funded the hiring of new people in the faculty of sciences for the first time in eight years. The sixties and seventies are  often portrayed as a golden age for higher education in the US. But, in Ghana they certainly were not.

I then returned to the office and wasted time talking to national service people and graduate students for about an hour. After that I noticed the food lady outside and picked up some ground nut soup, chicken, and rice. Interestingly enough I eat a lot more rice in Africa than I did when I lived in Asia. There I ate a lot more bread than I eat here.

A Monday

Today I got off to a slow start. I didn't get out of my flat until after 10 am. I skipped the tro tro because I found a taxi willing to take me to campus for 15 GH. Once I got to campus I went and got a haircut and beard trim. My barber operates out of a section of converted shipping container behind the Legon campus in a small bazaar called "Bush Canteen." After getting my hair and beard shorn from the Karl Marx look to the Vladimir Lenin look I went and got some passport photos taken. You can never have too many of these photos since all kinds of official forms require them.

For a change we had electricity at work today so I was able to get some work done even though I got off to a late start. After checking my e-mail I went across the street and had a big plate of jollof. Then I came back to the office and graded all of the mid-term exams for my class on the Cold War. In total there were 51 tests. Midway through grading them the food lady came by to sell me a bunch of coconut cookies and a meal of rice with chicken and tomato sauce and carrots. It didn't include any utensils so I had to eat it African style with my right hand.

One Sunday in my life

Well it seems my three readers think I should write more on everyday life here in Ghana. Although to be perfectly honest life in poor countries is not very exciting despite being romanticized in the US and Europe. You are limited in what you can do when you don't have electricity for instance.

But, it is something I can write about. Today I got up early and went to church. The English language service of the Presbyterian church I attend starts at 7:00 am. It is supposed to be finished by 8:30 am but almost always runs late, especially on days like today when we take Holy Communion. So I got up at 6:00 am and managed to get out the door by 6:30 am and walked to church. Ghanaians tend to get up very early in the morning. At 5:30 am there is a shoe repair man banging on his tool box in the courtyard of our apartment complex. So by 6:30 am on Sunday there are lots of people already wondering about. I got to church ten minutes early today.

The churches in Ghana are the one thing that seem to work well because Ghanaians actually do believe in them. Everybody outside the 20% Muslim minority from the north is a member of a church and all of them even mainstream denominations like the Presbyterians would be considered a fundamentalist and evangelical church by US standards. That of course doesn't stop the much larger Pentecostal denomination or the Jehovahs' Witnesses from trying to convert you. But, I do find it annoying to have to tell people almost daily that I already found Jesus and accepted him as my savior. Are there not heathens in Osu or Cantonments that need converting?

After church I had some ramen noodles. I buy Indomie which is an Indonesian brand that is popular here and fortified with some vitamins and other nutrients. They are manufactured for the West African market in a factory in Nigeria because Ghana produces almost nothing. I flavored them with hot sauce, soy sauce, and ketchup. All also imported. Then I did some reading.

On Sunday afternoons my cleaning lady comes. I pay her 200 GH ($50) a month and she comes once a week for about three to four hours to clean up my flat. On an hourly basis I pay her almost as much as I make which I think is fair. I obviously can't afford to pay much more. Usually, like today, I take a nap on the couch in the living room while she cleans.

After Eve finished cleaning my flat I went to the Mighty Jesus Supermarket around the corner and purchased a can of Coke, a can of Malta, and a bottle of sobolo. I then went to the phone credit vendor and purchased 50 GH of MTN credit. I got a bonus of 2 GH credit today. I then called my wife in Kyrgyzstan which used up about 15 GH. Then I walked home.

The rest of the day included another nap and finally finishing up the latest Jo Nesbo novel I have been reading. Sundays might be my most laid back day of the week since other than going to church I generally don't do much other than sleep and eat. I can also stay up late since I have no classes scheduled on Mondays this semester.

Annual Reader Survey

If I have any readers left now might be a good time for you to express your opinion of what I should do to bring this blog back to life. Or is it a hopeless cause?

First Steps

I am thinking about trying to revive this blog from its current nearly comatose condition. I am not exactly sure what I could do to attract any readers. But, obviously the first step in reanimating the blog is to start putting up some posts.

Random Economic Thoughts

Today I went to the new supermarket in Adenta, Shop and Save. Western style grocery stores are still a rarity in Ghana. Until the opening a couple weeks ago of the Shop and Save the nearest supermarket to me was in the Accra Mall half way between the university and the airport. It seems like it took forever to build the new supermarket. But, now that it is done there is another small piece of modernity in the Greater Accra area.

After I came home I finished reading Mira Kamdar's Planet India. In the last thirty years India has made incredible strides in modernization. Indian manufactured goods like cars, trucks, and tractors are everywhere here in Ghana. I don't think I have ever seen one of the few cars or trucks actually built in Ghana. The skyrocket in Indian production of goods not only for their domestic use but export has been nothing short of amazing. If you told me in the 1980s that India would be a major exporter of cars and trucks I would not have believed you. I think one of the big differences between India and Ghana that allows the former to be much more economically successful is attitude. Indians believe in their products and they themselves buy them. Most Ghanaians seem to believe that imports are by definition better than local products and refuse to buy things made in Ghana. If not even Ghanaians will buy Ghanaian manufactured goods how can anybody expect foreigners to buy them? They will just say "not even Ghanaians think their products are any good." India doesn't have that mindset.

Russian Review Article Link

It appears that you can get an electronic copy of my article "The Persecution of Ethnic Germans in the USSR during World War II", The Russian Review, 75 (April 2016): 284-303 at this link provided by the publisher. I am not sure if everybody can get access to the Wiley site or not. It may only be available through institutional access. Let me know if it works or not for you in the comments. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I could access an electronic version of the publication at all this early. Feel free to leave any commentary, criticism, or questions about the article in the comments below.

Random Musings

I know that updates on this blog have been really infrequent this year. Other than announcing new publications I feel I am running out of things I can write in the blog format. I suppose I would have been more motivated to write more entries if I ever got any comments. But, those largely ceased about a decade ago. I feel I should probably write something about my brief trip to Jerusalem last month where I participated in an academic conference. However, I was there for such a short period of time I really did not get to see much other than the campus of Hebrew University. I need to go back so I can see some of the actual city.

New Article on Crimean Tatars

The latest issue of International Crimes and History, no. 16 is a special topic issue on the Crimean Tatars and has my article, "The Deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the Context of Settler Colonialism." 

Abstract of Conference Paper on Germans deported to Kazakhstan

On 8 March 2016 I presented a paper on the deportation of ethnic Germans in the USSR to Kazakhstan to a conference at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The title of the conference was Jews and their Neighbors in Soviet Central Asia during the Second World War: Realities of Life and Survival. My paper, "Wir hatten nichts": The Fate of Ethnic Germans Deported to Kazakhstan during World War II was part of the Round Table on Deported and Evacuated Populations in Central Asia: A Comparative Approach. The abstract of the paper is below.

Abstract

  "Wir hatten nichts": The Fate of ethnic Germans Deported to Kazakhstan During World War II

by

J. Otto Pohl

In the fall of 1941 the Soviet government forcibly deported some 800,000 ethnic Germans from west of the Urals to desolate areas of Siberia and Kazakhstan. Upon arrival in their new places of residence the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) classified them as special settlers, the same legal designation as deported kulaks, and placed them under severe restrictions. In particular they could not leave their newly assigned places of settlement without special written permission. These legal restrictions remained in place until the end of 1955. About half of these deportees ended up in Kazakhstan where the local authorities initially assigned almost all of them to agricultural labour. Settled into the already inhabited houses of Kazakh kolkhoz workers, abandoned buildings needing repair, and even earth huts the Germans suffered from a lack of proper housing. They also experienced severe shortages of food, medicine, and winter clothing. As a result large numbers of them perished from malnutrition, disease, and exposure. After 10 January 1942, the Soviet government began the forced mobilization of the deported Germans into labour columns known collectively as the labour army to work in lumber and construction camps run by the NKVD in the Urals as well as building railroads. They conscripted over 100,000 ethnic Germans from Kazakhstan to work in the labour army. The mass induction of women after 7 October 1942 meant that many of the Germans remaining in Kazakhstan were children without any adult relatives to look after them. Deaths exceeded births among the ethnic Germans in Kazakhstan and other regions of the USSR until 1948. Only after this date do material conditions for the exiled Germans begin to improve significantly.

Neocolonialism in West Africa

I am currently reading Samir Amin's Neocolonialism in West Africa which is nearly as old as I am. The economic problems and obstacles to development in the region he points to are almost exactly the same as the ones faced today. Unfortunately, the policies during colonial rule and the first decade of independence that created these problems are also the same as today. One crop primary commodities like cocoa for Ghana still dominate the various national economies of the region. There has been very little diversification and no successful move to either import substitution industry or value added manufacture export. Instead Ghana continues to rely excessively on the export of cheap raw cacao to fund the importation of virtually everything including basic food staples and things like toilet paper. It is kind of depressing to realize just how little real economic progress has been made in West Africa in my life time. There has been some growth benefiting the wealthy and politically connected classes that are closely associated with the Asian, European, Lebanese, and White South African owned companies that totally dominate the economy here. But, there has been no real development of any type of independent indigenous industry in the more than forty years since Nkrumah died.

A Short Comparison of the Construction of the Modern Middle East and Central Asia

The creation of modern nation states in Central Asia and the Arab Middle East bear some important similarities. In particular the carving out of a number of distinct nation states from imperial territory in the face of pressure to create a larger unified entity in both cases. In the case of Central Asia the Soviet government created the five distinct states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan from the territory of the Turkestan and Steppe governorates and the protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva that had been part of the Russian Empire (Park 1957 and Roy 2000). In the case of the Arab Middle East the British and French partitioned the Ottoman Empire into the League of Nation's mandates of Palestine, Transjordan, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Lebanon.  These territories later became the nation states of Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. In both cases there was the creation of five new nation states constructed from a much larger imperial territory that had common binding elements that presented an alternative vision of political organization. In the case of Central Asia there was the idea of Pan-Turkism or Pan-Turanism that would unite all of the Turkic speaking Muslim peoples of the region into a single state (Zenkovsky 1960). Although it was never clear exactly what role the Persian speaking Tajiks would play if any in such a state (Bergne 2007). In the case of the Arab territories of the Middle East the challenge came from the much stronger idea of Pan-Arabism which sought to politically unite all of the Arabic speaking Muslims and Christians of the region (Mufti 1996). The Arabic speaking Jews were excluded from this project as a result of the spread of the hostilities between the Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine with the Zionist movement  into a larger Arab-Israeli conflict.  In both cases the larger pan movements lost out to smaller nation state formations.

Both the Soviet delimitation of borders in Central Asia as part of the larger project of korenizatsiia (indigenization) and the British and French partition of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire as part of establishing the League of Nations mandate system involved the idea of guiding new nations towards self determination. In the Soviet case it involved the creation of national state formations, Soviet Socialist Republics, within the USSR that would serve this function. These SSRs were united under the leadership of Moscow in a socialist union with a single political and economic system controlled by a centralized Communist Party. Symbolically they had the trappings of sovereign nation states but had no real political or economic autonomy. They had borders, national languages, flags, and various government institutions to administer the rule of Moscow. They also had a host of cultural institutions in their indigenous languages promoting Sovietized versions of their culture. These included schools, universities, newspapers, magazines, theatres, museums, research institutes, radio broadcasts, and other similar media. To rule over these national territories the Soviet government actively promoted members of the titular nationalities in the local government and branches of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Glenn 1999 and Martin 2001). The state and party apparatus of each SSR was to be nationalized and eventually members of the local titular nationality came to dominate on this level even as the central government and head of the party in Moscow became increasingly more Russian and largely excluded Central Asians.

The League of Nation mandates of Syria and Lebanon under French administration and Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq under British rule were all to become independent states with governments friendly to the former mandatory power. Except for Palestine they all did become independent nation states by the summer of 1946. Palestine as of yet has still not achieved independence as initially envisioned in the original League of Nations mandate. Instead the establishment of the State of Israel and the mass expulsion of over three quarters of the indigenous Arab population from the parts of Palestine that became Israel in 1949 has indefinitely delayed Palestinian national self determination (Sayigh 2007). As fully independent states albeit ones in which the former mandatory powers still exercised considerable influence their political and economic development differed from the Central Asian republics which had only symbolic and cultural national self determination and no real political or economic autonomy (Allworth 1999). The key questions of political rule and economic development in Central Asia remained under the firm control of Moscow even if these policies were executed by local Communist Party members belonging to the indigenous nationalities.

Development, defined as the creation of a modern industrial economy and the accompanying physical and social infrastructure became a key concern for both the newly independent Arab states and the USSR with regards to Central Asia. In addition to increasing the material standards of living these states also sought to improve education, health care, and access to modern expressions of indigenous culture (Wheeler 1964 and Amin 1980). The Soviet effort to develop Central Asia along modernist lines already began in earnest in the 1920s and greatly accelerated after 1928 with the first five year plan (Nove and Newth 1967). Despite setbacks during the 1940s due to the Great Patriotic War the 1950s again saw the return of a significant development agenda to Central Asia which continued into the 1960s and even 1970s.

One common feature of successful development both in Soviet Central Asia and the Arab states was the fact that both depended considerably on oil revenues. The most successful states in terms of development among those being compared in this article were Iraq and the USSR both of which produced and exported very large amounts of oil.  The huge profits from oil dominated both the Iraqi and to a lesser extent the Soviet generation of foreign exchange. This was particularly true during the 1970s following the massive increase in oil prices after the 1973 oil embargo by OPEC in response to the Yom Kippur War. A price increase that also benefitted non-OPEC producers such as the USSR (Shelley 2005). This allowed the Soviet Union to continue to boost the standard of living in Central Asia despite a massive slowdown in economic growth compared to the 1950s and 1960s.

The similarities in the construction of the Central Asian states in the USSR and the Arab states to come under British and French rule after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire as modern political entities have remained underexplored. This is in large part due to the reluctance of scholars to engage in comparative studies and an insistence on the uniqueness of the Soviet experiment . As such the Central Asian states have largely been excluded from larger discourses over post-colonialism (Moore 2001). Yet even a cursory examination of their recent political and economic history demonstrates a considerable number of significant similarities (Kandiyoti 2002). Certainly there should be far more comparative work on the history of the two regions in the near future.

Works Cited

Edward Allworth ed., Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview, Third Edition, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994).

Galal A.  Amin, The Modernization of Poverty: A Study of the Political Economy of Growth in Nine Arab Countries (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1980).

Paul Bergne, The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic (London and NY: IB Tauris, 2007).

Alec Nove and J.A. Newth, The Soviet Middle East: A Model for Development? (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1967).

John Glenn, The Soviet Legacy in Central Asia (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK and NY: Palgrave, 1999).

Deniz Kandiyoti, "Post-Colonialism Compared: Potentials and Limitations in the Middle East and Central Asia," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, no. 34 (2002), pp. 279-297.

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

David Chioni Moore, "Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique," PMLA, vol. 116, no. 1, pp. 111-128.

Malik Mufti, Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq (Ithaca, NY and  London: Cornell University Press, 1996).

Alexander G. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan 1917-1927 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1957).

Oliver Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (London and NY: IB Tauris, 2000).

Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London: Zed Books, 2007).

Toby Shelley, Oil: Politics, Poverty & the Planet (London: Zed Books, 2005).

Geoffrey Wheeler, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia (Westport CT: Greenwood, 1964).

Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islamism in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).