One Month Old

Mary Lynn is now over a month old. The last time she went to the doctor she had gained a kilogram in weight since her birth. I am not sure what the future holds for her, but for now she seems happy.

Askarbek was on TV

Friday Askarbek was on TV here. One of the local channels filmed a piece at his kindergarten and there is a segment with him and a teacher doing an art project. It was filmed over a week ago, but we knew before hand so Oksana could dress Askarbek up.

Improvement

I think things are going a little bit better now. I am pretty sure that my family is not going to go hungry now. For a while I was not sure.

Happy Birthday Askarbek

Today is Askarbek's birthday. He has been fascinated like the rest of us with the new baby. She spends most of her time sleeping quietly. But, she does eat a lot.

A new addition to the family

Early this morning Oksana gave birth to our new daughter, Mary Lynn. She weighed in at 3.3 kg (about seven and a quarter pounds). 

Things are more stable now

It looks like I have taken care of my most immediate concerns now. For a while things looked very bad. Now things look considerably better. Thank you to those people here in Bishkek that helped me negotiate this very difficult time.

I am still alive

For those wondering, yes I am still alive. But, recently my life has been very hectic. I will post more when things settle down somewhat.

Second half of Interview up at Moon Brothers

The second half of the interview with me is now up at the Moon Brothers' blog.

Update on Kyrgyzstan

Bishkek is still safe. But, there have been reports of ethnic clashes in Talas and Tokmok as well as Osh and Jalabad. The official toll of dead in Osh given by the government is over 2000. The UN estimates that some 400,000 people have been displaced from their homes by the recent events. This is definitely the worst violence Kyrgyzstan has seen in many decades.

Heat Wave

It has been really hot in Bishkek the last week. It has also been very humid. I do not mind the heat itself, but the humidity is very uncomfortable.

Moon Brothers Interview of me

A couple of months ago the Moon Brothers conducted an interview with me by e-mail about the history of the Russian-Germans. The interview is meant to provide historical background to their forthcoming movie Under Jakob's Ladder. The interview can be found here.

http://amoonbrothersfilm.blogspot.com/

Trouble in Osh

Other than what I see on the news and read on the Internet I do not have much information on the recent events in Osh. But, it looks very bad. This is certainly the worst ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan since 1990 and may end up being worse. Already the news is reporting that more people have been killed in Osh in the last few day than were killed in Bishkek on April 7th. So far Bishkek has not been too badly effected. Prices are going up noticeably, but other than that things still seem fairly normal. That could all change if we start getting waves of internally displaced peoples fleeing the violence in Osh.

What little information I do have that I have gotten from sources other than the news or Internet is that the attacks on Uzbeks were motivated by the rumor that a gang of Uzbeks raped and mutilated some Kyrgyz girls. I am sceptical of the veracity of this claim since it sounds like the justification for a lot of lynchings and pogroms. But, even if it does contain a kernel of truth the racist ascription of these criminal acts to Uzbeks in general by some Kyrgyz and the subsequent violence is truly disturbing.

Thank You to all my Supporters

I would like to thank everybody who has written or is planning to write to incoming AUCA president, Andrew B. Wachtel on my behalf. I believe your letters have had a positive effect. At least Dr. Wachtel now knows that there are people out there that do respect my scholarship and teaching. For those of you familiar with my scholarship and teaching that have not yet written Dr. Wachtel I am again reproducing his e-mail below. Type in the information between the brackets. If I do not include the brackets it will be a live link and subject to spiders and robots sent by spammers. I only want real people writing to Dr. Wachtel.

[a-wachtel@northwestern.edu]

If you have written on my behalf already and have not received a personal thank you from me, please send me an e-mail so I can express my gratitude. Some of you have shared the letters you have sent to Dr. Wachtel with me and I have been very touched. Your words mean a lot to me.

It has been over three years since I left Arivaca

I have now lived in Kyrgyzstan for a year longer than I lived in Arivaca. Yet it seems that I lived in Arivaca for much longer. There are a lot of things I miss about Arivaca. But, being treated with respect by everybody there is close to the top. The AUCA administration's complete lack of respect for me as a human being, scholar and teacher has really been galling. I wish they would at least stop lying to me and take responsibility for their actions.

Vefa Center is Open Again

Vefa center is open again, but it is not the same. Only some of the stores have reopened and they have a lot less inventory than they used to carry. The old Vefa center could have fit nicely in the ritzy areas of Orange County. Now it looks like it belongs in a run down section of Fresno.

New Publication Coming Soon

It has taken a while to get into print, but the book chapter based upon the paper I gave at Tartu Univeristy in 2005 for the Border Changes in 20th Century Europe: International Conference in Honor of the 85th Anniversary of the Tartu Peace Treaty is going to be published soon. It will be the following chapter in the book below. That makes eight scholarly publications since I started working at AUCA. Nobody else in the department even has a Ph.D. yet alone that many publications.

J. Otto Pohl, “Ethnic Erasure: The Role of Border Changes in Soviet Ethnic Cleansing and Return Migration” in Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann, eds., Border Changes in 20th Century Europe, vol. 1 Tartu Studies in Contemporary History (Hamburg, Germany: Lit-Verlag, 2010), pp. 217-236.

Works that have cited my research since 2008

My research has held up well over the last decade. Even though my first book was published in 1997 and my second one in 1999 they are still frequently cited in the scholarly literature. This is a pretty big accomplishment. From 2008 to 2010 alone my work was cited in total of more than 20 scholarly works by other researchers. Some of these people are pretty big names. Nicholas Werth, Yaacov Ro'i and Martin Dean are all in the top of their field.

Books 2010

Steven Rosefielde,  Red Holocaust (London and New York: Routledge, 2010).

Journal articles and Book Chapters 2010

David Gerlach, “Beyond Expulsion: The Emergence of ‘Unwanted Elements’ in the Postwar Czech Borderlands 1945-1950, East European Politics and Societies. No. 24, 2010.

Nicholas Werth, “Mass Deportations, Ethnic Cleansing, and Genocidal Politics in the Later Russian Empire and the USSR,” in Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses eds.,  The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Books 2009

Richard Bessel and Claudia B. Haake,  Removing People: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Zaur T. Gasimov,  Militar schreibt Geschichte: Instrumentalisierung der Geschichte durch das Militar in der Volksrepublik Polen und in der Sowjetunion 1981-1991 (Munster: LIT Verlag, 2009).

Anna Moltchanova, National Self-Determination and Justice in Multinational State(Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer, 2009).

David Priestland, The Red Flag: How Communism Changed the World (London: Allen Lane, 2009).

Marie-Carin von Gumppenberg and Udo Steinbach, eds.,  Zentralasien: Geschichte Politik, Wirtschaft: Ein Lexikon (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2009).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters 2009

Yaacov Ro’i, “The Transformation of Historiography on the ‘Punished Peoples’,”  History & Memory,  vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009).

Alexander Statiev, “Soviet Ethnic Deportations: Intent Versus Outcome,”  Journal of Genocide Research , vol. 11, nos. 2-3 (June 2009).

Zoe Waxman, “The Unknown Black Book,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 2009).

Books 2008

Per Brodersen, Die Stadt im Westen: Wie Koningsberg Kaliningrad wurde, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008).

Joseph Morse, Everybody Agrees: Book I: Words, Ideas, and a Universal Morality,(San Diego, CA: Amelior, 2008).

Kledja Mulaj, Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: Nation-State Building and Provision of In/Security in Twentieth Century Balkans, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008).

Walter Richmond, The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, Future (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters 2008

Golfo Alexopolous, “Stalin and the Politics of Kinship: Practices of CollectivePunishment 1920s-1940s,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, no.50 (2008).

Helmut Altrichter, “Ilse Bandomir im ‘Jahrhundret der Deportationen und Vertreibungen” in Klaus Hildebrand, Geschichtswissenschaft und Zeiterkenntnis: Von der Auflkaerung bis zur Gegenwart Festschrift feur Horst Moeller,(Oldenbourg Wissenshaftsverlag, 2008).

Martin Dean, “Soviet Ethnic Germans and the Holocaust in the Reichs Commissariat Ukraine, 1941-1944,” in Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower, eds., The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008).

Robert Geraci, “Genocidal Impulses and Fantasies in Imperial Russia.” In A. Dirk Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed., (NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008).

Mara Kozelsky, “The Challenges of Church Archaeology in Post-Soviet Crimea.” In Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, eds., Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

I Have Received an Anonymous Threat Regarding my Blogging on AUCA

Last night at 11:16 I received an anonymous text message threat on my cell phone regarding my blogging about AUCA. I have reproduced the complete message below.

"Otto, I'm a friendly. Please stop blogging on your firing. You're burning bridges for a pointless cause. Let it go."

The coward did not leave his name, but failed to block his phone number. It is listed below.

996779126686

I have repeatedly tried to call the number, but I keep getting a message saying the phone is turned off. Maybe somebody else in Bishkek can track down who it came from. In the US such attempts at intimidation are clearly illegal.

For those of you in the US this attempt to silence me through anonymous threats is something else you can add to your letter to your local congressman regarding continued US funding of AUCA.

A Major Structural Problem with AUCA

American University of Central Asia must be the only place in the world calling itself a university where somebody with a mere MA can fire the only PhD in the department without any justification. In the US and Europe people with only MAs generally do not get hired at all yet alone as the chair of the department. But, at AUCA like the rest of Kyrgyzstan, appointments are all based solely upon ethnic-racial and political considerations. Merit, especially in the form of publications and teaching counts for absolutely nothing here.

New Publication on 66th anniversary of Crimean Tatar Deportation

My new article, "The False Charges of Treason Against the Crimean Tatars" is now available in PDF form at the International Committee for Crimea website. The address is below.

http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/pohl20100518.pdf

The article will be published in Turkish translation in _Emel_ in a few weeks for their 80th anniversary issue. If you find the article to be informative and scholarly then I encourage you to write in protest of my recent firing. The relevant addresses are in the blog posts below.