New Publication on Internal Colonialism in the USSR

My article, "Colonialism in One Country: The Deported Peoples in the USSR as an Example of Internal Colonialism" has now been published by the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, vol. 5, issue 7 (May 2004). It is heavier on the theory than most of my earlier pieces. But, I think it works well. You can find it for download at the journal's website  here. Any and all feedback and discussion are welcome in the comments of this blog post. 

Something you will never see in a US university

Communist regimes in the USSR under Stalin and China under Mao murdered tens of millions of people. Millions more perished under communism in Cambodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, East Central Europe, and Afghanistan. Many of those killed such as ethnic Germans and Crimean Tatars in the USSR, Tibetans and Mongolians in China, and Vietnamese and Chams in Cambodia were deliberately targeted for persecution on the basis of their ancestry, that is their race. It is not a political system with a good record for human rights, civil liberties, or racial equality. It is fully comparable on these matters with systems like National Socialism or the worst excesses of colonial rule. Yet, the sign to the right here would never appear on the walls of any US university. With a very few exceptions, US academics refuse to recognize that there ever was any racial discrimination or genocide in the USSR under Stalin. The regime is militantly defended against these specific charges in a way that no non-communist regime guilty of these same crimes has ever been defended in US academia. Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the racist genocide committed by Stalin against the Crimean Tatars. This crime was commemorated throughout Ukraine by ordinary citizens. On the other hand the standard orthodox line in the US university is that the whole sale deportation of nearly the entire Crimean Tatar population to Uzbekistan and the Urals where tens of thousands of them died was neither a case of genocide or even an act of racial discrimination. Can you imagine somebody denying that the Holocaust was a case of genocide or even racism by claiming Jews are not a race and still getting tenure at a US university? Yet that is exactly what has happened regarding people who deny the true nature of Soviet crimes against humanity.

Фильм Хайтарма (трейлер)

I try to learn something new everyday

I am currently reading Chuck Klosterman's novel Downtown Owl: A Novel which takes place in North Dakota in fall 1983. Part of the historical background are the events leading to the 13 February 1983 shoot out in Medina between Federal Marshals and Gordan Kahl. I was not yet a teenager at the time of these events so I don't remember any news about them. Also I don't remember reading about them later. Most of my reading on North Dakota has been related to the fact that the state was a major destination for Black Sea Germans leaving the Russian Empire.

The end of an era

Today we had a departmental meeting. It was the last one chaired by the current Head of the Department. We have suggested a replacement to the administration now. I will be teaching Aspects of Early Modern European History and Aspects of World History 1914-1945 next semester. I also have three committee type assignments including continuing my current duties as coordinator for the departmental seminar. So it is more work than this semester, but not unbearable.

70 Years Since the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

Sunday is the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan and the Urals. On 18 May 1944, the Soviet NKVD began the systematic round up of the Crimean Tatar population and stuffed them on to cattle cars bound for Uzbekistan. By 20 May 1944, more than 180,000 people had been loaded into train echelons bound east. The Crimean Tatars formed the largest nationality ethnically cleansed from the Crimean peninsula by the Stalin regime during World War II. Smaller numbers of Crimean Germans, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Italians making up another nearly 100,000 people in total also met the same fate. A very large number of Crimean Tatars died prematurely in exile due to the poor material conditions in Uzbekistan and the Urals. Estimates vary from 20%-40% of their total population. It is certain that over 30,000 excess deaths resulted from the extreme poverty the Crimean Tatars endured in Uzbekistan and other exile areas. They also suffered under the legal restrictions of the special settlement regime which greatly limited their freedom of movement. These restrictions and exile were declared by the Soviet government to be permanent in 1948. The restrictions were removed in 1956, but the exile continued for the vast majority of the population up until 1987. Since 1987, many Crimean Tatars have returned to their ancestral homeland where they have struggled over issues related to their status as the indigenous people of the peninsula. The recent Russian annexation of Crimea has been largely opposed by the Crimean Tatars. Many of them believe that they will fare far worse under Russian rule than they did under Ukrainian rule.

70 Years Since GKO Order No. 5859ss "On Crimean Tatars."

Shortly after the Soviet military expelled the Nazi occupation forces from the Crimean peninsula, the Soviet government issued a decree falsely accusing the Crimean Tatars of mass treason and ordering their deportation to Uzbekistan. The State Defense Committee (GKO) issued Decree 5859ss on 11 May 1944 instructing the NKVD to resettle all Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan before 1 June 1944. An English language translation of the entire decree can be read here. The actual deportation of the Crimean Tatars began exactly a week later on 18 May 1944. By the end of 20 May 1944, nearly the entire Crimean Tatar population of over 180,000 people had been forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland and put on trains bound for Uzbekistan, the Urals, and other distant regions. I will have another more detailed post up on 18 May 2014 to commemorate the day of the actual deportation.

Thoughts on Victory Day

Today is Victory Day in the former USSR. That is the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. The Soviet victory over Nazi Germany was not a result of the efforts of Stalin or the CPSU. But, rather a victory brought about by the fighting men in the Red Army against Nazi aggression in defense of their various homelands in the USSR. As a result the victory does not belong to only Russians or even only the larger nationalities of the USSR. All of the Soviet nationalities including those wrongly accused of treason and collectively punished by the Stalin regime participated in the victory. Ethnic Germans, Koreans, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, and Balkars all received the Hero of the Soviet Union award (the highest honor possible) during the war in addition to thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of other non-Russians. Crimean Tatar pilot Ahmet-Khan Sultan was in fact twice decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union. Without the contribution of the non-Russian population of the USSR the Russians alone would not have been able to defeat Nazi Germany in 1945. Today there seem to be some elements of the Russian population who have forgotten this fact.

Soviet-Mennonite Writers of the 1930s

I just came a across a very interesting article today on Mennonite writers in Soviet Ukraine that were strongly supportive of communism in the 1920s and 1930s. They were part of a larger circle of ethnic German writers in Ukraine that were most active from 1930-1935 and centered around Kharkhiv. Foremost among the Mennonite writers producing work in a "socialist realist" vein during this time were David Schellenberg and Gerhard Sawatzky. As the article explains "Soviet-Mennonite writers were in the main committed Marxist-Leninists and sworn enemies of bourgeois capitalism." (Loewen, p. 38). Of course literature that did not follow these strictures could not be published in the USSR, especially during the 1930s when such writing was at its height. Ironically, Schellenberg died in Magadan in 1954 at age 51 and Sawatsky died in Solikamsk in 1944 at age 43. Sawatzky's major novel, Wir selbst (We Ourselves) was only published posthumously in the 1980s. Even strong ideological support for communism and the Soviet system under Stalin was unable to save them from early death in areas famous for housing concentration camps. Their German ethnicity condemned them to that fate and no amount of ideological support for the regime could have saved them.

Source: Harry Loewen, "Anti-Menno: Introduction to Early Soviet-Mennonite Literature (1920-1940)," Journal of Mennonite Studies, vol. 11, 1993, pp. 23-42.

Slow blogging ahead

This blog is going to be slowing down at least for a couple months. Right now I have a lot of personal issues that are taking up a lot of my time. These include recovering from minor surgery, finding a new place to live, and a whole host of other such problems that take up a lot of time and energy. So this blog which is probably past its expiration date anyways will not be getting as many posts as in the past.

Trans-generational account of the labor army

Testimony of Theodor Alexandrovich Klein

Simultaneously, all Russian-Germans were recalled from active army service, fearing that "Russian Germans" could desert to serve in the German army. My grandfather was sent to work in a mine. He rarely shared any memories about this horrible period of his life, trying to forget about all that. He stayed a year in the camp, and was caved in twice in the mine. People died like flies. My grandfather told us that he had mentally said good-bye to his wife, children and his life.

Source: Harold J. Goldberg, (ed.), Europe in Flames: Understanding World War II (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2011), p. 111 .

The Demographic Collapse of a Diaspora

The ethnic German population of the former Russian Empire and USSR has plummeted since 1989 due to massive emigration. Out of over two million ethnic Germans in the USSR at the time of the last Soviet census in 1989 less than 650,000 were left by 2010, a decrease of over two thirds. The loss from Kazakhstan and Central Asia where the majority of the population lived during most of the post-WWII period has been particularly great. The ethnic German population of Kazakhstan declined by over 80%. A similar percentage left Uzbekistan. In excess of 90% of those in Kyrgyzstan have also left. While more than 96% emigrated from Tajikistan.

Decline in Ethnic Germans in the Former USSR and Baltic States due to Emigration

Country              1989           2009-2010

Russia                824,295      394,138
Kazakhstan         957,518      178,409
Kyrgyzstan         101,309          9,500
Uzbekistan           39,809          7,000
Ukraine                37,849        33,002
Tajikistan             32,671          1,136
Moldova                7,335              NA
Turkmenistan         4,434              NA
Belarus                  3,517           2,472
Latvia                    3,783           4,539
Estonia                  3,466            1,905
Lithuania               2,058            3,243
Georgia                 1,546               651
Azerbaijan                748                NA
Armenia                    265              133


Source: T.B. Smirnova, "Ot perepisi k perepisi: prichini izmenenia chislennosti rossiiskikh nemtsev v poslednee desiatiletie" in A.A. German (ed.), Dva s polovinoi veka s Rossiei (k 250 letiiu nachala massovogo pereseliniia nemtsev v Rossiiu), (Moscow: MSNK-press, 2013),  table 2,  p. 675.

The Failure of Socialism in Africa

Unlike Asia or Europe, communism was never a popular movement in Africa. Only three states in Africa ever established fully Marxist-Leninist regimes based upon the Soviet model. These were Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique. Curiously enough despite the success of socialist states in Europe and Asia in breaking economic dependence upon capitalist states, those in Africa completely failed at this task. Ethiopia which went further than any other state in implementing Soviet style socialism found itself still largely dependent upon western foreign aid and the western purchase of its coffee in an international market that differed little from the colonial patterns established elsewhere in Africa. Angola's Marxist regime found itself dependent upon the capitalists running Chevron for its very survival. Despite the end of Portuguese rule Mozambique continued to rely upon the contract labor of miners sent to work in the mines of apartheid South Africa as one of its most important sources of revenue. The establishment of political regimes closely allied with the USSR in Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique did almost nothing to reduce their economic dependency upon capitalists in the US, Europe, and South Africa. Their basic trade patterns of exporting raw materials and labor to capitalist states remained. They were unable to industrialize, replace capitalist trade partners with socialist ones, or achieve any type of self sufficiency even within a larger socialist bloc. In this sense socialism was a much larger failure in Africa than it was in Europe, Asia, or Cuba where a number of states most notably the USSR did achieve these goals.

Ramen Gourmet

I just purchased a big box of ramen noodles along with a bottle of hot sauce and a bottle of Dijon style mustard vinaigrette salad dressing. I find the combination of these two condiments works really well on ramen noodles.

Soviet Flags

The USSR was supposedly designed as a union of national-territories that were "national in form and socialist in content." Although much of the official culture of non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union did in fact reflect the popular ethnic culture of these nationalities, other areas had been drained of all distinctive color and left a rather boring red. One surprising area where this was so was in the various national flags of the SSRs and ASSRs within the USSR. Here was an area where creative motifs of the constructions of socialist nations could have been given full reign while remaining completely symbolic. But, instead the flags of the various SSRs and ASSRs were universally drab red rectangles with gold trimming and almost no ethnic symbolism. In the upper right corner for instance is the flag of the Volga German ASSR. Other than the fact that the word ASSR der Wolgadeutschen is written on it there is nothing to distinguish it as specifically a Volga German flag. This would not have been hard to do and was something generally practiced with the various coats of arms of SSRs and ASSRs. The picture below the flag is a modified version of the Volga German ASSR coat of arms. The black which makes the coat of arms take on the German republican colors of black, red, and gold first raised in the revolutions of 1848 has been added. The actual coat of arms had white where the black is on this version. The wreath of wheat provides something distinctively Volga German to the design in addition to the sickle and hammer and the Soviet slogan "Workers of the World Unite" in both Russian and German. Why Soviet flags as opposed to coats of arms were so boring is something I really don't understand. After all many of the various state flags of the US such as California, Arizona, and Alaska are very distinctive.

Another Interesting Soviet Badge

This little flag pin is for members of the Central Executive Committee of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Volga Germans. In German the initials are ZVK ASSR d. W-D. The other set of letters are in Russian  and mean the same thing. In the upper right corner in red letters are the letters RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) in Russian. The Volga German Republic only existed from 1924 to 1941 before being officially disbanded on 7 September 1941 in the wake of the mass deportation of its titular population to Siberia and Kazakhstan. It was unique in being the only ASSR established in the USSR for a diaspora group as opposed to a nationality indigenous to the territory of the USSR.

Volksdeutsche and the Nation-State

The break up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI left large German speaking national minorities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The treatment of these national minorities varied, but for the most part they were able to exercise their political and cultural rights within the framework of the newly independent states of Central Europe and the Balkans during the 1920s and 1930s. This is not to say that they did not have any grievances, some of them even legitimate, but their legal and political status was considerably better than a number of other minorities at the time including Blacks in the US, Jews in Poland, and ethnic Germans in the USSR. This last group being targeted disproportionately for repression both during the dekulakization campaign of 1930-1932 and the Great Terror of 1937-1938, especially during the "German Operation." The German national minorities in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia cooperated politically and militarily with the Nazi occupation of these states to a considerable degree. Romania and Hungary were German allies, but the ethnic Germans here served in German rather than national military units. A comparatively large percentage of adult males from these communities were members of the NSDAP  and various German military formations such as the Waffen SS. The status of ethnic Germans in the former Austro-Hungarian territories changed radically at the end of WWII. Scapegoated for all of the crimes of Hitler during the war, the new post-war governments of these states as well as those of Poland and the USSR subjected almost all of the ethnic Germans under their control to a brutal collective punishment. Most of them were violently expelled from their ancestral homelands either westward into the territory that would later form West Germany and East Germany, and to a lesser extent Austria. A smaller number, comprised primarily of ethnic Germans living in areas of the USSR west of the Urals ended up in Kazakhstan and Siberia already in 1941-1942. In the decades after the end of the war a very large number of the ethnic Germans remaining in these territories have emigrated and settled in Germany. Only a small fraction of the ethnic German population that lived east of the Oder-Neisse line in 1939 still remain.

Unfortunately, the problem of defining rights as being coterminous with living in the nation-state corresponding with your ethno-national designation and having few if any minorities did not end with the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Central East Europe. The idea still seems to dominate a lot of frankly primitive thinking on this planet.  Creating ethnically homogenized nation-states where everybody lives in his own nation-state or nation-state like formation such as the republics in the Russian Federation can only be accomplished three ways. These ways are partition, expulsion, and killing. Usually, like in East Central Europe at the end of WWII they are applied in some sort of combination in which partition leads to expulsion which in turn due to its violence entails some degree of killing.

From Africa to Ukraine with love.

More on Ukraine

In so far as the Russian Empire and later the USSR were great world powers, possession of Ukraine was absolutely vital to their global status. Without the population and resources of Ukraine Moscow could not even afford to keep subsidizing the Central Asian republics yet alone clients in far a way places like Cuba, Vietnam, and Ethiopia. The USSR was a state that systematically transferred resources from the richer western republics including Ukraine as well as the even richer, but much smaller Baltic States to poorer republics in Central Asia. Not surprisingly just like in Yugoslavia it was the richer republics that wanted to leave the USSR and keep their own resources and the poorer ones that wanted to remain part of the union and continue to receive subsidies. Hence, the western republics that had a net loss of resources due to membership in the USSR were very keen to leave. The eastern ones with a net gain were very reluctant. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were the first states to demand the restoration of their independence. Kazakhstan was dead last in declaring itself independent from the USSR, doing so after the formal dissolution of the union. If Russia is to once again become a major world power rather than merely a regional power then it needs to recover a significant portion of the resources in Ukraine. How much they are aiming for right now is unclear. But, it certainly extends beyond Crimea and includes some of Ukraine's eastern oblasts.

Recent Events in Ukraine

In addition to Crimea it looks like the Russians are intent on detaching Ukraine's eastern oblasts from rule by Kyiv. There has been a steady assault by armed men on regional government buildings in this region. At the same time there has been almost no military response by the Ukrainian government to these provocations. The Russian military successfully annexed Crimea with very little difficulty. It appears that it may be able to repeat this experience with some of Ukraine's eastern oblasts, most notably Donetsk. I don't know what the military capabilities of Ukraine are as far as being able to resist the Russian seizure of its territory. But, both Kyiv and outside powers so far have been rather passive in the face of a sustained campaign by Russia to significantly reduce the amount of territory controlled by the Ukrainian state. As it currently stands it looks very likely that Donetsk Oblast will be detached from Ukraine just as happened to Crimea.