Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of GKO Order 1123ss

Today marks the 70th anniversary of GKO Order 1123ss ordering the first mass conscription of Russian-Germans into the labor army. This decree mobilized deported Russian-German men into labor columns. An excerpt of the actual text can be read here. The Soviet government inducted these forced laborers in the same manner as recruits for the Red Army. These men joined over 20,000 Russian-Germans already previously rounded up for forced labor from Ukraine and the ranks of the Red Army.  By April 1942 a total of 67,961 Russian-German men had been conscripted under the terms of GKO Order 1123ss into the labor army to work in labor camps devoted to industrial construction and logging. Most of these camps were located in the Urals. Another 25,000 worked for the Peoples' Commissariat of Transportation building railroads. These men worked under conditions very similar to prisoners in the GULag. On 14 February 1942 the Stalin regime issued GKO Order 1281ss extending the conscription of Russian-Germans to include men who avoided deportation in 1941 because they lived in Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Urals, and Central Asia. The death rates among all these men in the Ural camps were extremely high. Among these camps were Solikamsk, Bogoslov , and Usol'lag.  Other camps where Russian-Germans in the labor army worked were Karlag in Kazakhstan and Arkhanglesk in the Russian Far North.

Mystery novels

Today the campus bookstore finally opened again. It closed a few days before Christmas. Thus I was without  used crime fiction for two weeks. But, today I stocked up on the genre. I found two Patricia Cornwell novels I have not yet read, a Spenser novel by Robert Parker, and a novel by Karin Slaughter. I will probably spend a big chunk of this evening reading one of the Cornwell novels.

Racism and Culture

For those people who think racism can only be based upon biological categories and never on cultural ones please go to Google Scholar and type in "new racism" and culture. There has been a huge amount of scholarship on this topic and I have no idea why people studying the former USSR are completely unaware of it. A good scholar to start with on this subject is Etienne Balibar.

Racial Discrimination has Nothing to Do with Biology

The 1965 International Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) defines the term in the following words. Please note there is nothing in here requiring biological, physical, or genetic categorization. Discrimination on the basis of ethnic and national categories is legally racial discrimination under international law. There are no other definitions of racial discrimination that have any standing under international law.

1. In this Convention, the term 'racial discrimination' shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural  or any other field of public life.

Definitions of racial discrimination that require an exact imitation of Nazi practices basically make the term meaningless by excluding every regime except Nazi Germany from the charge of racial discrimination. Even South Africa under apartheid would escape the charge because their distinctions, exclusions, restrictions, and preferences were officially based upon ethnic origin not some biological category of 'race.'

Abstract for Soviet Apartheid article

This article examines the Stalin regime's treatment of the ethnic Germans in the USSR during the 1940s as a case study in racial discrimination.  After 1938, Soviet definitions of nationality became racialized. Systematic repression against certain nationalities in the USSR after this time clearly fit the definition of racial discrimination formulated by scholars in the post-war era. This article examines the separate and unequal institutions of the special settlement regime and labor army imposed upon the ethnic Germans in the USSR during World War II in the context of race as a category constructed along lines of primordial and essentialist views of culture. It also compares the construction of racialized groups and the practice of racial discrimination in the USSR with South Africa during the apartheid era.

Accomplishments

Today I finally got my appointment letter for a permanent position as a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Ghana. It is good until the end of July 2017 and renewable. I am permanently done with one year contracts. I also got the proofs for my journal article "Soviet Apartheid : Stalin's Ethnic Deportations, Special Settlement Restrictions, and the Labor Army: The Case of Ethnic Germans in the USSR" soon to be published in Human Rights Review. I sent the corrected proofs off this evening. The electronic version of the article should be in print soon followed by the print version. I will post the abstract tomorrow.

Question?

How many pages a week should I assign in my classes? Right now I am looking at around 60 pages a week in my 300 level class and 80 a week in my 400. The problem is that I have no idea what the standard is for 'world class universities' or even the average for a university in the US, Canada, or Europe. I would ideally like to assign as much reading as possible to my students.

Still Grading

I graded 24 exams today finishing off my Aspects of World History 1914-1945 class for the main campus. The class had 70 students. Tomorrow I will grade the section of the class I taught at the city campus.

Seeking Reading Suggestions for Nineteenth Century European History

This next semester I will be teaching European History 1789 to 1945. Does anybody have any suggestions for texts? I have one I will be using, but I need at least one more, preferably one with a nicely flowing narrative. In particular I am looking for stuff on the long nineteenth century. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.