Fun fact: During Josef Stalin's reign tens of millions of people were deported to the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Stalin de-populated whole regions in the Balkans, Eastern Ukraine, Crimea, Volga delta etc.etc. The "permanent revolution" purged and devoured 85% of the Communist party's nomenclature, an unprecedented level of carnage turned against itself. The Tatars suffered like so many others during Stalin's almost 30 years of deliberate, systemic terror. I am a descendant of German Mennonites who settled in Western Ukraine starting in the 1780s when Catherine the Great gave them farmland and freedom as they were looking to escape religious prosecution (they were/are also pacifists) in the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia. Starting in the late 1920s / early 1930s Stalin's regime systematically destroyed their communities, deported many to the concentration and labor camps in Siberia and executed anyone with above elementary level education. My maternal grandfather, a veterinarian, was executed in 1937 (my mother was less then a year old) and after WWII was over my widowed grandmother and her 5 daughters we put on the same trains destined for the internment camps on the Asian side of the Ural mountains as the Crimean Tatars. My grandmother died of denied medical care in 1947 and I was born in that very same place in 1964 (the camp was officially dissolved after Stalin's death in 1953). The total number of killed by Stalin is estimated to be in the 20-25 million range, not counting the soldiers and casualties of WWII.
The horrors seldom even acknowledged today. The diabolical actions under Stalin during his brief cover from scrutiny post WWII is hardly known. Is there a book you know that has reported the tragedy of the German Mennonites?
I don't know of a book, but GAMEO dot org (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online) has some material, and they also usually cite their sources.
Kathleen, there are only a few books available about the general history of the Anabaptists/Mennonites and a couple of novels by the Canadian writer Rudy Wiebe. Years ago I have downloaded a dissertation from a Canadian historian - who's name escapes me at the moment - about the German Mennonites in the Ukraine of the early 1930s and their strategies to survive the fatal waves of Dekalukization.
Your particular work on censorship came to my attention because I am very concerned with the current climate of partisan complacency when it comes freedom of speech and the open collusion between government, big tech monopolies and legacy media to restrict speech by nonchalantly and frivolously labeling it as "misinformation".
In a way because it wasn't "news" to us, nor covered in our history books very well, the things Stalin did are just coming to light and of course there is sadness but not much rage. I did find a book citation: Kroeger, Arthur. Hard Passage : a Mennonite Family’s Long Journey from Russia to Canada . Edmonton, Albert, Canada: University of Alberta Press, 2007. And this may be the dissertation you read: Neufeldt, Colin Peter. “The Fate of Mennonites in Ukraine and the Crimea During Soviet Collectivization and the Famine (1930-1933).” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1999.
I have been motivated to look at censorship in small events because I am concerned as well. What I keep finding is that every society regardless of the type of communication has done this. I'm looking tonight at misinformation during the Spanish Armada in 1588 and also how the first printing press in Mexico in 1530s required censorship. The Internet initially fooled people into thinking we'd have more information, but of course that is increasingly not true. I guess knowing as much as we can is all we can do. I can use academic databases which don't come up in google searches and add them to what I find, but of course that's just a little bit more. I'm also trying to include some entries that show how foolish it all can be.
Yes, it was Colin Peter Neufeldt's dissertation! Not being an academic my re/searches are often cursory, no doubt. When I don't have the time to read all I wish to read I look for lectures and interviews of the particular writers or academics, sort of the "I didn't read the book but saw the movie" approach. :-) As far as Stalin goes the best recent work came in my view from the Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin.
I find all your historic references to censorship events very interesting and in a way a bit comforting. I have to think about why that is (the comforting part). Thank you for your work!
I can go into the library databases and a lot of the things I find are not available in searches with search engines...so it's my being a librarian. I hope someday all the paywalled database information can be available to all.
You figured out my motivation..it's comforting to understand that people today censoring FB are like the people who smashed someone else's clay tablets..it's always been people like us trying to figure out the truth being hidden or distorted by people like them. we won't give-up.
I am trying to identify destruction of books and censorship over the centuries and to tell even a brief story about censorship in the Crimea today took me to this as background and honestly, the background is just misery--how the world has trampled on whole peoples.
Fun fact: During Josef Stalin's reign tens of millions of people were deported to the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Stalin de-populated whole regions in the Balkans, Eastern Ukraine, Crimea, Volga delta etc.etc. The "permanent revolution" purged and devoured 85% of the Communist party's nomenclature, an unprecedented level of carnage turned against itself. The Tatars suffered like so many others during Stalin's almost 30 years of deliberate, systemic terror. I am a descendant of German Mennonites who settled in Western Ukraine starting in the 1780s when Catherine the Great gave them farmland and freedom as they were looking to escape religious prosecution (they were/are also pacifists) in the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia. Starting in the late 1920s / early 1930s Stalin's regime systematically destroyed their communities, deported many to the concentration and labor camps in Siberia and executed anyone with above elementary level education. My maternal grandfather, a veterinarian, was executed in 1937 (my mother was less then a year old) and after WWII was over my widowed grandmother and her 5 daughters we put on the same trains destined for the internment camps on the Asian side of the Ural mountains as the Crimean Tatars. My grandmother died of denied medical care in 1947 and I was born in that very same place in 1964 (the camp was officially dissolved after Stalin's death in 1953). The total number of killed by Stalin is estimated to be in the 20-25 million range, not counting the soldiers and casualties of WWII.
The horrors seldom even acknowledged today. The diabolical actions under Stalin during his brief cover from scrutiny post WWII is hardly known. Is there a book you know that has reported the tragedy of the German Mennonites?
I don't know of a book, but GAMEO dot org (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online) has some material, and they also usually cite their sources.
Kathleen, there are only a few books available about the general history of the Anabaptists/Mennonites and a couple of novels by the Canadian writer Rudy Wiebe. Years ago I have downloaded a dissertation from a Canadian historian - who's name escapes me at the moment - about the German Mennonites in the Ukraine of the early 1930s and their strategies to survive the fatal waves of Dekalukization.
Your particular work on censorship came to my attention because I am very concerned with the current climate of partisan complacency when it comes freedom of speech and the open collusion between government, big tech monopolies and legacy media to restrict speech by nonchalantly and frivolously labeling it as "misinformation".
In a way because it wasn't "news" to us, nor covered in our history books very well, the things Stalin did are just coming to light and of course there is sadness but not much rage. I did find a book citation: Kroeger, Arthur. Hard Passage : a Mennonite Family’s Long Journey from Russia to Canada . Edmonton, Albert, Canada: University of Alberta Press, 2007. And this may be the dissertation you read: Neufeldt, Colin Peter. “The Fate of Mennonites in Ukraine and the Crimea During Soviet Collectivization and the Famine (1930-1933).” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1999.
I have been motivated to look at censorship in small events because I am concerned as well. What I keep finding is that every society regardless of the type of communication has done this. I'm looking tonight at misinformation during the Spanish Armada in 1588 and also how the first printing press in Mexico in 1530s required censorship. The Internet initially fooled people into thinking we'd have more information, but of course that is increasingly not true. I guess knowing as much as we can is all we can do. I can use academic databases which don't come up in google searches and add them to what I find, but of course that's just a little bit more. I'm also trying to include some entries that show how foolish it all can be.
Yes, it was Colin Peter Neufeldt's dissertation! Not being an academic my re/searches are often cursory, no doubt. When I don't have the time to read all I wish to read I look for lectures and interviews of the particular writers or academics, sort of the "I didn't read the book but saw the movie" approach. :-) As far as Stalin goes the best recent work came in my view from the Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin.
I find all your historic references to censorship events very interesting and in a way a bit comforting. I have to think about why that is (the comforting part). Thank you for your work!
I can go into the library databases and a lot of the things I find are not available in searches with search engines...so it's my being a librarian. I hope someday all the paywalled database information can be available to all.
You figured out my motivation..it's comforting to understand that people today censoring FB are like the people who smashed someone else's clay tablets..it's always been people like us trying to figure out the truth being hidden or distorted by people like them. we won't give-up.
Yes, we want the truth. We can handle the truth!
sorry for typos! It is the Tartars, of course.
I am trying to identify destruction of books and censorship over the centuries and to tell even a brief story about censorship in the Crimea today took me to this as background and honestly, the background is just misery--how the world has trampled on whole peoples.
There's a good one on this stuff in Russia: https://www.amazon.com/Shamans-Coat-Native-History-Siberia/dp/0802776760
elm
the russians were, like the US, rough on everybody
"most Westerners are not even aware that they exist" ---I will get this. I only have a vague understanding. TY!