The crux of the conference involved a series of presentations by KU CREES alumni and current faculty focusing on the Center’s past, present, and future. Guest speakers included one of the Center’s founding members, Richard De George (KU Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, of Russian and East European Studies, and of Business Administration), and several of its most prominent graduates, including John C. Reppert (Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies), Thomas Wilhelm (Director of the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas), and Glen Howard (President of The Jamestown Foundation).

As one would expect for an event such as this, a good deal of time was devoted to extolling KU’s considerable accomplishments in promoting the study of all things Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian. Speakers also focused  remarks on the continuing relevance of an area-studies approach to fostering and sustaining knowledge of the world beyond America’s borders. The most striking aspect of the presentations, however, was a recurring meme that cut across each one of the conference’s dozen or so talks: the vital importance of studying foreign language. Every one of the event’s featured guests (and the vast majority of attendees) owe their current stations in life in no small part to the fact that during their educational career they seized upon the opportunity to not only study, but to master, one or more foreign languages.

Setting aside liberal arts agit-prop regarding the inherent, humanistic value of knowing another culture’s language, there are immense “practical” advantages to be gained from acquiring language skills: from raising one’s standardized test scores, to broadening employment opportunities, to significantly improving fluency in one’s native language. Students looking to get the most “return on investment” in their education would be hard-pressed to do better than investing time and energy mastering a foreign tongue.

It’s not easy. Depending on the target language it can be very difficult and time-consuming. Despite myriad “advances” in instructional technology the acquisition of a foreign language still boils down to a great deal of memorization and repetitive practice. But it is far from impossible. (I started my own language training in Russian relatively late — during my sophomore year at KU).

It’s the one piece of advice I have constantly given students during the course of my teaching career. If you learn nothing else in school — learn a foreign language!

UPDATE: the links to Gabriela Mistral were dead for a while, but they appear to be back up. There’s also a newspaper clipping at a Chilean Russophile site.

UPDATE 2: The Independent tells us that this winter trip to Chile was part of a family vacation taken with the approval of Birkbeck College.

Ten years ago was the very beginning of Putin’s regime, and the heady days of Putinmania in Russia. But what’s striking in hindsight is just how much continuity there is between the tragedy of the Kursk and what’s happening in Putin and Medvedev’s Russia today. Efforts to obfuscate, emphasis on image over real action, bureaucratic inertia, half-hearted and slapdash concern for human life, deep-seated mistrust of the outside world–all of those were clear in 2000. The difference is that the Russian public seems much angrier about them 10 years on.

Let me be clear–I’m not saying that prompt action and cooperation with foreign governments would have saved the sailors on the Kursk. They did have access to an escape hatch, and the submarine was only 100 meters deep. On the other hand, in World War II, sailors trapped in the Arizona at Pearl Harbor–essentially at the surface and in the middle of a US naval base, couldn’t be rescued. My point is that Putin’s government didn’t try.

An Internet news site, lifenews.ru, first reported that on July 29, flames tore through a secret naval airbase in Kolomna, 100 kilometers (km) south-east of Moscow, destroying up to 200 aircraft worth 20 billion rubles ($600 million). Initially, the defense ministry tried to cover up the story by first declaring it to be erroneous, and then admitting that it was not an “airbase,” but logistic base office buildings, warehouses with unneeded equipment and vehicles were destroyed without any loss of life (ITAR TASS, August 3). It was later reported that the base in question ­Central Air and Technical naval base (also known as base 2512)­ has been used for 60 years to supply the entire naval aviation force with avionics, armaments, jet engines and other essential equipment (Interfax, August 3).

Medvedev did not elaborate about the equipment lost at base 2512, but implied “the consequences were heavy,” and that it was a result of “criminal negligence.” Medvedev officially reprimanded the Commander of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, and his First Deputy and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Alexander Tatarinov. Medvedev fired the Russian navy’s Chief of Logistics, Rear Admiral Sergei Sergeyev, and the Chief of Naval aviation, Major-General Nikolai Kuklev. Medvedev ousted three colonels: the commandant of 2512 base and two of Kuklev’s deputies. Under orders from Medvedev, Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, ousted five officers that served at base 2512 (Kommersant, August 5). Medvedev declared that further dismissals were possible later, after the entire crisis is finally defused (www.news.kremlin.ru, August 4).

The severity of the punishment handed out by Medvedev for a fire at a supply base that did not involve any human casualties surely reflects his overall anger, but also would indicate a large quantity of essential equipment was lost. The replacement of supplies lost at base 2512 could require billions of rubles, years of effort and, in some cases, may be simply impossible as the crisis in Russia’s defense industry has made the production of some essential components virtually impossible. Elements of Russian naval aviation could be grounded for a long time and maybe indefinitely, including the Su-33 jet fighters on Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov. The Su-33 is no longer produced and reportedly at least four new Su-33 jet engines were destroyed at base 2512 (Vedomosti, August 5). The 2512 base contained 65,000 tons of equipment, which might have been entirely destroyed. An airborne forces supply base (3370) was damaged by fire near the 2512 base, but its losses seem less significant (Kommersant, August 4).

fraud perpetrators with only a high school diploma cost organizations a median of $100,000, compared with a median of $300,000 for those with postgraduate degrees, according to ACFE.

Fortunately, this situation is about to change. Late next month, Routledge publishers will make its 2009 release The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945: A Documentary Reader by Alexander Hill (Associate Professor of Military History, University of Calgary) available in a handy paperback edition.

Hill’s edited volume contains documents covering wide-ranging aspects of the Soviet military experience: from pre-War diplomacy and preparations, through the debacle of 1941, to the Fall of Berlin and invasion of Manchuria. Separate chapters covering the Siege of Leningrad, Lend-Lease and the Economy, and the Partisan movement round out the volume. The collection is accompanied by Hill’s expert commentary and suggestions for further readings.

The book is an ideal supplement for individuals interested in the documentary history the Soviet war effort. And it makes a terrific companion text for courses devoted to the Second World War.

To pre-order your copy directly from Routledge, just click on the link above.

UPDATE: Figes’ victims, Robert Service and Rachel Polonsky, make their comments at History Today, and they’re both still mad. Being threatened with libel lawsuits for telling the truth could do that, I suppose. What they say suggests that the three-month lapse between exposure and apology was related to a fight over the precise wording of Figes’ apology, which has not yet been made public. Evidently it was circulated to the circle of British academics who were copied on the original emails about the controversy, and none of them have posted it. I welcome correction if it is indeed online.

But most of us can agree that a lot of academic jargon simply serves the purpose of claiming erudition and membership in the club of Great Thinkers. I just read (hat tip to Ralph Luker at Cliopatria) a marvelous takedown of unnecessary jargon in Simon Blackburn’s review of John Searle’s Making the Social World:

“Sometimes the mountains labor and bring forth something not much larger than a mouse. Here is a salient example. Suppose we enter on a joint enterprise. Together we are to shift a rock, carry a coffin, or row a boat. I cannot perform the task solely by myself, and neither can you. In Searle’s pleasantly old-fashioned example we set about getting a manual-shift car with a flat battery to start, by means of my pushing and you letting in the clutch at the right moment. I will only push if I expect you to let in the clutch–and if you do not let in the clutch, I will stop pushing and be annoyed at the waste of effort. Here is Searle’s account of this situation, in what he bills as his canonical notation for representing the structure of intentionality:

a collective B by means of singular A (this ia causes: A car moves, causes: B engine starts). In English this is to be read as: I have a collective intention-in-action B, in which I do my part by performing my singular act A, and the content of the intention is that, in that context, this intention-in-action causes it to be the case, as A, that the car moves which, in that context, causes it to be the case that B, the engine starts. Notice furthermore that the free variables “B” and “A” are bound inside the bracket by the verb phrases “car moves” and “engine starts,” that follow the respective letters.

It may be that Searle is right that this paraphrases the original. He may even be right that the sentence said to be in English is indeed so, although I must say that it is a rather strange and unfamiliar dialect of English. But how, exactly, are we to understand this dialect? Putting my hand on my heart I should say that for all my gray hairs and many years’ experience of fearsome bushwhacking through tangled thickets of logic and philosophy of language, I myself understand it by supposing that it means more or less that we are together trying to start the car by means of my pushing it and you letting in the clutch, which is where we started.”