THE RUSSIAN FRONT

As the only English-language print journal devoted to Russian & East European military history and defense issues, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies (JSMS) is an essential and highly regarded resource for professional scholars and graduate students. Despite its status as a peer-reviewed academic publication, JSMS has a great deal to offer non-academics as well.

The Journal features readable articles on topics relating to war, diplomacy, and espionage; authoritative reviews of related scholarly and trade books; discussions of works- and research-in-progress; and historically informed analysis of contemporary developments as well as translations of recently released archival documents otherwise unavailable in English.

The Journal’s editors (whose numbers include more than a few “Frontoviki“) are hardly constrained by conventional academic models. They encourage North American and European scholars at all stages of their careers to contribute articles, notes, and related items for consideration of publication. Whether you are a senior scholar, young graduate student, or lay reader interested in the military history of Eastern Europe and the lands of the former Soviet Union,  The Journal of Slavic Military Studies should be considered “must” reading.

For more information on JSMS (including recent Tables of Contents and instructions on subscribing) stop by the Journal’s official website.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: It’s amazing what one can find on the Internet.

In the summer of 2005, the city of Moscow played host to a photographic exhibit honoring the 60th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War. Titled, “1418 Days,” the exhibit drew upon a collection of rare wartime images contained in the archives of the Moscow House of Photography (Moskovskii Dom fotografii) to tell the story the USSR’s wartime experience.

Not surprisingly, most of the images concerned the battlefield heroism of Red Army soldiers at the front. But the exhibit included more than a few photographs drawn from the rear as well including scenes of factory life, public demonstrations, the air-raid shelters in Moscow’s metro, and bears (no, really).

The material from the 2005 exhibit (including a 40-minute video produced for the occasion) is available for viewing on-line. As is so often the case with these types of things, English-language translations are few and far between, so non-Russian readers will find themselves at a disadvantage.

To view the photographic collection in chronological order, click HERE.

ScP

I realize that this has nothing to do with Russian history, but it did happen to an historian of Russia.  I’ve lived twenty years in Indiana, and eight years in Kansas, but last night was my first encounter with a tornado.  My house sustained some holes in the roof, a broken window, and a sprung garage door.  At least twenty of my neighbors weren’t so lucky, and had their houses leveled.  The best presentation of what I’ve seen is this aerial footage:

http://www.ksn.com/news/local/19822559.html

The only thing it doesn’t show is the extent of damage to the houses still standing.

I actually appear in the video for the first 1.5 seconds.  I’m the guy at the bottom of the screen walking with a hand in pocket, wearing purple t-shirt with white lettering and ridiculously large boots  (give me a break–lots of nails and broken glass around).

William Odom has just died.

He was a giant of our field, but he was more than that to me. I did my Ph.D in Soviet military history at a school (Yale) that didn’t have anything you could describe as a program in Soviet military history. As a result, I was enormously fortunate in my fellow graduate students, and particularly in more senior scholars who were willing to form an advising kollektiv of wonderful helpfulness and flexibility–Jeff Burds, Paul Bushkovitch, Paul Kennedy, and . . . William Odom.

Though Odom was a political scientist, and a career military man, he was tremendously giving of his time and support to me and to a number of other graduate students headed through Yale. What struck me most, particularly in comparison to other academics, was Odom’s fearlessness. It’s always seemed to me that the professoriate as a group has startlingly little to fear. Once we’re tenured, provided we manage to keep our hands off the undergrads, we are cursed with a living wage, near complete control over how we apply our time and energy, and the privilege of reading and talking and writing about subjects we love, not to mention job security unheard of in other walks of life. Continue Reading »

I hope my colleagues will forgive me a brief digression from Russian history, though it does concern academia and the teaching of history.

In between grad school at Yale and my current position at Kansas State, I had a one-year visiting position at Hamilton College at upstate New York. In every respect but the weather, it was a wonderful opportunity. I got a lot of lecture writing done, met some very bright students, had supportive colleagues, and worked out the kinks in my teaching before I was at a place where it counted for tenure. The library even delivered books to the departmental office on request.

The chair of the department when I taught there was Bob Paquette. His students worshiped him, though he made them work like dogs. It was no secret, since he and everyone else in the department acknowledged it, that in political and ideological terms he was far apart from most of his fellow faculty. In all dealings I had with him, he was utterly and fully professional, in the best sense of the word, and prized that in others.

Which makes this triply ironic that he was penalized in May 2007 with a zero percent raise–not because the school was suffering from financial exigency, but for lack of service and collegiality. This lack of service involved raising large sums of money for an academic center at Hamilton, and then going public when the plug was pulled. There’s a long history of the disputes around this center and the academic politics involved, and anyone interested can track down the sordid story very easily. My point is that this action by Hamilton is clearly a penalty for ideological nonconformity, precisely what academic freedom and intellectual inquiry are supposed to celebrate. For the particulars, see this story.

What makes it even more ironic is that Paquette is mates in the History Department with Maurice Isserman. Isserman, likewise an exemplary colleague in my brief time at Hamilton, is an outlier to the left as Paquette is an outlier to the right, and has likewise critiqued Hamilton College and its intellectual culture. Has Isserman suffered for his views? If yes, we have even better evidence of mandated conformity; if no, a double standard for dissent on the left and on the right.