[xmca] Context and silence

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

It is just a little over 50 years since my wife and I arrived in Moscow as
part of the "new" Soviet-
American exchange program. Think November 1962, a few blocks from the
Kremlin where Luria
lived.... and Cuba.

David's photograph of the "Golodomor" (Extermination by hunger) in Khrakov
coincided with the arrival
of an article by Vladimir Zinchenko about the Kharkov school of psychology.
Its in Russian and VPZ's Russian is not easy for me, but attached for those
interested. There is no discussion of the coincidence of the origins of the
"Kharkov school" (which, as VPZ makes clear, began long before the 1930's)
and the organized starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviet Regime.

The same is true of Luria's Central Asian research which also was the site
of engineered and politically motivated mass famine after collectivization
began in the late 1920's.

The information is widely available:

http://www.volgagermans.net/norka/famine_1930s.html



http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-kazakh-famine-1930-33-and-the-politics-history-the-post-soviet-space
.


The Russians have a somewhat different way of discussing this history. For
a very recent example:


http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/25-12-2012/123291-american_holodomor-0/

More than 50 years ago, when I was learning Russian and Russian
history/politics as a grad student,
we read books such as Fainsod's *Smolensk under Soviet Rule *where the
Ukrainian policies of the Stalin regime were very well documented.

For a recent account of the geographical area of Eastern Europe, there
is *Bloodlands:
Europe between*
*Hitler and Stalin.*

The list could be extended geographically and historically until our eyes
drop out and our souls
wither. Seems worth keeping in mind whenever we highly privileged human
beings begin to feel
really self righteous.

Gorgeous sunny day in Southern California. I hope all are warm and safe.

mike
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