Mike,
Regarding your statement:
I am not pre-judging the outcome of the discussion. I simply think it
unuseful
> to pass off second hand rumours as facts which then become the accepted
> context for interpretation in cases where better evidence is available. Of
> course, that exercise takes time, and we all are busy with other matters.
So
> it may be just as well to pass on to topics of more contemporary relevance
> to xmca-ites.
The information concerning the Kholkhoz leadership I cited was the result of
what became a month long interview ( 5 to 6 days a week, 4hrs a day)of an
ex-official of the Ukrainian SSR who was in an excellent position to observe
the activities of a fairly wide range of party officials- both civilian and
military. I'm a trained ethnographer and my general impression of the
information collected from this gentleman is that was at least as good as
the ethno-historical material I collected in the mid '60s on Vancouver
Island Amerind military history and war practices and on the holocaust of
West Coast Amerind populations produced by the TB epidemic of the 1890's.
It's of interest to note that Fainsod's *Smolensk under Soviet Rule*
confirms the material collected in the course of the interview.
Highest regards,
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 10:32 PM
Subject: RE: rumors and the original sources of them
> I did not mean sources in the sense of people, Eugene. Sorry if I was
unclear.
> I was thinking, for example, of claims about Luria and lie detectors. By
an
> original source I meant The Nature of Human Conflicts. Even there, of
course,
> there is no original (except the edition that finally came out last year
in
> Russian which drew upon Luria's handwritten manuscript) since Gant says he
> cut from the manuscript he used for translation. But at least one does not
> have to depend descriptions of the work as if it were done at the request
> of the CHEKA or KGB, or whatever the secret police were called at the
time.
>
> The same holds for the cross-cultural work in Central Asia. Except for a
couple
> of brief reports in Science, the work was written 40 years later. But the
> 1976 translation is pretty faithful to the Russian edition and one can
> decide there is Luria was insulting the builders of communism or not.
>
> I am not pre-judging the outcome of the discussion. I simply think it
unuseful
> to pass off second hand rumours as facts which then become the accepted
> context for interpretation in cases where better evidence is available. Of
> course, that exercise takes time, and we all are busy with other matters.
So
> it may be just as well to pass on to topics of more contemporary relevance
> to xmca-ites.
>
> mike
>
> PS-- An excellent early source on the kholoz movement in (the) Ukraine is
> Fainsod's *Smolensk under Soviet Rule* which provides lots of support for
> Victor's characterization of the kind of person put in charge of that
> enterprise. Not original of course, but at least drawn from archival
materials
> taken by the Germans when they took their turn slaughtering Ukrainian
> peasants.
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