Articles in Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus
The Growing Importance of the Arctic Council
A recent trip to Tromsø, Norway reminded me that there is nothing more beautiful and life-affirming than spring in the Arctic: the return of the sun and the melting of the deep layer of snow allow the first fragile flowers to bloom. It is not this delicate beauty, however, that has recently attracted international attention to the circumpolar region. Six countries—China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore—exhibited renewed interest in the Arctic and were granted observer status in the Arctic Council during its May 15, 2013 meeting in Kiruna, Sweden.
The Geography of ‘Book’
The spatial distribution of words for a given meaning can reveal interesting patterns of both language spread and language contact. While both factors are always at play, language contact is more evident in regard to words for cultural innovations, such as ‘tea’ or ‘computer’. Another interesting case is the geography of words for ‘book’, which many languages borrowed along with the general concept of ‘book’ and more often than not with one particularly important religious text.
The Deportation and the Return of the Crimean Tatars—And the Controversial Issue of Collaboration with the Nazis
Crimean Tatars were among the many ethnic groups deported under Stalin during World War II due to the alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Today, this Turkic-speaking group constitutes merely 0.5% of Ukraine’s population, but historically, they held the key to the Black Sea shores that the Russian Empire (and later independent Ukraine) needed to gain access to warm sea ports.
The Tragic Saga of the Volga Germans
When I was a college student in Russia, one of my classmates was a Volga German from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. At the time, her identity made no sense to me as Germany, the Volga River, and Uzbekistan are thousands of miles apart. Who are the Volga Germans? How did they come to live in Central Russia, and later in Central Asia? This post examines the twisted history of yet another group victimized by Stalin’s deportations.
The Deportation of Soviet Koreans and Its Reverberation in the Lyrics of Korean Songwriters
One of the first ethnic groups deported by the Soviet regime on purely ethnic grounds was the Koreans of the Far East. Their deportation was conceived in 1926, initiated in 1930, and carried out in 1937, when virtually all ethnic Koreans were forcefully moved to unpopulated desert areas of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This resettlement program was so brutal that it engendered enduring bitterness not only among the deportees themselves but also among many of their descendants as well. It is thus unsurprising that the two most famous ethnic Koreans in Russia are songwriters known for the subversive lyrics.
The Russian-Finnish Borderlands: Territorial Changes, Population Transfers, and Linguistic Changes
An earlier GeoCurrents post mentioned Finns among the nationalities deported by the Soviets before and during World War II. As it turns out, the situation in the Finnish borderlands is rather more complicated than that. The territory between St. Petersburg and Helsinki is home to a number of ethnic groups whose histories range from cultural and linguistic assimilation to population transfer to outright ethnic cleansing.
Stalin’s Ethnic Deportations—and the Gerrymandered Ethnic Map
An earlier GeoCurrents post on Chechnya mentioned that the Chechens were deported from their homeland in the North Caucasus to Central Asia in February 1944. However, the Chechen nation was not the only one to suffer such a fate under Stalin’s regime. He took to gerrymandering the country’s ethnic map by moving whole nationalities around like chess pieces on the board.
The Geography of “Cucumber”
Several earlier GeoCurrents posts examined the history and geography of culinary vocabulary, particularly words for ‘cheese’, ‘onion’, and ‘tea’. It has become clear that the distribution of such words in European languages tells a story of both common descent and borrowing. But a completely different picture emerges if we examine words for ‘cucumber’ (see map on the left). Here, areal patterns are more conspicuous than those of language-family relationships.
Russian cuisine: a Melting Pot of Native Sensibilities and Foreign Influences
Russian cuisine, as can be expected, is a multifaceted phenomenon, varying with time, space, and social class. Like much of Russia’s material and intellectual culture, Russian cuisine finds itself at the crossroads of West and East, having soaked up influences of neighboring peoples—Ukrainians, Tatars, peoples of the Caucasus and of Siberia—as well as of Western cuisines, chiefly that of France. Traditional Russian cookery, which is the focus of this post, goes back to the customs of the medieval period.
Where’s Chechnya?—And a Brief Look at Its Bloody History
As the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings—Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, killed by police, and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19—have been identified as immigrants of Chechen origin, it’s worth taking a look at their homeland, Chechnya, and its bloody history.
Karaites: Who Are They, and Where Do They Live?
Like the Samaritans, the Karaites accept only the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) and the Book of Joshua, and their identity as Jews has been questioned on a number of occasions. Unlike the Samaritans, the Karaites celebrate Passover on the standard date, though their observance of the holiday is quite distinctive.
Novgorod Birch Bark Documents, Second Slavic Palatalization, and the Wave Model—The ‘Whole’ Story
More on the birch bark documents from Veliky Novgorod, Russia. With letters scratched into the inside surface, these scraps of birch bark, well-preserved in water-logged soils near Lake Ilmen, contain a wealth of information for historians and linguists alike. One of the most fascinating puzzles of Slavic historical linguistics was posed by birch bark document #247.
Birch Bark Documents from Novgorod, Russia
Ancient written documents—from Hittite clay tablets to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Scandinavian runes carved in stone—are extremely important for our understanding of both the languages and cultures of peoples long gone. Among these important witnesses to earlier epochs are documents written on birch bark from Novgorod, Russia, dating from the 11th-15th century. While birch bark has been used for writing in various cultures (e.g. some Gandharan Buddhist texts have been found written on birch bark and preserved in clay jars), it is the documents from Novgorod that are particularly celebrated and for a good reason: they changed our understanding of the Old Novgorod dialect, Slavic philology and linguistics in general, and of the early northern Russian culture.
New Maps of Eurasian DNA from Oleg Balanovsky
The recent doctoral dissertation by Russian geneticist Oleg Balanovsky contains a number of fascinating maps pertaining to the distribution of both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups and other genetic markers across Eurasia. These maps reveal that the main genetic division divides Eurasia into western and eastern sub-regions; the boundary starts at the Caucasus and traverses through southern Urals, northern Kazakhstan, and southern Siberia, then follows the course of the Yenisey River.
Say “Cheese”!
While cheese-making processes reduce the amount of lactose found in cheeses, cheese production and consumption are still also a predominantly European practice. But how European peoples refer to cheese differs from language to language.
Terranova: The Black Petaltail - A Novel
Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development (5th Edition)
Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World (3rd Edition)
