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Revisiting the Soviet Union

Yes, It Was An ‘Evil Empire’: Nearly every form of Soviet nostalgia gets the facts wrong.

“In 1983, the 61-year-old empire looked like it would be eternal. In just a few years, Soviet communism was relegated, just as Reagan had predicted to much ridicule, to ‘the ash heap of history.’ The leaders of the new Russia that emerged in its place themselves echoed the language of ‘evil empire’ when they spoke of the Soviet past: During the 1996 elections, President Boris Yeltsin told supporters at a campaign rally they had to win ‘so that Russia can never be called an evil empire again.’ An idealized image of Soviet communism also bubbled back up among progressives in the West, especially after the reputation of democratic capitalism was left tarnished by the war in Iraq and the Great Recession.” SOURCE: Reason Magazine

The quoted article is by Cathy Young, an American journalist who lived her first 17 years in the Soviet Union. Her perspective than is hardly neutral and dispassionate. For the goal of reevaluating the legacy of the Soviet Union, especially for young people how weren’t alive during the times of the USSR, I think that her background is incredibly helpful to understand what is life behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

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Mongolia Didn’t Want Independence?

“It’s not often a country asks to be annexed and even rarer that the answer is no. Yet this is what happened when Mongolia asked the USSR for just that. So why did the USSR say no? To find out, watch this short and simple animated documentary.” SOURCE: YouTube

I haven’t shared much information about Mongolia on this site before (FUN FACT: Mongolia is the least densely populated county in the world).  Most social studies educators are well aware of the history of the Mongolian Empire hundreds of years ago, but we lose the thread of Mongolia in the larger world history narrative.  So modern Mongolia: why is it an independent country?  It is a classic buffer state between Russia and China and has been used as either a puppet or a pawn by its larger neighbors.      

TAGS: Mongolia, historical.

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Economies of South America

“Data from IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2019“

There are many stories in this video in the nearly 40 years of economic history of South America since 1990.The two most important stories portrayed (or at least the most dramatic) in the animated chart are decline of Venezuela’s economy and the rise of Chile’s.  This video can act as a primer to get students to consider the regional context of economic growth as well as the differing historical, political, and geographic context that leads to distinct results in any given country.

GeoEd Tags: South America, Latin America, economic, historical, political, video.

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India Is Changing Some Cities’ Names, And Muslims Fear Their Heritage Is Being Erased

"A generation ago, long before Modi (and the BJP) was in power, right-wing Hindu nationalist leaders in Maharashtra state renamed Bombay as Mumbai — a nod to the city’s patron goddess Mumbadevi. Other cities followed: Madras became Chennai; Calcutta, Kolkata; Bangalore, Bengaluru. All the changes were a rejection of Anglicized names that came into use during British colonial rule. In the most recent wave of name changes, it’s not about erasing colonial monikers. It’s about erasing Muslim ones."

Source: www.npr.org

Indian officials have been altering toponyms to be more Hinducentric; this is a results of growing Hindu nationalism as an important element of modern Indian politics.  In another thematically similar, but regionally distinct example, we can see how place names matter in American cities.  When large corporations (like Google or Amazon) move in to a city,  the corporations might try to rename the neighborhoods and, in a sense, rebrand the place.    

Both examples show that the cultural landscape, including the names on them, are not just a passive reflection of the cultures that have shaped these places; they manifest the power dynamics of competing cultural groups seeking to assert their vision of place and culture to be physically manifested in public spaces. 

 

GeoEd Tags: culture, political, place, toponyms, India, South Asia, Hinduism, historical.

Scoop.it Tags:  culture, political, place, toponyms, India, South Asia, Hinduism, historical.

 

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Macedonia signs NATO accession agreement

This comes after Greece backed a deal to rename its neighbour North Macedonia, ending a long row.

Source: www.bbc.com

Oh, what’s in a name?  National pride, fear of irredentist dreams, border disputes and supranational exclusion…that’s all.  Ever since the collapse of Yugoslavia, Greece has opposed an independent neighbor using the name "Macedonia" when they have an adjacent region of the same name.  This has be a point of contention, in part, over the historic memory of Alexander the Great and Hellenic grandeur which Greece feels have been wrongfully appropriated.  It is also regarding expansionist ambitions of a "greater Macedonia" so Greece has blocked Macedonia’s entry to NATO and the EU.  To appease Greece, lessen international strife, and gain greater access to the global community Macedonia approved this change, but this move has lead to internal strife as many Macedonians feel that this name change is unfair.           

GeoEd Tags: culture, Political, place, toponyms, historical.

Tags:  culture, political, place, toponyms, historical.

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Inside North Korea’s bubble in Japan

"Why North Korea has children’s schools in Japan. This isn’t a story about a physical border. North Koreans living in Japan experience a much less visible kind of border, one made of culture, tradition, history, and ideology. The result is a North Korean bubble in Japan whose members face fierce discrimination from Japanese society, leading the community to turn to Pyongyang for support. Now that community is being tested like never before. North Korea routinely threatens to destroy Japan with nuclear weapons, prompting a spike in Japanese nationalism. Japanese politicians are feeling increasing pressure to crack down on this North Korean bubble, creating a battleground in the most unlikely of places: schools."

Source: www.youtube.com

This episode of Vox borders offers some excellent insight into a cultural enclave that feels deeply connected with a totalitarian regime.  From the outside, this raises so many questions, but understanding the cultural, historical, political, and economic context shows how this peculiar community continues.  The entire series of Vox Borders is fantastic material, dripping with geographic content.   

Tags: North Korea, Japan, East Asia, borders, political, historical.

WordPress TAGS: North Korea, Japan, East Asia, borders, political, historical.

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Why does the misperception that slavery only happened in the southern United States exist?

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“Christy Clark-Pujara research focuses on the experiences of black people in British and French North America in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She examines how the business of slavery—the buying and selling of people, food, and goods—shaped the experience of slavery, the process of emancipation, and the realities of black freedom in Rhode Island from the colonial period through the American Civil War.”

Source: vimeo.com

This is one of the many videos produced by the Choices Program about slavery in the New England (especially Rhode Island).  Featured in the videos is Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara, who wrote “Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island.”  There is a reason to what we learn in history, and there are also reasons to the histories that are rarely told.  More than any other of the original thirteen colonies and states along the Eastern Seaboard, Rhode Island plied the triangle trade transporting more slaves to the Americas than all the other states combined.

 

Some Rhode Island slavery facts:

  • In 1776, Rhode Island had the largest proportion of slave population of any of the New England colonies.
  • During the antebellum period Rhode Islanders were the leading producers of “negro cloth,” a coarse wool-cotton material made especially for enslaved blacks in the American South.
  • More than 60 percent of all the slave ships that left North America left from Rhode Island.

 

Tags: race, Rhode Island, slavery, labor, economic, historical.

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Map: Where Are Confederate-Named Schools?

Most schools with names tied to the Confederacy are in the South, were built or named after 1950, and have a student body that is majority non-white.

Source: www.edweek.org

The maps (and the charts) created from this national database is quite revealing.  At least 36 ‘Confederate-themed’ schools have changed their names since 2015 and I suspect that number will continue to grow in the coming years.    

 

Tags: race, racism, landscape, historical, the South.

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Five ways China’s past has shaped its present

“The country is perhaps more aware of its own history than any other major society on earth. That remembering is certainly partial – events like Mao’s Cultural Revolution are still very difficult to discuss within China itself. But it is striking how many echoes of the past can be found in its present.”

Source: www.bbc.com

This is a very interesting article…one can make too much of a country’s history as a casual factors, and yet make too little of historical patterns at your own peril.  “To understand China’s approach today to trade, foreign policy or censorship, consider its history.”  This article considers a few of  China’s current policies that may seem peculiar today but that make much more sense with a longer and deeper history.  Some of the topics considered include:

  • trade
  • trouble with neighbors
  • Information flow
  • Religious freedoms
  • Technology

 

Tags: China, East Asia, historical.

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