http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:11:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_98" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The last known photographs of Isaiah Oggins as a prisoner in the Soviet gulag, shortly before he was executed in 1947 by injection. Photo by C.J. Chivers of the New York Times"][/caption] Robbin Oggins, a retired historian of Medievel Europe at Binghamton University, stands after a tragic chapter ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/11/08/fascinating-tragedy-within-stalins-ocean-of-victims/ The economic crisis has made us think again about how much a government should intervene in the economy and for what purposes. The silly exchange this week between Barack Obama and Joe (the plumber) Wurzelbacher has focused the question on the idea of “spreading the wealth.” I don’t know this blog at all, but I ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/10/18/teddy-roosevelt-weighs-in-on-the-joe-the-plumber-deal/ The New York Times gives a video-and-sound format for comparing our current economic crisis and the Depression of the 1930s. That’s good for the text-averse, but this isn’t that exciting. Thankfully it has some nice images at the end. http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/10/09/reminded-%e2%80%94-whether-we-like-it-or-not-%e2%80%94-of-the-great-slump/ For now the courts are siding with the National Archive, historians, and a watchdog group in a legal case to compel Vice President Dick Cheney to publicly preserve his papers for the sake of research. It is more important in Cheney’s case to preserve his records for posterity because his influence within ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/09/26/legal-victory-in-battle-to-save-the-past/ Presidential palace in Santiago burns on the day of the coup Sept. 11 has not been just any ol’ date in Chile either. That’s because in 1973 a military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet attacked the government of the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende on that date. Allende died ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/09/13/chile%e2%80%99s-9-11-and-nixon%e2%80%99s-hand-in-it/ The concept of a public memory is an intriguing one, if slippery. Russia scholar Stephen Cohen wrote recently about the polarizing effect of Stalin’s memory, especially while the Soviet era lumbered on after Stalin’s death in 1953. There were millions of survivors of the gulags called zeks, and they were obviously bitter, and some made ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/09/13/stalin%e2%80%99s-legacy-still-divides-mother-russia/ Both China and Russia dominate the headlines lately. Reflecting on the two nation’s current role, Chrystia Freeland’s article on the return of authoritarianism has gained a lot of warranted attention. Was the gloating by liberal democrats in 1991 a failure to prognosticate? http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/08/23/big-power-despots-make-a-comeback/ Although somber about his passing, I do get pleasure from noting a person such as Solzhenitsyn who clearly shaped history but was nonetheless not in command of armies nor economies. The New York Times did a thorough and enjoyable obituary from which I learned many things. There have also been ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/08/09/alexandr-solzhenitsyn-1918-2008/ I may be one of the last to see this, but I am posting it anyway. I share the misgivings of a lot of people about PowerPoint, or more precisely, about how ubiquitous it has become. It has its place. But PowerPoint is not always the best means to communicate, and it ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/07/17/let%e2%80%99s-poke-fun-at-powerpoint/ The New York Times reporter Semoni Sengupta finds the promises of  India’s so-called Green Revolution era now emptied. At the same time,  the environmental harms endure to this day that were inflicted by these farm modernization programs of the 1960s in South Asia.   The surge this year in food prices has brought some ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2008/06/22/reflecting-on-the-green-revolution/