J. Otto Pohl - Free Lance Writer and Historian

I am a freelance writer and historian living in Sacramento, California. My first book is The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror, 1930-1953 (Jefferson NC:McFarland), 1997. My second book is Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group), 1999.

My articles include: "East by Rail: The Deportation of the Crimean Armenians," in the Spring 1996 issue of Ararat; "The Deportation of the Black Sea Armenians," in the Winter 1997 issue of Ararat; "The Dispersal of the Crimean and Black Sea Greeks," in vol. 22 no. 2 (1996) Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora (the 5 August 1998 issue of Eleftherotypia (Greece) has a piece by Takis Michas based upon this article and an interview with me): "Wine for the Workers: World's Best Wines for under Five Dollars," in issue no. 8 of Out Your Backdoor (1996); "Uprooted from the Caucasus: The Deportation of the Karachai, Chechens, Ingush, and Balkars," in the July/August 1997 issue of Quadrant (Australia); "Ethnic Cleansing in Eastern Poland: Stalin's Deportation of Polish Jews," in press with Jewish Affairs (South Africa); and "Stalin's Genocide against the 'Repressed Peoples'," June 2000, Journal of Genocide Research, volume 2 no.2

I also presented a paper at the 5th Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities: "Identity and the State: Nationalism and Sovereignty in a Changing World," 13-15 April 2000, Columbia University, New York. It was part of a panel titled "A Nation Exiled: The Crimean Tatars in the Russian Empire, Central Asia, and Turkey." This paper can be found on my links page.

On the next page there is a review of the Stalinist Penal System and Links on where you can find my articles and buy my books.