Historian David Reid writes about "Water, Power and Displacement" in California

Whittier Narrows Parks: A Story of Water, Power and Displacement

By David Reid 

"It is a site of layered histories in a struggle between the natural and built environment, California water politics, and the uprooted communities that once called this region home."

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE: HERE

Whittier Narrows Dam and Recreation Area from above | Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Public Domain

Back in the (former) УССР

From Moscow to Kyiv on June 23, 2014 (by plane)

Today I arrived in Kyiv where I was greeted by my first river views of the Dnieper (since my previous trip to Kyiv two years ago) and another friend and colleague from the Harvard History Department, Beth Kerley (I took over the apartment she had been renting since April). The apartment is absolutely perfect (in the Pechersk neighborhood of Kyiv and directly across the street from the metro, two doors down from TsDAGO, the Central State Archive of Public Organizations and three metro stops away from TsDAMLM, the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art).

Having arrived in the evening... the business of getting down to business can wait until tomorrow... (I'll be in Kyiv until I fly to Kharkiv on July 11, 2014)

*УССР [oo-ess-ess-err] was the abbreviated name, in Russian, for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919-1991)

Cossacks and Kobzars

[Moscow, Russia from June 2 - 23, 2014] I arrived in Moscow three weeks ago, settled into my cozy one-room apartment on the Taras Shevchenko Embankment (with wonderful fellow Harvard History Department comrades, Carolin Roeder and Marysia Blackwood), and survived the notoriously slow process of gaining access to Russian archival materials (shielded from the shock of toilet paper-less and soap-less archive bathrooms by prior warnings to bring my own supplies...)

Our daily commute across the Bogdan Khmelnitsky Bridge 
from the Taras Shevchenko Embankment 

Although I prefer the view from Reading Room #2 at "Leninka" (the Russian State Library) and cool breeze (literal and figurative) from the Kremlin... my work days are mostly spent in the joint reading room of GARF, the State Archive of the Russian Federation and RGAE, the Russian State Archive of the Economy. Here I have been reading the files of the Soviet Ministry of Water Management (thankfully more interesting that it sounds...)

The infamous "Leninka"

Slavophilism and the Arts and Crafts Movement
in Russia at Savva Mamontov's
Abramtsevo Artists' Colony

While I will be entering a bit less "charted" archival territory later in my trip, one of the benefits of working in Moscow is the amazing network of fellow historians and scholars. It seems that the GARF/RGAE reading room is the nexus of this network of new and old friends (that or the Khachapuri near our apartment...). I returned this evening from a weekend trip (while archives are closed) to the Artists' Colony at Abramtsevo, Sergiev Posad, and a wonderful night in a dacha near Radonezh with Marysia, Carolin, Kathryn and two friends from the history department at Berkeley (Rhiannon and Mirjam). Now I am transitioning back to work mode at our favorite "anti-cafe" in Moscow, Tsiferblat (Clockface Cafe, where we pay by the minute but enjoy free unlimited coffee, tea, and cookies).

Looking for "this meager nature"
at the Abramtsevo Artists' Colony
outside of Moscow

Twilight at 11 PM on Patriarshy Bridge
over the Moskva River, Moscow (above 55° N)

Kuindzhi, Night on the Dnieper, 1882 

(research trip to the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

On my last full day in Moscow, I finally made it to the Tretyakov Gallery, for serious research purposes of course... While I could have spent many more hours wandering through rooms dedicated to Levitan, Savrasov, Shishkin, Maliavin, and Vrubel, I had come to see the paintings of the Dnieper River by Kuindzhi and was not disappointed.

Kuindzhi, The Dnieper in the Morning, 1881

(research trip to the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Coming Soon...

The Dnieper River from space (2005)

I want to tell a story about a river.

The Dnieper River (Днепрo the Russians, Дняпро to the Belarusians, Днiпро to the Ukrainians, and Borysthenes to the Ancient Greeks) flows from its source in western Russia, gains strength from Polish and Belarusian tributaries, dives down through the heart of Ukraine, roaring though cascading dams and reservoirs before emptying into the Black Sea.

On June 1st, I fly to Moscow for three weeks of archival research at GARF and RGAE. From there I will continue on to Kyiv, Ukraine where I will begin my archival voyage down the Dnieper River... (then on to Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, Nova Kakhivka, Kherson, and Odessa)

Check back soon!

From Boston to Moscow on June 1, 2014