Archive for the ‘Saeil’ Category

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My Wiki Entry

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

I had rather a rough experience in my Wikipedia assignment. First of all, since it was the on-line encyclopedia website that anyone could write about anything, it was not easy to find topic that no one ever wrote before. After long search for the topic, I finally decided to write my entry about the movie called “Underground,” which is a movie about Yugoslavia Civil War. Since I could not offer too much information about this one particular movie alone, I decided to expand my topic to “films about Yugoslavia Civil War.” I hoped that once I start this entry with posting one movie, I thought someone else would post some other movies to expand my entry. It turned out that it was not kind of topic that many people would be interested on because I saw very few additions or edits on the history page section of my entry. Anyway, I tried to expand my entry every time I accessed into my entry, but I could not find much information as I hoped. And then, something truly strange has happened to my entry. As I typed in my topic into the Wikipedia website, I got a message that my entry was erased. What the message explained to me was that my topic does not have enough information to be listed as an independent topic. Besides, there was a separate entry about the movie “Underground” already existed somewhere which I did not realize before. I could fully understand why the webmaster decided to delete my entry, but what I could not understand was that why they waited about three months to take this kind of action? The website deleted my entry at the middle of November, so I was kind of wondering why they waited such a long period of time to take an action. Despite my rough experience with finding topic and my entry gets erased, I thought I experienced something very unique and valuable throughout this process. By some reason, it felt really good that what I wrote was on the internet. And, I realized that if I found a very interesting topic that many people might find interesting, maybe I could really expanded my entry through helps of strangers without I actually do all the researches. Maybe, I should try to find some topic that no one ever wrote before but really interesting one, which is really difficult to find these days. I remember watching “Underground” in the movie theater back in my native country. When I first saw this movie, it was really confusing and strange because I never heard of Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe before, and in my naïve perception, America was only the western country. So, it was really strange to learn about Eastern Europe and all those people’s sufferings since the WWII. I recently saw this movie again and since I had more understandings of Eastern European history because of this class, I could understand this movie better. I really recommend watching this movie despite the mixed opinions of critics about this movie. You might find little bit weird and awkward at the beginning of this movie, but I guess that was the way Eastern European history was written after the WWII.

Saeil

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My Presentation

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

I realized that I didn’t do very good job to present my topic during the presentation, so I’m trying to make more senses about my research paper here. The reason why I picked this topic was that I was always interested in individuals who inspired others to start something very new and special. Although there were many others who played significant roles during the Revolution of 1989, in my mind, Walesa and Havel were starter and closer of this revolution. While Walesa opened the door to the revolution, Havel actually achieved the revolution by implementing a lot of the revolutionary themes: such as the birth of democratic pluralistic society. Havel and Walesa came from different countries and they were political leaders of different states. Also, they spent quiet different dissident years before the revolution and their political legacies after the revolution were quiet different too. Hence, my argument is that Wałęsa and Havel’s dissimilar political careers and legacies were originated from their quiet different dissident political leadership experiences. I primarily used scholastic books from such a distinguished scholars like Mary Craig, Timothy Garton Ash, John Keane, Eda Kriseová, and Aviezer Tucker. I also used Wałęsa and Havel’s personal memoirs and other writings to prove my thesis. The main problem with my sources was that because of both Havel and Walesa’s rather disappointing presidency, many scholars started to write books and essays that contradicted their previous statements. A great example is Timothy Garton Ash. On his first edition of The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, which was published in 1985, Ash passionately praised Walesa’s achievements as a dissident leader. However, on Ash’s third edition of the same book, which was published in 2002, Ash added about 50 additional pages to criticize Walesa’s dissident political leadership experiences. Not only Ash, but also many other leading Eastern European scholars followed Ash’s lead: self-contradiction. So, it was not easy to find the middle ground to write well-balanced paper on my topic. However, I came to conclusion that Havel and Walesa’s achievements during their dissident years and throughout the revolution was beyond evaluation and their different dissident political leadership experiences deeply influenced their unique political legacies and achievements.

 Saeil

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the film/discussion

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Because of my class schedule, I only saw first one hour of this film but I thought it pretty interesting. First of all, I was really amazed by Albanian people who accepted women who chose to live as men. Even these days in American society, I wouldn’t expect many Americans to accept that kind of extraordinary cultural phenomenon. I guess there are great cultural differences in Albania that others would find interesting. However, the biggest question that I asked to myself was how come communist regime in Albania allowed that kind of extraordinary cultural phenomenon? As far as I understand, one of women that the film director interviewed was a member of the communist party and people in her village had high opinions on her because she was fair to all under the law. I was surprised by the communist regime in Albania whom allowed a woman lived like a man to represent their regime as a party member. I also remember one woman’s story that she went to the bar, which only man allowed to enter, to seek social recognitions of her standing. Certainly, I guess those Albanian sworned virgins were much different than American feminists who sought equal in everything compared to men in Ameircan society, since those Albanian virgins wanted something more than that; live as a man. From what I saw in this film, they made me to think about great cultural differences in Albania and women’s role in the communist regime of Albania. Since I couldn’t watch whole film, I couldn’t come up with any answer or conclusion, but I liked the way this film maker brought in this unique topic to debate.

Saeil 

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Maps

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

The important thing that I learned from today’s lesson was that maps could be quiet different based on different perspectives. When we think of maps, we usually think about maps of different countries. Without all those national boundaries, it would be hard to think about maps. However, when I saw maps beyond those limits, maps seem like contain lot more details and information than what I initially thought. I saw three maps today, which were the map of ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, NATO’s Kosovo military mission map, and Yugoslavia battlefield map during the WWII. All those maps put different priorities on their maps based on their purposes and perspectives. For example, from Kosovo mission map, I could see lots of strategically important cities and towns for transportation, which I would normally not pay much attention to since they’re minor details. Yugoslavia ethnic group map was very interesting too, because I could get very valuable information through looking at where certain groups of people live.

Saeil

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News article and thoughts about newspaper resource

Friday, October 5th, 2007

I found NY Times news article that talks about 1989 Revolution in Eastern Europe based on Havel’s quote. This article was basically arguing that collaspe of Communism didn’t solve all those old problems of nation-states and the ethnic rivaries, but it only brought their old and troubled history back. The author of this news article is arguing that this event does not indicate the end of history, but it’s only a new beginning.

I guess I could use newspaper articles to getting facts right and gaining relatively unbiased information about the historical event. Books and academic journals often tend to be very biased and opinionated toward specific directions becasue those writings were developed by scholars who placed a lot of time and thoughts on certain issue. Books and journals usually provide very thoughtful insight observations of historical events, but they could also provide wrong impressions of the event, becasue even historians could be very biased toward certain issues. Although it is very clear that newspapers often provide very biased information too, since journalists don’t have a lot of time to think about the issue and write about them, I think newspaper articles could provide very honest, direct, and unbiased information about the historical events; after all, that’s what good journalism should provides.

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My Topic for Research Paper

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

I’m planning to write a comparsion paper about Havel and Walesa. Obviously, those two characters were really important players for 1989 Revolution and the post-communist era in Eastern Europe. Both characters share great similarities, and they also have great differences in many areas. By examining two important characters of 1989 Revolution, I think I could write about how two different Eastern European nations went through their Revolution and how two different characters led the Revolution and ran their countries differently.  

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9/25/07 Class Blog

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

What is justice in post-communist Eastern Europe?  Why does it matter?

Justice in post-communist Eastern Europe is mostly about punishing people who actively cooperated with the communist regime to make innocent citizens’ lives miserable and who took personal benefits throughout this process. Many of Eastern Europeans in post-communist era wanted to start the process of normalization and the way back into the European communities, both economically and politically, through dealing with their history to bring back justice in their societies. Eastern Europeans in former Soviet bloc wanted to punish people who allied themselves with the Communist regime for their own interests to make sure their past tragic history would not be repeated for their next generations and to encourage start of the new nation building by the people, vast majority population, who initially suffered by their past repressive regime.   

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Stokes III

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Before I read this book, I had very little knowledge about Eastern Europe. I heard about Eastern Europe being the satellite states for the Soviet Union and they formed the Warsaw Pacts to fight against the U.S. led NATO forces in my high school history class. I previously thought that Eastern Europeans were either diehard communists or so completely controlled by the Soviets so they could not do anything. Stokes’ narrative about what happened in 1989 really enlightened me of unknown subject for me. Now, I guess I could say little bit more about Eastern Europe and how those people struggled against Soviet communism to gain their freedom. In my understanding, Eastern Europeans are a lot like Koreans after 1950s. After all those horrible times they went through during the WWII from the fascist regimes, Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germans, by the devil’s finger on their fate, they both had to face even bigger evil, Soviet led communism. I think the main point that I learned from Stokes’ argument is that although the author is very optimistic about the future of Eastern Europe, it would be very difficult to establish well-functioning pluralistic societies after not having self-rule and own power for very long period of times. For fundamental changes in Eastern European nations and to establish well-functioning democratic political institution and strong market economy in Western standard, the rest of world needs to support and wait for changes patiently for long period of times.  

                After carefully examine sources for chapter seven (Yugoslavia), I come to realized that Stokes did very good job on presenting resources which his arguments based upon. Stokes used acclaimed scholastic books, academic journals, and quotes from experts on his field of study, especially lectures from Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. I think his sources are plentiful and diverse, and I could not argue about any major problems about sources. However, I do wish that it would be much better if Stokes used some more sources from regional scholars. I think Stokes cited many ideas from prominent American and internationally acclaimed scholars. However, I am not sure if he used ideas from prominent scholars from Eastern Europe in many cases. I recognize that Stokes used many quotes from interviews or lectures from key local character of 1989, but I am not sure if he used ideas of Eastern European scholars in many occasions. I guess it would be hard to underestimate value of ideas from local scholars who actually saw and experienced the real event.  

Saeil

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Stokes Part II

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

After the walls tumbled down in Germany and the Communist regimes collapsed throughout Eastern Europe in 1989, the process of the democratization and the way back to the European Community started instantly. Some had a rocky start (Romania), but overall, the way toward political changes, democratic pluralist society, in Eastern Europe went very well. However, the economic reform efforts did not go very well due to lack of market economy experiences and insufficient resources to change their economic infrastructure fundamentally from the legacy of the Communism – wasteful centralized economy. Neither Poland’s shocking therapy nor Hungary’s gradualism was able to save Eastern European economy immediately after the fall of communism. Worst of all, old scars of ethnic relations really haunted this region. After all those horrible experiences and times under the Communist regime, tensions among different ethnic groups still remained very strongly. Political struggle between Czechs and Slovaks eventually put to end of Czechoslovakia, racial prejudice against minority population, such as Jews and Turks, went high, and racial politics of Serbs led by Milosevic eventually caused the Yugoslav Civil War. Despite all these negative aspects, for the second time in their history, Eastern Europeans tried to create functional pluralist societies, and Stokes is very optimistic about the future of Eastern Europe.

 

Saeil

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My Wiki Entry

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

This is Saeil Oh. I just posted my first wiki entry on “Films about Yugoslavia Revolution.” I only wrote about “Underground (1995),” but if you guys know more moives about Yugoslavia Revolution, please edit my entry. My wiki entry could be found when you click… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Films_about_Yugoslavia_Revolution

or you could just type “Yugoslavia” and go all the way down and looking for “See Also” section. You could find “Films about Yugoslavia Revolution” link.

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