Announcement:

A brief editorial pause

The first eight instalments of the series I have been publishing on the blog under the general heading Stalinism and Alcoholism in the Soviet Union have now appeared in both Turkish and English. As I noted at the very beginning of the first article, my intention has been to turn this work into a small booklet at a later stage.

Over the past few days, instead of adding a new instalment to the series, I have been reworking the first eight published pieces for this booklet. This involves far more than simply placing the blog posts one after another. It means strengthening the internal connections between the texts, expanding certain sections and themes, removing repetitions, filling in gaps, and producing a coherent draft as a whole. In the process, the text has expanded considerably, and its substance has been significantly strengthened.

I am now close to completing this work on the first eight instalments. I hope to finish this stage within the next few days. After that, I will resume the series from where I left off. Once the series is complete, I plan to finalise the draft text of the booklet and then share it with friends who may be able to set aside some time to read it, in order to open the draft up for discussion and take their views and suggestions into account.

Therefore, this brief pause in the series does not mean that the work has been abandoned. It simply means that I have taken a necessary break in order to turn the instalments published so far into a stronger, more coherent whole, better suited to the booklet format. Rather than attempting to do all this in one go after completing the series, I felt it made far more sense, given my way of working, to bring the material together gradually and proceed in this more methodical fashion.

The word “blog” is derived from the English term “weblog”. In Turkish, it is generally used to mean an online journal or diary. In keeping with this meaning, I try to structure my own blog not merely as a place where finished texts are published, but as a space in which ongoing work, explorations, and pauses along the way can also be shared.

My thanks to everyone who has taken an interest, read and shared the series, and contributed through their comments and criticisms. I will be back soon with new instalments.