J. Otto Pohl

Jonathan Otto Pohl (born 1970) is an American historian who formerly worked for the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, the University of Ghana, and American University of Central Asia. He has a PhD in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Pohl's works are primarily focused on ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Union; he has written several books on the subject, including The Stalinist Penal System, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 (1999), and The Years of Great Silence (2022).

Education and career Pohl is American, and was born in 1970. Pohl received a BA in history from Grinnell College.

From 2007 to 2010 he was an associate professor at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, teaching international and comparative politics. In 2011, Pohl became a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana in the history department, and was a lecturer at the same institution from 2012 to 2016. He was an assistant professor of social sciences at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani from 2016 to 2019.

Works Pohl has written four books; his works are primarily focused on ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Union. His first book, The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror 1930-1953, was published in 1997 by McFarland. The book is based on quantitative data and statistics rather than testimonies. Pohl criticizes statements from other scholars, particularly Charles Maier and Deborah Lipstadt, both of whom argued that Soviet citizens were not victims of forced deportations based on their ethnicity. He argues that this is "willful ignorance" of the systematic deportations of many Soviet citizens of varying ethnicities, which he contends constituted ethnic cleansing. The book surveys the peoples who were forcefully deported by the Soviets. Scholar Brian Glyn Williams described the book as "groundbreaking" and said that Pohl "makes a strong case" for describing it as ethnic cleansing. The Years of Great Silence: The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941–1955, was published in 2022 by Ibidem Press. He also contributed a chapter to the 2016 book Kwame Nkrumah, 1909-1972: A Controversial Visionary by Bea Lundt and Christopher Marx, about Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. His chapter focuses on the coup against Nkrumah, and the CIA's role.

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