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Rosa Kaganovich: did she even exist? According to Robert Conquest, Stalin "associated" with her after Nadezhda's death (Great Terror, p. 68), but according to the Kaganovich family, she is a figment of the imagination. The main references I've seen to her are on anti-semitic websites; but according to nndb, she was Stalin's third wife. D SCH 00:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Also, according Macauley's "Stalin and Stalinism," he never remarried after Nadezhda's death. D SCH 14:40, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
In Edvard Radzinsky's excellent and exhaustive 1996 biography of Stalin, there is no mention anywhere of a Rosa Kaganovich, only of Lazar Kaganovich. Hence, we must assume, that Stalin did not "associate" with Rosa Kaganovich and that he was never remarried after Nadezhda Sergeevna Allilujeva's death. (unsigned)
In Montefiore's "Stalin" (2003) he says (p.273) that Lazar had both a sister and a niece named Rosa, but that the marriage is a myth. Jobh 10:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I wonder how can a woman in Russia could have as surname "Kaganovich" since usually these surnames or "patronimics" have termination "vich" for males and "ova" for females which means that Rosa's name would at best be "Rosa Kaganova". 201.129.240.39 16:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC) Zealot Kmmunizma
I'm sorry about this; in an attempt to restore this article to a credible state after the actions of a vandal, I attempted to exchange the manipulated image in the sidebar [1] with Stalin.jpg, as opposed to Stalin1.jpg. It had become my belief after obeserving the image upload history that this was the correct image. However, this exchanged the picture with the one which is currently seen there, and thus said picture appeared twice throughout the article. I tried changing the code back to Stalin.jpg, hoping to restore the article to its previous state for somebody more experienced in wikiing to do what I had failed to do, but that resulted in there being no picture at all, so I changed it back to Stalin.jpg. The image that should, to my knowledge, be in the sidebar is this one [2]. I leave it to those more in the know to repair the article. Another user had uploaded the rather unflattering image of Mr. Stalin in which he fashions pink hair and a rather fancy suit, but he claims on a talk page (which I can no longer find, sadly) that this was accident. Yet another user attempted to revert to the orginal image, but it would seem that this fixed only the archived picture and not the article in which it is featured.
Thank you in advance to whomever who fixes this! -- TheFinalFraek 15:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
?action=purge
to the URL. --
jpgordon
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16:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)Surely Stalin shouldn't be refered to as one of the greatest mass murderers. Biggest or largest would be more appropriate.
It is generally agreed by conventional historians that if war, famines, prison and labor camp mortality, and state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, the number of deaths that occurred under Stalin is in the millions. - From the article.
So lets get this straight....Stalin murdered millions, but that fact is not clearly stated in the introduction. I guarantee that if U.S. President Bush had murdered millions of his own citizens, it is the FIRST thing that would be stated in his Wikipedia article, not buried somewhere in the middle, and rightly so. Well, the same goes for an article about the leader of the former Soviet Union...unless editors are trying to convey the impression that murdering millions was so common among leaders of that nation, that it doesn't deserve calling attention to it. This article should begin with a statement that Stalin murdered millions. Drogo Underburrow 03:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually if Bush killed any amount it probably would be left unmentioned. Clinton - maybe Bush the Elder too - embargoed Iraq and ended up killing 500,00 +- kids from forced drinking of foul water. Is that mentioned under Clinton's little blurb? Source - quote from M. Albright "we think it was worth it.."
Here is a sample of what I mean:
This is not necessarily the best version, but just a ball-park example of the type of intro I think should be in the article. Drogo Underburrow 05:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
For what it's worth, words like "despotic ruler", "tyranny", "beaurocracy", etc is what academics call "loaded terminology", i.e. emotionally biased language showing that the author has an ax to grind or a cause to promote. You can apply these terms to many rulers and governments, all you need is several well-chosen examples. If you want an objective discussion of Stalin's deeds you should avoid loaded terminology and convey your point by giving facts such as executions of millions of people. Bublick439 07:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin , original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power. During the quarter of a century preceding his death, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. Stalin industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivized its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, helped to defeat Germany in 1941–45, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, he destroyed the remnants of individual freedom and failed to promote individual prosperity, yet he created a mighty military–industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age. Bublick439 08:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
On another note "Victims" and "deaths" are not synonyms. Stalin imprisoned a lot more people than he killed. Bublick439 08:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
This is laughable, neither living in Siberia, nor being in prison in Siberia has been shown to cause 100% or even several % fatality rate, unless you have a reference from a peer-reviewed academic journal that shows otherwise. Bublick439 11:30, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
The insane demonization that Stalin has been subjected too is directlly proportional to the "white washing" of Fascist Crimes that has been occurring since the beggining of the 90's. Every one of the "democratic posing" Nazi-Fascists on this planet is doing his or her best to contribute to that demonization process. The Holodomor is an anti-communist lie, made up by Nazi Germany's propaganda machine (as many other anti-communist lies that are still circullating today thanks mostlly to the american neo-Fascist righ wing) to mobilize the german people in to the comming war, and to preemptively justify the atrocities that the german soldires were going to "have to commit". The famine did occur, but it was neither engineered nor the result of any brutal grain confiscation policy. No "non-nazi" evidence supports that. It was the result of the recurrent droughts that occurred in that part of the Soviet Union, combined with some inexperience from the Soviet authorities. What hard evidences demonstrate is that the famine was widespread, it was not conscribed to Ukraine. It coincided with a drough period as all the famines in that region did. It was relativelly less devastating than the 1921 famine preciselly because the soviet authorities were more prepared. Hard evidences also demonstrate that sabotage, both internaly originated and externally promoted (by western nations) also had a very important role in the famine. A known fact is also that the birth rate in all the Soviet Union decreased very rapidly, and it was not because Stallin was eating babies, but because the rapidlly increasing access to education, health care and a more hurban life style allowed the soviet women a greater controll over their bodies and reproductive cicles. This decreasing birth rate accounts for many of those "millions" of victims that the neo-fascists of today are crying about. After the fall of the Soviet Union "all the old demons have run free". Lies like the "Ukranian engineered famine" have become mainstream "truths", after being revided by the Ukranian Fascists that fled to the US after the defeat of Nazi-Fascist Germany, at whose side they fought and in whose atrocities (against the Ukranian and Russian people) they actively participated. Nowadays it is tabu to expose such lies and at the same time Holocaust Negationism and the deculpabilization of Fascist atrocities are more and more acceptable. This article, which is clearlly anti-communist biased, is yet another step in the wrong direction. User:HelderM 17:20, 12 April 2006
Drogo is basically right here. Neutrality is a fine thing, provided it does not obscure the truth. One must not be so open-minded that your brains fall out. Specifically, Bublick--what are you talking about in demanding a 100% mortality rate before accepting that gulags could be death camps? Being shot in the head is not 100% fatal, but it is certainly deadly, just like GULAG
Reimelt
01:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
He had a great charm, indeed. People couldn't stop crying when he died. It's just because he's a symbol, a star, a guiding light... There was atheism in USSR; however, Stalin was the God. Lenin, Marx and Engels were the Dogmas and communism was an absolute, undoubtful truth. I remember an event... When one man unsuccessfully tried to kill Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev because he broke Stalin's cult. This murderer was imprisoned twice during Stalin's reign and his parents fell during repression. People loved Stalin as Christians love Jesus. And, you see, Stalin was a great progressor of that time. He took the country with a plow and left it with nuclear bomb. He was a mass-murderer and a tyrant, but he was a brilliant ruler. Every medal has two sides. -- Wildead 07:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
The second section is that we don't know how many died. It is very difficult to go to where they died for example - Northern Siberia isn't the most hospitable place for research. Nor were records kept that are of any reliability - states tend to destory this sort of obvious section.
So is it 4 or 20 million. Who knows? And the blunt situation is. Who cares. This may sound harsh, but once Stalin has been proven for 4 million what's the point. We can't identify the corpses anyway. It's the same with the Harold Shipman case. They got to so many life sentences for murder (20+ I think), but stopped, because he can only ever go to prison once.
I hope this helps. It's not about soft-peddling, it's about the reliability of Wikipedia and the evidence at hand.
Thanks, Philipwhiuk 13:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I put up the POV label today
because the claims of tens of millions of deaths are unsupported by hard data. If the claimant can cite a study published in a peer-reviewed journal, then please give your source and your claims will be accepted as valid. Books and websites are not reliable sources of information, EVEN when an author claims to be a historian or is really a historian. You can publish any kind of nonsense in a book or on a website very easily and as someone who works in academia I can tell you that people with valid academic credentials, such as full professors, make questionable claims all the time, the problem is those questionable views most of the time cannot be published in a peer-reviewed journal, and until those claims survive the peer review process they should be ignored.
For those who are not familiar with how peer review works: when someone wants to publish a study in an accredited journal, they submit their manuscript to the editorial board and the editorial board sends the manuscript for review to at least three other unrelated researchers in the field and all three reviewers have to agree with the methods and conclusions in the study. The reviewers usually request the authors to redo some studies or use a different method or modify conclusions and when all reviewers approve the text of the manuscript, then and only then it will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
On a different note, the other two encyclopedias, Britannica and Encarta, are more careful about the death toll from Stalin's rule. Encarta lists millions from famine and executions, Britannica lists millions from famine, millions from executions and "tens of millions of victims" which appears to be an allusion to those imprisoned by Stalin.
Don't get me wrong, I believe Stalin was a bad guy, yet exaggerations and fiction are unacceptable. How would you like it if somebody started claiming that Osama bin Laden killed 3 million Americans?
In the introduction I changed "tens of millions of deaths" to "millions of deaths". The sentence in the last paragraph now reads: "Stalin tried to crush all opposition by commencing a bureaucratic and usually arbitrary network of terror that resulted in millions of deaths."
If whoever wrote this has a reliable source about "tens of millions" (see above about which sources are reliable) feel free to give a reference and to change the sentence back Bublick439 07:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
If you add up 3 to 4 million dead from famine and and estimate of 1.5 to 7 million of executions you may arive at a figure exceeding 10 million, which is still not "tens of millions". Again, I have no objections to mentioning "tens of millions" IF you have a reference to a peer-reviewed study on the subject. If you only have books and websites this doesn't amount to a reliable source unfortunately. As I said before, the other two Encyclopedia's say "millions of deaths", and if you want to go farther than that you should provide a reference to a peer-reviewed study. Bublick439 08:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
I have to disagree with you on "well over ten million", but be that as it may, even if we agree on say 15 million, that is not "tens". For most people "several" means more than two, not more than one. Note that Britannica never says tens of millions of deaths and rightly so because all its sources are books and opinions, not peer-reviewed studies, including your mention of Roy Medvedev. Mentioning his opinion with a full quote is all good and well if you mention other estimates in detail and discuss the discrepancies. This is done in the body of the article, and cannot be done in the introduction without making it look awkward. Again if you have a reference to a study published in a peer-reviewed journal that gives an estimate of tens of millions of deaths, then you can say so in the introduction, I have no objections, because this would be a very reliable source. Interviews, websites, books are not reliable sources, even if they are written by academics. Bublick439 09:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
When it comes to sources, what matters is quality not quantity. You are obviously not familiar with the scientific method and peer review. You can not publish any nonsense in a peer-reviewed journal because highly qualified reviewers will take your claims apart very quickly. At the same time you can publish any questionable claims in a book or on a website and cite thousands of equally questionable sources. I will copy and paste the second paragraph of this section for you: For those who are not familiar with how peer review works: when someone wants to publish a study in an accredited journal, they submit their manuscript to the editorial board and the editorial board sends the manuscript for review to at least three other unrelated researchers in the field and all three reviewers have to agree with the methods and conclusions in the study. The reviewers usually request the authors to redo some studies or use a different method or modify conclusions and when all reviewers approve the text of the manuscript, then and only then it will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Bublick439 10:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
With enough money you can flood the market with all sorts of false claims and "sources". In academic research, the number of sources that you cite is irrelevant, only peer-reviewed references are considered a source. Books do not undergo peer review, and publishers such as Academic press view any proposed material in terms of it commercial value, not its scientific accuracy. In academic research, if your results were not published in an accredited peer-reviewed journal, it is the same as your results do not exist. If a book cites sources that were not peer-reviewed, those kinds of sources are ignored in academia as unreliable, this applies to books, interviews and websites. With all due respect, please read the definition of scientific method and peer review in Wikipedia or somewhere else. Bublick439 16:30, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
Leaving aside the fact the the term "academic book" is extremely vague, your proof by assertion and proof by repetition attempts are ridiculous. Bublick439 18:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)Bublick439
A lot of issues being brought up here have been discussed many, many times before and a quick skimming of the archives is highly recommended for every newcommer here. Actually, reading the first two-three archives covers most of the disputed points since the rest of the archive is basically just the same debates and arguments made all over again, but with slightly other participants.
I think it would be usefull to have the archives sorted by subject. The death toll debate is a frequent one, and the last 3-4 years debate on it could be put on one single page for easy access. Then we have the "Why can't we simply call him a despot/dictator/tyrann/mass murder" debate, that also comes up every few months, which could put on another archive page. And one for discussion on the intro, and so on. I don't mean to push the active and current debates out on some sub-talk page, just to have the old archived pages more available. I think I'll do that. I'll leave the current archives as they are, and just make a copy of relevant content of former discussions over in a new and topic indexed archive with a table of contents. If nobody objects, that is. Well, maybe even then ;-). Shanes 08:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Look, I'm gonna be kinda blunt here and say that this article is not good. The POV in some sections is very, very bad, and this is compounded by the very weak referencing. So I have a proposal: let's have all interested editors go through this article thoroughly, top to bottom, together; let's look at every sentence; let's be rigid about neutrality and sourcing for everything; let's look toward balancing out the referencing by including sources from a sympathetic perspective. With this being such an important article, I think we need to do something like this and can do it. I suggest we create a draft page for each individual section, starting with the intro first and foremost. Would there be enough people willing to participate in this to make it work? Everyking 09:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Many of the statements in the article and on the talk page have no valid source to back them up. This looks like a kindergarten. If you are making a statement, please give a reference to an academic journal. If you are making a statement and don't give a valid reference or give an invalid reference, this is a waste of cyberspace and cybertime. Proof by assertion is one of the silliest ways of arguing your point of view.
The standard way of validation of data in academic research is publishing your results in an accredited peer-reviewed journal in your field. A relatively small amount of data in a research article can be easily and meticulously reviewed and vetted by at least three unrelated and independent academics for accuracy and for validity of methods used. If the research paper passes the review and gets published in the specialized journal, you can be sure that its conclusions are more or less truthful and accurate. peer review
Books, webpages, and interviews cannot be peer-reviewed thoroughly and are thus considered questionable as sources in academic research. With few exceptions like Wikipedia and online academic journals, webpages are practically never peer-reviewed. Books are particularly hard to review because few academics have enough time to read the whole book several times. Types of peer-reviewed literatureTo give the same kind of thorough review to a book that is normally given to a research article, you would have to give every chapter to three different experts which can easily total up to 40 or 60 revieweres per book. This is practically never done by publishing houses prior to publication of a book. If a book contains references to peer-reviewed journals as many college textbooks do, you can sort of be sure that the statements made in the book are trustworthy. If a book refers you to other unreviewed material like books, interviews, and webpages, this is like blind leading the blind. Peer Review: Crude and Understudied, but Indispensable
One case in point is the statement in the introduction about "tens of millions of deaths" by Stalin's hand. Another case is the exaggerated claims about death toll from famine in the 1930s. Those who are making the claims do not provide a SINGLE peer-reviewed publication to back them up. Citing politically motivated books, which are plenty for all points of view, is a useless waste or time and cyberspace. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Encarta both give about 10-fold lower death toll estimates than some of the authors do in this article about Stalin. Bublick439 12:31, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is a more recent peer-reviewed study: Europe-Asia Studies, September 1996, Vol 48, No 6, p 959-987: Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings, Forced Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s. Steven Rosefielde. It gives around 10 million deaths for some years during the 30s only. Ultramarine 14:18, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't have time to read that paper right now, but to bury the hatchet, I am temporarily removing the POV label and putting "tens of millions" back, even though that article provides evidence for millions. until further debates :-) Bublick439 15:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
The assertion that Stalin killed "tens of millions" is a fantasy and is a blatant manifestation of POV. I find it astounding how there are not any reliable, post-Cold War sources listed on this page. J.Arch Getty in [ American Historical Review] refutes sensational claims by the likes of Robert Conquest and Alexander Solzhenistyn that "tens of millions" perished in the "Great Purge" and the GULAG. Archival documents prove that in 1937-1938, there were 682,000 executions and 1 million deaths in the GULAG from 1934-1953 of which 620,000 were during the Great Patriotic War. Answer this simple question: how do these deaths come anywhere close to tens of millions? Deaths from famine have also been disputed. According to Stephen Wheatcroft and RW Davies in "Years of Hunger", excluding Kazakhstan, here were 2.5 million deaths from famien throughout USSR in 1932-1933 [ Source]
2.5 million from famine, 680,000 executions, 1 million deaths from GULAG. Explain again how the sum of these amounts to tens of millions? I'll leave out the fact that the 1932-1933 famine was neither "man-made" nor was it an intention of the Soviet regime. Zvesda
In other words, you have revealed that the Wikipedia editors bear anti-Soviet and anti-Communist prejudices and use a fallacious quantity over quality method in order to try and prove those with the facts wrong ("most 'scholars' put the death toll at 20 million"). I suppose if 10 people to 1 stated that 2+2=5, we should accept their thoughts as truth only because they hold strength in numbers. One major reason why this is so severely flawed is because there is an enormous chance that the vast majority of these "scholars" derived their work i.e copy-cats from leading Cold Warriors e.g Robert Conquest. Robert Conquest was basically a Cold Warrior trend-setter that various others were inspired by. Thus, their thoughts are indistinguishable from Conquest's thoughts. It must be stated that Robert Conquest does not have a single credible source for his sensational figures while the scholars that I mentioned Getty, Wheatcroft, and Davies entirely derive their works from archival material; these scholars have not estimated. Rather, they have reported data from archives e.g 681,692 executions in the Purge rather than an "estimated 3 million". Even the anti-Communist "Black Book of Communism" of all works in regard to the Purge correctly states that the Cold-Warrior estimations were incorrect; Getty is cited in a source in their reporting of 681,692 executions. Plus, none of the scholars that I have cited are of the Post-Cold War era; "Origin of the Great Purges" by Getty was released in 1985. R.W Davies authored several works about USSR economy in the 1970s and 1980s and Wheatcroft wrote several articles in "Slavic Review" during 1980s. I am not "cherry-picking" the lowest estimates; I am reporting the facts as the Russian archives present them. There is not a single more reliable source than Russian archives. Accusations of being a "Soviet apologism" merely for reporting what Russian archives say are hollow and lean towards absurd McCarthyistic logic. These labels of "Soviet apologist" are from the western perspective that connote one is playing devil's advocate simply for debunking many of the lies and myths about USSR. From the Communist perspective, you are an apologist for western imperialism. Zvesda
The factor of "tens" in Stalin's death poll is a direct result of tens of years of anticommunist propaganda and Cold War stereotypes, where historical sources and documents were ignored in sake of political goals. Hope wikipedians will find the way to stay away from baised unidentified sources.
Thank you Zvesda for pointing out the falacy of this petit bourgeois Trotskyite conspiracy by decadent western intellectuals to discredit our glorious leader Joseph Stalin. Surely a totalitarian state could not alter its records some time between Stalin’s death and the collapse of the Soviet system. John Keep’s article in Europe-Asia Studies [Wheatcroft and Stalin’s Victims. Vol 51.6 Sept 1999] points out that Wheatcroft’s method for counting Stalin’s victims is deeply flawed, casting grave doubts on accuracy of the number of victims supplied by Wheatcroft.
If we are keeping the new paragraph about poems, what does this mean: "the grant under the theory of literature"? Who is granting what to whom? Does "hrestomatiju" mean "the collection of the best samples of the Georgian literature"? And what does this mean: "Joseph Stalin devoted by R.Eristavi's"? Does it mean Stalin's poem is placed next to Eristavi's poem? I'm not criticizing the paragraph's subject matter, just the translation. Whatever you want to write about Stalin, I only want to make it look as if an American had written it. Art LaPella 19:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, if nobody knows what that paragraph means, would it be OK to remove it? Art LaPella 15:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I combined the two versions and expressed them in natural English on the main article page. Art LaPella 19:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
The two first paragraphs in the first chapter [5] include references "Archer 11" and "Hoober 15", however there are only two sources in the references [6] non of which seem to apply. I think I managed to find who added those references [7], those come from a Senior Research Paper by SteveBob but he did not cite them properly. SteveBob does not seem to be active since this is his only edit. There for I am going to remove them. -- Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð 13:29, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Once wrote:
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
Orwell must have peered into the future and read the Wikipedia article on Stalin. - Drogo Underburrow 04:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
the Marshall was fully rehabilitated by Khuruschev. The evidence against him was fabricated by Heydrich and leaked to Stalin by way of the Czechs. See article on Tukhachevsky. The article was way too pro-Stalin and had to be toned down.--Will314159 01:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Khruschchev never held the office of a General Secretary, since such an office was cancelled after the XXth Party Congress. He was First Secretary up until his forced resignation.
The office of General Secretary was reinstated during the reign of Brezhnev.-- Theocide 02:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Changed place of birth from "Gori, Georgia" to "Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire". There was no such country as "Georgia" at the time of Stalin's birth.-- Theocide 02:33, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Changed the "Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders led to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in Ukraine (see Holodomor), resulting in up to ten million deaths" to "Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders led to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in Ukraine (see Holodomor), Kazakhstan and the Northern Caucasus region resulting in up to ten million deaths" -- Theocide 03:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The part about Stalin's childhood is completely unsatisfactory and consists greatly of hearsay, so tipycal for Radzinsky. I removed the abstract "Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Vissarion often beat his wife and small son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry citation needed.
Another of his childhood friends, Iremashvili, felt that the beatings by Stalin's father gave him a hatred of authority. He also said that anyone with power over others reminded Stalin of his father's cruelty."' so as not to overburden the already humongous text with such doubtful notions.-- Theocide 03:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"Even when speaking in Russian, their Russian teachers mocked Stalin and his classmates because of their Georgian accents. His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants". - I removed the first part. While some Russians DO make fun of Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenian accents, there is no proof that there was such a problem in a (sic!) Church School in Georgia during the end of the XIXth Century.-- Theocide 03:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"Although Stalin later sought to hide his Georgian origins," - Removed this part since it is an extremely doubtful notion. While he rarely spoke Georgian, a Georgian with such a typical accent and look of a Georgian simply couldn't even hope to pass for a Russian.-- Theocide 03:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"In 1901, the Georgian clergyman M. Kelendzheridze wrote an educational book on language arts," - removed the word "reactionary". This term is too loaded to be considered neutral.-- Theocide 03:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"In addition to the small stipend from the scholarship he was also paid for singing in the choir. Although his mother wanted him to be a priest (even after he had become leader of the Soviet Union), he attended seminary not because of any religious vocation, but because it was one of the few educational opportunities available as the Tsarist government of Russia was wary of establishing a university in Georgia" - rewrote the last part to go like "but because of the lack of a university under the Tsarist goverment of Russia". I seriously doubt that whoever wrote the last part can give any sources proving that the Tsarist government was wary of anything of such kind.-- Theocide 03:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Corrected the "Djugashvili", "Djughashvili" and such like so that the name would be the same - "Dzhugashvili" - both for Joseph's father AND for himself. -- Theocide 04:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"His son finally shot himself because of Stalin's incredible harshness toward him, but survived. After this, Stalin said "He can't even shoot straight". Yakov served in the Red Army and was captured by the Germans. They offered to exchange him for a German General, but Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying "A lieutenant is not worth a General"; others credit him with allegedly saying "I have no son," to this offer, and Yakov is said to have died running into an electric fence in the camp where he was being held.
This, however, is the "official report," and to this day his cause of death is unknown. Nonetheless, there are many who believe his death was a suicide. Since many families of the Soviet Union had sons in German camps, Stalin could not have exchanged his son without losing public support. He may have sacrificed his son as a demonstration that he was one with the people". - once again, too many rumours which serve no real purpose since they show no sources for any credible version except the official one. I suggest seriously cutting down on rumours, hearsay and interpretation of actions. -- Theocide 04:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"who died in 1932; she may have committed suicide by shooting herself after a quarrel with Stalin, leaving a suicide note which according to their daughter was "partly personal, partly political". [1]
Officially, she died of an illness, but some rumors claimed that Stalin killed her. With her, he had two children: a son, Vassili, and a daughter, Svetlana." - Same goes for this abstract. Does the author wish to present any and all versions of any event connected to Stalin no matter whether there are facts to back up the version or not? I wonder, if the same author were to be entrusted to write an article on JFK, would he list all possible versions of conspiracies against JFK starting with KGB and cubans and ending with the CIA and mafia? If we don't know what really happened and have serious reasons for doubts, we should write that we don't know what really happened. If there is any other version by any other credible historians, we should name him.Once again, I suggest removing these "some rumours claimed", "may have committed", etc. and stick to the facts. If there are no objections, I'll do it in a couple of days or so.-- Theocide 04:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
After declining Franco-British missions to Moscow in hopes that the USSR would enter a treaty of Polish defense with them,
When did he decline anything of such kind? Any source? According to Ponomarev A.N., an aircraft expert who published his recollection in 1980, he was present during the negotiations between the Franco-British military mission in Moscow and Soviet military presented by Voroshilov. And according to his recollections, Voroshilov stated that he was authorized to sign a mutual defense pact with the Allies, while admiral Draks of the British and general Dumenk of the French (not sure about spelling - hope someone will correct me) stated that they were authorized to begin negotiations but not to sign anything and neither did they have any exact ideas about mutual defense. http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/ponomarev_an/05.html I couldn't find any link in English about the details of the Franco-British military mission though. -- Theocide 04:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
While the discussion is quite interesting, the author of the article seems biased and unwilling to show sources and first-hand information. What were the conditions of a treaty proposed by Bennet? And what are the details of the treaty proposed by Voroshilov? We are given only interpretation, chips and bits of the original proposals and no facts whatsoever. Therefore, I suggest replacing the "After declining Franco-British missions to Moscow in hopes that the USSR would enter a treaty of Polish defense with them" with "After failure of Soviet and Franco-British talks on mutual defense pact in Moscow," because it has a more neutral tone and because the real process of negotiations is too hazy since both sides accuse each other of being the reason for the failure.-- Theocide 08:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The part on WWII pays too much attention to Viktor Suvorov's ideas and supposed plans of the Soviet command prior to WWII. This is just a theory, one of the many.I believe it should be moved from the main body of the article to viktor suvorov article. What is the logic in posting the same kind of information in two articles anyway? Why not just write something along the lines of " Viktor Suvorov in his book M-day states that the Soviet Union was planning an offensive" and remove all further details? -- Theocide 05:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't deny that Suvorov's ideas laid the foundation for a more serious and less biased research of the subject by other authours. But the thing is, I see no reason for repeating the same thing thrice as is it is done in the WWII part:
1. According to a controversial Russian author Viktor Suvorov living in the UK, Stalin expressed in the speech an expectation that the war would be the best opportunity to weaken both the Western nations and Nazi Germany, and make Germany suitable for Sovietization 2. An alternative theory suggested by Viktor Suvorov claims that Stalin had made aggressive preparations from the late 1930s on and was about to invade Germany in summer 1941. Thus, he believes Hitler only managed to forestall Stalin and the German invasion was in essence a pre-emptive strike 3. A controversial theory put forward by Viktor Suvorov asserts that Stalin had been preparing an invasion of Germany while neglecting preparations for defensive warfare, which left Soviet forces vulnerable despite their heavy concentration near the border.
The whole three can be put into one to save space. Besides, constant repeating of virtually the same notion with a bit different wording seems to be senseless and tiresome. I suggest a single mentioning in the beginning of the WWII part, something along the lines of ""According to a controversial Russian author Viktor Suvorov living in the UK, Stalin expressed in the speech an expectation that the war would be the best opportunity to weaken both the Western nations and Nazi Germany, and make Germany suitable for "Sovietization", but eventually these offensive plans made the USSR unprepared for defense, causing big losses during the initial stage of war".
While this abstract: the possible Soviet pre-emptive or aggressive preparations were subject to heated discussion among the post-Soviet Russian military historians throughout the last decade. Some like Edvard Radzinsky (Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives) and Mikhail Meltyukhov believe Stalin was indeed planning an invasion (see Stalin's Missed Chance), while there are still others (M.Gareyev) who reject it. Should be completely removed and replaced with a link to Stalin's Missed Chance, Meltyukhov and Viktor Suvorov. Overburdening of the WWII part with some historical theories looks completely unnecessary, especially when the the main idea has already been conveyed to the reader and the interested party can simply follow the given links for further info. -- Theocide 08:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll keep everyone posted on further improvements. -- Theocide 08:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
On March 5, 1940, Stalin signed an order of execution for more than 25,700 Polish "nationalist, educators and counterrevolutionary" activists in the parts of the Ukraine and Belarus republics that had been annexed from Poland. This event has become known as the Katyn Massacre; over 20,000 were Polish officers. Actually, even according to Polish sources it was Beriya not Stalin who signed it. I changed it to "Beriya signed an order" for now.-- Theocide 08:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there any verifiable source for the story about Papismedov (the Jew who is supposed to have helped Stalin in his early years and was later received at the Kremlin? I can't find one. It sounds like an 'Uncle Joe' fairy tale. If it can't be verified, it should be removed. -- Smerus 16:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Is this sentence correct? It seems 'either' should be replaced with 'neither':
Also, this sentence is terribly stuffy; I can't even discern its meaning without a thesaurus.
Again, can anybody give a definition of the term? I will remove it until the exact definition presented.-- Nixer 13:06, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Why does it say the 18th of dec and not the 21st
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/history/29-12-2005/9457-stalin-0
( Deng 14:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC))
I was a little surprised to see the name change. Was there discussion on this somewhere? In any case, is it even correct to say Stalin spelled his name "Josef" instead of "Joseph"? Would he ever have written his name in Roman script? I'm pretty sure he spelled his name Иосиф.-- Deville ( Talk) 21:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Please note that, beginning with October 1952 (the 19th Congress of CPSU), Stalin's position in the Party was no longer General Secretary but just Secretary of the Central Committee of CPSU. This is the fact noted in most contemporary encyclopedias, as well as in Stalin's obituaries in March 1953. I'm not really sure what exactly happened, but it seems that the position was abolished, then to be restored in September 1953 as the First Secretary. Later Soviet encyclopedias gloss over this little detail, but contemporary newspapers leave no doubt.
There is no doubt of course that Stalin remained the country's dictator between Oct.'52 and March'53 (and he remained the Prime Minister, as well), but it's just a matter of precision and detail. Thanks. ouital77 21:36, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Ultramarine, IMO this passage in the "death toll" section
It is generally agreed by conventional historians that if war casualities, Nazi policy in the occupied territory, famines, prison and labor camp mortality, and repressions are taken into account, the number of deaths that occurred from unnnatural causes under Stalin is in the millions,
is indeed correct. Don't historians agree that it's measured in millions? (it's certainly not thousands or billions, right?)
It's then continued in the following paragraphs and explains that there's a disagreement over how many millions is that - just a few or more than 50.-- Poison sf 16:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Full quote:
There is certainly no agreement on that this is the number found in the archieves. Ultramarine 16:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
So, many do not attempt to claim what is documented in archives -- Poison sf 17:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, Robert Conquest, Steven Rosefielde, and others have posited relatively high estimates (see Table 1). On the other hand, Stephen Wheatcroft and others working from the same sources have put forth lower totals. Both “high” and “low” estimators have bemoaned the lack of solid archival evidence
Constant reverts [11] to a version containing numerous errors, like that Wrecker sensus showed a deficit of only 6 million, when it was 14. Or removing a source showing that Stalin ignored intelligence information regarding the German attack. Please explain. Ultramarine 18:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 14 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a "wrecker's census" with the census takers severely punished.
This is completely untrue. According to the net increase (births minus deaths) of the 1926-1928 period, the USSR population would have risen to 168 million by 1937, not a bloated 176 million. This is a stark exaggeration. Source
Since "the margin of error" with regard to the number of Stalin's victims is virtually impossible to narrow down to a universally accepted figure, various historians have come up with extremely varying ( 15) estimates of the number of victims, from under 10 million to over 50 million deaths.
Mattthew White whose work is cited above is nobody important and his gathering of dubious sources including American imperialist Zbigniew Brzesinski is not worthy of consideration. If famine, executions, and the GULAG are taken into account, then Stalin killed about 3 million. All this data is gathered from Russian archives. The documents in concern are RGAE 1562/329/108, GARF 9401/1/4157, 201-205; and GARF 9414/1/1155, 2-3
Famine source by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies:
Purge and GULAG sourceby J. Arch Getty:
None of the above consist of estimates. They are all recorded facts.
I find it interesting that Zbigniew Brzesinski is considered an imperialist by Zvesda. What exactly about Brzesinski is imperialist? As a member of the Carter Administration (one of the more dovish administrations in U.S. history) his actions seem anti-imperialist to me, especially his role in promoting universal human rights. Zvesda, you smear scholars opposed to your revisionist view with terms like “imperialist” and insist on the accuracy of Soviet era records, despite the fact that these records have clearly been altered. (ex. There are no official Soviet records of Khrushchev’s actions in Ukraine during the 1930s, these records were probably destroyed when Khrushchev assumed power.) I must enquire, Zvesda, are you now, or have you ever been in the pay of either the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation?
The fact is that data from Russia's archives have proved these flatulent estimations of 50 million dead to be utterly false. This must immediately be changed. If I were to ask you to break down these 50 million dead per category, you'd be unable to do so. The three carefully scrutinised parts of Stalin's rule was the famine of 1932-1933 that claimed a documented 2.5 million lives, the GULAG that during peace time had 380,000 deaths of which the vast majority were non-political prisones, and the Yezhovschina during which there were 680,000 executions. Now, tell me how these figures accumulate to 50 million or even to 20 million. I've listed sources above. Zvesda
The "Black Book" alleges that 6 million died from famine, which is an exaggeration as exposed by Wheatcroft and Davies in "Years of Hunger" [ Source]. Additionally, the "Black Book" (correctly) stated that 680,000 were executed during the Purge. It also correctly states that 1 million died in the GULAG. The final result of 20 million dead does not remotely correspond to the sum of these categories. Zvesda
Those estimates have long been discredited. They have proven to have been extremely exaggerative. Zvesda
Once again, it is a fact that these "estimates" do not correspond even remotely to figures from the archives. They have proven to be exaggerative. Zvesda
You still don't understand In Wikipedia, editors arn't supposed to decide what is true, then delete the "false" views. In Wikipedia, we simply report what others say on an issue. It doesn't matter if what they say is true or false, its not our job to judge them. Its only our job to report what the views are. Its a fact that Western historians SAY that Stalin killed people, and its our job to report what they SAY in the article. That's all. Argueing if its "true" is beside the point. Understand? This is not negotiable...its the law of Wikipedia, called NPOV. When you delete material that reports what valid historians SAY, you are being obstructive. Arguing about what is "true" here on this talk page is a waste of time, because that's not the job of Wikipedia editors. Drogo Underburrow 00:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I did not say that Stalin did not kill people. Rather, I submitted a plausable death toll. With questionable statements like, "Western historians generally believe", YOU ARE TAKING A POV. The thoughts of western historians connoted to be infallable are given more emphasis than others. When you use "valid historians", you are taking a POV. According to many conventional historians including J.Arch Getty, Robert Thurston, Stephen Wheatcroft, R.W Davies, Gabor Rittersporn, Mark Tauger, and Viktor Zemskov, these so-called historians' material has been discredited. Yet, the views of these have been omitted from this article.
Famine Source : RGAE 1562/329/108 . This is reported by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies in 2004's "Years of Hunger"
Purge and GULAG source GARF 9401/1/4157, 201-205 for the Purge; GARF 9414/1/1155, 2-3 for GULAG. This was reported by J.Arch Getty in an article that appeared in "Slavic Review" in 1993.
For the famine, there were about 2.5 million deaths. For the purge, there were 680,000 executions. For the GULAG, there were 380,000 deaths during peace time of which at least 75% were common criminals. The death toll can be summed up as roughly 4 million. Therefore, these estimations of tens of millions are INFLATED. They do not correspond to documented material. That is a fact. If any of this is wrong, show facts that are preferrably derived from the archives that say why.
Like I said, prove it. Show documents from the archives that are contrary to what I presented. Spare me of this "so and so estimates" nonesense as material like this is politically-motivated.
Once again, the "Black Book" presents figures for the Purge and GULAG that correspond to what J.Arch Getty and Viktor Zemskov reported in their 1993 article for "Slavic Review". For the famine, the "Black Book" exaggerates the total death toll as shown by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies. So then do 1 million GULAG deaths and 680,000 Purge executions come to a figure of 20 million?
Is it agreed here that our job is not to decide what is true and what is false, but to accurately represent in the article the views of historians, regardless of wether we feel that those views are true or false? Drogo Underburrow 01:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
You are not representing the views of historians manifested by your constant obstruction of my rectifications. This needs to be balanced out by posting an apolitically low death toll and a mainstream western anti-Communist death toll.
In regard to your attempt in trying to prove me wrong about Wheatcroft and Davies's death toll, there was not a registration system in Kazakhstan where an *estimated* 1.5 million died in a SEPARATE famine during 1931-1933. An additional 300,000 died died in the labour camps during the famine which of course irrelevant to the standard population.
Extremely selective material. Ignored is for instance Europe-Asia Studies, September 1996, Vol 48, No 6, p 959-987: Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings, Forced Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s. Steven Rosefielde. It gives around 10 million deaths for some years during the 30s only. And again, no good explanation for ignoring the Black Book of Communism. Again, the role of Wikipedia is not to do research and find the truth, but to report what real researchers think. And their findings certainly vary. Ultramarine 20:53, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
The article now contains numerous gross errors and pov deletions, like that Wrecker sensus showed a deficit of only 6 million, when it was 14. Or removing sourced showing that Stalin ignored intelligence information regarding the German attack. Please explain. Ultramarine 20:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you do not even cite your own sources corretly. Getty: "Turning to executions and custodial deaths in the entire Stalin period, we know that, between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 persons died in the camps of the GULAG. We have data to the effect that some 86,582 people perished in prisons between 1939 and 1951. (We do not yet know exactly how many died in labor colonies.) We also know that, between 1930 and 1952-1953, 786,098 “counter-revolutionaries” were executed (or, according to another source, more than 775,866 persons “on cases of the police” and for “political crimes”). Finally, we know that, from 1932 through 1940, 389,521 peasants died in places of “kulak” resettlement. Adding these figures together would produce a total of a little more than 2.3 million" [16]
Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies best estimate of the number of famine deaths in 1932-1933 is 5.5 to 6.5 millions. [17]
Adding these, your own sources, give a number of 8.5 million killed by Stalin. And this number ignores for example the ethnic minorities killed in deportations. his is ignoring the ethnic minorities killed during and after deportations, like half the Crimean Tartars. Or the several million Germans killed during the evacuation of East Prussia. Ultramarine 21:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you do not even cite your own sources corretly. Getty: "Turning to executions and custodial deaths in the entire Stalin period, we know that, between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 persons died in the camps of the GULAG. We have data to the effect that some 86,582 people perished in prisons between 1939 and 1951. (We do not yet know exactly how many died in labor colonies.) We also know that, between 1930 and 1952-1953, 786,098 “counter-revolutionaries” were executed (or, according to another source, more than 775,866 persons “on cases of the police” and for “political crimes”). Finally, we know that, from 1932 through 1940, 389,521 peasants died in places of “kulak” resettlement. Adding these figures together would produce a total of a little more than 2.3 million" [18]
Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies best estimate of the number of famine deaths in 1932-1933 is 5.5 to 6.5 millions. Your figure of 2.5 is false, that is only the registered deaths. [19]
Adding these, your own sources, give a number of 8.5 million killed by Stalin. And this number ignores for example the ethnic minorities killed in deportations, like half the Crimean Tartars. Or the several million Germans killed during the evacuation of East Prussia. Ultramarine 21:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Read up
this and
this (In Russian, sorry).
It is very helpful for people whose brains are full of propaganda about millions of dead. --
Grafikm
(AutoGRAF)
22:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Some more info here: http://www.uwm.edu/Course/448-343/index4.html (with references to books and all) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of "commonly accepted fact" that Stalin’s purges weakened the army so much, only about 3% of all army officer corps were executed and although slightly more were arrested, most were released before the war like SuperDeng says. You can read this in most books about Stalin that base their arguments on statistical evidence. Take Overy's "Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia" as an example. Now, calling Tukhachevsky brilliant so boldly, simply doesn't make sense. He miserably failed the Polish campaign - the only significant campaign he took part in. The theories of his engineer cronies, who attempted to design military inventions like machines that using magnets would deviate the course of enemy shells, proved to be nothing but childish fantasies. The only things at which Tukhachevky was actually brilliant were the violent supressions of peasant rebellions and planning coup to overthrow his own government. Well, maybe not that much at overthrowing. In short, Ultramarine, it does look like you are pushing your own point of view here. And you know, the fact that someone writes something in some dubious article like the one you sited, doesn't necessarily make this information a universally accepted fact. (NapoleonIII 00:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC))
(NapoleonIII 01:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC))
Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies best estimate of the number of famine deaths in 1932-1933 is 5.5 to 6.5 millions
This incorrectly represents "Years of Hunger" by Wheatcroft and Davies. Pg. 415 explcitly states: Kazakhstan famine: approximate - 1.3-1.5 million Excess deaths in OGPU system: .3 million Registered excess deaths, 1932-1933: 2.9 million
Since there was not a registration system for Kazakhstan, we can not know for sure the number of excess deaths in the region. Davies and Wheatcroft however have inflated the total because according to their half-baked estimate 25% of Kazakhstan's population died while the archives show that 5% of Ukraine's population died. The 1.5 million estimate of Kazakhstan can therefore be discarded and not be part of the death toll. The Russian archives explcitly state that there were 1.5 million excess deaths in Ukraine, 300,000 in the North Caucusus, and 400,000 in the Volga. With these factual documents available to us, any further estimates including those provided by Wheatcroft and Davies are completely worthless. The 1932-1933 famine therefore resulted in no higher than 2.2 million deaths. Add the 1 million deaths in the GULAG as reported by J.Arch Getty and the 800,000 executions in the course of 1930-1953, the death toll under Stalin according to archival documents amounts to about 4.5 million. I am going to add this facts to accompany the absurd "estimated" death tolls. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.111.74.89 ( talk • contribs) .
Can someone enlighten me as to exactly what piece of text in the article you guys are arguing about? I mean, presumably you are arguing over some particular piece of text, aren't you? Gatoclass 13:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Contradicted by its own reference, Revisionists vs. Anti Soviets, which clearly states 14 million deaths, yet inexplicably reverted to 6 million! Ultramarine 13:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, obviously the 6 million figure is contradicted by its own reference. Howver, looking at the Wheatcroft/Davies spreadsheet someone provided above from Years of Hunger, that spreadsheet says the population in 1926 was only 139 million, not 147 million, and that it had grown to 153 million by '37 (not 163 million). That spreadsheet also gives a total figure for excess deaths in '32-'33 as 2.52 million.
But then your reference in 2) below quotes the same source as estimating total deaths from the famine as 6 million out of a total population of about 140 million at the time, which appears to be the more definitive answer. So I guess they must have had some additional calculations to come up with the larger figure, which are not shown in the spreadsheet.
As for the quoted reference which says that The proof came with the 1937 census, which came up with a population (163-164 million) 14 million less than what the government had projected (a 3 million [2%] per year increase from the 1926 figure of 147 million - I note there is no actual source given for these numbers. And since they directly contradict the population estimates given in the Wheatcroft/Davies study, and are also it seems using a much cruder method of counting, I think they should probably be discounted, don't you?
So I think 6 million is probably the most reliable figure. Gatoclass 15:05, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Firstly, I haven't actually seen anything to indicate that these are the correct census figures. All I have is a webpage with these figures quoted. What is the actual source? Do you have something a bit more definitive?
Secondly, Wheatcroft/Davies have come up with very different population figures in their thorough study. So not only is the 14 million figure itself only a crude estimate, but the numbers on which this 14 million is based are themselves contradicted by experts in the field. So however the paragraph in question is phrased, I don't think it should be suggesting that 14 million is the correct number, which is what the paragraph is doing now. I think the six million figure should probably be emphasized, with perhaps the 14 million referred to as an outside estimate. Gatoclass 15:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
I thought the paragraph in question was meant to be about the famine.
But if we are talking about the total deaths under Stalin, hasn't that already been covered in the section? I mean, at the end it says the numbers vary hugely, from everything between one million and 50 million. So, I'm still not exactly sure what everyone is getting so excited about here. Aren't both sides already represented in this section? Gatoclass 16:05, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I agree with that. In fact I just started a new heading suggesting much the same thing. Gatoclass 16:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
First, for example the figures of several tens of millions killed during Stalin's regime mentioned here, [25], do not include "Nazi policy in the occupied territory" or "war casualities". Second, misleading descirption. The argued source for <700,000 executed, one among many, states "Turning to executions and custodial deaths in the entire Stalin period, we know that, between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 persons died in the camps of the GULAG. We have data to the effect that some 86,582 people perished in prisons between 1939 and 1951. (We do not yet know exactly how many died in labor colonies.) We also know that, between 1930 and 1952-1953, 786,098 “counter-revolutionaries” were executed (or, according to another source, more than 775,866 persons “on cases of the police” and for “political crimes”). Finally, we know that, from 1932 through 1940, 389,521 peasants died in places of “kulak” resettlement. Adding these figures together would produce a total of a little more than 2.3 million" [26] This exludues for example the famine, 6 million deaths according the particular source insisted on, [27]. Nor do these figures include those killed by deportations, like Crimean Tartars. Or German civilians killed for example during the Evacuation of East Prussia. Ultramarine 13:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
To be honest, I have quite a problem with this paragraph anyhow. Why should "war casualties", and "Nazi policy in the occupied territory" be lumped together with Stalin's victims? Also, I'm not sure why the figure of 700,000 political victims is being quoted here. I mean, what exactly is the point of this paragraph supposed to be? It's not at all clear. Gatoclass 15:05, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay so what your saying Poison is you want the political victims to be included in this paragraph to emphasize that not all these fatalities can be attributed to Stalin, is that right? I can see your point, my problem is with the paragraph as a whole as it has no obvious point. Is it supposed to be emphasizing the shortcomings of Stalin's regime? If so, it doesn't do that very well. What has Stalin to do with "war casualties" and "Nazi policies"? They were not his fault, so why bother mentioning them? The whole paragraph needs to be either rewritten, or tossed out. Gatoclass 15:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
The introduction attributes the victory in WWII to Stalin, but ignores his massive denial of the intelligence warning of the German attack. [28] Or his killing of the most experienced military officers, often cited as another factor for the enormous initial military defeats [29] [30] Ultramarine 13:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
I didn't see any attribution of victory in WWII to Stalin in the introduction. All it says is A hard-won victory in World War II (the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45) was made possible in part through the capacity for production that was the outcome of industrialization. I read that as meaning victory over the Germans on the Russian Front, not victory in WWII. If you think the paragraph is ambiguous, maybe it needs to be rephrased. Gatoclass 15:05, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, the most contentious section seems to be the one entitled (from memory) "Number of repressed" (which itself is kind of an odd title).
It seems to me the whole thing probably should be rewritten at this point, since most of it is obviously problematic.
I think maybe the best way to go about it is to break down the section under various smaller headings, listing each of the main causes of death and the range of estimates for each cause. That should then be followed up by a paragraph covering the other estimates for total victims (since some estimates appear to be overall totals rather than a breakdown).
That way we cover all bases, and everyone is happy.
So, what could the subheadings be? There is the 32-33 famine, obviously. There are the political victims. Maybe the Great Purge. What else? Gatoclass 16:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it's not exactly straightforward. Maybe some of them could be amalgamated. Really it's just a matter of digging up the various sources and putting it all together in some sort of comprehensible package. I'm just not sure I can find the time to do this right now. Gatoclass 16:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Why is again obvious errors like the 6 million figure contradicted by its own reference reverted to? Please explain. See Neutrality and factual accuracy above. Ultramarine 20:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
My thoughts on that section:
He is listed as having absolute pitch. Is there any source for this?-- Blackfield 13:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
(Moved from SuperDeng's talk page.)
Hello. Why are you reverting obvious factual errors? Ultramarine 20:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
But again, the text you reverted to had this as a source. Are saying that this information is incorrect? Then the whole paragraph should be removed. Ultramarine 20:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
SuperDeng, please explain why you have deleted sourced material: [33] Ultramarine 21:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
This is the bigest problem with POW pushers like you even when qouteing your own sources you fail to see the details now let us see what you say :"The purging of the army, meanwhile, saw about 35,000 military officers shot or imprisoned." You do not see the word imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned So there is no way in hell that you can uderstand that when the war broke out that all except 8 thousand were back and you still do not see the big picture which was that the army grew from 1.8 million to 5.4 million between 1939 and 1941 but the officer corp did not grow in the same rate this is what you and your POW pushing mind do not see and can not see. ( Deng 21:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC))
SuperDeng, this issue regarding these supposed census figures was already extensively discussed on this Talk page under the heading "Neutrality and Factual Accuracy" subheading "1" above. We all agreed that the piece of text quoted not only contradicts itself, but is also contradicted by other sources, unreferenced, and by and large redundant to the overall picture. And if you think this block of text about census figures is helping to put Stalin in a better light, I must respectfully disagree. It is only serving to obfuscate.
I suggest you read the talk section I quoted above so you understand the reasons for deleting that paragraph. In the meantime I've restored my compromise edit which we had all agreed upon at that point. Regards, Gatoclass 06:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
You remove the number 4 million because it does not fit with your agenda. Not at all. And you're quite mistaken if you think "my agenda" is to exaggerate Stalin's crimes. I'm basically just trying to help find a consensus.
I'm not aware of removing a number of 4 million at all, but if I did, it was purely by accident. As far as I'm aware, the lowest estimate for the famine alone which has been put forward by historians is 6 million. Add a couple million more for purges and deportations etc and you come up with a number somewhat short of ten million.
I'll quote you from the summary of different sources given at White's webpage (lower estimates only):
And from the Lower Numbers school:
Nove, Alec ("Victims of Stalinism: How Many?" in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 "surplus deaths" during the 1930s.
Cited in Nove:
Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
Tsaplin, V.V. ("Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody" 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
Dugin, A. ("Stalinizm: legendy i fakty" 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
- So it appears that even most of the lower numbers school give an estimate of around 8 million for the '30's alone. To that you can add a few more for the rest of his rule. So I didn't think "under ten million" is an unreasonable estimate.
"Most agree that the famine of 1932-33 was the worst period, with estimates of the toll in this case ranging from 6 million to 20 million." Is a plain and absolut lie the lowest number is around 2.5 million and not 6.( Deng 17:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC))
I took a careful look at the spreadsheet from Years of Hunger you quoted and the number given there for the famine is indeed around 2.5 million. But then Ultramarine provided an additional quote from the same source which put the total at "between 5.5 and 6.5 million". So naturally I assume there are additional estimates in that book over and above the spreadsheet data that caused them to arrive at the higer figure. Gatoclass 04:28, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
The current edit war should not be called "vandalism". I will let others decide which editor is more guilty of POV pushing, but neither is a vandal. Wikipedia uses the word "vandalism" mainly to mean a silly edit like this one, not arguing over how many million died because of Stalin. Here is a quote from how the Wikipedia:Vandalism policy defines vandalism:
NPOV violations
The neutral point of view is a difficult policy for many of us to understand, and even Wikipedia veterans occasionally accidentally introduce material which is non-ideal from an NPOV perspective. Indeed, we are all blinded by our beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. While regrettable, this is not vandalism.
Bold Edits
Wikipedians often make sweeping changes to articles in order to improve them — most of us aim to be bold when updating articles. While having large chunks of text you've written deleted, moved to the talk page, or substantially rewritten can sometimes feel like vandalism, it should not be confused with vandalism.
Mistakes
Sometimes, users will insert content into an article that is not necessarily accurate, in the belief that it is. By doing so in good faith, they are trying to contribute to the encyclopedia and improve it. If you believe that there is inaccurate information in an article, ensure that it is, and/or discuss its factuality with the user who has submitted it.
Bullying or Stubbornness
Some users cannot come to agreement with others who are willing to talk to them on an article's talk page, and repeatedly make changes opposed by everyone else. This is a matter of regret — you may wish to see our dispute resolution pages to get help. However, it is not vandalism.
Art LaPella 23:03, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
ok, let's calm down and get some good numbers supported by notable and/or reliable sources. Conquest says on the subject:
The motive for suppressing the census and the census-takers is reasonably clear. A figure of about 170 million had featured in official speeches and estimates for several years, a symbolic representation of Molotov's boast in January 1935 that 'the gigantic growth of population shows the living forces of Soviet construction'.5
Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (University of Alberta Press, 1986).
http://www.ditext.com/conquest/16.html
So, according to Conquest, the "Party Line" figure was "about 170 millions". This is more or less in aggreement with the note in the text disputed by Ultramarine that the census showed "6 millions less than what was projected". Very roughly 163+6 and 170 almost match, at least there's no drastic difference.
And Conquest, allthough I don't value him highly myself, is at least considered a prominent scholar. The 14 millions figure on the other hand is taken from some obscure site. Actually 14 is not the limit. On another obscure site I read that the projected figure was 193 (!), which gives 30 millions difference.
But, admittedly, that is not all. According to one Russian source I've read today (though it's to obscure and not trustworthy enough to be a good reference), these super-high projections that give 14 millions or more deficit are based on an uncautious speech by Stalin where he claimed that the Soviet population was growing by 3 millions a year "adding a Findland's population each year". This was based on very optimistic assumptions plus trademark Soviet self-congratulatory hurray-propaganda. In particular, it seems that these estimates were based on much lower adolescent mortality (from diseases) rates than what have actually been accompllshed by Soviet medicine at that moment.
One optimistic assumption that population growth predictions probably took is that the "weird" trend - birth rate surge that took place in exactly around 1926 will continue in 1930s. But this didn't happen, it almost immediately dropped from 50 down to 30 births (tremendous fall) and I don't think that any Soviet policies account 100% for that, because such rates are not normal for modern ubranized population, it's "third world population expolosion rates". Most serious sources note that education and employement of women and urbanization account for this demographic turnaround and that late 1920s birth rate was the last gasp of "old rural society birth rates" and that the change mirrors similar changes in other urbanizing countries. (See interesting graph in "Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution" by Robert C. Allen on google books (type "social breakdown resulted in millions of civilian deaths first from typhus" in the search term field and it will give the necessary page)
So there's no doubt that the falling fertility because of hard life and urbanization account for a lot from "population deficit". It would be nice to find a good source for the "3 millions accounted for by birth that didn't take place" claim. -- Poison sf 19:49, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
The total, in the lower projections made over previous years by Soviet statisticians, and on the estimates of modern demographers, should have been about 177,300,000. Another, rougher approach is to take the estimated population of 1 January 1930 (157,600,000)8 and add to it Stalin's statement in 1935 that 'the annual increase in population is about three million'.9 This too gives a figure of 178,600,000, very near our other projection. The Second Five Year Plan had also provided for a population of 180.7 million for the beginning of 1938,10 which also implies between 177 and 178 in 1937.
I don't see the point in haggling over census numbers. We are not supposed to include original research in articles. The idea is rather to report the estimates that scholars in the field have reported. So all we really need to do is collect the data from as many relevant sources we can find and summarize them in an appropriate way. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to do. Gatoclass 04:58, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
That is the Problem Ultramarine removes real sources paragraphs and adds pur pushing. For example he removed this line here which has been sources by not one real source but with 2.
Also compering the paragraph that he has removed with the paragraph he has added proves that it is pow pushing.
This is what keep geting removed. This paragraph has existed for a very long time before Ultramarine came and started the POW Camaping.
How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed because the main historical source for such estimations is demographic statistics, with uncertainty about what is an "unnatural cause" and how Stalin himself was responsible. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 6 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a " wrecker's census" with the census takers severely punished. A census was taken again in 1939, but its published figure of 170 million has been generally attributed directly to the decision of Stalin. [3] Note that the figure of 6 million does not have to imply 6 million additional deaths, since as many as 3 million may be births that never took place due to reduced fertility and choice. Note also that these figures ignore the death toll from the early and late years of Stalin's regime.
And this is what he has added
In attempting to collate the total number of victims of the Soviet regime under Stalin's leadership, historians have employed a wide variety of different methodologies and come up with a correspondingly wide range of results ( [42]) . Estimates of excess deaths under Stalin range from less than ten million to fifty million or more. Most agree that the famine of 1932-33 was the worst period, with estimates of the toll in this case ranging from 6 million to 20 million. There is still disagreement however over whether the famine was deliberately engineered by the Soviet leadership, or simply a consequence of failed planning.
One can see that they are totally diffrent.
For example the origianl paragraph has this line which is supported and sourced by logic
And he added this unsourced and pure POW pushing line.
Not only did Ultrmarine remove real info and replace it with absolut POW pushing he also added misinformation in the form of this line
"There is still disagreement however over whether the famine was deliberately engineered by the Soviet leadership, or simply a consequence of failed planning."
And the refusal to discuss this the many many times it has been mentioned before just adds to the case that it is POW pushing ( Deng 09:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC))
Answer the question and do not forget for one second that the article was fine before you came. The only thing that contradictis itself is you who refuses to answer any questions and refers to a home made internet page with no burden of proof what so ever in any form what so ever. Answer the questions which have been asked in such detail above. You have been blocked many times for this type of behaviour. You refuse to answer the questions at hand and refuse to discuss the points pointed out. The version given has been sourced by real books and not some home made internet page that can be made by anyone so answer the questions. And the fact remains you keep on removeing sourced info for example this paragraph here keep gette removed by you even though it has been sourced by a real professor who has written a real book written by
Richard Overy
Maybe Deng is right that the lower number should be 4 million, not "under ten million".
From White's summary of sources:
Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
If total excess deaths between 26 and 39 were "likely 3.5 million", then this period covers the worst of Stalin's rule and this source would probably not add too many more for the rest. Also, Deng says the official figure is around 4 million and he may be right about that, I'm not sure. How about if we say the figure ranges from "under five million to fifty million or more"? That might be a more accurate description of the various sources, and it might have the additional benefit of ending this rather fruitless dispute. Gatoclass 11:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
I personally don't have a source which says there were less than five million deaths under Stalin. However, as I already said, most sources agree that the period before 1939, which included the 32-33 famine and the great purge, was the worst in terms of death toll, and we have a source who gives an estimated 3.5 million excess deaths total for the period up until 1939. Presumably that same source would have a correspondingly low count for the rest of Stalin's reign, therefore I don't think "under five million" would be an unreasonable estimate.
Deng also says official records show no more than 4 million excess deaths in this period. I'm still waiting for him to clarify the source, but assuming he does have a credible source then that would confirm under five million as the low figure. Gatoclass 09:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
The problem is obvoius humans stand diffrently on the political scales and this will ofcurse flavour how they see and act in the world. So how do we solve it? Well we can either keep on yelling at each other and by doing so nullify each other which wont give or do shit or we can try to work togheter. Now how do we look beyond politcal thinking. Well it is quite simple, when ever comeing across a political hot potato that stalin and the death toll under him is then one should try just to give absolute truths and real facts. I will re write the death toll in some days and some other small parts hopefully tomorrow in this manner and hopefully it is something that most people or atleast those people who look beyond political ideology can accept. ( Deng 01:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC))
Does the rumor have any factual basis or is just a bunch of nonsense. If it came to be true; however, it could have enormous remifications. What do you people think?
-I came across an interesting argument awhile ago: His real name is Joseph David Dhugashvili. This is an somewhat Jewish name when you -break it down. Joseph and David are obviously Jewish. Dhuga can be translated to "Jew". Shvili translates to "son of". One could -translate Stalin's true name to be "Joseph David Jewison". It probably merits further research before you come to any conclusions -though... -LaoTze
I have read in a historical book that farmers starved because of the collvising of farms which hurt the whole production thing and because they in revenge destroyed and hid food to get back.
Emphasis on the latter part of that first remark, indeed ("and because"). Too often I don't see "history accounts" take this into account - even pro-collectivization accounts, too. Darth Sidious 07:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Ultramarine, in answer to your request above about sources for an "under five million" figure, I resubmit your own post from prior discussion on this page:
Unfortunately, you do not even cite your own sources corretly. Getty: "Turning to executions and custodial deaths in the entire Stalin period, we know that, between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 persons died in the camps of the GULAG. We have data to the effect that some 86,582 people perished in prisons between 1939 and 1951. (We do not yet know exactly how many died in labor colonies.) We also know that, between 1930 and 1952-1953, 786,098 “counter-revolutionaries” were executed (or, according to another source, more than 775,866 persons “on cases of the police” and for “political crimes”). Finally, we know that, from 1932 through 1940, 389,521 peasants died in places of “kulak” resettlement. Adding these figures together would produce a total of a little more than 2.3 million"[18]
So - Getty estimates 2.3 million for excess deaths between 34 and 53. Now if we add Ponton's estimate also given above of 3.5 million deaths between 24 and 39, we come up with only 5.8 million deaths, TOTAL - and that includes overlapping of the years 34-39. So I think five million would probably be a fairly accurate assessment of the lowest estimate. Certainly "under six million" would cover it. Gatoclass 03:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, of course Getty excludes the famine. It occurred in 32-33 and his count starts from 1934. The point is that we already have Ponton's estimate of 3.5 million for ALL excess deaths between 24 and 39 - that INCLUDES the famine and everything else that happened in that period. And Getty is saying another 2.3 million from 34 on. Now if you add those two figures you come up with a total figure of 5.8 million. But in fact the two periods overlap, so really the estimate between these two sources would be lower.
As for deportations, I don't know what the lowest estimate of the death toll is there but I think I've read as low as a couple of hundred thousand. As for POW's and non-Soviet citizens, one source gives 580,000 total POW deaths and another gives 1.1 million Germans who died during population transfers or fleeing the Red Army during and after the war.
If you add them to the 5.8 million figure you still only get 7.68 million total. But then it's highly questionable just how many POW's and non-Soviet citizens died as a direct result of Stalin's policies, and how many of them died simply as a result of hardship or as a result of Red Army actions at the local level during and immediately following the war. actions and abuses, not the result of Stalin's policies.
And finally it's not clear to me whether Getty's figures for Gulag deaths also include German POW's in those camps. But if so that would be a case of double counting.
But if we suppose (somewhat generously I would think) that regime neglect or incompetence is responsible for half the non-Soviet deaths, then you've got a low figure of roughly 7 million total victims of Stalin's rule. Gatoclass 10:48, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
The number of POW should not be posted in this article. They came to inslave and exterminate the soviets and they started the war
That doesn't matter. POW's are still the responsibility of the government in question, whether or not you think they didn't deserve any better is irrelevant. Those who died as a direct result of the regime's neglect should therefore still be counted. And my number is actually lower than yours, I quoted a source above which gives a total of 580,000 POW deaths for the war.
I've just been looking into Soviet deportations and it appears the archives show around 2.5 million total. I don't have figures for the death toll but assuming a third would give another 800,000 - minus the kulaks already counted by Getty gives about 400,000.
So it's: Ponton: 3.5 million excess death total between 24-39; Getty: 2.3 million excess deaths from Gulags, kulak deportation and executions from 34-53; 400,000 from other deportations; 580,000 POW deaths; 1.1 million German deaths from population transfer;
I think that would cover just about everything, wouldn't it? That would give a total figure of 7.88 million. Of course, maybe half or more of the POW's and German civilians probably died of hardship rather than Stalin's policies - so that would leave about 7 million as the minimum number, wouldn't it? Gatoclass 11:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Lots of speculation and original research, adding researcher who have probably have not used similar methodologies.
Yes, I'm aware that some of my figures are speculative, I'm just trying to find a figure that we can all agree on right now in the absence of a definitive overall figure on the low side.
As for "adding researchers who have probably not used similar methodologies", I agree it's not ideal but in the absence of an overall figure from these sources we have little choice but to add the available estimates for different periods/events in order to come up with an overall low.
Personally though, I must say I'd prefer just to go back to the "under ten million" figure. I was satisfied with that number myself, it was Deng who argued it should be much lower, and I've been trying to look at the available evidence to see if it would be possible to accomodate his view. But even counting the lows from various researchers, and adding some speculative adjustments of my own, I'm still coming up with a figure of around 7 million. So I think a return to "under ten million" is probably warranted at this stage. If we can find more definitive numbers down the track, we can change the figure to suit. What say you? Gatoclass 12:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but what is the breakdown of that 4 million figure Deng? I don't think those studies cover every category of potential victim, do they? Gatoclass 18:19, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
It's not quite as simple as that Deng. At Wiki we have a responsibility to quote the range given by reliable sources, and part of the definition of reliable sources is that they are people qualified in the field. So even if you and I might disagree with these sources, they still have a right to appear here. RJ Rummel is the real "big numbers" man and he estimates deaths under Stalin to be in excess of fifty million. I happen to think that the guy is a shonk, but because he is a Professor Emeritus of History his estimations have a right to be quoted.
Apart from that though, on second thought I think you may have a point. If there is a reliable source that definitively states that excess deaths under Stalin amounted to no more than four million, then that figure also has a right to be quoted here, even if the author apparently doesn't take into account all the categories outlined by Ultramarine. After all, it's not for us to second guess the source and decide he didn't know about these other categories, and then add some extra numbers to make up for it. As Ultra himself frequently points out, "no original research".
So if you can give me a link to a reliable source that definitively states no more than four million excess deaths under Stalin, I would be inclined to accept that as a legitimate figure for the low. Gatoclass 18:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
The article quotes books as references, but what I'd like to see are actual quotes from these books so I know exactly what they said. Gatoclass 19:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm moving the article back to Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin is far more common than Josef Stalin, the results are in:
Google:
Joseph Stalin: 1,420,000
Josef Stalin: 715,000
Yahoo:
Joseph Stalin: 676,000
Josef Stalin: 390,000
And I don't think I have to tell you that it is Wikipedia policy to use the most common name.
Jareand
19:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
SuperDeng has given this as a source: [48]. I can find nothing there to support it. Ultramarine 20:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I gave it to make a point that Inrnet sources are carp see the pop number for 1939 would mean that there was no famine and many less people died. Real books have a burden of proof. I know you like to remove sources and then go to other pages and then complain that other people remove sources. So lets cut the crap I have used real books no less then 5 to prove you and your obscure out of date home made internet pages wrong, Quoteing itnrnet pages that have no burden of proof what so ever is just wrong like you yourself have pointed out in the freedom house areticle but when it comes to stalin then any home made internet page is just fine. And you refusall to talk on the discussion page and answer the many many many posts made gives a strong indicator that you are not intressted in a correct version only in a rightwing one ( Deng 21:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC))
You have still not given any source for that less than 1 million killed. Why do you again revert to a version with this link and claim that less than 1 million died? Ultramarine 21:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I think there is a confusion and
telephone game with "1 mln deaths". AFAIR this number refers to the number of executions officially counted in NKVD/KGB archives opened since 1992. 17:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I quote this "During the early 1930s Stalin conceived the idea of having informants. An informant was anyone who reported others to the KGB. Informants were everywhere. Their main task was to report suspected anti-government activities."
This sounds more like speculation and POV. How does one substantiate "Informants were everywhere." Where is the evidence of Stalin conceiving the idea to have informants? Also, the proper name was the NKVD and not KGB (which we should know was post-Stalin).
Alive beginning 1923 - 137
Born 1923-53 ---------- 174
Annexed 1939-45 ----- 20
Total Population ----- 331
Died Natural Deaths ----(98) 30%
Died WW2 ---------- (27) 8%
Died Gulag-Shot -------- (8) 2%- only 1/3 of these political prisoners-rest criminals
Died Famine 1932-33 ----- (7) 2%
Alive end 1953 -- --------191 58%
Summary: 1923-53--Executed 1.5million; imprisoned or in Gulag 30 Million of whom 5 million died; deported 7.5 million of whom 1.8 million died. The 7.0 million famine deaths are listed separately since they are a controversial topic. The war dead includes 2.3 million in the territory annexed from Poland, these losses are usually considered Polish by historians outside of the former Soviet Union.
SOURCES:
Andreev, EM, et al, Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922-1991. Moscow, Nauka, 1993.
ISBN
5-02-013479-1
Vadim Erlikman. Poteri narodonaseleniia v XX veke : spravochnik. Moscow 2004.
ISBN
5931651071
--
Woogie10w
12:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Well I don't know why you've suddenly decided to cheer Woogie's contribution here Deng since he's giving a minimum figure of 7.5 million attributable to Stalin which is far higher than the claims you've been making up to now. And that's not counting the famine figures.
In fact I'm afraid I have to say that the more you post here, the more incoherent and contradictory your arguments appear to be. I really have no idea anymore what point you are trying to make, apart from disagreeing with anything Ultramarine says. Gatoclass 08:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, it's not original research, fine.
The question is however, whether this is the lowest reliable estimate for excess deaths under Stalin. I mean, you've got an estimate here of 7.5 million excess deaths, not including the famine. I'd describe this as one of the more credible, mid-range estimates. However, what we are trying to establish is the low, not the likely middle. Deng says the low is "under one million". I'd be happy with either "under five million" or "under ten million", but Deng has been insisting it's either four million or one million, depending on what mood he's in I guess. Gatoclass 10:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but that's partly my point. Not all sources would count the famine as being attributable to Stalin at all. And some of them have much lower figures for the famine anyhow.
Personally, I still think "under ten million" would probably suffice as a figure for the overall low unless and until we can get more definitive figures from somewhere. But try telling Deng that. Gatoclass 10:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, thanks for that excellent link Woogie. Seems that at last we have a definitive low for the total number killed by Stalin both deliberately and through negligence (ie the famine). Wheatcroft gives a figure of 3 million deliberately killed under Stalin, from all categories, plus 2.75-3 million from the 32-33 famine.
Therefore I think we can safely say we have a low of six million. Do you agree Woogie? Gatoclass 13:28, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
My suggestion is to summarize the views and statistics of the low figures and the high figures schools, listing the sources without taking sides. The articles in Slavic Review present both sides of the argument. The task of Wikipedia should be to let the readers know that there are estimates that range from 2 to 20 million and to explain why there are differences of opinion. This is a complicated and controversial topic that needs be covered from a neural POV.-- Woogie10w 14:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Well I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with your assessment of Rummel. As I've said before, I think the guy is a fraud. His numbers for communist states are far greater than ANYONE else's, and his numbers for US/Western states are by contrast ludicrously tiny. He relies totally on secondary sources and his methods appear to be entirely arbitrary. I'm suprised he hasn't been exposed as a fraud yet, but I think his time will come. Gatoclass 21:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Let me give a couple of examples. He estimates that over 13 million Russians were victims of Stalinist democide during the war. That means he believes that two thirds of total Russian casualties during the war were deliberately caused by Stalin. The Germans, in spite of the fact that they initiated the war and fought it with total ruthlessness, are apparently only responsible for one third of total Russian casualties.
How anyone could possibly conclude that, in the middle of a desperate war for survival, Stalin would want to kill twice as many of his own people as the enemy, I cannot imagine. But I consider this figure of his, like so many others, to be totally ludicrous.
Now compare that wildly inflated figure above to his estimate of US democide in Vietnam. Rummel estimates that in a decade of war, the US caused only 800 excess deaths due to indiscriminate shelling and bombing. That's right, 800. In ten years. That is in spite of the fact that the US expended more ordnance in Vietnam than had been expended in every war in history combined up until that point, and that estimates commonly put the civilian death toll in 'Nam at around 2 million (Rummel's estimate of civilian dead, BTW, is only 360,000).
Then there is his "methodology". Just as an example, go to his website and look at Table 6.1B. From lines 321-326, he lists the number of people estimated killed by the Vietnamese communists in the 1956 uprising. He cites four sources, which give estimates of 2000, 6000, 6000 and 10-15,000 respectively. He then extrapolates from his four sources to produce his own estimate of 13,000. What he has done is completely discard three of his four sources, then taken the midpoint of the highest estmate of 10-15,000, and rounded it up to 13,000.
You can find numerous examples of this kind of shoddy methodology in his figures. He appears to employ totally arbitrary methods to come up with the results he wants. Gatoclass 11:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Rummel cites the various sources and lists their estimates, then he makes an estimate of him own
readers are given the facts to make their own judgements.
In the case of Vietnam it was not US policy target civilians per se, however the left in the US made a big deal about the bombing during the war, Jane Fonda, Kerry et al., this was a time of real serious politics. In Cambodia however there was carpet bombing that caused 60,000 Democides according to Rumell. Chapter 13 of Statistics of Democide is entitled "Death by US Bombing". --
Woogie10w
12:48, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Wow, there's way to much templates on this talk page, someone should add a "too many templates" template. :p Ok, enough of uncyclopedia.
I've tried to find a source for him "almost walking out" of Yalta, but only found documents that say otherwise. From Roosevelt and the Russians by Stettinius:
-- Dandin1 18:47, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
"It is generally agreed by conventional historians that if famines, prison and labor camp mortality, and repressions are taken into account, the number of deaths that occurred from unnnatural causes under Stalin is in the millions. In attempting to collate the total number of victims of the Soviet regime under Stalin's leadership, historians have employed a wide variety of different methodologies and come up with a correspondingly wide range of results. Different researchers have claimed support for their numbers using official records in Moscow, some of which were opened after the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Estimates of the number of victims range from less than five million to fifty million or more. [54] [55] [56]" Can this find acceptance? Except by Deng of course, but he is blocked again for a few days. I would like the exact source for an article or book that states less than five million, otherwise less than ten would be better. Regarding fifty millions, Wheatcroft mentions a more recent source than Rummel stating this in Appendix 3. Ultramarine 20:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I think you've misread that Appendix. Wheatcroft is not arguing for a figure of 20 million - he's simply saying that that would have been an accurate representation of the normally accepted figure at a particular time. What he's basically saying is that Davies misrepresented the history of research in this area.
Wheatcroft doesn't give a figure of total excess deaths due to the regime in that Appendix, but in other articles in that series he appears to clearly give a figure of 3 million direct victims and 2.75-3 million victims of the 32-33 famine. But I do note that in the Appendix you quote he appears to argue that the famine was just that, a famine caused by grain shortage, not something engineered by the regime. If that is Wheatcroft's belief, then I guess we have a low figure of 3 million total from Wheatcroft. Gatoclass 18:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
He's talking about what would have been an accurate statement by Davies about the consensus amongst historians at the time. This is not a reference to Wheatcroft's own estimate of excess deaths. Wheatcroft doesn't give his own estimate in that particular article.
However, he appeared to give his own definitive estimates in other articles from that series which I read the other day. I can't recall now which ones you can find those estimates in, but they are the articles pertaining to those particular issues.
Edit: Okay, here's his estimate for total killed in repressions, excluding famine. This one you can find in the essay entitled The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45:
The Stalinist regime was consequently responsible for about a million purposive killings, and through its criminal neglect and irresponsibility it was probably responsible for the premature deaths of about another two million more victims amongst the repressed population, i.e. in the camps, colonies, prisons, exile, in transit and in the POW camps for Germans.
So Wheatcroft's estimate for total excess deaths in all categories, excluding famine, is 3 million. Still looking up the famine figure, watch this space...
Edit: I'm sure I found a total figure of 3 million deaths from famine in one of the later articles, but in his 1990 article entitled More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930's, Wheatcroft gives an estimate of 3.75-4 million deaths from the famine, I quote:
If we were to accept a normal level of mortality as 19.7 per thousand, the elevation in mortality in 1933 would be equivalent to 2.9 million, and additional losses could be added for the higher than normal mortality in 1932 which would add another 0.1 million, ie 3 million excesss death in all...Even if we accept that the scale of mortality in the omitted categories was much higher than the mortality in the part of the country covered by these registration figures, it seems unlikely to me that we would be able to find more than 1 or at most 2 million extra deaths to add to 2.75 to 3 million calculated above.
So, 3 million from repression plus 3.75-4 million from famine, gives a total for Wheatcroft of 6.75-7 million total victims of Stalin. So unless or until I can find a smaller figure I guess "under 7 million" would be our low estimate at this stage. Gatoclass 09:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I seem to remember that from earlier in the discussion. although I don't recall the exact context. Oh well, I guess we can say "under ten million" then. Gatoclass 15:21, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Take a peek at Ann Appelbaums book Gulag- It will help you. She puts the death toll at least 2.7 million-- Woogie10w 16:11, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Again, Woogie, we're not looking for the likely figure - we're just looking for the lowest figure available, so we can provide a range between the high and low. Gatoclass 04:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Then you need to understand how the low and high figures are derived and explain that to the readers in clear and concise English. People may questions.-- Woogie10w 09:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think that would be appropriate. Gatoclass 10:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The "low" and "high" schools engaged in a debate prior to the fall of communism because official data was not availiable. Today we know the number of executions was 1 million, the deaths in the Gulag are estimated to be at least 2.7 million by Ann Appelbaum a well known and respected historian. Then there is the issue of those people who were deported( Estonians, Poles, Chechens ect) They are not listed in the Gulag figures and those losses are 1.8 million out of 8 million deported according to sources cited by Erlikman. Then there is the issue of famine losses. The demographic evidence that has become availiable since 1991 clearly indicates losses of 7 million( 5 million in the Ukraine and 2 million in Russia). Those are the facts-- Woogie10w 10:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
No, those are not "the facts". Those are the estimates by some particular historians.
Our job is not to cherry pick our preferred figure from this or that historian, it is to provide the range of figures that reliable sources have provided. That range is currently between Wheatcroft (8.5-9.5 million) to Rummel (50 million plus). Gatoclass 11:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
In the case of the Holocaust what would you do post the range ? Post the low figure of 300,000 quoted by the right wing Holocaust deniers and the high figure of 6 million? -- Woogie10w 11:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Those are the facts! Your concept of a range of figures is unprofessional and totally unacceptable. I would be fired on the spot if I presented a report to my boss in such a format.-- Woogie10w 11:52, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
What needs to done is to give the readers the facts: 1- Officialy recorded excutions after a Soviet trial were c. 800,000, this does not include summary executions. 2- The Pulitzer Prize winning author Ann Appelbum estimates deaths in the Gulag at least 2.7 million. 3-The number persons deported is estimated by the Russian Historian Vadim Erlikman at 7.5 million of whom 1.8 million died. 4-The losses in the 1933 famine were 7 million, cite the Russian Academy of Science report of 1993 on Soviet Population as the source and mention that there is debate concerning the responsibility of the government for these losses.
The stories of Wheatcroft and Rumell and a range of 2 to 50 million belong in a special article on the history of the Gulag.--
Woogie10w
16:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Thankyou C33. Woogie, I have already posted Wheatcroft's figure of 8.5-9.5 million above. If I find a reliable source with a lower number, I will update the article then. Until then, "under ten million" seems an appropriate expression for the low. Gatoclass 05:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
You guys need to explain in detail what is meant by "five million to fifty million or more". --
Woogie10w
23:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
By 50 million or more they mean they are lying.
No,no! It did for their own good. When folks see 50 million dead they are bound to ask the question where did that statistic come from, show me I am from Missouri. And don't be suprised if they ask how the number was derived. I do know one thing for sure that if the USSR had the same death rate as the USA that 50 million more Soviets would have been alive in 1953(not counting 26 million more war dead). If those 50 million deaths were caused by the government is the matter that is being discussed.--
Woogie10w
02:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Well Wheatcroft says that too. He attributes only 1 million to "purposive killings" by the regime, however he also holds that another 2 million died in the Gulags along with 5 to 6 million who died from famine due to the regime's negligence. And I think most historians would agree with that.
If you have a source which says only three to four million purposive killings and which at the same time denies any responsibility on the regime's part for the famine deaths, by all means post it here and we'll alter the low accordingly. Gatoclass 04:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
No, Wheatcroft is not God, he just happens to be the guy who's provided the lowest estimate I've seen so far. As for "breaking out the losses", I already did this in relation to Wheatcroft, which I posted above but for your benefit I'll repost it now:
The Stalinist regime was consequently responsible for about a million purposive killings, and through its criminal neglect and irresponsibility it was probably responsible for the premature deaths of about another two million more victims amongst the repressed population, i.e. in the camps, colonies, prisons, exile, in transit and in the POW camps for Germans.
He has also given a figure of 5.5-6.5 million for the 32-33 famine. And yes, as I already said I think a breakdown of the losses in the Death Toll section would be useful, I know this section could do with a rewrite but I haven't found the time to get around to it yet. Also, I've been trying to ensure a consensus here on the talk page before I bother to give it a go, because I get rather tired of taking the time to do a rewrite only to have someone come along and revert the whole thing five minutes later. Gatoclass 14:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I think we both agree that a rewrite is neceaaary. I quoted that figure of 4.5 million from a website review of the book by the publisher. In her section on the death toll Appebaum DOES NOT cite this figure of 4.5 million. She believes the actual figure is greater than official figure of 2.7 million but does not provide an estimate.-- Woogie10w 16:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry guys but I have no time for a redo job on that section. I am busy crunching numbers in the real world. If you need any help just post an inquiry to my talk page.-- Woogie10w 00:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
What do we need to do to remove the totally disputed tag. I believe Ultramarine added it during the course of a dispute with SuperDeng. The version as it stands now is close to the version Ultramarine wanted. Is it safe to remove the tag, or do we need to resolve further disagreements? -- C33 19:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
The article is fine by me, and by and large was fine by me weeks ago. I think some sections, especially the Death Toll section, could do with a rewrite, but that's another issue. There's nothing in the article I have a particular objection to ATM. Gatoclass 16:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I do not get this, still on wikipedia, wrong birthday, cant you people agree on anything? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.107.1.84 ( talk • contribs) .
Okay Gatoclass. Lets talk before this gets out of hand.
-- JohnFlaherty 16:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Then I am going to put it back. I said lets talk. That does not mean you get to just revert back again. It is very accurate and as verifiable as possible. How do you justify ANY number under your criteria?
You are re-writing history. The Nazi's did not kill more than Stalin. "Consensus" on that (not a " "fact" but so tight a fiqure that none will dispute it) is six million killed in the holocaust. Only holocaust deniers disbute that fiqure. I provided a link to info on the consensus of twenty million. I will get more. The fiqures are accurate. Can you cite the fiqures you just threw out? -- JohnFlaherty 16:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Thank you Tjive. You are correct. I meant to clarify Jewish Holocaust victims. That consensus - which is just that - consensus not fact - is agreed to by all but Holocaust deniers.-- JohnFlaherty 16:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
BTW - The entry specifically says "consensus" not fact or absolute number. It is preceeded by the statement that says we don't know for sure and that the range is 5-50 million.-- JohnFlaherty 16:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Then I will revert it back again and we will both be at three reverts for the day.
It is not absurd at all. The death toll is not about the war dead. For that you must include German as well. It is about those criminally killed. Those numbers are documented all over the place. Just because the evidence is not acceptable to you does not mean it is not true. What would you consider acceptable? The authors of the Black Book on communism not good enough? Why is your evidence (of which I have seen no citations) superior?
I would ask you to stop reverting my entry until we can reach consensus.-- JohnFlaherty 17:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
On second thought, I am going to get citations, add them, and THEN revert the article back to the accurate account and they will stay that way.-- JohnFlaherty 17:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
-- TJive 17:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Your fiqures on the U.S. , Inida, etc., etc., et al are red herrings. They have zero bearing on this issue. I have never heard of them until now and they are entirely besides the point.
The point is that Joseph Stalin was an barbaric animal. That is not POV. It is fact. A mass murder as bad or worse than Adolph Hitler. If he is not, then the inhumanity and evil of Hitler, Pol Pot, and others are also POV and the words evil and murder have no meaning. The issue is about accounting for the millions of souls who died as a direct result of his misanthropy. I don't care on wit about your attempts and moral equivalence. You would never haggle over how many Jews Hitler murdered, and you should not. They are as verifiable as humanly possible - as are Stalin's numbers.
The range is 5-50 million murdered. 20 million is on the LOW end of the mean between those estimates and is a fiqure that has been arrived to numerous times. We accounted, in the article, for the fact that the numbers in question are not positive. They are consensus. We have accounted for the fact that there is a range of possible deaths. Your continued stonwalling of this issue is the only POV I see here.
That section of the entry will be going back and will not be changed just as soon as I can get my references in order.-- JohnFlaherty 18:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Nice try putting "unrealistically" back in as well. What a hypocrite. You claim that your whole enlitened view on this is about nothing less than an objection to "POV" and you revert to the most POV section of the entry?-- JohnFlaherty 18:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
"Unrealistically" was not my word, and if I'd been in less of a hurry last night I might have taken the time to delete it myself, instead of just restoring to my former version. I didn't bother deleting it because it was very late last night where I am posting from and I figured someone else would quickly correct it. Gatoclass 03:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The facts regarding excess deaths during the Stalin era are as follows.
A. Executions
The official total of executions from 1921-53 is 799,257. This does not include executions of foreign nationals or summary executions. Vadim Erlikman, a Russian historian , estimates an additional 700,000 summary executions in the USSR and 450,000 German civilians killed in 1945.
B. Gulag
The official total of Gulag deaths from 1930-53 is 1,713,419 , this includes prisons and labour camps but does not include deaths in transit and premature deaths of released inmates due to overwork. The official total does not include Gulag deaths from 1921-29. Vadim Erlikman, a Russian historian , estimates an additional 3.3 million Gulag-prison deaths from 1921-53.
C. Deportations
There is no official data for premature deaths of the estimated 5 million Soviet citizens deported during the Stalin era. Vadim Erlikman, a Russian historian , estimates 800,000 deaths of these deportees 1937-53.
D. Collectivization - and Famine of 1933
Demographic losses due to Collectivization and the famine are 8 million. per the 1993 Russian Academy of Science study by Andreev
E. Russian Revolution
Red terror deaths during the Revolution are estimated by Vadim Erlikman, a Russian historian at 2 million --
Woogie10w
11:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
F. Axis POWs
Official Soviet data lists the deaths of 630,000 Axis Pows in captivity, this does not include deaths of military personnel captured on the battlefield who died during transit to the camps--
Woogie10w
11:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The above categories listed above total approximately 18 million excess deaths during the period 1917-1953.
--
Woogie10w
12:39, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Your predictable. I knew you would latch onto my comments about Stalin. I also knew you would convienently ignore the comments about murder & evil having no meaning if you disagree. Hitler has some admirers too. Are you prepared to tell me that you do not think Hitler was evil? Are you going to tell me that is POV? Not to mention that, as usual, your argument is a straw man. I never said that any of the wording I used should be included in the article. My opinions on Stalin have nothing to do with getting the record on his murders corrected. Your citations and quotes are refuted by numerous sources. You are not going to hijack this article by denying legitimate fiqures or by quoting a few sources who disagree.-- JohnFlaherty 13:36, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
There are dozens of sources cited at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin which prove the consensus and the fact that you do not approve of these as legitimate betray your biases.
I suggest we take a vote and get a consensus here. Does anyone second that?-- JohnFlaherty 13:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
15:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC) Give us the breakdown of Wheatcroft’s number. Please tell us: The estimated deaths due to executions, Gulag, Deportations , the Collectivization & 1933 famine and of Axis Pows. Now is the time when the piano stops playing and the cards are spread on the table. Show us your hand.-- 68.236.161.237 16:08, 9 June 2006 (UTC)-- Woogie10w 16:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC))
He cites half a dozen researchers estimating 40 million or more, half a dozen estimating under ten million, and half a dozen estimating around 20 million.
Wrong again. He cites thirty sources. Tweleve of which claim 20 million, ten claim around 50 million, eight claim less than 20 (around 10 million). So the majority of his meticulously cited sources (twenty two out of thirty) say the toll was 20-50 million killed. The mean of all sources was 30 million.
it is not true to say Stalin's regime is the second worst in regards to excess deaths in the 20th century after Mao's because Hitler for one has a worse record than Stalin.
POV. You cannot back that up because it is not true. If you tried, you would be ignoring your own arguments - the upper range of Stalin's numbers are at 50 million.
Calling for a "vote" on the issue to try and compensate for your lack of evidence is not in my view a valid response, particularly given the current shortage of editors involved in this discussion.
Your biases make me barely interested in what you consider valid. In addition, you're again wrong. Your evidence is weak and short. I have tons.
I do not see anything valid in your rejection of these sources. I see bias. I see no reason to continue to allow the entry to stand the way it is. I suggest we mention that the majority of investigations list his death toll at over twenty million (that removes the word "consensus" at twenty since the consensus is actually great than 20).-- JohnFlaherty 16:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Woogie, I don't need to give you a breakdown of Wheatcroft's figures, because I've already given you his collective figure, as quoted from an article of his that you yourself provided. Let me quote again:
The Stalinist regime was consequently responsible for about a million purposive killings, and through its criminal neglect and irresponsibility it was probably responsible for the premature deaths of about another two million more victims amongst the repressed population, i.e. in the camps, colonies, prisons, exile, in transit and in the POW camps for Germans.
He clearly states in that paragraph that this is his collective figure for all the categories we have previously discussed, excepting the famine.
But in any case it's irrelevant to this discussion what Wheatcroft's figure is, just as it's irrelevant what Erlikman's figure is. What we are trying to establish is whether or not there is a "consensus" figure amongst historians of 20 million, and I don't believe any evidence has yet been provided to demonstrate that - apart from Mr White's opinion on his website, that is. Gatoclass 17:13, 9 June 2006 (UTC) The statement “consensus of historian’s” ; those are mealy mouthed weasel words. Just give us the details of the numbers you want to post-- Woogie10w 17:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
He doesn't cite 30 sources. He cites 25 sources, some of them are double counted - 7 sources for 34 million or higher, 10 for 20-30 million, and 8 for 15 million or less. Where is the consensus for 20 million here?
You’re right. I said it is more accurate to state the consensus is for GREATER than 20 million. And my accounting of the numbers was far better than your latest attempt at dismissal – leaving the impression that it was “half a dozen”.
Furthermore, I doubt you have any idea who these people are or whether they constitute reliable sources or not.
Did I read every book? No. Did you? Talk about a subjective and unverifiable claim. I have read Brzezinski. He is hardly a biased source and NO conservative on this issue. Your claims are unverifiable.
I notice that one of White's sources in another section is "some guy on the internet". This is hardly a validation of White's criteria for source selection, is it?
You are a master at red herrings and other false arguments sir. Because one source is that you discount all the others?
I simply pointed out that on that criteria, he would not be the second worst mass murderer because both Hitler and Tojo have demonstrably higher totals.
You keep saying that. It is not true.
That's an even more indefensible position than your original one! You cannot possibly talk about a "majority" when the only source you have is a brief quote from a handful of sources of unknown validity from somebody's website.
It is actually more defensible actually and I’ve proven it. I notice that all you have done in this entire discourse is discount others evidence and provided none of your own.
And, again, you tell untruths and deliberately mislead. The validity of the sources is not in question. I know a few first hand and have seen others not mentioned on that site. The “somebody’s website” is a pathetic attempt to inject doubt to the sources by implying he made them up. The site in question is simply a list of sources compiled by the website owner. If you prefer, I will re-compile the list from Amazon.com. It will be the same.-- JohnFlaherty 17:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The facts on the issue are clear and I am going to alter the current article, but I'll make one more attempt at compromise first - since you have made zero attempts, I would like to know what you think we should say in the article about this subject?-- JohnFlaherty 17:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Can you offer a re-write of the paragraph here on the discussion page describing what you think it should say?-- JohnFlaherty 18:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I find the wording acceptable but not the fiqures. They are far too low. 50 Million is too high.
I do not understand how you justify two sources (both of which just HAPPEN to agree with your views) and not the sources that justify the higher numbers. I must assume a hopeless bias.
You discount a whole swath of sources that indicate a much higher death toll than the TWO sources you are willing to accept as bonafide. If I was going to act like you, I would demand we go with the average of 30 million, but I am not so I won't.
8-16 million ignores Brzezinski's fiqures as well as Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, and Andrzej Paczkowski (along with a slew of others) who all see the numbers as higher (over 20 million).
I agree with the wording but your numbers are insultingly low. Insulting to his victims and to me as I have sought agreement and took the lower number of 20 million (in lieu of the mean of 30 and the high of 50) and you continue to push the very low end of the estimates, which have the least credibility. I tried compromise several times. You will not compromise at all. You continue to advocate the least reliable fiqures which have the least support. I have been fair and open minded and you have continued to push the same position. When I asked for your example of a good compromise I expected better. 8-16 million is a joke.
I will use your wording but I am going to use 20 million. It is the most plausable estimate (8-16 million is insulting). I propose; "Estimates of the number of victims have ranged from less than five million to fifty million or more. [8] [9] [10] Recent research from the Russian archival sources and others indicates that the likely figure lies somewhere between 20 and 30 million."
Out of respect, I will wait until you get back to this tomorrow. If someone else would like to weigh in with a proposal that would be great as well.-- JohnFlaherty 19:13, 9 June 2006 (UTC) Russian archival sources only document 800,000 executions and 1.7 million Gulag deaths. See Ann Applebaum’s book on the Gulag has an appendix on the death toll. She does not accept the official figures as being the final word on the subject. Erlikman, a compiler of statistical data, estimates 1.5 million executions including 700,000 summary executions, 5 Million Gulag deaths including 600,000 deaths from 1922-29; 800,000 deaths of persons deported not included in official statistics and 8 million deaths during the collectivization-Famine.-- Woogie10w 19:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC
I have been looking at woogie's page and his entries. He is the recipient of a Wikipedia award for research in the area of WWII casualties (a related topic to say the least). His work has been reviewed by Wikipedia peers and recognized for its quality. His take on these numbers would be acceptable to me.
What do you think Woogie? What does your view boil down to on the two points of contention? In a nutshell.-- JohnFlaherty 19:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC) We need to list the official death toll of 2.5 million and that it not accepted by Ann Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, as being the final word on this subject. Mention should be made of the fact that it does not include deaths due to summary executions, the Gulag from 1921-29, deaths of Gulag inmates in transit or those released on the verge of death, deaths of deported persons, famine and collectivization deaths and Polish /Axis POWs. Readers should be aware that there is a vigorous debate on the topic and the link to the articles by Conquest and Wheatcroft should be added along with Mr. Whites list. Erlikman’s tally of 16 million deaths could be mentioned but with a caution that it is only an estimate. The different components of the toll should be mentioned, executions in the Purge, the Gulag, deportations of minorities and the Collectivization.-- Woogie10w 20:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
So you're saying 2.5 million should be the estimate? I am confused.
Can you offer a proposed entry similar to what Gatoglass and I wrote?-- JohnFlaherty 22:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I like your suggestion a great deal I am just confused as to the numbers. Sorry that I am missing it.-- JohnFlaherty 22:55, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose; "Estimates of the number of victims have ranged from less than five million to fifty million or more. Recent research from the Russian archival sources and others indicates that the likely figure lies somewhere between 20 and 30 million."
The problem with that John, is that I don't believe it is an accurate statement. The operative phrase is recent research from the Russian archival sources. The point is that the archival records, as Woogie has appeared to affirm several times in earlier discussion, do not support the higher figures. AFAIK, the higher figures come from earlier research, such as that by Conquest, and are based, in Wheatcroft's words, on "anecdotal and literary sources" rather than archival material.
It seems to me only reasonable that we should place more emphasis on the more recent data, based as it is on meticulous research from the archives, rather on these earlier, anecdotally based claims, some of which seem to have relied on little more than guesswork. I don't see how anyone could conclude that such an approach is biased, on the contrary, it's the obvious thing to do, ensuring as it does that Wiki's estimate reflects the latest research and not the more outdated and less scientific conclusions. Gatoclass 05:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
You have some cheek Gatoglass. Unbelievable. I wait before making changes, out of respect since you claimed you would be away for the night, and you go ahead and make that lame, insulting edit by fiat anyway, totally disregarding any other views.
You refuse to accept legitimate sources, you cherry pick ridiculous estimates that support your views alone, you make no effort at compromise or consensus, and you choose to throw every attempt to reach out back in my face.
You keep refering to the same couple of sources while disregarding the majority of evidence to the contrary. The propensity of evidence points to higher numbers. I am reverting the changes until we can reach a consensus. I would like to hear more from Woogie.-- JohnFlaherty 10:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC) The article by Michael Ellman "Soviet Repression Statistics:Some Comments" (See link Nr.10 in the Stalin article) will be helpful in understanding the problems relating to the official Soviet repression statistics.---- Woogie10w 12:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC) 63.42.44.231 12:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Woogie, I have spent much of the day going back through this page and re-reading other texts to try and get a handle on this issue. I'm loosely considering a rewrite of the section detailing some of the more credible sources including breakdowns, as we have previously discussed. For my part I intend to use Wheatcroft. Are there any sources you would like to see quoted? I assume you would like Erlikman and/or Applebaum, or perhaps that Russian guy (forgot his name, Andreev?) If so, I'd appreciate it if you posted a breakdown of their figures either here or on my homepage, provided I agree they are suitable sources for inclusion I could then try to work them into some sort of summary that will hopefully satisfy everybody. IMO I think it would probably be a better approach than the weaselly text we have currently. Gatoclass 13:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
You did not wait long enough. It was night. I was sleeping. Your entry was lame and improper and you took advantage of the fact that I was not around after I SPECIFICALLY refrained from doing anything similar largely because you were not around.
As to your proposed compromise, I don't know. Maybe. I still do not accept 8 million. It is way too low. The idea is closer to what I am willing to accept however so maybe. Let me continue my research.
I admit to being very confused on where woogie stands on this. I THINK he would prefer a more detailed and nuanced entry.-- JohnFlaherty 13:28, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I want Robert Conquest and Brzezinski included at the very least.-- JohnFlaherty 13:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Get real! Applebaum's book is first rate history, her analysis towers over Wheatcroft. please read pages 578-86-- Woogie10w 13:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't propose "excluding" her. I'd just like a couple of additional recommendations, that's all. Who else do you think might be worth inclusion? Gatoclass 16:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
You're not substituting anything without approval. We are going for consensus here. You have tried twice to change the entry without an agreement. Don't try a third. No one else here has done that. We are trying to reach an agreement.
Any proposed entry you make should include sources suggested by others, not just who you aprove of (ie; Robert Conquest and Brzezinski at a minimum for my case). Your ability to decide who are the best sources has not shown to be to reliable (from my research on Applebaum for one, it is clear she is an extremely credible source who has been widely recognized). In addition, as a practical matter, Woogie is the most qualified individual involved in this discussion to make decisions on these issues. Researching casualty demographic and statistical information is his forte and he has already been recognized inside Wikipedia for that talent.-- JohnFlaherty 10:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Don't "Buddy" me. You try pushing ridiculous low numbers in "your" re-write and I'll add my own. I do not surrender my perogative to your claim to be the one who re-writes the entry. We all will agree on whatever changes are to be made or I'll revert back to what is up now until we do. I am anxious to see "your" re-write and assume nothing at this point, I am just stating my position.
As to the rest, nothing you have done has convinced me you were the least bit interested in consensus until it was clear you were in the minority and that you were not going to be able to bully your way into your version of the facts. And as far as presumption goes, the only one I saw who made any presmptions was you. This whole dialogue was started by me in an attempt to stop a revert war.
Stop pouting. You've missed my point. I said I was anxious to see what you were coming up with. I have tried to reach out on this several times and keep getting slapped. I ASKED you for what you thought it should read, remember? I also said that while I reject your fiqures of 8 million as insultingly low, your proposed entry was moving in the right direction.
You know what my issue is. The average of most historical accounts is thirty million. The POSSIBLE range is 5-50 million+. The consensus on this issue is twenty million. According to Woogie's statement earlier in this discussion, "The facts regarding excess deaths during the Stalin era are...(including, Gulag, Deportations, Collectivization, famine, and the Revolution)" at least 18 million. That does NOT include many other categories. I have cited seventeen sources that estimate 20-50 million (ten of which say 20 million).
That is where we stand.
-- JohnFlaherty 13:23, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Can we see details on what the numbers you propose to post and how you back them up?-- JohnFlaherty 13:25, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Tjive.
The issue is about writing into the Stalin entry a more accurate range of deaths associated with his regime, and especially citing the number 20 million which is the consensus fiqure by historians and published researchers. Applebaum's numbers, as illustrated by Woogie's posts, come in at 18 million MINIMUM (even excluding some souces). That is very close to the 20 million claimed by the "Black Book of Communism" as well as Robert Conquest, Brzezinski, and slew of others. -- JohnFlaherty 15:07, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Erlikman gives an estimate of additional deaths that are: Summary Executions 700,000; Deportations 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; deaths in Gulag from 1922-29 700,000: additional deaths in Gulag not counted in official statistics 2.4 million, deaths of POWs and Germnan civilians 1 million, add the 2 million dead in the Revolution and you come up to 18 million which is darned close to the 20 million cited in the Black Book of Communism -- Woogie10w 15:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose we make the entry read something very close to what you just wrote Woogie. Citing the refernces as well and mentioning Robert Conquest, Brzezinski and others as well.-- JohnFlaherty 16:09, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
A table is an intriquing idea. I would like to see it.
I would be more inclined to agree with you on some points if I did not see what I can only assume is serial dishonesty. You keep refering to numbers and positions that are just not true. For instance, you keep cherry picking your sources and misrepresenting what is being said here and what others say to get a 16 million or less fiqure. There is no way I will accept that. It is 20 million or higher. You claim that out of Wheatcroft/Davies, Erlikman and Applebaum and Conquest four claim 16 million or less and one claims 20 million. That is a lie. As presented by Woogie, here in this discussion more than once, Applebaum claims AT LEAST 18 million (not 16 or less) and Conquest says 20 million is a very low number.
In addition, you CONTINUE to ignore a slew of other sources that all say 20 million or more and refute them with ONE source - Wheatcroft.-- JohnFlaherty 19:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Ya know, not for nothing, but you sorta did it again! Applebaum says AT LEAST 18 million. Not 18 million firm. How can I NOT assume bad faith on your part? You JUST did what you claimed to not do.
I said I was intriqued by your idea. I cannot bend until I see what you propose to write. In addition, with all due respect it is my very firm posiion that you are the one who NEEDS to be bending more than I. The majority of evidence is on MY side.
How many sources can you provide to support your fiqures? Woogie asked you at least twice now to pony up. To "lay your cards on the table" as it were.
I'll try and "fight nicer" but I am very firm in my position because I have seen nothing to persuade me it is incorrect.-- JohnFlaherty 21:06, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
)
AARRGGHH!!!!
You can't imagine??? You just did it AGAIN!
That is NOT TRUE. The majority of sources on his site claim OVER 20 million. Man alive! We went THROUGH this already.
And you are, also, AGAIN, misrepresenting me!
I am NOT saying more than 20 million. Not at all. I belive it IS 20 million based on the preponderance of evidence.-- JohnFlaherty 21:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
That's cool...me to. TBC on the morrow.
Night.-- JohnFlaherty 22:23, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Darned close - okay. But it's still less than 20 million, isn't it? And therefore it conforms fully with the description "20 million or less". Especially given, as I've already pointed out, that deaths in the Revolution are irrelevant to the article, which is about deaths that occurred during Stalin's rule. So Erlikman's figure is really 16 million.
I don't know if you read what I had to say above Woogie, but it occurs to me that you have been reluctant to provide additional researchers because you felt that more might overwhelm the text. Now that I've expressed my intention to construct a table with multiple sources, does that encourage you to contribute more sources? If not, I probably have enough information already to construct a table, but obviously additional data would be more than welcome. Gatoclass 07:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Just do me a favor and put it up here on the discussion pages so we can all see it.-- JohnFlaherty 12:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
NOTE: The above conclusion is gone, I had to rewrite my proposed edit because it was too long. I'm inclined to think this subject could use a separate article. There are just too many ifs and buts to be crammed into an already long article. I have managed to trim my proposed edit down to an acceptable size but I had to cut a few corners to do so. Unfortunately, now I've got to go and do all the refs again :/ Gatoclass 14:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Please do not mix the political victims with excess mortality and other demographic figures. And also I ask you not to use such strange term as "death toll" of Stalin. It can be applied to a disater or epidemy, but not to politician.-- Nixer 14:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
One argument at a time please. We will handle "death toll" in order, after we deal with this and one other issue.
I don't likle your tone or attitude on deciding to simply post it without our agreement.
However, I must admit that I think your entry is...uhmm...fair. It is starting to grow on me. Good job so far I think. How about you woogie?-- JohnFlaherty 14:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
You change it AFTER I manage a "good job" and after I see a real possibility at an agreement??-- JohnFlaherty 15:09, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I must agree. Excellent job Gatoglass. Except for two numbers. 18 million (instead of 15-17 - see the comments/estimates from woogie earlier) and 15-20 million from Gatoglasses own proposed changes above.-- JohnFlaherty 18:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Don't do this Gato. Don't start another revert war. We were all suppossed to agree on the numbers. Your entry is very good and 90% there but those numbers are still heding to the low side and that is not what we discussed.
You said yourself that we could edit whatever you put up if we disagreed. -- JohnFlaherty 18:20, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
On second thought, the 15-17 million vs 18 million is not important enough for us to quibble over, but the range should be 15-20 million, not 10-20 million.-- JohnFlaherty 18:30, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I am being more than fair. I backed off the low range of 15-17 million (vs 18 million)
I'll leave it for now. I have to go out and I do not want another revert war and out of respect for the rather good job you did I'll back off for now but I do not agree with that range and this is not quite over.-- JohnFlaherty 18:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC) == Number of victims ==
I like that compromise.-- JohnFlaherty 19:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Ultramarine, these are excess deaths. If demography says it was not more than 1,5 million excess deaths (for various causes) how do you derive 6 million for the famine only?-- Nixer 19:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Nixer, I don't have time to challenge all your edits right now, or to alter them to make them more acceptable to the body of the text. But let me just point out that the content of your edits amount to very little in the overall context of the topic. So, let's assume you are correct that most of the Gulag prisoners died "fighting at the front". Did they volunteer to go? Or were they put into punishment battalions to carry out suicide missions? If the latter, then the question of exactly how they died is moot, since they can still be counted as victims of Stalin.
As for "only 50,000 being rehabilitated", who cares? The issue is how many men died from atrocious conditions in the camps, "guilty" or not. Gatoclass 20:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
You're asking Nixer and not me, I take it? I've removed the ref. to the 50,000 again. I don't see that it has any relevance whatever to the death toll in the Gulags. Gatoclass 20:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
May I give a humble advice do not use the work of the gentleman as a source. He is a journalist not an historian (although in his youth he indeed studied history in Istoriko-Arhivny Institut). What I mean there is no such scholar as "Russian historian Erlikhman". This name is unknown in academic circles :) Here you are his works (in Russian) - http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/2283471/?type=305#305 You see among them such works as " Stephen King. The king of dark side", "Anthology of children world literature", "Anthology of world fantasy" etc.
I agree but we have something of a shortage of researchers who give a full breakdown of their figures. I'm going to be picking up a few books on the subject over the next couple of days so hopefully I'll have a little more to work with. Until then Erlikman is going to have to fill the bill. He does at least have the advantage of quoting figures that don't lean too far in either direction. Regards, Gatoclass 22:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I have stayed out of this debate for the most part and have not been following it closely, but I can hardly stand idly while bad sources are touted as having particular relevance on this matter.
Namely, that J. Arch Getty, et al, are cited as having made "higher estimates" "more difficult to sustain". Rather, Getty has always represented the very lowest trend of victim estimates and since the fall of the Soviet Union has been forced to revise his estimates upwards, but he still portrays the Great Purge as mainly an instance of cannibalism among the party leadership rather than a general terror inflicted on the population at large (as seen by the very title of his recent work on the subject, Stalin: The Road to Terror and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks. [My emphasis.]
Meanwhile, this likely copyright violation is being hosted on an avowedly Stalinist page whose host's main claim to fame is storage of the Maoist Internationalist Movement archive, which hosts similar, albeit much more crude, tracts of Stalinist apologia such as those of Ludo Martens.
The section, needles to say, still needs work. -- TJive 00:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Gatoclass, I am not an idiot. It might serve you well not to speak to me as if I were.
When an article reads that, "higher estimates became more difficult to sustain" and leads into an "example" which links to a specific article with specific numbers, the clear (and intended) implication is that this article represents an instance or the instance of the event described, i.e. that "higher estimates became more difficult to sustain". That is clearly not the case, as other estimates (those revised from earlier work and not) have come up with greater numbers than Getty, who has consistently put out the lowest numbers accepted by anyone other than Stalinist hacks.
As for "who cares", anyone who has a lick of intellectual credibility, not to mention the remotest sense of responsibility in sorting out legitimate data pertaining to the murder of a great deal of human beings should have the capacity to differentiate from sources which speak on such a matter credibly as opposed to braying the party line in defiance of reason and the barest human decency. This is not to stain Getty and his cohorts with the petty Stalinism of the site in question, but it is rather revealing if you don't happen to "care" about what sort of site you are linking to in the very explicit context of political murder by Stalin.
Furthermore, I did not call for the removal of references to Getty but rather a modification of his treatment in the article. However, as I mentioned earlier, it may well be that this is a copyright violation and should not be linked to in this fashion. I don't see that the details of publication are even anywhere mentioned by this web site, which is not true even of the site's other instances of copying work from other publications such as The Guardian and a book. [60] That should send up a flag right there, if the crass indifference to misery does not. -- TJive 02:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
:The bottom line is that while Gatoglass did a good job, the whole section still leans towards crediting the lower numbers and implying that the higher numbers are not credible.-- JohnFlaherty 12:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Nekto are you referring to the jail the Webb’s visited after they had tea with Yezhov?-- Woogie10w 20:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
The bottom line is that while Gatoglass did a good job, the whole section still leans towards crediting the lower numbers and implying that the higher numbers are not credible.--JohnFlaherty
With all due respect, John, I don't think the high numbers are very credible. Most of them, AFAIK, come from earlier estimations that relied on anecdotal and literary material. Others are compilations from secondary sources.
And most if not all those who posit higher numbers are not experts in the field. I don't know of any specialist in the subject that has posited a figure of above 20 million. Wheatcroft and Getty both say about 10 million; Conquest says 20. That seems to be the range pretty much agreed upon by the experts.
In any case I don't specifically say the higher numbers are wrong - I've just laid emphasis on the 10 to 20 million range, and used Erlikman to sketch out an approximate midpoint. The references are all there, and the reader is still left to judge for himself which figures he prefers.
All the same I'm planning to bone up on this subject a little more over the next couple of weeks. If I come across any information that causes me to change my mind about the likely range, I will certainly be willing to consider further changes to the text. Gatoclass 01:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, you are, yet again, cherry picking the sources you prefer to support your position. Twenty million is the consensus fiqure, or at least 15-20 million. By listing 10 million you are consigning to oblivion almost the same number of souls as perished in the holcaust based on un-credible sources.
Every credible source I have seen, indeed woogie's own highly credible estimates show 15-20 million.
I plan on changing that number to 15 million unless somone can show me where I am wrong.-- JohnFlaherty 02:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
You'll consider ME in breach of Wikipedia NPOV? You have some nerve buddy-boy.
You create a revert war over an entry you added without consensus and you will be in violation of Wikipedia's guiedlines. The only one who is NPOV here is you. You do not own this entry but you have been acting like it from word go. You are the only one who made entry changes without consensus. No one else, including me, has made any changes to the entry without agreement. You did that more than once.
I am the one who started this discussion after YOU started a revert war and you claimed you and Woogie did all the heavy lifting.
I never said you could not include their estimates. I said the range is incorrect. If your view is that "the more recent research" is 10-20 million based on the limited sources you brought up then I will add a modifier to the extent that the majority of sources put the bottom of the range around 17 million.
The most credible data I have seen is 18 million. The bottom line is that the fiqure of 20 million IS the consensus fiqure and nothing you have said in the last week changes that. Your entry was a good compromise except that it still leans towards the low end. I agreed to compromise on two areas of what you wrote, including the whole "consensus" point if the range was raised to 15 million. I am not going to allow you to discount 5 million lives. I have plenty of evidence to support higher numbers but am not pushing the issue because the very high ones are as difficult to support as the lower ones are and the ones closer to say 30 million I was willing to give up for consensus.-- JohnFlaherty 02:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. That will certainly do for now at the very least.-- JohnFlaherty 03:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to all step away from this for a while. The entry is a heck of a lot better now than when we started.-- JohnFlaherty 03:06, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
We never finsihed the second part of the discussion, which was ranking Stalin as the second greatest mass murderer after Mao.
Rather than get all up into that directly, especially so soon after reaching consensus on the current changes and reaching (I had thought - obviously incorrectly) a new level of respect, I did not push to mention that fact. I simply put in a link to another Wikipedia article that discusses the issue in great detail, allowing for many opinions and verdicts, and in perspective. I thought it was a rather benign and appropriate solution to the point of contention.
If you disagree, by all means lets discuss it here, but stop reverting my edits. You have been doing that from the begining. This is a pretty harmless edit (a link) for what I consider an important aspect of Stalin's & Communism's legacies. It does so in an indirect and rather peripheral way - IOW it is a compromise as it is MUCH less than I would LIKE to see from the article but I wanted to avoid too much heat after so much progress. I was in a mood for compromise.
I did not fight one wit on the re-naming of the section from "Death Toll" to the more euphamistic "Number of victims". Words should mean thigs (I am a great fan of George Orwell) and the current header for the section is fairly weasle-like put hey, I am trying to appreciate others viewpoints and not contest every change. This link to the Wikipedia article is much more benign and less complex than addressing the whole issue in this article. It is an important part of why people study Stalin to begin with and a simple link is not to much to ask for IMO.-- JohnFlaherty 07:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for being civil. I will try to be civil in my disagreements.
a) This is not about being a “soapbox”. None of the changes I agreed to, which we have made, or that I made with the link are soapboxing in any way, and that includes being a passive or anti-soapbox for covering up historical crimes either. Sins of omission are still sins.
I am not pushing a POV at all. The claims are not bogus in any way. The are as provable as any of the numbers are. They are important to know or to seek to know as much as possible. To deny the search for information of such importantce to human history is unfathomable to me. It is important to know that America killed over 100,000 Indians. It is important to know that Hitler killed 6 million Jews. It is important to know that Stalin killed 15-20 million people. It is also important to know who the worst criminals against humanity were, especially if they share common traits like the ideology of Communism. That is not POV anymore than saying National Socialism was a destructive ideology responsible for 6-10 millions deaths at least.
If, however, you really feel that way you should be over at the “List of wars and disasters by death toll” entry because it’s whole existence is “bogus and un-provable” by your way of thinking.
b) Thank you, and see a) for that very recommendation. I think I will join you. I do not believe they are un-sourced but that does not mean they might not need polishing up. I think that you would be good at that, with the proper supervision. ;-)
c) I’ll take your word for it. As to the compromise, as I said, it is not worth arguing over. I agree with you that it is an improvement over “Number of repressed”! You make a good argument for victims as well.-- JohnFlaherty 08:49, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
In the Soviet Union, there were several rumors that circulated the notion that Stalin was most probably a bastard child to another man. His mother worked as a housekeeper who happend to be a wealthy Armenian and was in fact the real father of Joseph. Wishing to keep such an affair secret, he paid off the woman and distanced himself from her. Later on, this was used to justify Stalin's extreme anger at robbing and killing owners of Armenian stores when he was a street thug and later on when he became dictator, the reason why many Armenians were sent to Gulag camps afterwards (although, millions of Soviet citizens weren't spared such a fate but it persisted that he had special hatred for the Armenians and angst to his unknown father). I'm curious has anyone else heard this theory and if so, is there reasonable grounds to include it in the article?-- MarshallBagramyan 04:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
This statement is "Point of View." Destalinization removed the main features- the "cult of personality," the massive GULAG system, total ban on criticizing society, saturation of stifling bureaucracy, etc. etc.
Gorbachev was quite the opposite, but it is enough to talk about Khrushchev's removal of the above mentioned policies, the end of the GULAG, the decentralization (to some degree) of the economic planning when top managers were sent to regions, a strong decrease in the number of bureaucratic departments (described in a recent news article in ARGUMENTI I FAKTI), the end og the GULAG, a regulated rebirth in freedom in the arts and sciences. See Ehrenburg's famous book THE THAW and movies criticisng bureaucrats/ bureaucracy.
Furthermore, the Communist Party became the only party even in Lenin's time due to the Left SR party's demands for continuing WWI, so this is not a special principle of Stalin's rule that his heirs continued. During Gorbachev's time, multicandidate elections and fractions (such as Yeltsin's) were common. --Rako
I never understood the reason for Stalin's ethnic cleansing. The only incentives I could find were colonialism of the less-populated areas, removing perceived radical threats that didn't go well with the state (ie. Islam?), and maybe to create an enemy. But it seems rather counter-intuitive to Machiavellianism to ethnically cleanse if it doesn't gain power.
Perhaps it was the high number of rivals in the Party who happened to be Jewish and it was a convenient label? I mean, in order for ideological soundness it would have seemed wiser to pick another label. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais ( Be eudaimonic!) 05:05, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
It appears that some error occurred in my viewing of the diffs. For some reason, I was being shown what was effectively the anon's version with the low number summation. I had thought the more egregious problems in sourcing were dealt with several days ago so the wording struck me as being rather terrible. This means that a good portion of my problems appear to have been mistaken. However, other edits and fixes I was dealing with are still needed, so I will hash out the differences (on the article as well as talk), carefully, tomorrow so as not to go over reverts. -- TJive 10:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Early researchers of the number killed by Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence, and their estimates range as high as 60 million.
This will be removed because it has been proven to have been discredited. The views of early "researchers" are irrelevant since the opening of the archives. They would give readers the fale indication that there is plausability in the ridiculous death toll of "60 million". Plus, the demographer Frank Lorimer predicted early in the 1940s, long before any archival evidence, that excess deaths in the 1930s were about 4.5 million. If Solzhenitsyn's discredited figures are reported, then the work of a professional demographer undoubtedly has to be and given more emphasis.
Factually correct statement and interesting. Ultramarine 01:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
the archives record that about 800,000 prisoners were executed (for either political or criminal offences) under Stalin, while another 1.7 million died of privation in the Gulags and some 389,000 perished during kulak resettlement - a total of about 3 million victims.
While this data is overall accurate, the assertion that 1.7 million died of privation in the GULAG is false. The Russian historian V.N Zemskov in 1991 reported that 1 million people had died in the GULAG, established in 1934, until 1953. It should also be noted that the majority of these deaths occurred during 1941-1945 when the the entire USSR was more or less without centralized government. The excess deaths in the GULAG during this period were not at all the fault of the Sovet government. They occurred entirely due to the war brought by the Germans.
Also, it is generally agreed that the data are incomplete, since some categories of victim were carelessly recorded by the Soviets - such as the victims of ethnic deportations, or of German population transfer in the aftermath of WWII.
These charges are unsubstantiated. As the historian Robert Thurston has correctly stated in "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia", the anti-Stalinist Khrushchev had no reason to have the figures minimized in the reports prepared by Kruglov and Shvernik. There is not any evidence that the Soviets "carelessly recorded" ethnic deportations or German population transfers. They have actually turned out to be accurate. According to the archives, for instance, there were 90 thousand Kalmyks deported in 1944 of which 80 thousand were located in 1946. The assertion that it is "generally agreed that the data are incomplete" is false manifested by how archival data has been presented in countless scholarly works including those of Stephen Wheatcroft, R.W Davies, Robert Thurston, and Mark Harrison.
Russian writer Vadim Erlikman[10], for example, has made the following estimations: Executions 1.5 million, Gulag 5 million, Deportations 1.7 million (out of 7.5 million deported), and POW's and German civilians 1 million, for a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
While the views of a Russian-Jewish writer should be noted, they must not be given emphasis over concise archival data. Post-1990 estimates are entirely worthless because we have in our midst archival documents the necessity of estimations. 1.5 million executions is unsubstnatiated; the actual number of death sentences during Stalin was under 800 thousand. It cannot be proved that a certain number of executions were carried out with judicial proceedings while others were carried out without such proceedings. The figure of 8 million deportations is also false. Deportations in the course of 1939-1945 amounted to about 1.5 million Polish and west Ukrainians, 1 million Volga Germans, 500 thousand Chechens and Ingush, 200 thousand Crimeans, 100 thousand Meshkhetians and Kurds, 100 thousand Kalmyks, and 40 thousand Balkars. The sum from all these deportations does not exceed 3.5 million. Overall, there were about 400-500 thousand deaths among these deportees of which the vast majority were Polish and Germans. The statement of German civilians and POWs at one million is also overstated. Collectively amongst all prisoners of war taken by the USSR including those of Germany, Japan, Romania, Hungary, and Finland, there were about 520 thousand deaths according to German historian Stefan Karner.
These numbers are by no means the full story of deaths attributable to the regime however, since at least another 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-33 famine must be added.
This is yet another inaccurate figure. The cited source of Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies seems to have been deliberately misrepresented. They estimated on page 415 of "Years of Hunger" that there were about 4.5 to 5.5 million excess deaths. 1.5 million of these are unsubstantiated estimates of a famine in Kazakhstan. The USSR archives have shown us that excess deaths in Ukraine, North Caucuses, and Lower Volga amounted to about 2.5 million. Davies and Wheatcroft inflated this figure by putting forth an implausable 1.5 million deaths in Kazakhstan. Therefore, it must be reported that there were 2.3 million documented excess deaths in Ukraine, North Caucuses, and Lower Volga while some historians have estimated an additional 1.5 million in Kazakhstan.
Regardless, it appears that a minimum of around 10 million surplus deaths (4 million by repression and 6 million from famine) are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a probable figure of somewhere between 15 to 20 million.
This is yet another misrepresentation of the facts. It has been documented that there were in 2.1 million attributable to "repression" and a documented 2.3 million attributable to famine. These two added together has a sum of 4.5 million which is tune with earlier estimates by the demographers Frank Lorimer, Barbara Anderson, and Eric Silver.
Pioneering researcher Robert Conquest[13], meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million. Others, however, continue to maintain that their earlier much higher estimates are correct
Robert Conquest's work has been long discredited. To call him a "pioneering researcher" is to take a POV. The pioneering researchers on the USSR have been N.Jasny, N.Timashev, and W.Eason according to historian Stephen Wheatcroft. To cite Rummel, a parrot of Conquest, as a source is an embarrassment to academia. This change has to be drastically altered in order to maintain a balanced point of view. Mikhail Frunze
You are incorrect to assert that this alone is my view. My reports are all supported by scholarly sources that have incessantly reported the figures that I have cited. You say that Wikipedia should "report and not decide" yet the previous version of the "number of victims" section gives an overwhelming amount of emphasis to those that disregard archival data as if to give the connotation that the Russians don't know how to count. Mikhail Frunze
You have incessantly issued reminders of Wikipedia's policies, yet the version of the section that you endorse attempts to say that those who disregard archival sources such as Erlikman are correct. There cannot be any serious debate against recorded facts e.g archival material. Mikhail Frunze
You are again incorrect. Robert Conquest, who was given emphasis in earlier versions of the page did not use archival sources. The overwhelming majority of scholars perceive the archival figures to be complete. Mikhail Frunze
"Early researchers of the number killed by Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence, and their estimates range as high as 60 million. [65] [4]
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, hard evidence from the Soviet archives finally became available, and many of the earlier, higher estimates became more difficult to sustain. For example, the archives record that about 800,000 prisoners were executed (for either political or criminal offences) under Stalin, while another 1.7 million died of privation in the Gulags and some 389,000 perished during kulak resettlement - a total of about 3 million victims.
Debate continues however [66], since some historians believe the official figures are unreliable. [5] Also, it is generally agreed that the data are incomplete, since some categories of victim were carelessly recorded by the Soviets - such as the victims of ethnic deportations, or of German population transfer in the aftermath of WWII.
Thus, while some archival researchers have posited the number of victims of Stalin's repressions to be no more than about 4 million in total [67] [68] [69], others believe the number to be considerably higher. Russian writer Vadim Erlikman [6], for example, has made the following estimations: Executions 1.5 million, Gulag 5 million, Deportations 1.7 million (out of 7.5 million deported), and POW's and German civilians 1 million, for a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
These numbers are by no means the full story of deaths attributable to the regime however, since at least another 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-33 famine must be added. [70] [7] [8] But again historians differ, this time as to whether or not the famine victims were purposive killings - as part of the campaign of repression against kulaks - or whether they were simply unintended victims of the struggle over forced collectivization.
Regardless, it appears that a minimum of around 10 million surplus deaths (4 million by repression and 6 million from famine) are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a probable figure of somewhere between 15 to 20 million. Adding 6-8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a figure of between 15 and 17 million victims. Pioneering researcher Robert Conquest [9], meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million. Others, however, continue to maintain that their earlier much higher estimates are correct. [71]"
That is incorrect. This section does not at all represent all views manifested by the absence of how the majority of scholars perceive archival data to be correct e.g J.Arch Getty, Viktor Zemskov, Gabor T. Rittersporn, Stephen Wheatcroft, Mark Harrison, R.W Davies, Robert Thurston, Gregory Freeze, etc, etc, etc. There is disproportionate emphasis given to right-wing leaning scholars including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vadim Erlikman, Robert Conquest. While there is one single sentence about archival reports, there are four paragraphs devoted to a fringe of scholars that hold a contrary view. Mikhaul Frunze
Steven Rosefield's work was largely refuted by Stephen G. Wheatcroft in various articles during the 1980s. It has since been acknowledged that Stephen Wheatcroft's estimations matched archival data. Nice try, though. If you had actually read the 1990s works of Stephen Wheatcroft whether in the book "Years of Hunger" or articles in scholarly journals, it would be seen that he exclusively uses archival documents to reach his conclusions. You are therefore incorrect in saying that he uses other sources other than archival data. Please take your "Freedom House" subversion elsewhere because it is corrupting respectable academica. Mikhaul Frunze
As you always have, you have once again misrepresented the works of others. Stephen Wheatcroft documented 2.3 million excess deaths in Ukraine, North Caucuses, and Lower Volga. You can find out for yourself by either checking into his book or by checking into data that he posted on Mark Harrison's web site. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/
Concerning the "Black Book of Communism", it is not a source worthy of scholarly consideration as it has been debunked by the scholar J.Arch Getty. Mikhaul Frunze
I did not decide who is and who is not correct, if you would read the current version of the page. Notice that I distinctly said that Wheatcroft reported data for Ukraine, Lower Volga, and North Caucuses. Kazakhstan is not included because there does not exist precise data for it. The chart I posted is an expansion of his data on page 415. It specefically counts: 1.54 million in Ukraine, 300 thousand in North Caucuses, and 250 thousand in the Volga. This adds up to not 5 million victims, but 2 million. Mikhaul Frunze
This is not original research but is rather material reported by Davies and Wheatcroft. They use the Russian archive section RGAE 1562/329/108 that documents 2 million excess deaths in Ukraine, North Caucuses, and the Lower Volga. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/deaths.xls
That is simply a matter of opinion. The Russian archives distinctly state that there were 2 million excess deaths in Ukraine, North Caucuses, and the Lower Volga. The review of one's work by someone else does not necessarily mean it has been accurately presented. On pg. 415, Davies and Wheatcroft wrote:
Kazakhstan Famine: approxmiate: 1.3 - 1.5 million Registered excess deaths, 1932-1933: 2.9 million Excess Odeaths in the OGPU System: 300 thousand
This adds up to not 6 million but 4.6 million. Disregarding the Kazakh famine because there is not evidence for it in the archives, the excess deaths in Ukraine, North Caucuses, and the Lower Volga amount to between about 2.5 million. You are yet again misrepresenting the works of these scholars. The summary of one's work will not be given preference over what the authors actually said. Mikhaul Frunze
Nowhere did I say that they are incorrect. Data from the Kazakh famine has been neglected because there is not any archival evidence for it. Instead, we have opted to use official records from Russian archives that were posted by Stephen G. Wheatcroft on Mark Harrison's web page. You have actually misrepresented their work as having concluded 6 million from famine when in fact on page 415 they concluded that the 1932-1933 rural famine, the Kazakh famine, and excess deaths of the labor camps add up to 4.6 million. Mikhaul Frunze
That summary is contradicted by what Wheatcroft and Davies themselves wrote on p.415:
Estimates of excess deaths from famine, 1930-1933 (millions)
Kazakhstan famine:approximate: 1.3-1.5 Excess deaths in the OGPU system: .03+ Registered excess deaths, 1932-1933: 2.9 million
This adds up to about 4.6 million.
That summary is contradicted by what Wheatcroft and Davies themselves wrote on p.415:
Estimates of excess deaths from famine, 1930-1933 (millions)
Kazakhstan famine:approximate: 1.3-1.5
Excess deaths in the OGPU system: .03+
Registered excess deaths, 1932-1933: 2.9 million
This adds up to about 4.6 million.
With 2 million neglected from the Kazakh famine and the OGPU whose deaths are included in the GULAG from 1930-1953, we are left with 2.5 million excess deaths in 1932-1933. Hence, it was written that in 1932-1933, there were 2 million excess deaths in Ukraine, Lower Volga, and North Caucuses which are found in the Russian archives and which were reported by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies.
I neither questioned the material of a scholarly book nor asserted that they made a mistake. You are telling lies. I am citing figures from Russian archives that can be found on Mark Harrison's web page while you are citing figures from a book review that are contrary to what the authors concluded on page 415. You are without credibility. Mikhaul Frunze
That is a REVIEW of a book as opposed to material taken directly from the book. On page 415, Davies and Wheatcroft established a figure of 4.5 million that included 2.9 million registered excess deaths, 1.4 million Kazakh famine deaths, and 300 thousand OGPU deaths. You can verify for yourself by actually reading the book. Mikhaul Frunze
P. 401 of the work in concern states the following: "As we explain below, our own view is that these extreme estimates are implausable and that excess deaths probably amounted to 5.5 to 6.5 million"
Of course, as shown by the term "probably", there is not any certainty or conclsion reached on their estimates. Chapter 13 starts at page 400 and ends at page 441. Half way through on p.415, they have put an estimate resulting from 1.5 million from Kazakh famine, 2.9 million from registered excess deaths, and 300 thousand from the OGPU system that amount to 4.6 million. The book review does not accurately convey the material of their book. Mikhaul Frunze
P. 401 of the work in concern states the following: "As we explain below, our own view is that these extreme estimates are implausable and that excess deaths probably amounted to 5.5 to 6.5 million"
Of course, as shown by the term "probably", there is not any certainty or conclsion reached on their estimates. Chapter 13 starts at page 400 and ends at page 441. Half way through on p.415, they put an estimate of 4.6 million resulting from 1.5 million from Kazakh famine, 2.9 million from registered excess deaths, and 300 thousand from the OGPU system. The book review does not accurately convey the material of their book and is surely not of more reliability than what is actually written in the book. The chart that I linked is an expansion of the data they posted on page 415: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/deaths.xls It is actually a part of their book. In contrast, you have put forth nothing but hearsay from a reviewer who had nothing to do with writing the book. Mikhaul Frunze
The previous version of the page will be kept because the version endorsed by the Cold Warriors contains disproportional emphasis on right-wing partisan sources including those by Rummel, Solzhenitsyn, Anne Applebaum, and others that make unsubstantiated claims that Stalin "killed 20 million". The vast majority of scholars including J.Arch Getty, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Robert Thurston, Gregory Freeze, and countless others who have cited archival documents perceive archival information to be correct. This page needs to be balanced and accomdodate all points of view equally instead of writing one paragraph for archival information and four paragraphs for right-wing dissidents.
Once again, in reply to the who persistently lies about how Wheatcroft and Davies asserted 6 million famine deaths in 1932-33, take a look at p.415 where the conclusions for the death toll are reached. Nowhere is a figure of 6 million endorsed. A review of one's work will cannot be used as a credible source as opposed to material directly derived from one's work e.g the chart that lists the famine deaths. The previous version of this page will yet again be discredited by me:
Early researchers of the number killed by Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence, and their estimates range as high as 60 million.
That is just simply incorrect. There were a diverse array of estimates prior to the Cold War which included about 5 million by the demographers Frank Lorimer, Barbara Anderson, and Eric Silver. To simply cite Solzhenitsyn is to give preference to a source which is not allowed.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, hard evidence from the Soviet archives finally became available, and many of the earlier, higher estimates became more difficult to sustain. For example, the archives record that about 800,000 prisoners were executed (for either political or criminal offences) under Stalin, while another 1.7 million died of privation in the Gulags and some 389,000 perished during kulak resettlement - a total of about 3 million victims.
While other figures are correct, there is not evidence anywhere in the archives that deaths in the labor camps was anywhere near 1.7 million. The real figure is 1 million.
Also, it is generally agreed that the data are incomplete, since some categories of victim were carelessly recorded by the Soviets - such as the victims of ethnic deportations, or of German population transfer in the aftermath of WWII.
It is not generally agreed that the archival data are incomplete. This is immediately contradicted by the countless scholars who have cited archival material. There is not any evidence of data being carelessly recorded. Those who find the archival data to be incomplete are in the minority and have been thoroughly refuted by those who defend archival information.
Thus, while some archival researchers have posited the number of victims of Stalin's repressions to be no more than about 4 million in total [10][11][12], others believe the number to be considerably higher. Russian writer Vadim Erlikman[10], for example, has made the following estimations: Executions 1.5 million, Gulag 5 million, Deportations 1.7 million (out of 7.5 million deported), and POW's and German civilians 1 million, for a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
One single author is not allowed to be receptive to disproportionate emphasis. The point has already been made that some authors disagree with the archival figures. This paragraph above is a manifestation of redundency. Erlikman is incorrect to assert 1.5 million executions because actual death sentences did not exceed 800 thousand. He is incorrect to assert 5 million in the GULAG because there is not any evidence for it. He is incorrect to even cite the deportation of 7.5 million because the archives show that about half of that figure were deported. He is also incorrect about German POWs because the total of POWs that perished from all countries in Soviet custody was 520 thousand. Again, this is to give disproportionate emphasis on a fringe scholar whose views are not endorsed by mainstream academic circles.
These numbers are by no means the full story of deaths attributable to the regime however, since at least another 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-33 famine must be added.[13][11][12] But again historians differ, this time as to whether or not the famine victims were purposive killings - as part of the campaign of repression against kulaks - or whether they were simply unintended victims of the struggle over forced collectivization.
This is yet again exemplary of Wikipedia's shoddy material. The source of Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies is deliberately misused because they favored a figure of 4.6 million - 5.7 million in their work. Archival demographic information asserts that there were 2.5 million excess deaths in Ukraine, Lower Volga, and North Caucuses which is undeniably of more reliability than partisan estimates.
Regardless, it appears that a minimum of around 10 million surplus deaths (4 million by repression and 6 million from famine) are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a probable figure of somewhere between 15 to 20 million. Adding 6-8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a figure of between 15 and 17 million victims. Pioneering researcher Robert Conquest[13], meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million. Others, however, continue to maintain that their earlier much higher estimates are correct.[14]
It is wholly incorrect to say that there is a minimum surplus death total of 10 million. Most archival researchers have favoured a minimum toll of 5.5 million which is reached by 1 million in GULAG + 800 thousand executed + 400 thousand kulaks + 520 thousand POWs + 3 million famine deaths. There is yet again disproportionate emphasis given to some fringe Russian-Jew scholar named Erlikman as if he is the sole authority on the subject. The adjective of "pioneering" for Robert Conquest is an automatic POV and needs to be removed. His views have been thoroughly challenged and refuted by Stephen Wheatcroft. The emphasis given to Rummel is another pathetic joke as his work has been discredited. Overall, we've got a single sentence devoted to archival information while the rest gives emphasis to half-baked estimates that lie in the minority. Mikhaul Frunze
Frunze your remark , "some fringe Russian-Jew scholar named Erlikman" lets us know your POV. We hear you loud and clear.-- Woogie10w 01:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I was just curious, but what did Stalin consider himself, religiously? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Somerset219 ( talk • contribs)
The Joseph Stalin mentions that Lev Shubnikov, the physicist, was shot. I'd like to see a cite for that. Google has several hundred hits indicating that he was shot, but they're all derived from the Stalin article in Wikipedia. This issue came up because someone created an article for him, and the question then arose over whether he actually was shot, and if so, for what. -- John Nagle 05:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Man, that painting is hilarious- The Producers II: Summer for Stalin, Autumn for Mao. Stalin dreessed in white, standing in a bucholic pasture, with small rosy-cheeked children giving him flowers. Totalitarian kitsch, I love it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RolandDeschain ( talk • contribs)
I find the Arabic version quite comical, his name is clearly 'Yousef', and obviously we're calling him the English version 'Joseph', I can't see why this means we have to bastardise the same thing in Arabic when clearly his name is 'Yousef', I've changed the name under his picture and at the start, if somebody can change the title that would be very helpful, I can't conduct an Arabic search on this computer so if someone with the ability could go through and check the rest.
It be prudent if we did the same things for the Persian and Hebrew versions.
-- Zayd 13:45, 29 July 2006
The estimations of number of victims of famines in Tsarist Russia differs. For example, this source [73] says it were 2.8 million victims in 1901, and 1 million in 1911.-- Nixer 19:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Ultramarine, please exoplain your reversions. Why do you not respect the WP:AWW and WP:NPOV rules?-- Nixer 20:32, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Nixer, what historian has not blamed the Stalinist regime for the '32-33 famine? Just curious. Because as far as I am aware, every historian has found the regime culpable for the famine, they just differ on whether it was deliberate or accidental. Gatoclass 04:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
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