Talk:Joseph Stalin

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Stalin as Mass Murderer

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)

Of course it is inevitable that Bush, and any prominent U.S. politician currently in office for that matter, is likely to get somewhat unfair coverage on Wikipeida. Now that Bush is down in the polls, though not at levels historically surprising for a second term president, I notice the bias creeping in his Wikipedia article. Parts of the article are becoming screeds for some of the most extreme and partisan elements of the Democratic Party; yesterday, for example, I removed a photo calling for the president's impeachment. [1] A couple of weeks ago, I also had to clean up the article on Conrad Burns, a Montana politician who is also under attack of partisan national Democratic activists. Electoral politics are clearly working their way into Wikipedia.

Fortunately, Wikipedia seems to have a capacity to avoid a shrill and polemical tone in articles on historical figures who are long dead. It may be inconsistent with the tone of articles on living politicans, but Wikipedia is more encyclopedic when it can avoid emotional overtones in the history articles at least, including the articles on figures like Stalin and Hitler.

As a case-in-point, the Adolf Hitler intro is well-written because it mentions 'deaths of 11 million people' toward the bottom, in the third to the last sentence. The reference to the 11 million deaths belongs toward the end for two reasons. First, an encyclopedia article has to identify the basic stuff like 'who, what, when, and where' first, including name, birth date, birthplace, formal leadership titles, and period of rule. Second, the reference to 11 million deaths belongs toward the end because those deaths occurred toward the end of Hitler's rule. As an intro gives a summary of his rule, it should be moving along somewhat chronologically. The same goes for the Stalin article, where information should also be detailed in an encyclopedic tone. 172 | Talk 04:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

In one way, being responsible for millions of deaths is so much more notable than anything else that I can understand that you feel it should come very first in the article. But it's not how we write articles on state leaders, be it Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong or Stalin, to mention a few. We begin the article with the name, when they lived and the highest position they held and when they held it. I don't think we should make exeptions to that based on death tolls. Do you know of any other encyclopedia articles on Stalin (or anyone else) that begin as you would like it? Shanes 04:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm saying a brief statement about it should be the first issue that the introduction deals with about him, after the stuff about date of birth, etc. Since I doubt if editors will agree to that, at the very least it should be mentioned in the first paragraph. If it is insisted that the first paragraph be limited to giving formal information about him, then the second paragraph should deal with the issue. Drogo Underburrow 05:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Here is a sample of what I mean:

"Joseph Stalin (help·info) (Russian, in full: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин (Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin), né: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили (Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი (Ioseb Jughashvili); (December 18 [O.S. December 6 (although the date on his death certificate is December 21, 1879)] 1878[1]) – March 5, 1953) was the despotic ruler of the Soviet Union who built a bureaucratic and arbitrary network of terror unprecedented in history. He was responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people, ordering more people to their deaths than anyone else in history.

Stalin became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922 and following the death of Vladimir Lenin, he prevailed over Leon Trotsky in a power struggle during the 1920s. In the 1930s Stalin initiated the Great Purge, a period of severe repression that reached its peak in 1937...."

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)

The last thing we want to do is insert contested claims in the intro, or anywhere in the article without attribution for that matter. Not everyone agrees that Stalin was responsible for "ordering more people to their deaths than anyone else in history" because it is impossible to know for sure exactly how many deaths he 'ordered' or what constitutes the 'ordering.' Some come up with estimates, but they vary considerably. Distinguishing intent and effect is a major difficulty for a political historian... Regarding some of your other proposals, terms like "despotic" are also avoided on Wikipedia. I see no reason this intro cannot follow the rubric of the Adolf Hitler article, which is concise and readable. Mentioning millions of deaths says it all without loading up the text with a bunch of bad-sounding pejorative words. 172 | Talk 07:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it the consensus of historians that Stalin was a despotic ruler? If so, then why not say so? Not saying so is just as misleading as falsely saying so. Drogo Underburrow 07:20, 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

Although I disagree with the concrete proposals of both Drogo and Bublick439, I agree with Bublick439's reply to Drogo above. I only have a minor unrelated gripe; I don't understand how "bureaucracy" is a loaded term. At any rate, again, that's totally unrelated to the point. 172 | Talk 07:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The Encyclopædia Britannica calls Stalin a "totalitarian dictator" and a "tyrant". I guess you are accusing the EB of being unobjective and having an axe to grind. It appears you simply want the Wikipedia article to avoid any terms that make Stalin sound bad, even when those terms accurately describe what Stalin was. Stalin was a despot, and calling him one is entirely appropriate. Not calling him one could be a way of falsely putting a favorable spin on him. Drogo Underburrow 08:10, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

At the same time the Britannica intro does not mention the "tens of millions of deaths." Nor does it mention the famine. In that sense, I think we're doing a better job of conveying Stalin's criminality. By pointing to the concrete human toll better informs the reader than using the word "despot." 172 | Talk 08:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

to Talk: "bureaucracy" is a loaded term for "goverenment employees"

It isn't. The term has sometimes taken on a pejorative association in popular usage, especially since the attacks on government during the Reagan and Thatcher years. But that's an incorrect usage. The term has a specific meaning defined by experts in organization and other social scientists. A bureaucracy is any private or public entity organized impersonally in a hierarchy of specialization and functioning under rational and legal rules and procedures. So the term describes any corporation, school, hospital, political party, military, or government agency. In other words, bureaucracy is the primary mode of human organization of the modern world. 172 | Talk 08:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

to Drogo: mine was merely a suggestion, not an imperative. I am pasting the intro from Britannica. It doesn't sound too emotional or loaded to me, at any rate it doesn't say "killed millions of people" in the first sentence.

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

Ok, then lets continue to quote the EB....I but a couple of words in bold so you won't miss them:

That Stalin's system persisted as long as it did, in all its major essentials, after the death of its creator is partly due to the very excess of severity practiced by the great tyrant. Not only did his methods crush initiative among Soviet administrators, physically destroying many, but they also left a legacy of remembered fear so extreme as to render continuing post-Stalin restrictions tolerable to the population; the people would have more bitterly resented—might even, perhaps, have rejected—such rigours, had it not been for their vivid recollection of repressions immeasurably harsher. Just as Hitler's wartime cruelty toward the Soviet population turned Stalin into a genuine national hero—making him the Soviet Union's champion against an alien terror even worse than his own—so too Stalin's successors owed the stability of their system in part to the comparison, still fresh in many minds, with the far worse conditions that obtained during the despot's sway.

"Stalin, Joseph." Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-13394> [Accessed April 7, 2006]

Aww..guess what...EB calls Stalin a despot, too. Now, all I propose is we say this in a nutshell, in the intro, like the example I gave. Drogo Underburrow 08:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Again, at the same time the Britannica intro does not mention the "tens of millions of deaths." We're already doing a better job of conveying Stalin's criminality. Mentioning the concrete human toll says a lot more than any one adjective. 172 | Talk 08:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Why can't we do both? Call him a tyrant, despot and all-around not nice guy, and still say he killed millions? And why can't we say this in the introduction, right after the required foreign language nonsense that editors love and ordinary readers hate? Furthermore, EB DOES say that Stalin murdered tens of millions. Drogo Underburrow 08:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Stalin's political victims were numbered in tens of millions. His main motive was, presumably, to maximize his personal power.

"Stalin, Joseph." Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-13391> [Accessed April 7, 2006]. Drogo Underburrow 08:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The rules of Wikipedia state very clearly that all articles should be neutral. The intro is negative enough already. IMO, there is no need to make it extremely negative. Drogo, if you want to criticize mass murderers (a friendly suggestion) you can vent some of your energy on capitalist governments, who collectively exterminated well over 100 million people in various wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. If you feel that tyrany is wrong, do a little research on incarceration rate in the United States: it is the highest in the world.

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

Imprisoning people in a Siberian gulag is a way of torturing someone to death. Drogo Underburrow 01:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

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 rapidlly, 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

Repeat: Peer-reviewed articles vs. Books and Websites

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

The following is the sentence that you are calling into question: Stalin tried to crush all opposition by commencing a bureaucratic and usually arbitrary network of terror that resulted in tens of millions of deaths. You would be correct in pointing out that the claim that the Great Purge and the Gulag system resulted in tens of millions of deaths is contested. The 'numbers' on the Great Purge vary greatly from estimates by Getty at the low end to estimates by Conquest around the high end. However, I think you are misreading the sentence. The sentence is broad enough to cover all periods and facets of Stalin's rule. Thus, I read the sentence to include the 1932-34 famine as well as the Great Purge and the Gulag. Including the famine easily puts us past the 10 million threshold. Hardly anyone disputes that the Soviet famine deaths in 1933 alone, for example, were not at least at three to four million. On a perhaps more compelling level, mentioning tens of millions of deaths is necessary if you consider Drogo Underburrow as a common example of the extreme emotional reaction triggered in many readers by the article. Without disregarding the objective standards that you are bringing up, we must establish in a very poignant way the scale of Stalin's criminality; the best way of establising this point is saying outright that the was responsible directly or indirectly for tens of millions of deaths. 172 | Talk 07:51, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

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 think we're on the same page when it comes to the estimates, such as the leading studies by Tsaplin, Getty, Conquest, Medvedev, and a handful of others. I think the dispute is our read of "tens of millions." I take that to mean at least 10 million. One can speak of "tens of" a unit X when X can be divided by ten and equal an amount greater than one. There is no disputing that we're easily above the 10 million mark when including the Gulag, famine, Great Purge, etc., even when picking out the low-end estimates for each category. So we can say "tens of millions" without disregarding the work of serious researchers whose numbers for the purges and the labor camps come up at the low end, such as Getty. At any rate, just about the famous 'combined' figures are much higher. Hence, Britiannica cites Medvedev's famous 20 million figure in their Stalinism article: In 1989 the Soviet historian Roy Medvedev estimated that about 20 million died as a result of the labour camps, forced collectivization, famine, and executions. Another 20 million were victims of imprisonment, exile, and forced relocation. 172 | Talk 09:03, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

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

These estimates are always going to be rough, even when they get passed peer-review. So I am not saying that we should present Medvedev's 20 million figure as an uncontestable claim... I still think the source of our disagreement is semantics. "Tens of millions" can technically mean at least one more than 10 million. Who's assuming that the 10 million figure can only be multiplied by a whole number? At any rate, this discussion isn't going to go anywhere. There is a contingent of users who will revert back to "tens of" without listening to you. Instead, they'll make the matter into a political fight. 172 | Talk 10:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

That is of course wrong. Academic books can be better than articles since thay can list their sources in great detail. For example the Black Book of Communism, written by several academics, lists thousands of sources. Ultramarine 10:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

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

Academic press also have strict requirement. There is simply no way that a short article can list thousands of sources and give long descriptions. Ultramarine 10:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

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

Unfortunately, you seem to know little about how academic press workds. Academic books are as a good a source as peer-reviewed articles. Ultramarine 16:56, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

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

Please read something about what academic press is. Ultramarine 19:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The talk page archives

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)

Exactly. Every incarnation of the intro is a very delicate consensus capable of standing for a couple of months until it's shattered by the arrival of one new user. Then the same fight plays out again, but with a new set of players... Regarding your proposal, I doubt that a topic-indexed archive will help. Most of the time the discussions involve reasonable users trying to reconcile different ideas for improving the text, as I think is the case now with the most recent newcomers. Reasonable users have always been willing to review the archive, despite the lack of an index. The problem with indexing archives involves the trolls. A topic-indexed archive might give trolls more material for disrupting Wikipedia. For example, users like User:Libertas and User:Agiantman were able to attract attention to themselves by cherry-picking their way through archives in order to misrepresent the work of other editors. At any rate, routinely rehashing the same discussion, no matter how tedious it is to longtime editors, may have some value when considering Jimbo Wales' argument about the role of "creative destruction" on Wikipedia. 172 | Talk 09:51, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

A proposal

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)

I definitely don't want to. The editing environment is too explosive. The best I think we can do is to keep out ridiculously poorly composed and inaccurate material. The only hope of this becoming a good article is a complete rewrite by a well-read user. If I ever find the time, I'll do it. Though I won't have the time in months. If you have the time, I'm confident that you're capable of single-handedly producing a superior draft. 172 | Talk 10:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Claims and statements without any references

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)

Britannica says that Stalin's political victims were numbered in tens of millions. We should say this in our article too, in the introduction, as this is important. Drogo Underburrow 12:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

If you can find a reference to a peer-reviewed study in Britannica that confirms this claim, then go ahead. Note that Britannica doesn't mention tens of millions of victims in the introduction. In addition, "victims" can easily be construed as "death toll" which is inaccurate. Ambiguous and vague language should be avoided Bublick439 13:02, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

EB is an encyclopedia, not a bibliography of peer-reviewed studies. EB is a valid source that satisfies Wikipedia policies that material be sourced. Drogo Underburrow 13:42, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you interested in finding the true death toll, or do you want to blindly pin an arbitrary death toll number on Stalin just because it "feels good"? What is your motivation? Britannica can contain errors and false claims Comparison of Britannica and Wikipedia and it is edited and updated continuously. A more reliable source would be a peer-reviewed publication in the field of history, if Britannica does not provide you with one.

I am not interested in "finding the true death toll" as that would be original research. I am only interested in reporting what sources say. However, whatever source I find, if it states that Stalin killed tens of millions, I have a feeling that you will come up with a reason why you won't accept its validity, and will challenge its use as a source. At first you said that the EB didn't give such a total; then when I looked it up, and found that it in fact did say what you said it didn't, you then decided that the EB was not a good source. I'm not going to bother finding another source. The EB is an acceptable one. My motivation is making the Wikipedia article report what valid sources say, and the EB is one of them. Drogo Underburrow 14:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

You can cite EB if you want, the problem is you want to multiply the statements about the death toll in EB by the factor of 10 and use the same vague language about "victims". There is no reason to replicate inaccuracies of Britannica, when you have a number of specialized journals in the field of history both in Russia and in the West. Bublick439 15:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about?? Who said anything about multiplying by ten? I want our article to say the same thing that EB says..that Stalin killed tens of millions in political murders, and up to another ten million in the Ukraine famine. Drogo Underburrow 15:31, 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)

Ultramarine, how do you spell the name of the journal? I can't find it in google. thanks for your contribution anyway Bublick439 14:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Corrected. Ultramarine 14:44, 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

Getty, Wheatcroft, and Davies, whom you cite, are legitimate scholars whose work I do not disregard... Responding to your argument, the "tens of millions" figure, even if we were to sum up all categories (famine, purges, deportations, labor camps, etc.), might or might not be too high if we were to sum up only the most conservative academic estimates posited for each category. Still, cherry-picking only the lowest estimates to add up in order to reach the most apologetic sum possible, in other words consciously struggling with the arithmetic in a desperate attempt to take us out of the tens of millions realm, is just as dubious as cherry-picking only the highest estimates in order to reach one of those sensational sums around 60 million. Almost all the possible sums are safely enough within the tens of millions of realm. On a more tactical point, I suggest that you and Bublick439 give up on fighting the "tens of millions" reference. You will never be able to establish a consensus for your proposal. From my experiences, most Wikipedia editors are either unfamiliar with post-Cold War scholars like Getty, Wheatcroft, and Davies, or even intensely suspicious of them. Wikipedia editors tend to be more familiar with best-seller authors like Conquest and Pipes-- scholars who were increasingly considered the 'traditionalist' old-guard of Russian and Soviet studies when I was a student more than three decades ago. Demand creates supply here; readers feel more comfortable with Conquest's perspective, and they will become editors to make sure that it remains dominant on the English Wikipedia. 172 | Talk 07:33, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

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

Poem paragraph

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)

Young Dzhugashvili did write verses. http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?p=85456#85456 --85.141.202.84 16:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've found were Jaro.p took it - in the bottom of this page with Stalin's verses (in Russian) there is a sort of footnote: http://zero.thewalls.ru/htdocs/tirani/coco/stihi.htm Here you are my try:

"The verses written by young Stalin met with public notice. In 1901 Georgian public figure M. Kelendzheridze, who made educational book on language arts, put in the book among the best examples of Georgian classics a verse under Soselo signature. In 1907 the same M. Kelendzheridze had published 'Georgian chrestomathy or collection of the best exemplars of Georgian language arts' (volume 1) in which (on the page 43) he put a Stalin's poem dedicated to Eristavi."

(I guess here they meant Rafael Eristavi - Georgian poet. 1824-1901. And BTW I've found that in the Soviet Literature Encyclopedia they called Kelendzheridze reactionist-clericalist :) ) --85.141.202.84 17:29, 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)

Missing footnotes

The two first paragraphs in the first chapter [2] include references "Archer 11" and "Hoober 15", however there are only two sources in the references [3] non of which seem to apply. I think I managed to find who added those references [4], 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)