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Talk:Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 96.241.74.184 (talk) at 19:10, 29 October 2024 (Sources and figures: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Sources and figures

There are only two sources that place numbers on deaths and neither are rigorous or reliable. One is a non-peer reviewed word document that you need to use the Wayback Machine to even access, and that source itself cites other sources without ever naming them. The other source cites a non-peer reviewed article by an anthology published by a Christian bookstore. Neither of these are credible historiographic sources and none can point to anything like archival documentation. As the discussion above alludes to, there isn't even a consideration of who is or isn't a Christian in these broad estimates of Soviet death. Until a credible source can be found, I believe these numbers should be removed. - Bjmunise (talk) 01:37, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I've removed the challenged claim. I'm also adding boxes for neutrality and poor/biased citations. This article has quite a lot of problems, and I'm not sure where to begin other than alerting editors to it. It may require a rewrite. - LesbianTiamat (talk) 18:31, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am restoring the sources in a separate section since they are reliable sources. User:Bjmunise is incorrect. James M. Nelson source is Springer (academic publisher), Todd M. Johnson source is from an academic institution (University of Notre Dame) and is an editor of the World Christain Encyclopedia (Oxford university Press), and Yakovlev is from Yale University Press. These are are not random sources. Should be careful of not removing properly cited material WP:REMOVECITE. Ramos1990 (talk) 03:17, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"since they are reliable sources"
Neither are accredited historians and both have obvious biases. Calling these reliable sources makes a mockery of academic study. 204.63.40.47 (talk) 14:48, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I deleted the passage. Why? Johnson's claim is that over 20,000,000 Christians were killed. He provides no footnote for this to investigate further. But if we take the estimate from the Black Book of Communism, which is higher than almost any current scholar would agree, that only gives 20,000,000 as the total victims of the USSR, period, whether Christian or not. Johnson's number is not supportable when compared to other sources in any way, shape, or form.
As for Nelson, 12 million is still absurdly high to claim as victims of Soviet persecution of Christians. I followed the footnotes, and the claim that his source (`Bergman, S. "Twentieth-Century Martyrs: A Meditation," in Martyrs: Contemporary Writers on Modern Lives of Faith.) makes is that "The Orthodox communion of saints, determined by a less technical process than that carried out by the Roman Catholic church, includes hundreds of thousands of such martyrs and estimates as many as 12 million Christians to have perished under the most recent atheistic regime." This page is about persecution of Christians in the USSR, and the source only says that hundreds of thousands were martyred for their faith. The 12 million number would seem to simply be victims of the USSR, who coincidentally happened to be Christian but that isn't why they were killed. It isn't a number that is relevant for this page, as at best will cause confusion for the reader, and more generally should be seen as intentional and disingenuous conflation to advance an agenda contray to what the source actually states. 96.241.74.184 (talk) 15:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These sources are from academic publishers and these are estimates by researchers. Personal opinions on academic sources is not enough to remove properly cited material. Ramos1990 (talk) 17:28, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fine... I have added additional sources to call into question the legitimacy of those claims, as well as linking to the Wikipedia page on Excess mortality in the Soviet Union. As you agree "academic sources is not enough to remove properly cited material", that should be perfectly agreeable and we can allow the competing, cited information speak for themselves. 96.241.74.184 (talk) 19:10, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]