Talk:Joseph Stalin

Holodomor and NPOV

It seems to me that Holodomor remains a disputed controversial topic and therefor its statement as fact is going against NPOV. No documentation has ever been produced to substantiate or verify any deliberate policy of genocide. For comparison, Natives in North America have claimed that Union soldiers purposefully gave them blankets contaminated with small pox, but this isn't written as fact, but as contested and controversial. This reference to Holodomor appears in the first section under Stalin, by comparison let's look at Stalin's contemporary Winston Churchill and his article on wikipedia. In his first section there is no emphasis on the Bengali famine. It is buried a number of sections down and it says:

"Another source of controversy about Churchill's attitude towards Indian affairs arises over what some historians term the Indian 'nationalist approach' to the Bengal famine of 1943, which has sought to place significant blame on Churchill's wartime government for the excessive mortality of up to four million people.[126][127][128] While some commentators point to the disruption of the traditional marketing system and maladministration at the provincial level,[129] Arthur Herman, author of Churchill and Gandhi, contends, 'The real cause was the fall of Burma to the Japanese, which cut off India's main supply of rice imports when domestic sources fell short ... [though] it is true that Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports from other theatres to India to cover the shortfall: this was wartime.'"

I would suggest a balanced approach should be presented in this article. The Collectivization was at least in some part a response to the practice of sharecropping done by the kulaks, or rich peasants, against the poor and landless peasants. Sharecropping is essentially understood as debt slavery, which much as it meant in the United States a continuation of slavery by other means, likewise for Russia was the continuation of serfdom by other means. Rich peasants exploited poor peasants to pay through the nose for land, for animals, etc. Ending such a system caused pushback. So did ending slavery in the USA, by those who benefitted from such an arrangement. There have been many documented cases of kulaks killing livestock, destroying harvests and grain to sabotage the collectivization effort. I see no such mention in the article of the form of resistance by the kulaks in sabotage of collectivization. Instead the article helps foster a view which implies that Stalin and the Bolsheviks purely of their own subjectivity decided to cause a famine.

I get that people have their political biases, of course. I get that most people on wikipedia will hate Communism and love "liberal democracies", like supposedly Britain was. But the fact remains, and this is a fact and not disputable, that Churchill ordered shipments to Bengal to be diverted, thereby contributing to a famine. We have his orders. For Stalin, no such orders have been found. And yet the four million deaths of the Bengalis are not called a genocide by 26 governments, Churchill is not portrayed as a murderer, if anything the blame is shifted to the Japanese. Meanwhile Stalin and the Bolsheviks in this article get full blame for the famine, and nowhere is it discussed about how any of the actions of the kulaks contributed to the shortages.

Does this seem truly neutral or am I detecting a liberal and anti-communist bias? I think so. this is supposed to be an encyclopedia and therefor academic, not journalistic.69.139.11.106 (talk) 07:46, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

"He subsequently managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin through suppressing Lenin's criticisms (in the postscript of his testament)"

This is just flat out untrue. Upon the reading of the testament, all sources say Stalin immediately offered his resignation. The Politburo refused it. This statement has no citation or basis in fact.69.139.11.106 (talk) 15:26, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

"Between 1934 and 1939 he organized and led a massive purge (known as "Great Purge") of the party" Not correct to say he "organized the purge". Yezhov organized the purge (who was himself also purged later). More correct to say Stalin authorized or approved the purge. But the organization wasn't done by Stalin.69.139.11.106 (talk) 15:29, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Fake picture

That picture of a 23 year old "Stalin" is not real. It's a propaganda picture. You can't even compare it with this one: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72315244/z/stalin.png 85.76.136.175 (talk) 12:41, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

That photo is from 1911 (see in the article), when he was 33. Well, of course his face changed in 10 years. Vanjagenije (talk) 18:25, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Terrible article; list of events, not a biography

This is a terrible article, instead of being a biography of the man Joseph Stalin its a list of events (usually the worst of the worst).. This is a biographic article and deserves to be organized accordingly, just as the Hitler article is. I'll be working on a new version in a sandbox of mine. --TIAYN (talk) 23:36, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be impressive, if you manage to achieve it. Stalin embodies a very political subject. Much more so than Hitler. Imho, majority believes Stalin's vilification is absolutely mandatory. 77.38.191.209 (talk) 10:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Do you know how insufferably conservative Wikipedians are? Expect your improvements to be reverted.Kurzon (talk) 16:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Religion

There is no source for Stalin being an Athiest in the religion section. And immediately after that there is a sourced sentence about how he believed in or thought it was possible there was something like a god of nature, which would make him an animist or agnostic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.173.173.38 (talk) 00:43, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 January 2015

Add to the External Links

• Stalin and His Repressive Regime. High School curriculum published by the State of New Jersey Department of Education Holocaust Commission and Prakhin Foundation

173.70.47.107 (talk) 15:24, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template.  ^B E _C K ^Y _S A ^{Y L} E _S  16:09, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Completely unsubstantiated "deaths" figure based on two newspaper articles.

What a complete embarrassment. Pathetic. Journalism is inferior to academic study. 75.73.4.72 (talk) 23:46, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, one of those is the NYT discussing Russian academic research on Stalin's death figures. It looks like a solid ref. Capitalismojo (talk) 05:42, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

The NYT, serious? It is impossible for Stalin to have been the sole responsible party for the death of 20 to 40 million. Look at the Soviet census figures for population. We know the Nazi invasion killed 27 million, and the famine around 5 million (or ten million as the liberal estimate). Granted. But are we blaming Stalin for the deaths the Nazis inflicted? This makes no sense. Just a cursory glance at the population figures of the census show that the Soviet Union's population continued to grow. Anyone with a basic knowledge in demography could see that such a figure is not only unsubstantiated by primary documents (which is true) but also an impossibility demographically. It would be like making the claim that the Great Depression in the US caused 20 million deaths between the 1930 and 1940 census. If one were to make such a claim, it would be challenged if not simply laughed at. But the NYT, BBC and other Western journals have a long history of printing unsubstantiated anticommunist bias. Again, if there was evidence that could stand up to academic scrutiny, that would be one thing, but where is this evidence? We aren't talking about the Nazi holocaust, something well documented. We are talking about something that is constantly asserted as truth, has been for so long it has become unquestioned, and yet is not substantiated by records. This more like when the Western press printed the claims and propaganda of Saddam's WMD program as fact, instead of being rigorous NPOV investigative journalists. In the end, the parroted the propaganda and were proven wrong when held up to the facts. I challenge these numbers to get their source from any primary sources that will hold up to scrutiny. If the reference of the NYT is academic research, then we should examine the primary source, not simply assert that it is from the NYT. Caliming the NYT and BBC as authoritative is not much better than claiming RT or Al Jazeera as authoritative.69.139.11.106 (talk) 15:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)