Talk:Joseph Stalin/Archive 3

Stalin Talk Archive 1

This article is very week on industrialization, collectivization, and the establishment of the Administrative Command System (ACS), which is the term used by Western specialists to refer to the system of economic planning founded by the implementation of the first Five-Year Plan. It also completely ignores developments between 1945-1953, which are, of course, quite noteworthy since we see the beginning of the Cold War. It's easy to chronicle the nature of Stalinist terror with excruciating detail and cite estimates on causalities, but this leaves readers with a faint understanding of the actual scope of Stalin's impact on Russian history, which is evident to this day in the structures of Russia's economy, political institutions, and culture. While much improved over the past four months, this article is still on the superficial and sensational side. 172

I quite agree this article was appauling when I first set eyes on it, I've tried to improve it, but I'me not that good at writing history. G-Man

G-Man:

Don't say that. You've been doing a fine job. You've been adding valuable and detailed factual content and quality analysis. My comments were directed toward all contributors, especially myself. I had been adding content but wound up neglecting the article. That’s why I’ve been trying to steer you toward filling in the gaps that have been left by myself and other contributors.

172

Alas, it's been far too long since I read any Soviet history, so my memory for detail has gone. But at least I can trim out some nonsense. Here is the first para to go:

The rapid growth in the number of industrial workers living in cities meant that more food was needed. Stalin believed that this could be achieved by collectivising agriculture.

This cannot possibly be true. You have almost 5 million people killed in WW1, then a long-drawn-out and very bitter civil war with more millions dead or emigrated, fields ruined, machinery destroyed, and then you take some of those peasants and transport them to the cities, where they can only eat as much as they can buy (no slipping an extra handful of grain into your pocket when no-one is looking once you work in the iron foundary instead of on the farm), and you can factor in a major increase in food production because the armies are no longer marching all over the place shooting at each other and disrupting farming. In short, a food shortage caused by the number of industrial workers living in cities is clearly bunkum.

This next lot is harder to deal with.

opposed by peasants who in many cases destroyed their animals rather than hand them over to collective farms. This produced a drastic drop in food production and widespresd famine. Stalin blamed this fall in production on Kulaks or rich peasants, who he believed were counter-revolutionaries deliberately sabotaging food production, although there were very few peasants who could be described as rich, and there was very little evidence that there was any organised sabotage. Stalin was determined to wipe out any opposition to collectivisation. Under this pretext the peasants who opposed collectivisation faced enormous repression from Stalin's regime. Many peasants who opposed collectivisation were branded Kulags and accused of sabotage, although most weren't Kulaks but were poor peasants who were innocent. Many hundreds of thousands of peasants were shot or sent to Gulag prison camps. In some cases entire villages were wiped out.

There is stuff there that clearly has to go back into the entry. As it stands, however, it is balderdash. If "there was very little evidence that there was any organised sabotage" how do we explain all those destroyed animals? We need to do something about the bleeding-heart "poor peasants who were innocent" stuff. The basics of the tale are in the above ... somewhere. 172? Is this your field?

Good job Tannin for identifying these shortcomings. I'm not responsible for posting these two paragraphs, but I should've spotted them earlier. I've just gotten too timid to work on an article pertaining to such a controversial subject these days. After all, as you vividly recall, last December I was accused of being the last unreformed, unreconstructed, and unrepentant Stalinist alive just because I wanted to chronicle the industrialization and urbanization of the Soviet Union in this article.

The first paragraph that you're pointing out is actually correct; it's just unclear to the point of being misleading. Stalin was factoring in the expected boost to the urban population caused by the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan. There weren't really any food shortages, just predictions of food shortages after the drafting of the first Five Year Plan.

The second paragraph is largely fine except for this sentence: "although there were very few peasants who could be described as rich, and there was very little evidence that there was any organised sabotage." Kulaks did sabotage crops and did hoard their crops, despite the unfactual claims of this article, hoping for an end to the forcible seizure of surpluses. This is not an unrealistic expectation in light of the fact that less than a decade eariler in 1921 the party had caved to agrarian pressure and abandoned the unpopular agricultural policies of War Communism. What would've stopped them from caving again? No one knew how resolute Stalin was at this point. And the peasantry was also coming out of a market economy, and, of course, in a market economy withholding supplies is what producers do when the opprotunity cost of selling them off at a certain price (under collectivization it's 0!) is too high.

I also agree that the article should not object to defining the kulaks as rich peasants. Relative to the standards of their society they certainly were an elite middle class of farmers. They're not rich by the standards of contemporary Russia, with its multi-billionaire media oligarchs who accumulated huge sums from illegally pilfering state assets and parlaying them in Swiss, Caribbean, or Cypriot bank accounts, but they were distinguishable from most peasants.

I'd recommend that you make the necessary adjustments. There are still a handful of users who think that I'm a Stalin apologist for the December edits. Also, you could work on the tone. It reads like propaganda.

172

I do apologise, I confess I wrote the aformentioned bits, I was trying to counter the pro-Stalin bias of this article that existed before.

The point I was trying to make was that the term Kulag was a loose term used by Stalin to describe anyone who opposed his collectivisation policies, which included poor peasants as well as rich ones.

Collectivisation was opposed bitterly by most poor peasants, not just by Kulags.

The current revision of this article gives the misleading impression that collectivisation was welcomed by poor peasants which it most certainly wasn't.

The line

Stalin's regime moved to force collectivisation of agriculture. For landless peasants, this meant an opportunity to take an equal share in the labour, and in its rewards..... sounds like stalinist propaganda to me

G-Man 4/5/03

Notice above that the key word is landless. In some respects, the above statement is true and not propagandistic. Many landless peasants did support the onset of collectivization and not every peasant in a collective farm was miserable. After all, conditions varied greatly from farm to farm.

Now some who supported collectivization might have begun to regret the process, since supporters of the regime themselves were often victims of state terror, especially when they failed to meet production targets. Though not a peasant, even Stakhanovich, the hero worker who inspired the Stakhanovite movement was sent off to the GULAGs (for some reason not involving production quotas, of course!).

The majority of Russians today who lived through the Stalin era remember his leadership very fondly. This article also has to explain that phenomenon, which would seem contrary to so much else. Any attempts to do so do not constitute a "pro-Stalin" bias.

172

Yes but your forgeting that the generation who lived under Stalin were bombarded for most of their lives with endless all-pervasive propaganda about how wonderful Stalin was, so its hardly surprising that people remembered him fondly.

Even some of the most intelligent, intellectuals, scientists etc, were taken in by the propaganda.

And secondly I dont believe the line that their was any significant support for Collectivisation amongst the peasantry. As even for the poor peasants it meant the complete break up of a centuries old way of life, and co-ersion into an alien system, where they had no control over their lives.

Collectivisation was a blatant attempt by the Soviet regime to expropriate as much grain as they could to pay for the import of industrial machinery from abroad, and had nothing to do with the welfare of the peasants.

If any evidence is needed of the complete disregard the Soviet regime had for the welfare of the peasants. Between 1931-33 at a time when millions were starving, the Soviet Union exported millions of tonnes of grain on world markets. G-Man

G-Man:

Please don't pick up the Lir/Vera habit of quoting people and attributing something to them that's way out of context. Tannin and I are not concerned with writing a piece either sympathetic or critical of Stalin. We just do not want to turn this historical article into a partisan debate on Stalin's legacy.

My comments, and Tannin's comments earlier, did not express any support of collectivization whatsoever. In response to your comments, I merely pointed out that landless peasants (please, please this time take note that the key word is landless) were often broadly sympathetic of the program, depending on other complicated local concerns, and that this program was officially carried out in their name.

My statement on the talk page that the majority of elderly Russians remember the Stalin era fondly does not suggest anything about the legitimacy of Stalin's legacy. You pointed out the role of propaganda, which was an important aspect of Stalin's regime, and a very complex topic in itself, considering Stalin's master manipulation of Russian political culture. Propaganda, however, was one of many factors.

All in all, you're underestimating the high level of support Stalin enjoyed from many classes within the Soviet Union, which was not always entirely attributable to propaganda. Just as the atrocities that you have documented were brought to fruition, the Soviet Union was perhaps witnessing the most all-encompassing improvement in day-to-day living standards among the ordinary populous within a generation ever before in history, at least in terms of access on the aggregate to basic amenities, health, education, and modern luxuries. The Soviet Union also covered a huge geographical expanse, one sixth of the globe, so keep in mind that conditions varied greatly. Some regions and classes fared better than others; and many were often unaware of the system of prison labor, largely well-hidden in isolated regions of Siberia, that contributed to these remarkable strives in industrialization.

I broadly agree with your assessment of Stalin's actual motivations, but this question is far more complex than you assert. Collectivization is also linked to his consolidation of power, his skill at playing many factions of the party and bureaucracy against each other, his fears that rapid super-industrialization would lead to urban over-population and famine, and even fear of the new middle classes of nepmen and kulaks someday poising a challenge to Communist Party rule. We don't need to endorce one argument or bring up one factor, as you seem to want.

On the talk page, you correctly noted that the Soviet Union exported grain even at the peak of the famines in the Ukraine. You're correct since collectivization and industrialization are inextricably linked. Exports of grain helped the Soviet Union to raise the cash to import technology necessary for the industrialization program. As an aside, it might interest you to look at the fairly high levels of grain output during the NEP years. The Soviet Union perhaps would have been able to export even more grain had it not collectivized agriculture. This leads to another complex question of whether or not Stalin had any idea that collectivization would lead to huge declines in productivity.

172

Sorry I got a bit carried away in my last writing. I didnt mean to imply that you were biased.

But I'm a bit alarmed that Tannin's latest edits may be giving to much weight to the Stalinist version of history.

I agree that there may have been a degree of support for collectivisation at first from landless peasants. But there is ample historical evidence that collectivisation was opposed violently by most of the peasantry.

If evidence is needed of this. During 1929-30 so called "shock brigades" were formed, to cajole the peasantry into collective farms, and they usually used indiscriminate violence to achive this (it hardly suggests that the peasants were enthusiastic about collectivisation, if the government had to beat them into it) by 1930 about 60% of the peasantry had been driven to enroll into collective farms, In response to this co-ersion the peasants began slaughtering livestock. The government was so alarmed by this that they drew back and gave peasants the option of withdrawing from the collectives. and immediately well over half of those who had been enrolled into collective farms withdrew from them.

This was however a brief restbite because by 1931 an even bigger co-ersion drive was launced, and this time anyone who resisted it was branded as a kulag and either shot or exiled to siberia.

IMO Stalin probably believed in his own propaganda, that kulags were capitalist parasites who witheld food supplies for profit, and that opposition to collectivisation was organised by them (no one was going to dare to tell him otherwise) and he was surrounded by a load of yes men, who told him whatever he wanted to hear. He probably didn't have a clue what was really going on.

The whole colectivisation debacle was probably more the result of stupidity, poor communication and mis-understanding than deliberate malice.

G-Man

172 what exactly do you mean by "this version is more detailed" you've removed all of what I've just written, which as far as I'me concearned was perfectly valid. G-Man

That was an accident. I restored it just a minute prior to reading these comments. Sorry. I thought that you only removed content and changed the spelling of "kulaks" to mispellings. 172

Oh okay then, do you think that what I've written is an improvement on what was there before. G-Man

The recent major NPOV violations "Stalin Lives on in the Struggle of the Proletariat of All Countries and Oppressed Peoples!" and "Faithful disciple of Marx and Engels and the great comrade-in-arms of the immortal Lenin" were stolen from these websites: http://www.ganashakti.com/archive/stalin.htm http://www.geocities.com/komakml/staline.html

To the poster; please don't do that again. --mav 19:15 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

User:Paektu keeps spamming the same a pages-long text referred to above over a few pages, including this talk page. Temporarily protecting to avoid pressing "rollback" 100 times. --Delirium 03:27 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

He seems to have moved to Talk:Joseph Stalin forum for contributors' analysis; unprotecting this page. --Delirium 03:45 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That's a temporary solution. When more open-minded users come online, they'll demand your censure for deleting views with which you disagree from a talk page. Paektu

You can post whatever views you want on the talk page. Spamming a 3-page essay from an external website over a dozen Wikipedia pages is not the same thing. --Delirium 03:51 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, I'll stop posting it elsewhere when I'm able to post it where it really belongs, on the Stalin talk page. If you weren't so tyrannical, I would just have it on my talk page, as they are my views, and the Stalin talk page, where I want my views heard so that contributors will post some content from alternative perspectives.

I'm not sure why it's necessary to copy/paste such a lengthy work here; it disrupts the discussion since everyone has to scroll down several pages. Especially given that much of it is copied verbatim from here. But in any case, I'm done reverting this page, so if you really wish to copy/paste it in, I'll let someone else deal with it. --Delirium 03:59 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Josif vs Iosif

Why is it I instead of J?

Because the name is not English. "Iosif" is the way it should be written and pronounced if we are aiming to be accurate. Think about the Arabic name "Yusuf".

It would be nice to add the original Georgian version of his name in Roman and Georgian script.

! At this rate, we'll need a separate 'Stalin's Name' section (which I'd advocate now, actually - the first sentence is dreadful and should be

Josif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin, was the second leader of the Soviet Union.

Morwen 23:32, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Josif v. Joseph

The page should not have been moved without prior discussion. Joseph is many time more common than Josif: [1]. I will move it back. --Jia ng 01:09, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ok you are correct it should not have moved without prior discussion and I apologize. But just as an example let's say your Wiki username is Jiang, What if everyone started calling you Hiang instead because they thought it was the more commonly used name. The fact is that your name is Jiang not Hiang and in my opinion it would be a grave error to misspell a name of a historical figure. I seem to remember in high school history reading about the Soviet Union that his name was always spelled Josif, I believe the only reason it was spelled Joseph was so that westerners, Especially in the U.S.A. and U.K. could easily remember his name. Misterrick 01:37, 11 September, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy is to use the version most commonly used in the English language. RickK 01:47, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Josif and Joseph are both not the real name. The real name is written in the cyrillic alphabet. If both are transliterations (derivations of the original), how can one be more preferable than the other? They sound the same! --Jia ng 02:59, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I think I'm right in saying they're pronounced differently - Joseph has a hard "j" but as I recall, Josif or Iosif starts with more of a "y" sound. However, his name seems to have been anglicised to Joseph virtually from the start. -- ChrisO 11:15, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Stalin's Jewish ancestry

We have an anonymous user (66.124.101.229) who keeps inserting dubious statements that Stalin was Jewish, e.g. As is signified by the first syllable "Dzhu", he was of Jewish ethnicity, forced to Christianity in order to "get ahead" under Russian law of the time. If s/he has any source for this statement could s/he post it here? Stalin's supposed Jewish ancestry is generally regarded as a myth. Robert Conquest deals with it in his book "Stalin: Breaker of Nations" - Stalin's daughter Svetlana married a Jew but there is no evidence that I know of that Stalin himself had any Jewish relations. -- ChrisO 11:15, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

<--:: That anonymous user never did come back to substantiate his or her claim... -- ChrisO 19:13, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Man of Year

30 million is an estimate not many will agree upon. Probably not "widely regarded as a tyrant" either. He was, after all, Times man of the year twice. BL 05:01, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

TIME specifically says that it's Man of the Year designation is not intended as some honor or award. --Jia ng 05:03, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Did they say that before or after they had already "designated" Josef Stalin for the "designation" twice? :) My point is that the description of him has varied a lot. Changed into to reflect that. BL 15:19, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Hitler was time's man of the year, too. They have consistantly said it's a mention of the person who's had the most impact on the world, not the best person. RickK 01:50, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

1-26-2004

Highlighted words removed.

Under his leadership, the country was transformed from a backward peasant society to an advanced industralised state and was victorious in World War II.

to

Under his leadership, the country was transformed from a peasant society to an industralised state and was victorious in World War II. However, this came

The "advanced" is an easy one to go. It was advanced in a lopsided manner. Most of population barely felt this "advanceness". The word "backward" IMO is inapplicable. The country was crippled, destroyed, by revolution and civil war. You may call it "backward" if you like, but it is like calling a handicapped person "clumsy", if you get the idea. Mikkalai 04:51, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mikkalai, good changes - didn't think about it, but the adjectives ("advanced" and "backwards") and the "but" load the whole sentence to make it seem as if Stalin's murders were justified. I only picked up on the but. Overall good job, though you might want to replace the hyperlink to shock brigades. godless 09:10, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

After making some corrections I thought I have already done, it came to my attention that this aricle in its large part is a cut'n'paste from "History of the Soviet Union" Part I Part II (or both are from the same barrel). How about compressing the "historical" part of this article? Mikkalai 05:09, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Intro paragraph

Please keep the commentary out of the intro sentence. Right now, it's simple and matter-of-fact. Each point raised in the intro sentence is addressed in the article. 172 08:11, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Right now it is almost as simple and even more matter of fact. Stalin did kill millions and he did earn some reputation. Mikkalai 08:51, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

172, the adjectives ("advanced" and "backwards") and the "but" load the whole sentence to make it seem as if Stalin's murders were justified. That is not NPOV. godless 09:11, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

For crying out loud, no it doesn't. These are just two matter-of-fact statements that introduce the article. We don't need commentary in the intro on whether something was justified or not. Let these matters resend into history. 172 09:35, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think "but" certainly does load the sentence - it has the effect of minimising whatever comes before the "but". Consider the following: "Under Hitler's leadership, mass purges and repression occurred, but he transformed Germany from a nearly bankrupt state into a leading world power." Is that NPOV? I think not... -- ChrisO

We should be concerned with the Soviet historical record. Insisting on a congruence vis-à-vis the Hitler article is futile. I'd rather not get into it in great detail, but a basis for comparison is a bit trickier than the amateur reader of history may appreciate. We are dealing with regimes with significantly different institutional configurations. At the foundation, Germany and Russia stood at starkly different levels of economic and social development. The development of the Stalinist system of administrative command was a starkly different phenomenon from what was being seen in Germany, Italy, Japan, and even Spain and Portugal, where the fascist or fascist-like dicatorships arose within the framework of existing political structures.

Moreover, we need to shy away from using ambiguous and emotive terms like "murder" in historical writing, at least in the context of the edits in question here. At worst, debates on the numbers and statistics related to Stalinist causality figures often degenerate into games of semantics, all depending on what kind of criteria and definitions are being used. Please note the astronomical variations between many of the estimates commonly found. Usually, this is the result of different sources, combined with different formulae for compiling the figures.

BTW, when I was asking for sources, I was hoping that this would prompt the two new contributors to reengage themselves in the academic literature. I am familiar with each of Conquest's major works, and scores of other more recent accounts. In other words, I directed them to sources hoping that they would correct their use of sweeping generalizations on their own.

This is also an avoidable controversy. I'm begging other users to avoid opening up a can of worms by rehashing these controversies and debates solely as a reaction to a simple, straightforward intro sentence. Concrete overviews of the death tools resulting from collectivization and the Great Purges are given later in the article and in other pages on Soviet history linked to this article. 172 11:12, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think we've got a bit sidetracked from the narrow question of what the intro paragraph should say. I think it needs to note four things as a precis of the overall article, namely: (1) Stalin transformed Russia into an industrialised state, (2) the USSR won WW2 under his leadership, (3) millions died as a result of his policies and (4) he is generally regarded as a very unpleasant dictator. The first three of these things are indisputable and the fourth is an accurate representation of the general modern view of Stalin.

I agree that the intro paragraph needs to be NPOV, but I also agree with Godlesscapitalist that your preferred version of it is unsatisfactory. It comes across as saying that "these bad things happened but lots of other good things happened which effectively justified it". The impression is reinforced by the fact that it disposes of all of the "bad things" - which is what people mostly remember about Stalin - in only five words. You say that your version is more "concise" and "succinct" but where is the value in deleting a one-sentence summary on the aspects of Stalin's rule for which he is most remembered? -- ChrisO 13:06, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This is not "my version." It was written by someone else a while ago; I just keep restoring it since other versions have been emotive and/or wordy. The short version already accomplishes all four of your objectives (which are very well put and appropriate) without excessive verbiage. The issues of the purges, collectivization, and his legacy are dealt with later in the article; "mass purges and repression" says it all. BTW, I appreciate your constructive presence here. You obviously are interested in a quality article. Godlesscapitalist, however, solely appears interested in a flame war and controversy. Your additions on the deportations are mostly fine, but more linking them to Stalin's consolidation of power, administrative problems, and the implementation of the Five Year Plans would be helpful. 172 15:00, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Shock brigade

"In an attempt to overcome this resistance Stalin's regime used shock brigades to coerce reluctant peasants..."

The above sentence demonstrates the confusion in the usage of the term "shock brigade". In the context of Soviet Union the term "shock brigade" is used to translate the expression of Russian "udarnaja brigada". A correct meaning of the term would be something like "team of energetic, intensive labor".

It had nothing to do with coercion, or military conotation of the word "brigade".

It is known that often collectivisation was perfomed forcibly, under threats, but I suggest not to use the buzzword "shock brigade" in this context, to avoid confusion with the workers' "shock brigade". Or may be there is another term for translation of "udarnaja brigada", "udarnik"?

At the same time, during collectivisation there were indeed special brigades for coersion of peasants. They were called "twenty-five-thounders", after Stalin's call to send 25,000 of industrial worker bolsheviks to "help" collectivisation.

Mikkalai 15:55, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

- Just a note: udarnaja brigada translated word-for-word is hitting brigade or attacking brigade (by the meaning of the word). Ilyanep 01:20, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Intro

I hope that no one I alarmed with my reversion of a good number of edits, as I open to discussing this. Anyway, the use of the bullets in an intro is an unorthodox way - to say the least - of introducing an encyclopedic entry on a historical figure. In its place, I restored the straightforward, conventional intro, which broadly introduces everything denoted in the bullets. The main body of the text clearly addresses all the points and hotly debated causality estimates. Although this article is going to attract a lot of passion and anger, we still need to stay focused on keeping this an orthodox encyclopedic entry. 172 14:46, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IK I give up bullets. You hate Microsoft, aren't you :-)? Nevertheless your reversal killed two my proposals.

First, Stalin's dominance over the Eastern Europe is of importance and consequences for the whole world is not less than industrialization of Russia and hence deserves a word in the preamble.
Second, a succinct list of what made a man memorable must be somewhere. It must be handy. A reader must not do an additional research to fish this out of wordy and sometimes controversial articles.

What is your say on this? Mikkalai 19:51, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's all really hard to say. We're dealing with perhaps the most influential figure of the 20th century, so an attempt to weigh the significance of all the points that could go in the summary would be an extremely difficult process. Furthermore, it might open up a lot of controversy, given that we're already dealing with the most provocative article of all. I doubt that any summary could satisfy all interested users. Perhaps other users would be more enthusiastic about this idea. However, more attention and conflict than with which I'd personally be unable to deal. 172 20:12, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What about removing this phrase altogether, since it may leave an impression that it covers all? Also, I don't see a problem of collecting the list I said as a conclusion of the article, provided it will be (a) list of facts, not opinions, (b) facts of general nature, rather than kind of "Stalin killed Bukharin" (c) laconically and unemotionally worded. I don't see a problem of relative importance of the items in the list. I've already seen such lists for in Wikipedia (Khrushchev, Tito, Churchill...). Mikkalai 21:00, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Georgian name for Joseph Stalin

If anyone knows the Georgian name for Joseph Stalin in the Georgian alphabet, please add it to the article after "original name Ioseb Dzhugashvili (Georgian: add it here) - Texture 23:00, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC) -- edited by Cantus

This article is full of non NPOV, I don't even know where to begin. For one thing, anything done in the USSR is personalized to Stalin as if no one else in the Soviet government existed.

Then there is the POV. Here's an example:

"Following World War II Stalin's regime installed friendly Communist-led satellite governments in the countries that the Soviet army had occupied, including Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, the later 'Communist Bloc' allied from 1955 in the Warsaw Pact. Stalin saw this as a necessary step to protect the Soviet Union, and ensure that it was surrounded by countries with friendly 'puppet' governments, to act as a "buffer" against any future invaders, a reversal of inter-war western hopes for a sympathetic Eastern European cordon sanitaire against Communism."

OK let's see, the USSR becomes "Stalin's regime". The governments of eastern Europe are "installed friendly communist-led satellite governments in the countries that the Soviet army had occupied, including... Hungary". If this is what to call them, how come France, West Germany and Italy are not called "installed friendly capitalist-led satellite governments in the countries that the US army had occupied"? The POV language used is ridiculous. Why call these governments "installed" and the French, Italian and West German governments not installed? Why are the Eastern countries satellites and not the Western countries? From this paragraph, you'd never know that Hungary had had a communist revolution in 1919 without the help of any "occupying army". You'd also never know that in Western Europe, the communist party was France's largest political party in the years following WWII; that the communists in Italy were so popular (like Hungary, starting in the 1919 of il biennio rosso, communists seized power for a short time, in this case syndicalist control of many factories) that the US had to dismantle the government they set up after invading, throw elections in the years following WWII, and as late as 1976 the communists were getting over one third of the vote, less than 5% behind the center-right Christian Democrats; in West Germany, of course, the communist party was totally banned (unlike East Germany which allowed Christian Democratic political parties to run alongside the Communist party). You get quite a distorted picture of what's going on from the type of stuff written here.

Here's another one:

"His successors were not, on the other hand, able to wean themselves from the basic principles on which Stalin based his rule -- the political monopoly of the Communist Party presiding over a command economy, relying on force to maintain its position at home and abroad."

Let's just imagine changing this the USA entry "the political monopoly of the wealthy presiding over a command economy, relying on force to maintain its position at home and abroad." I mean the US spends more on it's army than the #2-#11 top military spenders combined. Or if you combine what the rest of the world spends, from the 12th top spender all the way on down. The US invaded Iraq, and yesterday it invaded Haiti. As far as using force at home, the US incarcerates a larger percentage of it's population than any other country on earth. One just has to take a look at police spending, prison spending, national guard spending and military spending. Who is being accused of relying on force to maintain its position at home and abroad? This article is a POV joke. -- Richardchilton 17:05, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

While you are generally right, sometimes you are off-mark.

Replacement of "Stalin's Regime" by USSR. Seemingly unPOV, you've lost the historical precision. It is customary to call historical periods by the name of the ruler in order to be precise. If you don't like regime, use a neutral word era. That's what it exactly was: Stalin's era in the history of the USSR. Not to say that the article is about STALIN, about his role in the history of the USSR, and not to say that major desicions were Stalin's not USSR's.
About Hungary and Italy, you have all rights to write all that it their histories. Europe is discussed here from the perspective of Stalin's interests.
In your quest you've lost some facts.
I bet in next 6 hours someone will revert you :-(, so that my coming minor edits will be lost, but I'll try anyway. Mikkalai 18:02, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The following piece is cut as irrevant to the main topic.

The Soviets bore the brunt of civilian and military losses in World War II. Between 21 and 28 million Soviets, most of them civilians, died in the "Great Patriotic War", as the Soviets called the German-Soviet conflict. Civilians were rounded up and burned or shot in many cities occupied by the Nazis. The Nazis considered Slavs to be "sub-human", ranking the killings in the eyes of many as ethnically targeted mass murder, or genocide. The conflict left a huge deficit of men of the wartime fighting-age generation in Russia. As a result, to this day, World War II is remembered very vividly in Russia, and May 9, Victory Day, is one of its biggest national holidays.

In must be incorporated into a history article instead. Mikkalai 18:22, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I disagree, Mikkalai. The article needs to address this. There is too often a tendency to lay the blame for massive Soviet losses at Stalin's doorstep, rather than emphasizing that the Germans were fighting the war as a war of extermination. It puts in context the most important event of Stalin's rule. Everyking 20:29, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Then it must be presented in the form you've just laid out here. You are right, but I didn't get this from the way it stood. Mikkalai 20:38, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Dear 194.117.201.100, While I share your point of view, nevertheless an Encyclopedia is not the place for emotional language. Please get yourself acquainted with the basic rules of cooperation in wikipedia, starting from the Community Portal. Mikkalai 17:52, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hey Mikkalai,

yes. But the opening paragraph is just too positive about that guy. So unless you come up with something better I prefer my version. 194.117.201.100, 21:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Note also that "purges" is just a nice way to say "deportation" and that Stalin really didnt care about millions of people to die from this agricultural reforms. Even if accepted by most landless peasants. He even killed his own wife. So I think opening the article with just his "sucesses" doesn't work out. 194.117.201.100, 21:59, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Obviously, you didn't take my advice. It is advised that before making any changes in an article that existed for quite a while, it is reasonable to assume that there is kind of consensus reached, kind of tradeoff. Especially painful talks are related to the introductory statements. Therefore changes near the top are better discussed at this talk page first. Let me do this for you, for starters, see below. Mikkalai 21:38, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Introductory phrase

The following change is suggested in the introductory sentence, because I think the opening paragraph sounds too positive for a person widely known of his atrocities.

Under his absolute leadership, mass purges and repression occurred, but the country was transformed from a peasant society to an industrialized union and was victorious in World War II. Between 1937 and 1939 due the "great terror period" he liquidated about 1,5 million people, including his wife.

What will be the opinion? 194.117.201.100

No, because nobody can agree on a figure, and accusing him of killing his wife is pure speculation. Everyking 21:46, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

First, I would like to apologize for rollbacks. Histories of many articles are full of edits that amount to random insertions of random thoughts by random people who never come back.

(1) "Purge" is not "deportation". May be in German language "purge" is a nice word, but I suggest you to look into Great Purge and Gulag articles.

(2) Stalin's atrocities are described (or may be described) in great detail in special articles and sections. You don't need to repeat details in the intro, even if these "details" are millions, especially if you don't know and cannot know actual numbers (discussed in the article).

(3) Killing of his wife is rumor.

Mikkalai 21:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well the german and the french version of wikipedia have that inside so it must be diffrent history for them :)

Seriously its not just pure speculation but approved by highly reputated historians. See http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html and http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/conquest.html about the author of that article. Check the "How many died?" section especially.

So again, the opening is way too shiny. Compare it with the one of Hitler or other maniacs :) I want at least his death toll to be mentioned, m'kay? my name is Thomas by the way, maybe I should get a login, and sorry for being rude in doing a revert earlier 194.117.201.100, 22:56, 2 Mar, 2004 (UTC)

Purge really is good enough. What would bug me is the "but" there. It sounds like justificating the purges but thats just my 2 cents :-) How about just removing the "but" and everyone is happy? Engerim -- 23:22 UTC, Mar 02/2004

Please don't forget that at all times in all countries ordinary people were "expendable" for rulers. The difference only in the degree. Stalin is certainly tops them all. But he did this not because he was Jack the Ripper, for fun of killing. Directly executed were only immediately dangerous political opponents (sometimes "officially" by fire squad, sometimes via the euphemism 10 years of camps without rights for correspondence, which everyone knew was the same). The mentioned millions died for the three main reasons: famines, WWII, labor camps. A significant toll may be also attributed to forcible population transfers. With the exception of famines, all above served Stalin's goals, those after the "but". Of course, I know the say about means and goals, and for some time I was agains this "but", but historically, that's what happened: Russian people were expendable tools, nuts, bolts, cannon meat, horses, etc., for building the USSR in the way he could. This by no means justifies him, and the tally must be kept, but history is indifferent to how many slaves were killed in Great Rome, or how many serfs died during the construction of St.Petersburg, or how many native Americans were exterminated. We (at least some of us) pray for all these people. Russia's history is full of cruel tsars. Stalin was nothin new; he simply had more possibilities at hand and people had less possibilities to run away. Mikkalai 23:13, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately even today :( I would be happy with just the but removed like Engerim proposed. Can we do that? It makes a better general conclusion imho. 194.117.201.100, 00:31, 3 Mar, 2004 (UTC)

How about changing the "but" to "while" then. It sounds more historian like ;-) -- Engerim, 00:37, 3 Mar, 2004 (UTC)

"Whilst" sounds very clumsy to me. Everyking 00:54, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The whole intro sentence is bogus. For example it shouldn't be "country" but "soviet union" there, as some parts of the soviet union were much more self govern than some people would think. I propose to remove the entire paragraph since the article is so blown up already. 194.158.115.5 10:32, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Russification

The following guesswork removed from the article.

, although an ambition to ethnically cleanse regions in a process known as "Russificiation" may have also been a factor.

First, If one looks at all resettled nations (listed in Population transfer) and the histories of the respective territories, with the exception of Latvia, there was no significant compensating movement of Russian population.
Second, there is a confusion in terms. "Russification" primarily means suppression of national cultures in favor of "Great Russian" one, regardless where was this population, at home in Polesie swamps or resettled into Central Asia.
Third, the share of Russians in Gulag was "fair", to put it mildly, so one may very well speak about "derussification" of Russia.

Mikkalai 23:42, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Undid Robert

Robert turned out to be an attention-getting troll using anonymous proxies and mixed user accounts to try to incite fights, so after others had noticed that and blocked his proxy I undid what he'd done and merged in anything since he started which seemed to fit, reviewing every edit since he started. Mikkalai, I don't think I missed anything you did, please take care of anything I did miss. See here for details of what got Richard blocked by the IP he was using to hide, though the log Tim posted doesn't show the later developments in IRC. Jamesday 02:59, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

PMelvilleAustin

Your intentions are good and some your edits are valid, but many of them show that you are not familiar with history in sufficient detail. I am going to revert many of your changes, with explanations. I hope you will act similarly in the future, especially editing long and old articles. Mikkalai 03:17, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Comparing current and 03:31, 3 Mar 2004 revisions

Under his leadership, mass purges and repression occurred, but the country was transformed from a peasant society to an industrialized state with a command economy which was victorious in World War II.
- A sentence of this construction gives three false impressions. First, command economy was Stalin's invention, while it is the core of Lenin's interpretation of Socialism. Second, the subordination introduced by the word "which" (formally, correctly) makes the sentence consist of two equally important items, rather than of three. Third, the "which" implicitely implies that command economy is crucial for victory.
Stalin's government financed industrialisation... etc.: Again, Stalin didn't start it. (The article is about Stalin, isnt' it?) So USSR was a correct usage.

Stalin's regime moved to force : Two encyclopedic flaws: "Regime" is a loaded word. Initially there was no force. It was introduced when the temp of collectivization turned out to be insufficient.
Stalin's government placed heavy emphasis on the provision of basic medical services : again, it is neither Stalin's original initiative, nor his "area of interest". Of course personality cult propaganda attributed everything to Stalin, including progress in Soviet linguistics.
Stalin is said to have personally signed 40,000 death warrants of suspected opponents of the regime.
- What is the intent of this sentence to say besides what is already said?
  - First, The issue is not that he personally signed something. The issue was the whole system of repression.
  - Second. Imagine the picture. "Night. Kremlin is dark. Only one window is lighted. It is Stalin. He works around the clock. He thinks hard how to make your life better." Now replace the last sentence by "He signs these bloody death warrants all night long." (how else did he manage to do this humber?) Do you see the similarity? OF course Stalin personally responsible for millions of deaths, but NOT because he "personally" signed the warrants. Besides, who counted them into such a nice number?

, although an ambition to ethnically cleanse regions in a process known as "Russificiation" may have also been a factor.
- Confusioon and guesswork. See the earlier comment of this phrase in this talk page.

, Stalin and his colleagues bad word choice.

In response on November 6, 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule (the first time was earlier that year on July 2). He claimed that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, that the Germans have lost 4.5 million soldiers (a gross over-estimation) and that Soviet victory was near.
- Dubious statement. What is the source? Besides, what is the reason for inclusion? That Stalin lied? Nasty boy, this Soso, indeed.

His immediate successors, though, continued to follow the basic principles on which Stalin based his rule -- the political monopoly of the Communist Party presiding over a command economy. : For the last time again: these are NOT Stalin's inventions, and the article is about Stalin.

Mikkalai 17:52, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Almost forgot: the above critique doesn't mean that I like the prevous version. IMO it is also lousy, and I perfectly understand your intentions. But the point is, unfortunately, it didn't become any better. Try again. But this time on this page. Mikkalai 18:02, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I got the feeling that a couple of Russian contributors supportive of Stalin are trying to force their opinions into the article. While Hitler is described as "dictator" and responsible for the deaths of million of people, they revert every attempt to change the title of Stalin from "leader" to "dictator", although there is no doubt that Stalin was the most brutal dictator ever in history, even worse than Hitler. And what is wrong with showing some respect for the 20 million people he killed by mentioning them, or are 20 million people not important enough for the introduction? Then why is the people Hitler killed mentioned? What was the primary thing Stalin did in his life? It was exactly being the worst mass murder (and war criminal) ever. Ertz 06:21, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"He transformed the Soviet Union from a peasant society to an industrialized state that was victorious in World War II. "
- And what is this supposed to mean? Being the worst war criminal in history is surely nothing to be proud of. The atrocities of Stalin's hordes, massacres and rapes of million of people, eventually ethnic cleansing of the whole of East Germany and occupation and brutal repression of most of Eastern Europe is a crime which the Russians will have to be ashamed of for generations. -- Ertz 06:37, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  - "What supposed to mean?" : Exactly what was said: he built, he won. Are you claiming he didn't?
  - The emotional and biased languge is not the place for encyclopedia. You have all rights to describe crimes in terms of facts. This will speak much better that cliches like "dictator", etc. Mikkalai 08:05, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  - Dictator is the term used at Wikipedia. As long as it is used in the Hitler article, it should be used here. And as long as all those favourable things Hitler did (Autobahn, full employment, social care, Volkswagen etc.) it not listed in defense of him, there should not be such a clear defense of Stalin here either. Ertz 08:25, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    - Encyclopedia is not Nuremberg process. The facts are presented here not to "defende" or "condemn". If you think that some facts are missing from Hitler or Stalin article, please feel free to add them. The idea of "neutal point of view" in encyclopedia is to present facts, not to judge them. Mikkalai 16:08, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    - I also suggest to remove "dictator" from Hitler's article. The word is not an official position today, it is an informal term, see article dictator. Therefore it should't be used in the introduction. It may be used later in the context of a sentence like "due to his unlimited power... he was considered dictator.etc..." Mikkalai 16:15, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    - I agree with Mikkalai. Dictator is totally inappropriate for the leader of Russia no matter how tyrannical a leader he was. That can be discussed separately, but it must be discussed. Not thrown into a factual statement. - Texture 15:25, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ertz:

Welcome to Wikipedia. As a new user, you are already taking strong stands on a controversial subject that often makes hardened longtime contributors uneasy about even touching. Your boldness is evident. It is a sign that you will likely emerge as a valuable and influential user quite rapidly. However, I think that you might benefit from some advice before becoming embroiled in a contentious dispute that you hadn't anticipated.

As a mostly passive observer for more than a year (I haven't contributed much content to this article since 12/02), I've noticed that the same disputes crop up over and over again. Almost every week there seems to be a different user who comes along and gets very upset about the intro sentence(s). Mikkalai and I have already addressed repeatedly the very same concerns that you're bringing up. So please, I beg you to refer to past debates on this issue of the introduction so that we don't have to rehash this argument once again. We understand that this subject induces intense passions and emotions. But we have to keep the article encyclopedic and pay attention to NPOV polices. So let's keep the intro succinct, non-emotive, and matter-of-fact. Let's refrain from making moral judgments in the article. Let the details presented later in the article speak for themselves. And believe me, if you go on to read the rest of the article, they do. 172 12:18, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am planning perestroika here

In many places the article looks like a piece of the history of the USSR. I am going to *slowly* move some pieces, not directly related to Stalin's persona, elsewhere, replacing them by summaries.
A huge section, directly related to the main topic of the area is underrepresented, namely Stalin's personality, including personality cult.(Here, all vigilantes will have their chance to use the words, such as "tyrant", "dictator", etc., at will.)

I am not going to do any rewriting yet, only moving the information around. Mikkalai 22:30, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)