Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:25, 21 September 2007

Soviet Union Unassessed

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Soviet Union, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Soviet UnionWikipedia:WikiProject Soviet UnionTemplate:WikiProject Soviet UnionSoviet Union ??? This article has not yet received a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Userspace

• See User:Vecrumba/SovHis Colchicum 20:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Good book: . Biophys 03:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

More cons then pros?

While I welcome the idea of this article (thanks, it's a great idea to write articles about sources, now we can let our readers to decide what is reliable and what is not), the text is not ok. I wholeheartedly agree that the Soviet historiography of the Soviet Union is unreliable, but there were e.g. freaky historians unrelated to propaganda (Lev Gumilev), interesting Byzantine studies in the Soviet Union, some other things, and as such things are not represented here, the article looks just like an attempt to make a point and the point sounds much less credible (true though it is). Colchicum 18:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I started the 'Usefulness for research' section to point out that Soviet historiography has its uses. The section may be renamed, and most certainly it should be expanded.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  18:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems that Colchicum is right. Like any other area of Suppressed research in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography included some valid scientific research and some outright pseudoscience, as Lysenkoism in biology. So, one should include some very clear and specific examples of widely recognized achivements by the Soviet historians, as well as examples of clear falsifications and call the falsificators by name - like Lysenko. Then, this article would be really informative and NPOV.Biophys 20:23, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about? "Wanting the strange"? Balance in article about Soviet Union/Russia started by Baltic editors with Piotrus's contribution? Article which values Rezun's opinion? Be thankful they're not basing this on Lysenko's (mathematician) theory. RJ CG 18:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Disagreement over the lead

It appears we have a disagreement over the lead (). I think both versions are fine; perhaps we can agree on some compromise merged variant?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  04:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Lead is supposed to be a quick summary of the topic, suitable for a Popups' preview, for example. Thus, it is important that the lead provide an overview in a concise, yet thorough and interlinked form. Accordingly, all relevant links should be kept; there is no need to compromise the lead by removing them.

The newly fashionable faux concerns of "OR" are quite misplaced, as everything in my lead is thoroughly covered in the full article. Irpen's complaint seems, instead, be based on his POV that Soviet research was "just like any normal research, except sometimes compromised". In case of historiography, this was emphatically not the case, and -- as I already pointed out -- it is already thoroughly covered by WP:RS. Digwuren 16:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Please explain what's wrong with the version of the lead that you keep changing contrary to several editors. Be specific and explain how the other version is better too. --Irpen 16:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that differences between the two versions were significant; I hope that my new version satisfies both parties.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  21:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, your rewritten version is better than what Irpen had pushed. 泥紅蓮_凸凹箱 02:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

As a side note - Учитесь, дети, Сталина ценить (partial translation here). -- Sander Säde 15:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Better Russian sources about thiis story: Biophys 19:04, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Piotrus' version is identical to mine with an addition of the tautologous statement that "Soviet historiography is the historiography produced in the Soviet Union". This is merely bad style and unsourced definition. I am removing it again. --Irpen 19:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Piotrus, why are you reinserting the tautology again? Please use talk. --Irpen 19:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't care about what you call the tautology one way or another, but please don't remove the bolded title (Soviet historiography).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

You guys are edit warring over whether to include Soviet historiography in the first sentence or not? That seems odd. Style seems to be that you include the article title in the very first sentence of the article. At least I always do it in my articles. For example, Antonio Bagioli, and Brown truss do. Sometimes I leave the disambig out, or add extra chars as in Christopher Columbus (whaleback) or use the alternate title as in Croton Dam (Michigan) but I had no idea this was at all controversial. Does someone have a ref to where our MOS says not to do this? Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 19:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

What history are we talking about?

Soviet historians published articles and books about: (a) history of the Soviet Union (and especially history of the CPSU), and (b) about everything else. It should be clearly stated that the current text of this article is about history of the Soviet period only. History of tsarist Russia and other fields have been also affected by censorship and propaganda (e.g. interpretation of "Ivan the Terrible" ruling), but to a significantly lesser degree.Biophys 15:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Would you have citations for that? Marxist ideology twisted a lot of research about non-Soviet era, too.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  15:54, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No, I could not find anything to support or disprove such position. Maybe you can? Of course, such statements must be sourced. What I found was mostly about some Western misconceptions of Russian history fueled by the Soviet propaganda, which is probably irrelevant here.Biophys 19:04, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The important thing is that often Soviet historiography was Soviet or Marxist only on the outside. Forewords were written in Soviet argot to by-pass censors. That part usually had little to do with actual content of the research, which had quotes from Marx inserted here and there just to make it look Marxistish. To focus only on this aspect of Soviet historiography is grossly unfair to many great historians who happened to live during Soviet era and their work. M0RD00R 20:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Citation, please.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus I'm afraid I have little precious to offer you. You know because no "right" google keyword combination will replace a visit to a library. I know some feel obliged to "write an encyclopedia" on subjects familiar to them only from google 15 minute "researches". But this strong urge to write, better be contained in favour of the good read of a book on relevant matter. In case of Soviet historiography, or better Soviet social and humanitarian sciences in general, works of Soviet historians, philosophers, linguists, etc. such as Aron Gurevich, Merab Mamardashvili, Aleksei Losev etc. would be a good start. Attempts to "write an encyclopedia" by persons not even familiar with those names seems like a bad joke at best to me. Regards. M0RD00R 23:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

M0RD00R, you are pointing correctly towards the universal problem that plaques many of the Piotrus articles. --Irpen 02:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Irpen, by vice of having made this personal attack towards Piotrus, you're in violation of NPA. 泥紅蓮_凸凹箱 03:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Please review WP:NPA and explain how my entry violates it. It is merely an assessment on the mode of the user's contributions. I may be wrong in my assessment (I would not be alone in such mistake though) but being skeptical towards a part of one's work is not an attack on the person. --Irpen 04:25, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Weasel and POV

The article's "Criticism" section works almost exclusively with weasel words or weasel-ish passive voice.

Further, it also presents a lot of criticisms of Soviet historiography as fact. It often presents its POV by being very vague and thus making it seem neutral. This really needs to be fixed. It also uses POV terms that should not be used per WP:WTA. Some examples:

• "Many historians turned virtually into propagandists with academic credentials."
• "Any non-conformist history had to be erased, and questioning of the official history was illegal." What law exactly forbade what?
• "Similarly, the tragedies of enforced collectivisation, the wholesale deportations or massacres of small nationalities in the Caucasus or the disappearance of the Crimean Tatars are not recognized as facts worth of mention."
• "Another major factors influencing its unreliability was that the Soviet interpretation of Marxism simply predetermined research done by historians."--Carabinieri 19:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe those statements are referenced to academic literature. If any are not, don't hesitate to remove them. But certainly the criticism section is based on many academic works, and they use very similar tone and words. I would also note that the article has not been so far tagged as POVed or weaselish, despite being edited by several users who in the past has not hesitated to tag articles with such problems.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The remark about "propagandists with academic credentials" comes from a WP:RS. I can vouch for it, for I added it after checking. Furthermore, it is exactly what Soviet historiography was actually about. 泥紅蓮_凸凹箱 20:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Piotrus, neutrality and verifiability are different concepts and only by working together they can add up to good articles. You have repeatedly inserting POV-ish or irrelevant or tendentious stuff into Misplaced Pages claiming that its being sourced justfies its presence regardless of the issues. This article suffers from the same problems. If you insist that tagging is the only way to deal with such edits and just noting them at talk to your attention is not enough, fine, tags are added now. --Irpen 19:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

And you have repeatedly failed to present sources to support your arguments. You can't claim the article is biased if you fail to show any sources that present point of view different from that of the article. In simple words: if the article states x is white, you cannot claim it is POVed until you show that there are sources we ignore that claim it is black.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No, Piotrus. The article may be biased even if it is sourced fully. I explained above how. Since you choose to revert war, I leave it to you to develop this soapbox. I will merely note this section at DYK proposal page for DYK admins to read it. Happy revert warring. --Irpen 19:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Whom do you believe -- my donkey, or your lying eyes? 泥紅蓮_凸凹箱 20:46, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I see. No sources presented for bias - but since WP:IDONTLIKEIT, hence POVed.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:46, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. Unfortunately, it's quite a pattern for Irpen in many Soviet-related topics. 泥紅蓮_凸凹箱 20:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Please, no "happy revert worring" here. Let's add more sourced content to make article more neutral and informative. I am going to contribute here as time allows. Others can do the same.Biophys 19:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• • "certainly the criticism section is based on many academic works, and they use very similar tone and words" That's because academic works don't necessarily have the same neutrality standards as Misplaced Pages.
  • "I would also note that the article has not been so far tagged as POVed or weaselish, despite being edited by several users who in the past has not hesitated to tag articles with such problems." That's because I don't believe tagging articles is the best way to fix problems like this one. It usually offends the article's editors and makes discussions about an article less productive. But if you insist that discussions like this one must be accompanied by taggings, I won't hesitate to add a template or two to the top of this article.--Carabinieri 20:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to remove weasel words, I already got rid of a few (such as 'tragedy'). But to show problems with POV you need to show that there is other POV that we don't include (or issues due weight).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've tagged some of the most obvious POV and weasel statements in the first paragraph. I was unable to fix the weasel statements, because I just don't know who the "various critics" are. The main problem, however, with the section is that it uses really vague statements to present certain views, making them extremely hard to challenge. As a whole, the article is unbalanced, the criticism section makes up 2/3 of it.--Carabinieri 20:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I rewrote the sentences. Various critics include dozens, if not hundreds, of authors who discussed Soviet historiography. I do agree the article sections look unbalanced, but apparently most of available material is simply critical of Soviet historiography. I - and apparently not a single other editor - where unable to find a single source which would be purely positive of it; even the current 'credibility' section reflects (per its source) the fact that the most positive sources simply state 'Soviet hist. is not that bad', not a single source states 'it is good'.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Book cover: Copyright violation?

I don't know much about copyright law or Misplaced Pages's policy on the topic, but it's my understanding that fair use book (or film, video game, etc.) covers may only be used on the article about the book. The template {{Non-free book cover}} states that the use of the image is permitted "to illustrate an article discussing the book in question". If my understanding is correct, then Image:The Commissar Vanishes.jpeg should be removed, but I'll leave it up to others who know more about this to actually remove it.--Carabinieri 20:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No, the actual fair use doctrine is not that stringent. Furthermore, this particular book cover is not an original work of art, but a compilation including several two-dimensional pieces of artwork by earlier unknown authors whose copyrights have expired, and these original pieces of artwork are relevent to this article. Finally, the book itself is discussed, too. 泥紅蓮_凸凹箱 20:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Where is the book discussed? I could only find the footnote, which gives the book as a reference, and the image caption. According to WP:NFC, use of fair use cover art is only acceptable "for identification only in the context of critical commentary of that item (not for identification without critical commentary)". Misplaced Pages's fair use policy is generally stricter than the law, because the goal is to create a free encyclopedia. Therefore something being in accord with US law, does not mean it is necessarily allowed on Misplaced Pages.--Carabinieri 21:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• Unassessed Soviet Union articles
• Unknown-importance Soviet Union articles
• WikiProject Soviet Union articles