Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes

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This article is not POV. A google search is showing multiple referecnes on this topic. Communism killed 100 million people which is more than Nazism. This article should stay. --Joklolk (talk) 17:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The topic and most of the contents of the article are worth of keeping, BUT certainly not in a separate article. It should be rewritten, maybe to be more compact in form, and added as a subsection to Communism, or some other relevant article.poisonborz (talk) 22:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Original research going on

I have now removed twice original research and editorial comment from the article, which is not backed up by the sources provided, here and here. Neither source mentions anything about so-called communist genocide and to portray it as such goes against core policies such as WP:V and WP:OR. If editors want to editorialise, take it to your own website/blog, there is no place for such things on WP. --Russavia 00:13, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Undiscussed deletion of sourced material by User:Russavia

As per this edit, could User:Russavia explain why he/she deleted the reference. Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes is reliable source. It is a non-profit research organization founded by historian Mart Laar. Please explain why you are considering this source unreliable. --Joklolk (talk) 02:19, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit by User:PasswordUsername

This edit by User:PasswordUsername removed a reliable source Baltic Federation in Canada. I added it back. Joklolk (talk) 03:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

No, please take a look at WP:QS (questionable sources):

"Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking, or with no editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature..."

The Baltic federation is "an umbrella-organization for the central socio-political organizations of the three Baltic communities in Canada."

And political organizations organized around particular constituencies tend to be promotional, which makes the source questionable. Of course, if there is academic consensus that the communists committed a "genocide" in Belarus, you'll have no trouble finding a better source than a pamphlet pdf file from the Baltic Federation's web site.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union never recognized any "genocide" or "ethnocide" in Belarus, except the Nazi one–and neither does modern Belarus, so materials like this

"The effects of this genocide and ethnocide were later admitted by the communists during the perestroika "

are downright misleading.

There should be more reliable sources than a Candian political group. Looking at WP:RS should guide you well in this respect.

Best,

PasswordUsername (talk) 04:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

No problem, there is an entire chapter on the subject available in Belarus: at a crossroads in history by Jan Zaprudnik 1993. Hope that it helps. --Termer (talk) 04:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, as Radford University's Professor Grigory Ioffe writes, Zaprudnik is a nationalist who immigrated from Soviet Belarus for Nazi Germany–for whom an individual who "embraces Polish or Russian identity, as has happened many times in history, he or she is not a true Russian or Pole, and attempts are justified to uncover their true Belarusian selves." Zaprudnik spent a subsequent chunk of his life working for Radio Liberty propaganda broadcasts into Eastern Europe–but you can even get that from Misplaced Pages. As for the quality of the cited work as a polemical piece, Ioffe writes that

"The third major thread of Zaprudnik's portrayal of Belarus is blanket negativism about what happened to the country after 1944, when he left the country for Germany. In a 278-page book about Belarusian history, the immensity of what was built on the totally and completely devastated Belarusian land after the war receives 5 pages in the chapter titled "Destruction by War and Russification (1941-1985)."

Consequently, Ioffe suggests that we read two books by David Marples, recommended as "devoid of Zaprudnik's extreme biases." Not a good candidate for Misplaced Pages policy on reliable sourcing for neutral-content articles.

Lastly, consider the fact that Zaprudnik considers as his main charge of genocide Stalin's advances against the presence of the Belarusian language in certain spheres such as universities–when Soviet policy until the mid-1930s actively promoted the Belarusian language after centuries of repression under czarism. (Even the Taraškievica alphabet for transcribing the language was designed as part of Soviet policy in 1933.) I dare say that Russification is no more an element of communism than Anglicization is a part of it, but hey, this article is a fork for anything with "communism" and "genocide" mentioned by the same person against whatever backdrop. PasswordUsername (talk) 05:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Who exactly is Grigory Ioffe? And how is someone who thinks that there is nothing wrong with the murderous regime of communists in the former USSR less biased than someone like Jan Zaprudnik who points out the wrongdoings? In case you like, feel free to add the viewpoints of Ioffe (in case he's notable enough) pr WP:YESPOV. Other than that Russification was an important aspect of the cultural genocide in the USSR, thanks for reminding me that. The cultural genocide or ethnocide by the communist regimes deserves perhaps it's own section, perhaps later entire article.--Termer (talk) 13:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Grigory Ioffe is a professor at Radford University, known for his work in Slavic studies and Eastern Europe's geography and political economy. He is not a former volunteer for the Nazi German Luftwaffe auxiliary and Waffen-SS like Jan Zaprudnik . I don't think that a topic as significant as genocide in a country should be discussed using sources from a scholar with a noted agenda for pushing an extreme point of view. That is the point being made here. PasswordUsername (talk) 22:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

one of the leaders of the Belarusian community in the United States and an honoured member of the Belarusian PEN-centre is an extremist, a noted agenda pusher? This kind of opinion is good to know, just that, please do Misplaced Pages a favor and remove your accusations from this talk page pr. WP:LIVE. Thanks!--Termer (talk) 06:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Watching the OR circus

I am yet again not surprised to see the familiar faces from two very polarized teams arguing at this AfD. Let me make a few predictions of what will happen to this synthesis of a bunch of quotes taken out of context here.

The polarized debate will be closed with no consensus.
the war will start over adding/removing POV/OR/BIAS/SYNTH tags in this article
a number of attempts will be made on renaming this article, e.g. into something ridiculous like allegations of communist genocide
eventually the interest in editing this turd of an article will go to zero
in several months another AfD will follow citing no consensus in this AfD, no significant improvements in this article, obvious POV/OR/SYNTH issues
there might be a number of RfCs, ANIs, AEs initiated by the same usual suspects over this article, and, considering the team tagging, the result of these debates is also predictable (for those of you who's just tuned in, I mean a complete and utter waste of time)

Looking forward to this circus. (Igny (talk) 18:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC))

Rather than make vague generalised claims, please identify which parts are OR. --Martintg (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

As it has been established that the whole thing was nothing but trolling, your extremely unwise suggestion to make contributions to the trollish article amounts to asking me to give pearls to swine. (Igny (talk) 01:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC))

Making the point

For those of you who is interested in making a point, I have a few suggestions on the new articles with WP:GHITS

And many more. Fire away, be creative. I would appreciate if you notify me, I will watch with much interest. (Igny (talk) 18:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC))

My impression, as I have said on the AfD, is that this article was created in order to advocate or perhaps to troll. It may be notable that the artice creator, User:Joklolk, had been indefinitely blocked for sock puppeting and cross-wiki vandalism. This really makes one wonder about his motives for creating this article. Offliner (talk) 19:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh and how did I forget about the communist holocaust. (Igny (talk) 01:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC))

Creation by a banned troll

This page was created by a banned user as seen here, . Could we speedy delete this under G5? Surely we don't want to keep a page made maliciously by a serial troll. Triplestop x3 20:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The article has been significantly expanded by other editors in good standing, so I would oppose any attempt at speedy deletion, particularly since this article is already subject of an AfD debate. --Martintg (talk) 20:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

But why do we want to keep this article so much? We shouldn't let that troll troll us. Triplestop x3 20:27, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Why do you want to delete this article so much? --Martintg (talk) 20:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Because it's crazy, ridiculous POV. Go to some place like China and you find lots of propaganda for communism. Go to a capitalist nation and you find crazy propaganda against it. Communism is evil, the antichrist, blah blah blah. And calling communism genocide is only a part of that. We shouldn't be honoring either side of the spectrum, as an encyclopedia. Triplestop x3 20:39, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Communist (adjective) genocide (noun). Communism is a political system. Communist regimes employed genocide in the pursuit of their aims. No one is conflating communism as genocide. It's more than a stretch to accuse that such is the case here. VЄСRUМВА ☎ 13:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

And I love your argument that it's all propaganda anyway. Can you stoop to a less scholarly means of denigrating the article or trampling on the millions of lives lost? Let's wait and see! VЄСRUМВА ☎ 13:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Way to go, troll. A successful troll manages to strike a particularly sensitive, polarized issue, and a spark creates a fire. The "editors in good standing" jump in and start feeding the fire. Again, way to go, I am impressed. A notice to all involved: Experienced wikipedians should know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore him or her, because responding tends to encourage trolls to continue disruptive posts — hence the often-seen warning: "Please do not feed the trolls". (Igny (talk) 01:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC))

Igny, don't call editors trolls! It is a violation of the spirit of no personal attacks. Please be more civil.radek (talk) 17:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I've already indicated the solution is to cite sources specifically discussing "communist genocide" and insure the article, regardless of how it started, fairly represents reliable sources. There are plenty of those, regardless of (baseless) claims that "communist genocide" isn't even used as a term in scholarship. VЄСRUМВА ☎ 13:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What seems to be the problem?

Sorry but I must be missing something, what are those WP:SYNTH, WP:OR accusations above all about? How is an article about the established fact of mass killings of about 60-100 million people by the Communist regimes around the world WP:trolling? Is the problem the title? "Communist genocide". So is anybody suggesting to rename the article or something? How about Communist mass killings according to the chapter Communist Mass Killings in Final solutions By Benjamin A. Valentino? And how exactly is this all WP:OR and/or Synth? Or is anybody actually saying that the killings of those 60-100 million people by the totalitarian communist governments never happened? Thanks!--Termer (talk) 06:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Their main issue is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. You can always tell when someone accuses of WP:SYNTH, WP:POV and WP:OR but is unable to point out what exactly is wrong, forcing them to use phrases such as "the whole thing was nothing but trolling".

Also, I would support renaming as well - perhaps Communist mass murders?

--Sander Säde 07:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Outrageous. This diff explains it nicely. Triplestop x3 15:21, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Except nowhere does the article use the alleged "universal doctrine" (in quotes) that I've found, so your outrage is nicely unfounded. VЄСRUМВА ☎ 18:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

And just because, say, Italian communists have not practiced genocide does not remove the notability of the term regarding "Communist". VЄСRUМВА ☎ 18:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, the argument posited that the article covers genocides by "individual communists" is utterly specious, as the genocides were carried out by the regimes (leader, leadership, military, paramilitary,...), so this is not akin to "list of bank robberies by communists" as individuals, for example. VЄСRUМВА ☎ 18:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

So say changing the article to the list Genocides by Communist regimes (note plural, it is not a concept, it is a list) will be ok by you? (Igny (talk) 18:54, 7 August 2009 (UTC))

The topic is obviously notable as the concept of "Communist Genocide" is used in scholarly sources. Additionally several countries have laws against denial of Communist Genocide - which is like notability-squared. Furthermore, the article has extensive references and inline citations. Can you point to a specific instance of SYNTH or OR in the article rather than just making general (and spurious) accusations?radek (talk) 17:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Again, I do not want to feed the troll by contributing to this turd of an article. Again I point out that your contributions do nothing but feed the troll. As I also pointed out earlier a vicious cycle of edit wars has just started, and I really do not want to participate in this circus (see the pearls before swine for explanation why). I am just watching this development, which I consider to be an example of Misplaced Pages degradation, with interest from sideways. I do believe however that in time the interest of editors in this article will naturally die, as it happened to so many other trollish articles. If it survives a couple more nominations of AfD, only then I may consider contributing here. (Igny (talk) 18:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC))