Summary of previous discussion The question of whether the USSR should be described as totalitarian was broached as the article currently does not use that term Arguments for The USSR is commonly considered totalitarian The article Nazi Germany uses the term to describe that regime and Soviet Union is a comparable article Arguments against Scholars disagree on the proper application of the term totalitarian so in light of that uncertainty it should be avoided as being POV Soviet Union being a summary article is not directly comparable to Nazi Germany it being part of the History of Germany series The question of how the scale of the deaths during the USSR s history should be represented was broached The suggestion was to quantify it as millions of people Further whether this should be called murder or killings or some other term was discussed Arguments for millions Millions did in fact die Arguments against millions none though I may be misremembering correct me if wrong Arguments for murder Murder is a legal term so it s neutral and appropriate Arguments against murder Murder in the context of lawmaker sanctioned killings is a moral term so it s not neutral and is inappropriate Whether there should be more details about the agricultural failure was broached Arguments for It represents a significant aspect of the collapse of the USSR It was at least in part engineered as part of the campaign of killings The failure to manage agriculture being a significant purpose of civilisation and the land in question being adequate for the needs of the population is a significant indicator of the general failure of communism Arguments against It s covered adequately for the purpose of the article which is a summary and gateway to other USSR articles Wikipedia is not in the business of doing original research on why things happened only presenting what did happen and what respected experts think about why Further saying why is inappropriate for the purpose of the article being summary as in the above point The purpose of this article was broached as you see above The article was claimed to currently be a summary of the USSR so that it could act as a gateway to other more detailed and specific articles on the USSR The counter claim was that the USSR is directly comparable to Nazi Germany and this article should be about the USSR as a regime and so mirror the article Nazi Germany in structure Arguments for similar structure to N G The USSR was not a legitimate country but was a regime Therefore it is directly comparable to the Nazi regime in Germany Q E D Arguments for it being summary gateway article The USSR was a country with a history of several distinct regimes Further Soviet Union is not a part of the History of the USSR series while Nazi Germany is a part of the History of Germany series The article directly comparable to Soviet Union would instead be Germany or perhaps East Germany was intended Please avoid editing the summary This summary is for new people entering the discussion to be aware of the unresolved issued that can be found in the last archive it is not supposed to satisfy any of the original participants that their arguments have been presented strongly enough convincingly enough or in enough detail Most disagreement with the summary can be done by just re opening the issues anew below this summary Only omissions of entire arguments should be grounds for changing the summary Summary written by Rewrite Here s a rewrite of the article based on LOC handbook text at Soviet Union temp I favor the article as it is as a more concise and condensed directory of Soviet related topics But I can accept basing a new one on one the LOC if it can put an end to this dispute Was the LOC text written in 1989 In my opinion the Soviet Union article must at its core reflect that it no longer exists Some parts are other parts where nececessary are more up to date The history section is taken from the background section in the handbook on Russia Hence the referenc