Talk:Joseph Stalin/Archive 11

message: Anyone ever had a critical look at these two?
"Before":
[]
"After":
[]
Firstly, I noticed that the pattern on the water isn't the same on those pictures although the first picture is a bit brighter. The pattern should be the same if it's the same picture. To me it's obvious it isn't. Even the "after" picture looks more authentic. Finally, the modified picture is larger than the original one. 
To sum up, those pictures "prove" nothing. Maybe they made two pictures? One with Stalin alone, and the other together with the officer.
Please do only publish clear facts! I suggest a removal of the picture at least until has been cleared up. To me it looks just like one of those Hearst/Hitler anti-Stalin fabricated propaganda pictures/facts. Who would gain most of the removal of the officer? Fascists or Stalin? What would Stalin gain out of it anyway? Don't state it as a fact if you can't prove it. Thanks.
::The 'officer' in question is none other than Nikolai Yezhov, aka the 'Blackberry', head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, who presided over the worst excesses of the Great Terror.  He was eventually replaced by Beria and executed in 1940.  It had been standard Soviet practice for many years to airbrush 'enemies of the people' out of history (Lev Trotsky was a particular victim of this process) in every possible sense.  We could hardly have Comrade Stalin walking beside a 'non-person'.  Hence the edited photograph.  White Guard 23:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: not only that, the bridge to the left of Stalin's hat also vanishes. --74.134.98.79 21:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Commissar Vanishes 

message: I'm not sure that it's undisputed in what context the murder of Sergei Kirov should be seen. I remember reading and even watching a documentary displaying a totally different version than the one currently standing in the article. As the article now is written Sergei Kirov was close to Stalin and after the murder by someone else Stalin got afraid and this was one of the reasons for the purge. However, the other version is that Sergei Kirov was very popular in the party and in a secrete vote the party even wanted him to take over the position at the time held by Stalin. Stalin manipulated the voting to his own favour, but from then own he knew that a silent majority wanted to have him replaced, even though he didn't know exactly who had voted for himself and who had voted for Kirov. Stalin's solution was to kill Kirov. By doing so he had got rid of the direct threat of Kirov. Also, he had a legitimate reason (to find and kill Kirov's murderers) to root out opposition against himself in the party. I've not changed the version of the article, because I don't have the necessary sources so that I can give references, but I think that both versions should be listed. Smallchanges 11:54, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purges and deportations 

message: I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information.  I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list.  Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article.  Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here.  Regards, Durova 17:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ... Good name. I've just moved Rasputin in the media to a similar name. `'mikkanarxi 22:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Cultural depictions of Joseph Stalin]] 

message: I reversed both unjustified (unsummarized) recent reversals of contribs of user:Jacob Peters without even bothering to look into the actual text in detail. Such reversals are absolutely inadmissible and will be removed on sight.. I dont' see any discussion whether this Peters guy a nasty troll or what, so that he must be reverted on sight. If his edits are wrong, I dont see it described.
On the other hand, I see Peters didn't write edit summaries either. I left him a message in the talk page. `'mikkanarxi 22:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Help:Reverting#Explain reverts Art LaPella 00:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reversals of Jacob Peters 

message: There is an excess of CIA-inspired propaganda on this page. There is no evidence that Stalin himself operated the cult of personality. Evidence from the archives published by J.Arch Getty and Robert J.Thurston also also casts doubt that the purges were initiated and operated by Stalin himself as opposed to regional NKVD units. The claim that Stalin weakened the country's defense with the purge of the officers is incorrect as archival research shows that a small 15% minority of the relevant cadres were affected; most of these were even reinstated after 1939. The claim that famine resulted from the imaginary confiscation of grain is also false. Archival research published by Stephen Wheatcroft and RW Davies shows that total collections in 1932 about 4 million tons lower than in the two previous years. There is also evidence on the "Holodomor" page which quotes Stalin as having been gravely concerned with the precarious situation in the countryside. He replied to an inquiry: "We will do everything required. Inform sieze of necessary help. State a figure." 
Furthermore, there is a serious negligence of the miraculous economic and social advances made during Stalin. Industrial growth,medical care, education, cultural identity, urbanization were all made possible because of Stalin. Infant mortality plunged from aboug 175/1000 in 1926 to around 47/1000 in 1956. Life epxectancy which was about 35 years before the revolution expanded to about 67 years in 1956. The inclusion of a fringe viewpoint that "Russia would have expanded regardless of Stalin" is unsubstantiated. Comparing levels of growth of the 1920s to the 1930s shows that Stalin's policies alone contributed to massive expansion during the 1930s.
In regard to the death toll, this is also rife with errors and propagandistic POV nonesense. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is not a serious historian or scholar and his viewpoint does not take precedence over professional demographers like Frank Lorimer, Barbara Anderson, and Eric Silver who correctly estimated demographic losses to be in the range of 4-5 million. The attempted discredting of the archival material which show the true figures is reprehensible. Almost every scholar of Russian history acknowledges the declassified archival documents to be reliable. These include Stephen Wheatcroft, J.Arch Getty, V.Popov, V.Zemskov, Gregory Freeze, Ronald Grigor Suny, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and countless others. 
To start with a laundry list of errors, 800 thousand people were not executed under Stalin. Rather, around 770 thousand received death sentences but not all of them were executed. Historian A.Dugin reported in the late 1980s that in 1921-1953, about 642,000 people were executed for political crimes. 
The claim that 1.7 million died in the GULAG is also unsubstantiated. Archival reports put forth by V.Popov, V.Zemskov, and J.Arch Getty in English language have shown that around 1 million died in the GULAG in 1934-53. Of these 1 million, it should be taken into perspective that the majority of these occurred in 1941-45 when the government couldn't have done a thing to prevent them. 
The claim that 389,000 kulaks perished during resettlement is also inaccurate. Their deaths occurred years after they were resettled. They died from standard illnesses that the rest of the population died from.
Also, it is generally agreed that the data are incomplete
This is absolutely false. This is not the view of most scholars. Stephen Wheatcroft distinctly refuted claims that the archival data are somehow incomplete or unreliable. 
http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf
The Soviet repressive system was complex and required records and a record-keeping system to operate. The managers of the Gulag, labour colony and special exile empires needed a set of accounting data to plan their work. The special police and judicial authorities needed to keep records. The central party leadership also required periodic reports from the secret police/Ministry of Internal Affairs on developments in the Gulag, labour colonies and special exile areas, and on the policing and mass repression operations. In their time these official records were kept in the appropriate secret archives of the NKVD and the party leadership. These secret accounting materials should not be confused with the non-secret propaganda materials that were published at the time.
When the ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) lost control of the labour cmaps (ITL) during the Khrushchev period, the labour camp archives were transferred to the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF) or TsGAOR as it was known then. When Conquest refers to as "the Zemskov figures" are some of the summary data from these archives, which Russian historian V.N. Zemskov was able to publish from the late 1980s. These represent a few figures from amongst the thousands of Gulag accounting data which are now freely available for examination in fond 9401 of GARF. The fondy contain conjunctural reports on Gulag work, supply reports concerning Gulag requests to have the government increase average personal food rations and the size of the Gulag contingent on food rations, health reports, and general accounting reports. 
Western historians who consider that all these data were falsified 60 years ago, and then held in secret to be produced in order to disinform them, appear to be suffering from an exaggeration of their own importance. When Gulag officials were pleading for more supplies they had no incentive to underestimate the number of prisoners. When Gulag officials were planning production they needed to know the real number of prisoners. The health departments needed to know how many were dying. When MVD leaders were briefing Stalin in their top security 'Osobye papki' reports they had good reason to avoid the charge of misleading him. When two different generations of MVD officials were briefing Khrushchev on the iniquities of their predecessors, in their top security reports, Kruglov in 1954 and Shvernik in 1963, they similarly had more to lose than gain by falsifying the figures.
since some categories of victim were carelessly recorded by the Soviets - such as the victims of ethnic deportations, or of German population transfer in the aftermath of WWII.''
This is also completely false. The figures on ethnic deportations and their deaths can be located in works by N.Bugai and by Polian. It was found that 85-90% of ethnic successfully were transferred to Central Asia and in around 1948 or so, the Tatar settlers in Central Asia produced more birth than deaths. Polian's work can be found here:
http://www.memo.ru/history/deport/
others believe the number to be considerably higher. Russian writer Vadim Erlikman[13], for example, has made the following estimations: Executions 1.5 million, Gulag 5 million, Deportations 1.7 million (out of 7.5 million deported), and POW's and German civilians 1 million, for a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
This is the opinion of one single author that should not take precedence over the conesensus of the majority of scholars of Russian and Soviet history. Vadim Erlikman's claim that 5 million died in the Gulag is completely unsubstantiated. Neither are the claims of 1.5 million executions of 1.7 million deaths in deportations substantiated. 
What explanation is there that Erlikman's work takes precedence over the conesensus over the majority of scholars of Russian history? A fringe view should be treated as such. 
These numbers are by no means the full story of deaths attributable to the regime however, since at least another 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-33 famine must be added.
This is also a gross exaggeration. There is no evidence to corrobarate that 6 to 8 million died from famine. Demographic reports have concluded that excluding Kazakhstan for which there was not any appropriate record keeping, there were 2.3 million excess deaths broke down as:
Ukraine: 1,544,840
Lower Volga: 167,671
Central Volga: 107,085
North Caucuses: 305,285
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/deaths.xls
Ronald Grigor Suny stated in "The Soviet Experiment" that there were 4 to 5 million deaths from famine.
In 1990, Stephen Wheatcroft wrote in Soviet Studies
Concering the scale of the famine in 1932/33, we now have much better information on its chronology and regional coverage amongst the civilian registered population. The level of excess mortality registered by the civilian population was in the order of 3 to 4 million. If we correct this for the non-civilian and non-registered population, the scale of excess mortality might well reach 4 to 5 million, which is somewhat larger than I had earlier supposed, but which is still much lower than figures claimed by Conquest and Rosefielde and by Roy Medvedev. 
http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Scale_Repression.pdf
Returning Soviet soldiers who had surrendered were viewed with suspicion and some were killed[19] compared with 3.5 million Soviet POW that died in German camps.
This has been refuted by Igor Pykhalov and the Russian archives. While a small minority of about 10-15% of traitors collaborated with the occupiers were punished but were released after six years, the vast majority of repatriated soldiers were either returned home or rejoined the army.
Jacob Peters
:All of you know a hundred times more about Stalin than I do, but I'll judge credibility based on one tiny detail: "imaginary confiscation of grain". When I was a child living in Chicago, we lived next to a Cossack family that had escaped starvation in the Ukraine. I don't think I need to repeat what I remember of that story to people who already know. Art LaPella 00:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But you agree the confiscation/collection wasn't imaginary. Art LaPella 01:47, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

text: "the imaginary confiscation..." I have to wonder if the rest of the statement is true in a similar sense. Art LaPella 22:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Why do you try to tell that there was no cult of personality, and everything was just a lie of the CIA? I've read an encyclopedia from the '60s (not an American one, it was written in the Eastern block) which is full of pro-Soviet propaganda and POV, and even they write about Stalin's mistakes, and that he showed a bad example to the communists with his cult of personality. --V. Szabolcs 10:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV Propaganda, Lies, Distortions