Talk:Joseph Stalin/Archive 1

message: Some of the edits made today (Dec. 7) were fantastic strides toward a NPOV. Valeofruin (talk) 07:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archives, POV's and Edits 

message: He was walking through streets and markets
Knocking doors of me and you.
He was playing his old panduri
And singing his song. He knew,
That song of him - it was magic
And as pure, as shining ray.
It had a truth and wisdom
And dream he could not astray.
Hearts of stone got softer
When listening stranger's song.
Spiritual flame was stonger
And shining wide and long.
But they, who's souls were in darknness
Who forgot their duty and faith
Gave him a cup of poison
Mixing the wine with death.
"Drink it" - they said - "God damn you!
This was the way you choose...
Your song for us is just nonsence
And we don't need your truth!"
translated from russian by Mikhail D.Kuznetsov 77.45.240.248 (talk) 18:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stalin;s poem 

message: Does anyone have this book used for a quote about Stalin's suspicions about Soviet POWs? The entire quote and more is based on one note in the book, but I don't know where Bullock got the information from, and would like to.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 21:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alan Bullock 

message: Well, first I think it's obviously significant enough - being pretty much the most important diplomatic agreement concluded under Stalin, possibly aside from Keitel's capitulation - to be in the lead. Second, Paul, previously you stated you were ok with the version I proposed, as long as it was without the "carving up" part. The thing about compromises in a repeated interaction with another person is that they have to be observed or the cooperation breaks down. Of course, being compromises, neither side is going to be perfectly happy. Then, you state above that somehow mentioning the secret protocol is "Polonocentric". Actually, you're the one being "Poloncentric" here, since you're, once again, forgetting about the Baltics, Finland and Romania. In fact the secret protocol concerned; Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania. So mentioning it is in fact representing a Germano-Soviet-Polano-Lithuaniano-Latviano-Estoniano-Finno-Romanocentric. In other words it involves all the parties concerned. I guess it doesn't quite give the Fijian POV but, hey, undue weight and all that. Finally in reference to the Roberts article you give above; as the author himself admits, his thesis is "contrary to historic orthodoxy", hence not representative of historical consensus (besides the fact that he doesn't even have circumstantial evidence. It's all pure conjecture. This kind of stuff one can get away with in ____-studies departments, as here, but not in serious history departments).  If a historical consensus that the part of the protocol concerning Poland didn't exist, emerge at some point in the future... well, so what? The Baltic, Finns and Romanian parts are enough to support inclusion of the contentious phrase. Sorry, I already compromised on this so I'm not giving in any extra feet, after the inches.radek (talk)
:I didn't argue about first. MRP triggered the war and pre-determined all other foreign steps of the USSR during 1939-40, therefore it deserves mentioning as soon as we mention other Stalin's questionable steps. Second, I didn't modify your edit. I changed the Seektrue's edit that removed MRP at all, re-introducing MRP back (hoping that it would be a reasonable compromise between you and Seektrue). In actuality, I wasn't fully satisfied with your wording, however, I wouldn't say full omission of MRP (proposed by Seektrue) to be correct either. I also don't think the difference between revision 244420762 and the present version is a serious reason to start an edit war, but if you inclined to do so, feel free to go on. For me, both these versions are satisfactory.As regards to your arguments on "Polonocentrism", "_____-studies department" etc. I think, your have to agree that they are a kind of straw man style to conduct a discussion. I hope you are educated enough to realise a fallaciousness of them. By the way, the style you conduct a discussion suggests you take it too personally, therefore, it is difficult for you to be neutral. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: MRP carved up large areas in Eastern-Europe (5 contries completely + part of Romania). Already that fact alone is pretty damn notable. Dividing Poland started war. I would say that Stalin's cooperation with Hitler is definitely notable enough to be mentioned.--Staberinde (talk) 16:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  MRP in the lead 

message: Maybe we should mention here that the use of torture by the NKVD was authorized by Central Committee of the Communist Party and ordered personally by Joseph Stalin. For example, during "Doctor's Plot" Stalin requested to torture falsely accused physicians "to death" (see this article: Stalin's torture: "Beat them to death" (Russian) by Novaya Gazeta).Biophys (talk) 02:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In addition, he requested to execute them (hang them up) publicly.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:30, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should this be noted? 

message: His son finally shot himself because of Stalin's harshness toward him, but survived. After this, Stalin said "He can't even shoot straight". This phrase reads like a part of a novel or a movie script. Is there a source for this? --TEO64X 14:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citing 

message: There is a mistake in the article, stalins father wasn't ossetian, yes some scientists think that surname jughashvili may have ossetian roots ,but stalins father was cultural Georgian. In Georgian Stalins surname sounds like Jughashvili and not Dhzugashvili and at the end "shvili" is the ending of Georgian surnames.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr.pukha (talk • contribs) 08:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently there is actual evidence that Stalin's father was Ossetian. From Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Young Stalin": "When Stalin's dying father was admitted to hospital, significantly he was still registered as Ossetian."165.123.123.205 (talk) 00:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stalin's surname 

message: I noticed that some dates concerning the pictures appear to be incorrect. According to Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin, mentioned under Further Reading, the picture of Stalin wearing a scarf (currently dated 1902) was taken after Stalin was arrested when attending a party conference in March 1906 (p.180). Further, Montefiore claims that the information card from the secret police actually depicts Stalin in 1911, not 1912.
--Heburnslikethesun (talk) 18:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed the information card date (as there was no visible source for the current date of 1912). I've left the other one for now -  the original image source of the picture of him in a scarf seems to assert that its source, the book "Josef Wissarionowitsch Stalin - Kurze Lebensbeschreibung", claims it as 1902. I'm not familiar with either of these books personally, so I'll leave it to someone more familiar with the subject matter. ~ mazca t|c 18:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong dates on photographs 

message: Can somebody add why people thought he was cremated? Buried without fanfare must be added!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bayazidd (talk • contribs) 01:14, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Burial misconceptions 

message: A russian television station is holding a poll in which stalin is until now the third most popular russian in history. Final results will be released on dec 29. Is this interesting. And where could this be inclueded in the articel. Here are some links:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=DG9rbkSNYAQ  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Goodbryan (talk • contribs) 11:07, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  third most popular russian in history 

message: Stalin was born on December 21, 1879, not on the 18th of that month and that year, as the article indicates.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sherohlyn (talk • contribs) 22:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of birth in this article is incorrect 

message: The sentence "Pro-Stalinist historians such as Ludo Martens and Stefan Merl, estimating meager 300,000 casualties" seems like pure POV to me, in regard to Merl.  Martens' communism and sympathy for Stalin is obvious but I've seen no indication the Stefan Merl, a German professor, is sympathetic to Stalin or even a communist.  The word "meager" seems inappropriate to me, designed to provoke outrage over Merl's alleged apologia. -Matt
This is just another example of something that does not belong in the intro.  what's been left to the content of the article if Ludo Martens and Stefan Merl are mentioned at the beginning. 82.194.62.220 (talk) 16:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pro-Stalin 

message: There should be a section on Russian action in the Spanish Civil War. I know it opens a whole new area of controversy, especially when considering the supression of POUM, but somebody should give it a try.Locospotter (talk) 19:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stalin and the Spanish Civil War 

message: I was browsing around and noticed that the Muhammad page had a scrolling box for Notes, of which there were many. I thought the scrolling box made the page a lot nicer, and I thought I would seed the idea on different pages, hoping it would catch on. It can easily get reverted if popular opinion disagrees, so I thought I would find out what others think of using this format on extra-long pages such as Stalin's. JW (talk) 09:03, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As at the Adolf Hitler page, I will say that I don't like any internal scrolling feature. I prefer to continue scrolling from the outside of the article. Binksternet (talk) 17:22, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely not!  Scrollboxes are never to be used in an article because of major accessibility issues.  I am a little bit surprised that there isn't something in the WP:MOS about this (at least, nothing that I could readily find).  See the template documentation at Template:Scroll box for more details; this template is coded to be disabled in the main article namespace.  The html workaround is, obviously, also not allowed for the same reasons.  siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 17:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  scrolling boxes 

message: This from the intro is bad English:  "Critics argue his rule was typical of a dictator, and refer to his style of leadership as Stalinism[5], whereas others refute these accusations as falsifications or exaggeration.[6] [7]"
To refute means to prove wrong - the word should be replaced with deny.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.252.80.100 (talk) 16:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad English 

message: Let's just go ahead and take out that "meager."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.179.122.109 (talk) 15:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  estimating meager 300,000 casualties 

message: Can someone tell me what the problem is about neutrality in this article? --69.228.144.226 (talk) 02:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If you read the talk page you can easily find the POV conflicts. --69.239.175.29 (talk) 19:15, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality disputed? 

message: The intro is now way too long.  I'm going to try something shorter.Kurzon (talk) 00:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  I cut it down to a fraction of its former size.  I also tried to add (and hit the points for) links to the other associated Wikipedia articles on the subject (e.g., Eastern bloc, Population transfer, etc.).Mosedschurte (talk) 01:01, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

text: I shortened some of that, and added back a few of the most obvious facts that have to be in a Stalin summary intro.  Also, there were errors (e.g., "WWII", and the Warsaw Pact wasn't enacted until 1955).Mosedschurte (talk) 02:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I find it curious that an estimate of the number of people that died on Stalin's orders did not make it into the introduction. Imagine not sighting the number of Jews that died on Hitler's orders in his introduction.  The numbers warrant mentioning don't you think? Dave3457 (talk) 06:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with the numbers is that they differ widely from source to source. One number, the number of executed for political charge is more or less consensual that is 1.4 million(if my memory serves me well). Their cases are in archives. All others are "excess deaths" and vary from less than 1 million to 100 million depending from the researchers and their methods. Some of those methods yields millions of victim if applied to the Great Depression in the USA, Marketing reforms of 1990ies in Russia or even the postwar decline of birth rates in Western Europe. Almost any numbers put in the lead are warranted to start an editorial war Alex Bakharev (talk) 07:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: Just to be clear, and I don't think any editor is claiming this, not every target (or even close thereto) in the Great Purge was actually susepected of some sort of substantive corruption or treachery, even though those charges were formally brought in mass against hundreds of thousands of people.  Large numbers of people, including just political dissidents, were targets.
I'm not saying any editor is making the claim that every victim was actually suspected of genuine corruption or treachery, but there is editing using language which would indicate such a result.
Rather, as part of the mechanics of the purge, they were all accused of such crimes, or of closely related crimes.  Not necessarily genuinely suspected of actual criminal acts.  I don't think there is disagreement here on edits, but the language is just not clear on a few edits.Mosedschurte (talk) 09:39, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Great Purge]] Sentence in Intro 

message: Substituted at 20:37, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment