Talk:The Great Terror (book)/Archive 1

message: I have to agree with Shorne here. "Many western intellectuals" is a weasel word. And I give a halfpenny for the opinion of "intellectuals" about what happened in the USSR, especially for the opinion about these opinions. For every opinion there was a counter-opinion. Intellectuals were polarized,... no; they were spread across the whole spectrum. Let us stick to facts. This article is about the book. Here goes a summary of the book, i.e., the opinion of Conquest, but first and foremost the summary of facts he presented.  Mikkalai 21:09, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

message: Now IMO the intro contains only facts. Some opinionated words, such as "comprehensive research" and "critical inquiry" are IMO reasonable.
The section about the critique of the book remains to be written, but the critique must be verified. Thanks to Shorne, I am aware of quite a few websites that pour lots of liquid shit onto Conquest, but their credibility remains to be verified, since they reek with hatred.
::Oh, lovely. Conquest is embraced and hailed with a puff piece full of venom for such broad categories as "leftist intellectuals", while anyone who disagrees "pour[s] lots of liquid shit" and "reek[s] with hatred". Shorne 01:05, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: which had wiped out virtually the whole of the pre-Stalin Communist Party and intelligentsia 
Is this a Conquest's claim? It is false. Mikkalai 00:17, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yet another Conquestian conquest of the truth. Shorne 01:05, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The word "Conquestian" does not answer the question. Is it Conquest's own or Conquest's followers/interpreters? Mikkalai 15:55, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 1 

message: Keep in mind this article is about THE BOOK The Great Terror.  <B>If Conquest makes the claim IN THE BOOK THAT 20 MILLION DIED this is not POV, it is RESTATING WHAT CONQUEST SAYS IN THE BOOK IN AN ARTICLE ABOUT THAT SAME BOOK.</b> Its no different than writing a plot synopsis of a novel for an article, say, on the Great Gatsby. Thank you.Marlowe 16:12, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: POV!!!!!

message: A disagreement posed by adherants of a splinter group perspective does not create a POV dipute. Fred Bauder 23:37, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)
:How the hell did you ever become an arbitrator? Your bias reeks from every pore. Shorne 23:51, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV notice

message: Incidentally, I would like to do a careful wordsmithing of this article that will answer some of the complaints; but there is little point when Shorne deletes entire paragraphs of factual material that doesn't fit his POV. Stan 08:48, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It's relevant because it's describing the time when the book was genuinely controversial, and actually debated by leading intellectuals. It does impart a particular tone, and that's part of what I wanted to tinker with. The book is not actually controversial any more, if only one unimportant Belgian Stalin-apologist is even bothering to say anything about it.
*I note that you deleted all of my stuff without even discussing it. Shorne 08:54, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Your "contribution" consisted of deleting other people's work, plus a claim of controversy based solely on a massively biased and unprofessional work by a obscure non-scholar. Find an actual professor of history at an accredited university that says the same thing (hint: there is an ongoing research project, alluded to on another talk page), then you have a basis for claiming controversy exists today. Stan 09:21, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tweaking 

message: The edit history on this article is getting ridiculous, and the people doing it seem incapable of rational discussion of the content, so I'm washing my hands of this for now. Don't get too attached to the deletions however, it's all in history and I expect to bring it back in the future, along with some additional material I'm collecting. Stan 19:06, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-re-re-re-reverting 

message: Once again, it is not correct to simply delete half of the article's factual content just because one doesn't like it. All the objections raised in the past have been shown to be based on misreading of the article or misunderstanding of NPOV, so I'm left with the conclusion that the goal is to turn the article into the collection of slanders by two-bit partisans at plp.org, and I'm not willing to go along with that. If the problem is that wording is not neutral, then that can be fixed by wording changes, not wholesale deletion. Stan 19:37, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't delete anything about the book's content. What I deleted was a personal screed against people who dare to question the book. That cannot stand. Shorne 19:56, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: Furthermore, the objections have not been addressed, let alone "shown to be based on misreading of the article or misunderstanding of NPOV". See above for a long list of objections. Shorne 19:58, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Which I answered, and then you ignored the answers. The section you're deleting says things like "Conquest argued that", "Conquest said", "Conquest's sharp criticism", "Conquest's comment that", and "Conquest responded". This is perfectly correct attribution as per NPOV - to call it a "personal screed" betrays a serious lack of reading comprehension. It's also seriously biasing to delete Conquest's own words from an article about his book, while leaving in the crude partisan slanders from plp.org ("Nazi", geez, it's like something from junior high school). I take it you still haven't found the actual professors I mentioned two weeks ago; what's the matter, too much like actual research work? Stan 20:15, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Quotations can still be POV. Imagine doing the same thing with the page Mein Kampf: "Hitler argued that", "Hitler said", "Hitler's sharp criticism", "Hitler's comment that", and "Hitler responded". All that in the context of blackening the entire opposition with a single brush (Jewish communists, let's say), the whole capped with the assurance of Der Führer that they're all "fucking fools". That's what is being done with this article. Shorne 03:12, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you actually read the Mein Kampf article? It has several paragraphs describing Hitler's POV as expressed in the book, plus links from those to additional articles describing Hitler's POV at greater length. It would be pretty hard to understand why "Nazis are bad" if people started deleting all their statements of their beliefs because "quotations are POV". In fact, if Conquest is so bad, why would you work so hard to delete the testimony that demonstrates his badness out of his own mouth? Readers on both sides of the spectrum will find that kind of direct evidence much more convincing than the lame material on plp.org. Stan 05:09, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You really don't get it, do you? Why don't you put your thinking cap on, compare this article to Mein Kampf, and report back to us on the differences? Shorne 06:00, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  In my opinion two last Stan's message are a brilliant example of comprehension of the NPOV policy and of rational and unprejudiced thinking. Shorne seems to lack arguments and in response he resorts to comments such as the one above. Boraczek 13:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Heh, I think if you compare my contributions for a week to Shorne's for the same week, it should be pretty clear who's the thinker and who's the partisan! But pity Shorne - WP work entails dealing with many points of view, both admirable and reprehensible, and it's clearly beyond his abilities; whenever that becomes obvious, he resorts to trying to belittle everyone who disagrees with him. Stan 20:35, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: I may have been somewhat clumsy in rewriting the paragraph regarding Marxist-Leninist criticism of the book. Particularly in attributing views advanced by Wikipedia editors to Marxist-Leninists as a movement. I would welcome revisions and additions, provided they are properly attributed. Fred Bauder 12:30, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
:I wonder why Shorne is so determined to delete the reference to Ludo Martens; it's very unscholarly. I've been doing some research in preparation for writing the article about Ludo, so that readers will be able to find out more about just who is doing the criticizing. Of course, I'm planning to praise him as the last true champion of the Stalinist ideal, which should make Shorne very happy. Stan 07:27, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Attribution

message: Western does not mean American, it means Western Europe as well.  While the US was passing Taft-Hartley, starting the Cold War, purging leftists from their jobs, beginning a Red Scare and McCarthyism and the supposedly dormant 1950s, with no real leftist activity until the civil rights and anti-war movements picked up in the 1960s, Europe was not the United States.  As soon as WWII ended, the English booted Churchill out and elected a Labor Prime Minister who began nationalizing everything - a Labor Party that still sang "The Red Flag" at its conventions.  Diplomatic and intelligence sources showed the left was going to win the 1948 Italian elections and the US massively intervened to prevent it.  The largest political party in France in 1956 was the communist party.  The KPD was banned in West Germany in the 1950s.  Conquest's regurgitation of the British propaganda office would have been shown for the nonsense they are at any time. Ruy Lopez 07:44, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It would do a lot for your credibility if you actually wrote up some details about this IRD and provided some sources for what it did and how it operated, preferably books written by professional historians and not websites of partisan propagandists. I don't even understand what communist parties in France in 1956 have to do with a book appearing in the next decade. I find it interesting that a few paragraphs about one book have generated so much angst, when there are literally hundreds of other scholars and books deserving of similarly detailed treatment. What about Getty's works for instance? Instead of working so hard to smear one person, why not tell us about the constellation of Conquest's opponents? That will carry far more weight with readers than the wording of a couple sentences here. The link to Neal Ascherson has been sitting empty for months, a leftwing journalist I believe, surely he is worth knowing more about? Stan 08:12, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: BTW, the Nineteen Eighty-Four article does not say it is primarily a parody of British propaganda. WP articles should at least make a feeble attempt to be consistent with each other. Stan 08:15, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW, it was not exactly "primarily", but the article "Nineteen Eighty-Four" does mention someting along these lines, if you read carefully. Mikkalai 08:31, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it does. I'm no literary critic, but I think Orwell's underlying point was that the various evils could occur in any society, that it was not uniquely British or Russian or whatever. It's a pretty serious misrepresentation to suggest, especially in this context, that Orwell was singling out the Brits; the nature of the mirror he holds up is such that everybody looks in it and says "nope, not me - but clearly resembles the people I hate the most". Alas, the people most in need of the insight are also the ones most sure that they're looking through a window, not into a mirror. Stan 09:17, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Another brilliant comment by Stan. Let me add that Wikipedians are not suppposed to impose any interpretations of literary works on visitors. A literary work speaks for itself. That kind of unilateral interpretation is  raping the literature. Boraczek 09:51, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: One more bit of irony; the text that Ruy Lopez characterizes as an "American-centric view of the world" was originally written by an Australian, heh-heh. Tricky to throw those stereotypes around! Stan 08:21, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  timing 

message: As Conquest himself notes, he's been criticized by Russian scholars including "the respected A. Adamovitch...[who has] criticized me...in Literaturnaya gazeta '[for] always lowering the number of the repressed, he is simply unable to understand the true size of these fearful figures, to understand that one's own government could so torment the people.'"  Conquest comments upon Adamonvitch's statement: "It is true that I have always decribed my figures as conservative; but, hithterto, I have been more used to objectors finding them unbelievably large." (The Great Terror: A Reassessment, page 487)
For those seeking more facts, The Black Book of Communism by Courtois, et al (a group of former French communists and radical Leftists who have renounced their errors) is highly recommended.  The book's section on the Soviet Union by Nicolas Werth upholds Conquest in nearly every detail, differing only on the number of those murdered by Stalin.  To dispute over whether it was six, twelve or twenty million is, to quote Frank Herbert, "the ferocious quibble over a comma."
What is clear is that between 14 and 21 million people were murdered between 1929 and 1953 to establish the absolute power of one man.  Another 10 million murders can be laid to Lenin's charge. Another 1 million were murdered during the pacification of Stalin's new slave states in Eastern Europe, so cravenly surrendered to him by Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman.  Former Soviet dissident Roy Medvedev puts it best, it was the "fearful abuse of human dignity" (The Great Terror: A Reassessment, page 487) that is most striking about the Terror Famine, the Great Terror, and the post-WWII Terror that Stalin was clearly preparing before his death.  The "Jewish Doctors' Plot" and the near annihilation of the Leningrad "cadres" immediately after the war, were merely dress rehearshals.
Finally, the Soviet archives themsevles have corroborated almost everything Conquest asserted in the original edition of The Great Terror.  To my mind, to deny these facts, to abuse Conquest over trivia is to make one's self an accessory after the fact.  
Stalin made himself the most powerful human being whoever lived.  That he did so at the cost of millions of lives is irrefutable.  Russia and the former Soviet "republics" are one vast graveyard.  It is simply obscene to dispute the confirmed, to reject the established, the ignore the irrefutable.  The greatest crimes ever committed by a human being can be laid at the feet of that "wonderful Georgian" as Lenin called him once before the October coup.
That there are still people who defend Stalin is testimony to the willingness of some people to overlook anything to support their opinions, however warped they may be.  There are still people in the United States who deny Alger Hiss's treason--despite the proof of it found in the Soviet archives!  Ditto with the Rosenburgs--Jews who betrayed their country to help an anti-Semitic tyrant who was actively murdering Jews during their treason (quoted from an FBI agent who helped investigate the Rosenburgs' perfidy.)  Hitler was Stalin's student in mass murder, but the pupil never came close to equalling the master in bureaucratic murder.  
Conquest's Reflections on a Ravaged Century is also highly recommended.  It should be noted that Conquest further revises downward his estimates of the number murdered by the Soviet Death Machine.
As a footnote:, I've read both the original and revised versions of The Great Terror, the original is superior. I can still remember the chill of horror down my spine at the revelations, far worse than any fiction I've ever read. The original edition had an entire chapter devoted to an estimate of the number of victims; this is now reduced to a section of a chapter in the "Reassessment."
I feel it should be pointed out that the most up to date (in English) and authoritative (at the time of writing) story of the Gulags is Anne Applebaum's work: "Gulag". In this work she estimates a death toll of roughly 4.5 million throughout the whole history of the Gulags. Death tolls of 21 million (let alone the 60 million I have seen elsewhere) deaths under Stalin are literally insane as only 25 million Russians (absolute maximum and probably a lot less than that) were ever in the Gulag throughout the history of their existence. Only 18 million were in the Gulags throughout the entirety of Stalin's reign.  Now it is true that as well as this Stalin was personally responsible for many famines (some of which led to the deaths of millions), but we start to move away from deliberate murder in this case. It seems that as of the time of writing the absolute maximum death toll attributable to the entire Communist system (included Lenin, Stalin etc. up to Gorbachev) is roughly 9 million and possibly quite a few million less than this (depending on how you add up the figures). 
By any possibly way of adding up the figures Hitler killed many many many more people than Stalin (Hitler murdered 6 million Jews, but also 6 million others (Poles/Ukrainians/homosexuals/Romany): also he must take the majority of the blame for the 2nd world war (death toll: 50 million plus)). 
BScotland
:Question for BScotland: Anne Appllebaums' figure of 4.5 million I assume refers to those incarcerated in Gulags, not deaths attributed to malnutrition outside Correction Camps.  Thank you.  nobs 17:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian writers criticize Conquest for minimizing death toll! 

message: There having been no "dispute" about this article since November, I am removing the dispute tag. In any case it was only "disputed" by the communist POV-pusher and troll Shorne aka Ruy Lopez etc etc etc. Adam 9 July 2005 16:04 (UTC)
:that is a particularly hysterical link at the bottom, though i suppose it was left in to quell further edit wars. J. Parker Stone 08:38, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, this link is irrelevant to the aricle: it is about "the harvest of sorrow". I am removing it. mikka (t) 20:58, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dispute tag

message: Conquest argued that Stalinism was a natural consequence of the system established by Lenin, although he conceded that the personal character traits of Stalin had brought about the particular horrors of the late 1930s. Neal Ascherson noted: "Everyone by then could agree that Stalin was a very wicked man and a very evil one, but we still wanted to believe in Lenin; and Conquest said that Lenin was just as bad and that Stalin was simply carrying out Lenin's programme."
No one can seriously deny that Lenin was just as brutal and genocidal as his eventual heir Stalin. Nor that Stalin did not carry out Lenin's plan to "communize" Russia and export revolution to the world. While one might argue plausibly that Lenin would not have brutalized that party itself, especially its upper echelions, as Stalin did, that doesn't eliminate Lenin's guilt for many other blood-curdling atrocities.  E.g. having the "Red Army" cross the borders of the Baltics and round people up, basically at random, and murder them in the most bestial manner.  Further, the Soviet archives have Lenin's signature on the order to murder the Czar's children.  Even if one accepts--which I do not--that that great idiot Nicholas II deserved death, certainly murdering his school age children and idiot wife can never be excused.
Further, Lenin's commitment to violence cannot be doubted (nor that he drew it from the Messiahs of Communism: Marx and Engels themselves).  One need only read his own writings or speeches and, best of all, review his actions.  The mass murder of the SRs following the "assassination" attempt by a nearly blind woman can serve as merely one example of Lenin's blood-thirstiness.  The expropriation of the peasants and the fictional "kulaks" was only halted by Lenin because it threatened to destroy his fledgling totaliarian state.  It's great fun reading Soviet and western apologists' attempts to portray this move as anything other a dictator's hypocritical about face to save his own ass.
Finally, Stalin had to attack the party with the same terror apparatus Lenin created for use against his enemies (the liquidation of the Kronstadt "rebellion" and the crushing of the "Worker's Opposition"), and the population, because he did not have the personal credibility that Lenin did with the leading "cadres."  Destroying those old cadres, and any remnant of the oligarchy under Lenin (the dubiously titled "proletarian democracy"), was necessary to establish "that wonderful Georgian's" absolute power.  And no human being as ever wielded as much power as he did.  Not Mao, Hitler or even Lenin.  Though Lenin's premature death was probably the only thing that prevented him from accumulating the power that Stalin did.
For an insider's perspective on the horror-show and farcical elements of the Soviet "compound" I recommend the books of the late Lt. Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov.  He was fired from his job by "Smilin' Mike" Gorbachev for daring to expose the regime's crimes.  He was apparently immune to "Gorbasms" as so many fools in the West weren't. He nobly stated that, "freeing myself from Leninist dogma  [was the greatest achievement of my life.]"  Indeed, it would be of any life. PainMan 01:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  No real doubt that Lenin was as bad as Stalin and Hitler