Talk:Oprichnina

message: I personally beleive it should be oprichniki because that is the Russian plural. Why would we use English rules of grammar on a word that is not even English? Anyway, hopefully the person who keeps changing it back will explain himself here and either convince me or be convinced. Alexandre-Jérôme  — Preceding undated comment added 04:25, 28 February 2007
* I can't read minds, but three good reasons would be 
*# Nearly all of our readers know virtually nothing about Russian, and to them the i on the end sounds more like a change of part of speech than a change of grammatical number, making it confusing and misleading.
*# There are in English plenty of Slavic loan words that end in -ik, and a number of words that borrow the -nik ending. I'm pretty sure i've never heard "Chetniki" (Rdr to the plural Chetniks!), or ":wikt:nudniki", or "apparatchiki" (tho our article lists only the i-ending plural, ":wikt:apparatchik" lists both plurals and has only the s-ending one as a blue lk) and i've heard "Bolsheviks" much more than ":wikt:Bolsheviki"; ":wikt:peaceniki" and "Vietniki" would be horribly affected neologisms. Your preference is unnatural to our readers' ears but the other is natural to them.
*# Oprichnik is a perfect candidate for a new loan word, if it is not already an established one: there's no natural and well known English word to substitute for it -- just as with Blitzkrieg when we started to need to deal with the concept. I've gone places in Germany where i had to do business with monolingual Germans, but i would say :wikt:blitzkriegs  rather than Blitzkriege when speaking English; i'm pretty sure i've never heard "soufflés" pronounced in English with with the s silent, and i think i'd do a double take if i did.
: I strongly support keeping Oprichniks. --Jerzy•t 10:11, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, an example of a word that has been widely adopted is apparatchik, for which apparatchiks is the English plural. The "i" (transliterated) Russian plural is not required. —PētersV (talk) 05:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oprichniki vs. Oprichniks 

message: On 16 May 2007 an editor commented out most of one 'graph and all of two more. 
The most visible discussion was this edit summary:
: In the 1560s the very poor harvests, plague, Polish and Tatar raids devastated Russia. Under these circumstances the existence of two systems of authority only strengthened disorganization.
which is a decent summary of the single paragraph that was added in the edit. The remainder of the edit was unsummarized, and consisted of hiding existing material in comments, and adding commentary in the comments on that material.
# The first sent of the first 'graph of "Disbandment" was left intact and visible:
#:: The Oprichnina was a total failure and Ivan was forced to disband it in autumn of 1572. 
#:Hidden in a comment the editor gave their opinion of the (newly hidden) material that follows that opinion:
#:: Bosh. Moscow was lost because of strange behavior of boyars. Bosh. Together with  troops the boyars were covered in city instead of battling against Tatars near city. 
#:The editor added quotes around the remainder of the former 'graph, likewise hidden in the comment (and added a  tag, left expanded bcz of being inside the comment):
#:: "He had several of its leaders executed, however, the remaining oprichniki, about 600 men, continued to plunder Russia without the consent of the tsar. When, in 1571 the Crimean Tatars marched on Moscow, the garrison of oprichniki did nothing  and the city was plundered."
# Another 'graph, immediately following it was also hidden (but since removed and at least partly refactored); the editor opined within the comment:
#:: Many regions of Russia have been ruined by the very poor harvests (the period called little ice age), the plague and the war. Oprichnina itself did not cause the devastation. 
#:Again, the comment-hidden previous material was placed in quotes:
#:: "What had once been Russia's best and most fertile areas had been devastated and had fallen well below the rest of the country. Those that had not been killed by the oprichniki or forcefully deported often fled into other areas of Russia on their own. Tax revenues had not increased as the tsar had hoped, and Russia quickly lost all of its gains in the war for Livonia. Although the Oprichnina was successful in instilling a fearfully submissive view towards the tsar in Russians across the kingdom, it ultimately posed as no tangible improvement if not a detriment to the economy and stability of Russia."
# In the section "Legacy" the editor opined:
#:: Bosh. Peter did not make "purges". 
#:Again, the old material was places inside quotes and left hidden; a  tag was also inserted :
#::"Years after the reign of Ivan the Terrible, tsar Peter the Great of Russia and even Stalin, himself, based their own purging schemes on the 'terrible, blood thirsty' Oprichnina."
#:No comment remains in this case, but the following related text appears, followed by a ref to the same source cited twice elsewhere in the article ("Philip Longworth, Russia: The Once and Future Empire (New York, 2005), pp. 98-105"):
#:: Years after the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the oprichnina continued to affect Russia. Stalin, himself, based many of his own purging schemes on the 'terrible, blood thirsty' Oprichnina, and the position of tsar was forever after shrouded with a great sense of terrifying power.
#: Note that the reference to Peter -- apparent target of the fact tag -- is gone, and there is new text: 
#:: and the position of tsar was forever after shrouded with a great sense of terrifying power.
My interest in this (as one who remembers Ivan, Peter, boyars, and the Crimean Tatars, but little else) is that it involved dreadful procedure regarding material that is sensitive because of its relation to nationalist and political PoVs. After-the-fact comment on this talk page, regarding the quality of the suppressed material, would be desirable.  --Jerzy•t 20:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suppressed material from "Disbandment" and "Legacy" sections 

message: In the Organization section (a title, by the way, that does not fit its section), I find this sentence:
:The Russian historian Ruslan Skrynnikov estimated the number of victims to have been between two and three thousand . . .
It's not clear whether this refers just to Novgorod, or to the entire Oprichnina (which would seem to be a gross underestimate).
Also, we ought to mention somewhere the wholesale slaughter of high government officials in 1570.
Elphion (talk) 16:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of deaths 

message: From what I've read, the main reason for the start of the Livonian War is not their failure to pay tribute. Swyilk (talk) 02:57, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Causes 

message: I propose merging the poorly-cited Oprichnik page into this one. There's no need to have both articles. The only section from that page that would add useful content to this one is the section Appearances in modern media, which could be combined with cultural depictions.--cel25 (talk) 01:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Closing, given the uncontested opposition. Klbrain (talk) 21:55, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Merging [[Oprichnik]] page

message: This appears towards the end, with no indication of what it is.  Should be explained. --2607:FEA8:FF01:4B63:616C:468A:C31:55BC (talk) 14:38, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "dog head motif"