Talk:Gabriel Kolko

message: I removed the following sentence, placing it here, for the reasons outlined below:
:::"Although Kolko and Kahin advance similar viewpoints, they differ as to the situation in South Vietnam. Kahin, in his treatise Intervention, emphasizes that the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was a spontaneous home-grown movement that indicated a pervasive desire among South Vietnamese for unification with North Vietnam. Kolko disagrees, contending that the NLF was dominated by Hanoi from its foundation in 1960, confirming the US Government policy stance expressed in the White Paper of 1965 that opposition to the Saigon government was 'not a spontaneous and local rebellion against the established government.'"
: reasons for removal
:: 1. The sourcing for this alleged dispute is inadequate.
:: 2. If this purported difference is elaborated on in print somewhere please provide references. It is perhaps notable that when Kolko reviewed Kahin's book of memoirs in The Journal of Contemporary Asia (Vol.33, 2003) he made no reference to any such differences. Kolko remarked that Kahin "went to South Vietnam and met opposition Buddhists as well as the NLF, gaining credibility as well as insight. But he also realized the importance of land in mobilizing the peasants behind the NLF, and he quickly became knowledgeable on all aspects of the Vietnam conflict. He wrote two books on the Vietnam War, one in 1967 and his 1986 work, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam, remains a classic." 
:: 3. From my experience if there is a difference it is that Kahin felt that "the appeal of the NLF was broad and so was its leadership. Carlyle Thayer found its early leaders to be "long-time VWP (Lao Dong) cadres who had been active in the south, members of the sect forces, former non-party members of the Resistance, and non-communist opponents of the Diem regime." (Intervention, 116) For his part, Kolko afforded the key leadership and direction role to the branch of the communist party that existed in the south, The Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), which is not the same as claiming that it was directed or dominated by Hanoi. In fact in the appropriate section of "Anatomy of a War" Kolko emphasizes significant dimensions in which the NLF was autonomous with respect to Hanoi, as well as its organic ties with local populations at the grassroots level. To quote a sample:
:::"This local autonomy and power allowed the NLF to reconstitute itself again and again, leaving the United States with the frustrating reality that, no mater how successful the RVN was, it could never destroy the grassroots NLF. The paradox for the Party leadership was that the southern movement was by its very flexibility, autonomy, and community basis often quite ready to take care of its own problems in its own ways, the punishment of enemies being just one example. Another, and more important, was the southern Party’s substantially greater emphasis on land reform, as opposed to a united front against the RVN, than Party leaders in Hanoi deemed wise." see BernardL 16:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Purported disagreement with Kahin 

message: It was suggested by one contributor that Kolko subscribed to the Soviet version of the Katyn massacre. This is straight fabrication. If you check the original 1968 version of The Politics of War he states that "the criminological evidence exhumed in the ghastly affair does suggest Russian guilt." Clear as day. Kolko could only go, like everyone else at the time, on the available evidence at the time. When more evidence came in, you'll find the following in the afterword in the 1990 reprint of The Politics of War the following: "We now have confirmation [my emphasis] that the Russians were indeed responsible for the Katyn Forest liquidations of Polish officers."
Anyway, the point is that Kolko never supported the Soviet version of the massacre, contrary to what was stated.
I have to disagree:
Louis Robert Coatney in his University of Illinois, 1993, Thesis quotes these from pages 105/106 of 1968 version of The Politics of War:
Whoever destroyed the Polish officers at Katyn had taken a step toward implementing a social revolution in Poland, and on the basis of class solidarity, the London Poles felt one officer was worth many Jews or peasants.
Yet insofar as Soviet culpability is concerned, of the by now endless lists of complaints the Poles made about the treatment of their nationals in Russia, mass murder was not one of them. Indeed, the U.S.S.R. permitted a much more formidable Polish military force to organize with Soviet weapons, and then finally to leave, and no one ever attributed a similar incident to the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe during the period 1940-1945. German mass liquidation, by contrast, was a common occurrence.
are you saying these passages do not appear in the 1968 book, p. 105 ?
and, there was ample evidence of Soviet guilt for those who looked with open eyes.  
121.217.231.228 (talk) 12:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Views on Katyn massacre 

message: That Kolko is a revisionist historians (American) is also referenced here: Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist: . --Ludvikus (talk) 18:54, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Revisionist historians (American)]] 

message: At the beginning of the Career section, the article now reads, "According to internet activist...." Are citations to the opinions of internet "activists" and internet "columnists" (referring to Charles Burris later in the same section) considered to be adequate support for material in this or similar articles? (I am not questioning Gabriel Kolko's notability, which seems clearly established to me based on the all the citations.) If not, perhaps other opinion sources might be used instead. —HowardBGolden (talk) 18:45, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "According to internet activist..." 

message: The article basically treats Kolko's, essentially Marxist, idea that business controls government as true. There is no critical section in the article - no real presentation of opposing views. As Wikipedia claims to be a reference source this article is no good.90.194.152.177 (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of any critical section in the article 

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thread_title:  External links modified