Talk:Great Purge/Archive 1

message: Shouldn't the name really be "Great Purges"?
:No, it is vastly more commonly known as the Great Purge, and therefore trumps accuracy. Kent Wang 05:18, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is more commonly known as The Great Terror.  Perhaps this page should be renamed as such.Marlowe 19:23, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is no reason to propagate ignorance, even it is widespread. The article is about the Great Purge. If you want the article The Great Terror, you are welcome to write it. Mikkalai 18:27, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever.  I take you up on the offer.  Though I still think this article should be titled The Great Terror.Marlowe 20:46, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

message: According to a contemporary joke, "there are three kinds of people in the Soviet Union: those that were in prison camps, those that are in prison camps, and those that will be in prison camps."
: This joke is well-known indeed, but it is not from these early times. Mikkalai 04:47, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joke 

message: Removed from the article.
The bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party itself contained many individuals who were not enthusiastic regarding Stalin's policies. This was apparent to Stalin by sluggishness in the carrying out of his orders: for example, the campaign to verify Party cards in 1935, and resistance by statisticians to his requests that the 1937 census present more positive statistics. Part of the Great Terror was a purge of the Party and the bureaucracy in an effort to put personnel in place who would follow orders without question.
: This is guesswork. If you want it here, please mention the sources of the conclusion. Otherwise it is "original research" at better.
The second goal was to eliminate "social dangerous elements", ex-kulaks, former members of opposing political parties such as the Social Revolutionaries, criminals and former Czarist officials. This group formed the bulk of those caught up in the Terror. Another issue was the Soviet concern with spies which Stalin felt were being infiltrated into the Soviet Union by neighboring countries.
:This is anachronism. Kulaks and esers were fiercely persecuted much earlier. "ex-kulaks", "spies" are from propaganda lexicon of purgers. Was Bukharin a spy, really?
True, both social groups were persecuted earlier, but during the Great Terror there was a second run at them. Kulaks often were not liquidated or imprisoned the first time around, rather they were not allowed to join kolkhoz and given poor land to farm or deported to the east or north.  However, experience showed that former kulaks often were able to find good jobs and enter the work force. Many of them and other socially dangerous elements had also moved away from the north and east and were mingling with the general population. A decision was made to imprison or liquidate them. Pages 166, 167, Black Book of Communism.  Fred Bauder 21:00, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
Bukharin was a special case, simply a political opponent tried on trumped up charges. Fred Bauder 21:00, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
: He was not. He was a general case. See, e.g., Moscow show trials. Mikkalai 00:34, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If it is so, it undermines the credibility of the book. You should read minutes of show trials. They are available on internet. YOu would see how ridiculous the accusations typically were. Mikkalai 00:37, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: First, most of the major communists left no memoirs - neither Marx, nor Lenin, nor Stalin.  They considered it vanity, and Molotov said as much.  Second, I concur this artcile and other articles are too Stalin-centric.  I find this a generic problem on Wikipedia, people seem to want to whittle history down to a handful of people - Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt.  That makes for a good play or movie, but not for a good history. Ruy Lopez 01:39, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background 

message: Andris's request for proof that the absurd overstatements of 20 million dead (to say nothing of 66 million) are impossible is perfectly fair. I shall be happy to refute those "estimates" once and for all. I don't have the data to hand, but here is the procedure:
Subtract 20 million from the number of deaths from all causes for the period. Divide by the number of years to get an average number of deaths per year that were not related to the purges. Divide by the population at the end of the period to get the crude death rate per year. Compare this rate to published crude death rates. You get something like 2 per thousand per year, which is far lower than the crude death rates of the most prosperous countries in 2004, not to mention the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In other words, you get an impossible conclusion that utterly shatters those wild claims of 20 million dead.
Again, I'll try to dig up the data. It will mean a trip to a library or two, however, so you'll have to wait a few days or so. Anyone who has access to the relevant figures in seventy-year-old almanacs or whatever is welcome to post them, preferably with a reference. Shorne 04:51, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to disprove "20 million dead" 

message: Mikkalai, I thought you were above the vile propagandists here who insist on turning every word into a broadcast from Voice of America. Please do not delete pertinent links and add POV information to others. Shorne 00:04, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The sole piece relevant to the article from the webpage you included is a short section , which contains no reference to original facts; at least nothing else not covered in another reference, by Martens. It is not good to pollute encyclopedia by secondary sources that shed no additional light.I can add hundreds of them from internet. The goal of references is to present more facts. The book of Martens is in defense of Stalin; it is fact, not POV. Did you read it yourself?  "It is very difficult to raise one's feeble voice against the torrents of anti-Stalin propaganda." Mikkalai 00:46, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: I hardly consider two links to be overwhelming pollution of the encyclopædia. As for whether the book is POV, did you make the same objection about Conquest? or Black Book of Communism? Those are hardly going to win any awards for their neutrality. Sorry, but your complaint sounds like special pleading to me, and I'm afraid I cannot accept it. Shorne 04:49, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Pease read carefully what other's write. I didn't say that the book is POV. Mikkalai 16:32, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: And by the way, I don't classify in books as POV and not-POV. Unlike encyclopedia, whose main goal to present facts, authors of books are entitled to their POV. Books may contain facts and POV or lies and POV. Mikkalai 16:43, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry. I had read "it is in fact POV". The effect of aging eyeballs.… Shorne 19:27, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: I am not Russian. I am even not exactly Mikkalai :-) And BTW I think having leftists around here is good: they make us to write more argumentative texts, with more facts and less opinions. A shark in a sea for herring not to sleep. And such emotional outbursts against opponents are in best traditions of Lenin texts, by the way. So who is leftist here? :-)  Mikkalai 16:32, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Somebody told me you were Russian sorry :( my bad. i got emotional cause im tired of being attacked by ideological fanatics - even Adam has said that even when he and i disagree on something i'm always try to do the right thing. Its hard living with an autistic disorder like Aspergers - its a very lonely road to walk. PMA 18:07, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I demand a retraction and an apology for the personal attack and, in particular, for the false accusation that I am some other user. Shorne 19:27, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I must admit you do behave like an ideological fanatic. As for multiple names, I am curious what this conclusion is based on? Mikkalai 20:11, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Damned if I know. It sounds like the utterance of an ideological fanatic to me. Shorne 23:16, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: I retract and apologise and hope you really aren't that user that keeps using multiple accounts (Eco, RichardChilton, Hanpuk etc etc). PMA 06:23, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: My best guess is that Shorne is a reincarnation of GayCommunist rather than the Richardchilton series (who I suspect is now functioning as Ruy Lopez), but I'm not interested enough to investigate the matter so deeply.  I advise, just revert his POV edits. VeryVerily 06:37, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I accept PMA's apology. In fact, I have no idea who those other people are; I haven't even run into them (except Hanpuk on Talk:Khmer Rouge—some stuff he posted there months ago). Shorne 06:51, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irresponsible changes 

message: The issue of unfair trials is in progress of being exposed in the series of factual articles. Some of them are already in place: NKVD troika, Moscow Trials, Enemy of the people, Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), Secret Speech, Dewey Commission, Population transfer in the Soviet Union, as well as in the current article itself. Mikkalai 07:14, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: Mikkalai, I know that talking to VeryVerily is what the French call pisser dans un violon, but you seem to be far more reasonable. I'm concerned by your insistence on disputed claims in the face of my request for documentation. What is the issue? Shorne 07:16, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue is time. Mikkalai 15:23, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Meaning what? That your supposed lack of time to track down the references justifies dispensing with this requirement? Shorne 23:06, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Meaning that unlike propaganda and counter-propaganda phraseology, I have to come up with statements  that reflect reality and with means to support them. And this takes much more time than to simply write: "everybody knows that Stalin was tyrant, but he did this to destroy the enemies of the country." Mikkalai 19:05, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Documentation, please 

message: I object that the opening of the article says one million were executed.  I also object to the "estimates" of how many were killed being decided by whoever.  Cite sources and let the reader decide.  Im leaving the MVD and Memorial estimates since at least they're sourced. Ruy Lopez 02:10, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I support this objection. Shorne 02:50, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  executions 

message: In The Gulag Archipelago by: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he writes:
"When people today decry the buses of the cult, they keep getting hung up on those years which are stuck in our throats, '37 and '38.  And memory begins to make it seem as though arrests were never made before or after, but only in those two years." 
(Chapter 2: The History of Our Sewage Disposal System)
He goes on to say that the wave of '37 and '38 was not the only one, or even the largest but that others (for example 1929-30) are not widely known because "peasants are a silent people, without a literary voice".  (Chapter 2)
I think that it's important to acknowledge that persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin did not begin and end with the Great Purge.
Padington (talk) 20:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree; "Stalinist repressions" should not redirect here but should be an article of broader scope. Languagehat (talk) 22:23, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Larger Context 

message: The number of people who perished in the purges is subject to hot disputes with death toll estimates ranging from 1 to 100 million people, depending on who counts and what is counted as a purge.
This has got to be a joke. You couldn't convince a 10 year old that a median of 50 million would be executed out of a population of 160 million. Such is unfeasible. Demographic data does not remotely correspond to such allegations. Countless sources have correctly specified the death toll from executions to total 681,692 including the Russian Viktor Zemskov, J.Arch Getty, Robert Thurston and Stephen Wheatcroft. Archival data must be given priority over hearsay, rumours, and crude arithmetic. 
Some sources place the number at about 20 million, which includes approximately 5 million kulaks and other peasants killed between 1929 and 1933; 5 million who died during the Ukrainian Holodomor, 5 million executed between 1933 and 1953 (including military personnel executions during the Great Patriotic War), and 5 million dead in gulag camps. 
This has been debunked by archival material. It's been revealed that 150,000 kulaks died during 1930-1931; 3 million died during the rural famine of 1932-1933; 786,000 executions from 1930-1953; a 1 million deaths in the GULAG. The total figure is not quite 5 million. Again, we must give priority to archival sources over second-hand estimates. Sources include "Years of Hunger" by Stephen Wheatcroft and RW Davies and "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence" by J.Arch Getty.
:Then don't talk about it.  Fix the article with your data, adding sources with every claim.  Remember:  be bold.  -Kasreyn 22:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are plenty of other reasons why this might have happened. It is a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument to say that the lower population was a result of genocide. To assume that it's related to genocide is drawing a pretty long bow. David Glantz has proposed, with some justification, that the real figure for Soviet war dead was closer to 40 million rather than the figure of 20 million which is usually quoted.Flanker235 (talk) 11:47, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Astonishing Death Toll 

message: I have removed the following line from the end of the paragraph Purge of the Army: "However, this is untrue since Hitler had already stated a fight against communism in "My Struggle", and many times in his speeches during the 1930s."  This line attempts to discount any link between Germany's assault on Russia due to the idiological position of the Nazis.  That Hitler and the Nazis were completely opposed to Communism is clear from Mein Kampf and numerous other sources - however, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact also shows that the Nazis were very pragmatic about this opposition.  The issue is not whether the Nazis were ideologically opposed to the Communists, but rather whether the purges helped contribute to the actual timing of Operation Barbarossa.  --The Thieving Gypsy 17:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Great Purge and Barbarossa 

message: Большая чистка transliterates into (if I'm not incorrect) Bol'shaya Chistka; I'm going to put this into the parenthesis in the intro sentence next to the Russian. I hope this is ok? T. S. Rice 10:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian to English Transliteration in intro 

message: Hey Mikkalai, I can't see for the life of me why you reverted my changes to this article. Please let me know why you did it in the talk, or I'm going to re-post them. They seemed fairly uncontroversial. SparhawkWiki 22:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mikkalai revert? 

message: I've passed this for the Version 0.7 DVD release, as it seems (generally) pretty well done and complete, as far as I can tell.  However, it does contain some shocking information, and as such it could benefit from some inline citations - an important topic like this deserves a good quality article.  Thanks, Walkerma 02:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Version 0.7 review 

message: There are thousands of books about stalinism, all from reputable scholars. It is not like some obscure topic you cannot find information. We have a specific topic here. Please explain which sections of the books in question deal specifically with the Great Purge. I have nothing against long list of references, but they must be reasonable. For example the article Joseph Stalin has like a hundred of them. But the topic "Stalin" is broad. 
In our case, for example, "In Defense of the Russian Revolution: A Reply to the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification [David North." or "Was there an alternative to Stalinism? [David North." It is unclear from the titles how the are related to 1937.
The best idea would be to write articles about important books or at least to add brief summaries in the current article, so that people will know why these books are listed here. `'Miikka 17:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: What started the first wave of the great purge was the assasination of Sergei Kirov in Leningrad in 1934. Was it set by the party or not, but it was exploited widely by the party to begin a mass war of terror against their own people. Someone has to add this to the article. 
:Not exactly so, but I added the name. `'Míkka 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, mistaken. Please don't forget there are plenty of native russian speakers in wikipedia, who know which terms "they" use. If you don't believe them, try google. `'Míkka 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True. Steveshelokhonov 20:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No single word about Kirov? 

message: Although the Purge in the Soviet Union was the biggest, shouldnt there be at least some informaion about the Purge in Mongolia, which happened at the same time as it did in the former?
There isnt even one mentioning of the Purge in Mongolia here. --ChinneebMy talk 07:45, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Be bold and write an aricle about purges in Mongolia, rather than complain about lazy rest of us. Only pease use the correct title (how they were called there) and cite reputable sources. `'Míkka 15:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. The name in Mongolia is the same as the one in the Soviet Union, so maybe the title should be Great Purge (Mongolia) or something like that?? --ChinneebMy talk 04:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See Twentieth Century Mongolia `'Míkka 05:57, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purges elsewhere? 

message: Could we make this a disambig page, as I would like to add Stalinist Purges in Mongolia. --ChinneebMy talk 09:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: Editor C.J.Griffin, can you explain your deletions of Gulijan's referenced material?  Binksternet (talk) 13:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm under the impression that this might be another sockpuppet of permabanned vandal Jacob Peters. This Gulijan is citing some of the same sources Peter's has cited in the past. I'll leave them for now but will keep an eye on further edits made by Gulijan. C.J. Griffin (talk) 01:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: We'll all keep an eye out. ;) Binksternet (talk) 08:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems like I was right. Looking over Gulijan's recent edits there is no doubt in my mind that this is indeed another sockpuppet of vandal Jacob Peters. I've reported him and if it's confirmed, I'm removing his edits from this article and all the others as banned users cannot edit wikipedia. C.J. Griffin (talk) 03:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gulijan's addition 

message: The number of 30000 executed officers is only based on Khrushchov'e era propaganda. I have removed the number along with its reference that also proves nothing, only mentions again the 30000. In fact, the number 30000 refers to the officers FIRED or RETIRED from the army at that period, including some 12000 arrested (arrested is not necessary executed), but also some 15000 cases of people "wrongly accused" returned to service.) The actual blow was aimed towards the party and NKVD officials who wore military ranks 
AbuAmir (talk) 05:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  about the army purge 

message: The background section in its current form seems rather weak. There is no discussion there of the role of the murder of Kirov, that certainly provided a crucial pretex for the start of the Great Purge, and nothing about the 17-th party congress. I also find it strage that the section says rather little about Stalin's personal role in starting the purge. The focus of the explanation of the purge given in the section as moitiavated by the need to eliminate right- and left-wing opposition within the party also seems somewhat misplaced. From everything that I read on the subject before, the main impetus for the purge came from Stalin himself and his principle motivation was to eliminate those among the perfectly loyal and ideologically correct members of the party who had significant independent popularity and moral authority and thus could represent a potential challenge to his hold on power. I don't have books on the subject at home (except for Geoffrey Hosking's Russia and the Russians, that touches on the topic briefly), but really, the background section needs a lot of work. Nsk92 (talk) 22:55, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: partially addressed re Kirov, my source is Conquest, but unfortunately only a 1989 edition.Mtsmallwood (talk) 07:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background section 

message: "Estimates of the number of deaths associated with the Great Purge run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 2,000,000."
The 681,692 figure is not an "official figure" but comes from documentary archives opened to historians after 1991.  It refers to executions carried out in the two-year period of 1937-8.  The range of 1.5-2 million is put forward by Getty & Naumov as a plausible estimate of the total numbers of not only executions but also deaths in labor camps from the beginning of collectivization up to the entry of the USSR into WWII.  These numbers refer to different events and neither one was ever an official figure.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.247.123.232 (talk) 13:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading sentence 

message: I am curious why "great terror" redirects here. The term great terror was only 'coined' as a reference to Stalin's purges because a historian was trying to liken it to the "great terror" of the French Revolution and as a result, the, original term now seems to be 'written' out of history by wikipedia, an action I don't know if I agree with. I studied both the Russian and French revolutions in high school and at university and the great terror always referred to the period at the end of the Reign of Terror in 1790's France. Yet now, if someone searches for this term their first match will be Stalin's purges because a Western (see not Russian) historian seemed to think the term was catchy and reusable.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Senor Freebie (talk • contribs) 11:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You are absolutely right. This is wikipropaganda. Biophys (talk) 13:27, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great terror redirect 

message: If you look at the image captioned "Josef Stalin circa 1938", near the top of the page , you will see that it is in fact an image saved as "Portrait of Stalin in 1936". I'm afraid I can't recommend any resolution, not being involved at all in this article's creation.213.94.149.215 (talk) 20:15, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Portrait source confirms it is 1936. Fixed. Dzied Bulbash (talk) 15:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture of Stalin 1938 - incorrect  caption/image 

message: Just a reminder to editors that external links are not to be used for secondary sources. Articles about the topic should be used as citations, or not at all. From WP:ELYES:
What should be linked (ELYES)
1. Wikipedia articles about any organization, person, web site, or other entity should link to the subject's official site, if any. See Official links below.
2. An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a copy of the work, if none of the "Links normally to be avoided" criteria apply.
3. Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks) or other reasons.
Links to be considered (ELMAYBE)
1. For albums, movies, books, and other creative works, links to professional reviews.
2. Very large pages, such as pages containing rich media files, should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Worldwide, many use Wikipedia with a low-speed connection. Unusually large pages should be annotated as such.
3. A well-chosen link to a directory of websites or organizations. Long lists of links are not acceptable. A directory link may be a permanent link or a temporary measure put in place while external links are being discussed on the article's talk page. The Open Directory Project is often a neutral candidate, and may be added using the  template.
4. Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources.
Video from the show trial is fine (although not great); analysis is not fine. I hope that's clear.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:27, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links 

message: In this article it says, 'Stalin received 292 negative votes' (second paragraph under Background), while in Stalin it says, 'Stalin received 1,108 negative votes' (second paragraph under Purges). Which is correct? Tyrannophobe (talk) 16:33, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  dispute with Kirov 

message: The Tsarist executions from 1825 to 1910 were in response to about 1,000 Tsarist officials' being killed by Leftists.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 16:59, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  1825 

message: "Enhanced interrogation" seems a rather Orwellian euphemism for torture.  Shouldn't an encyclopedia just call torture "torture"?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.149.64.33 (talk) 04:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "enhanced interrogation?" 

message: This article is entirely biased towards the observations and opinions of essentially two people: Orlando Figes and Robert Conquest. While neither of them are terrible historians, there are thousands of other historians/historical narratives/facts and figures concerning the Great Purge, while this article is limited in scope, due to poor research.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.182.176.234 (talk) 01:30, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources and Content 

message: Grover Furr's work is invaluable in giving a full account and any entry without reference to him can have no real value as a source about the Stalinist Soviet republic.
50.149.24.221 (talk) 16:37, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is the work of Grover Furr not included? 

message: The earlier Tsarist executions were a reaction to the killing of about 1,000 Tsarist officials by Leftists.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.162.190.126 (talk) 11:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Tsar Alexander II was killed in 1881.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.222.199.204 (talk) 11:52, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparison 

message: Just pointing out that "-shchina" suffix in Russian and other Eastern Slav languages does not by itself relate to a time period. Its historical value only comes from the reference root, not from the suffix itself. In fact, the roughly approximate translating would be "instigated by" in a negative sense. So, in present context, "Yezhovshchina" would mean "anything instigated by Yezhov" or "anything having to do with Yezhov". And since Yezhov is part of the Soviet history today, the term connotes chronologically. --Whydoesitfeelsogood (talk) 01:35, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, thanks for explaining. I was going by past reading of books in which it was translated as "era". The memory of which led me to search for the pages that I linked. I think your explanation is interesting and helpful. I still suspect that "era of [mis]deeds" would not be a *wrong* translation, because the time component that is implicit in Russian is absent in English unless it's made explicit. But I defer to your preference. — ¾-10 02:04, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  "the doings of Yezhov" sounds dreadful in English, can't it be "the deeds of Yezhov"? Changes will also be required on Nikolai Yezhov, by the way. Emerald (talk) 07:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

text: Per wikipedia rules, once some statement in wikipedia is questioned, the only acceptable answers may come only from reliable sources. Not to say that there is may be several equally valid "literal" translations or even none. - üser:Altenmann >t 13:36, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

text: I'm inclined to agree on that. "phenomenon of Yezhov" then? --Whydoesitfeelsogood (talk) 15:20, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: See the modified article text. - üser:Altenmann >t 15:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yezhovshchina 

message: Uhhh, turns out you have to start a Talk section here for everything, because apparently you have tons of free time, while others are too busy and prefer spending 5 seconds to revert your edits...
Okay, the phrase By the summer of 1938, Stalin and his circle realized that the purges had gone too far; is incorrect a/p sources from the Russian Wikipedia. Here it is unsourced. The outcome makes you think that Stalin has decided single-handedly decided to start the Purge, and he himself, along with his executives, decided to end it. This is totally opposite as to what the sources state.
The Purge has ended in part because Stalin has conducted a reforming of the NKVD. However, the main cause was Yezhov's removal and his charging with culpability of several unlawful practices (which he did conduct without Stalin knowing on multiple occasions). When Stalin made Yezhov head of the Water Transport Committee (a position created in 1937 and abolished in 1939), it was only because of the latter's certifiable merits in terms of using prisoners to built the Moskva-Volga canal. However upon receiving that position, Yezhov was granted with even more authority, and was later deemed unstoppable in his goal to find "enemies of the people".
By the end of the summer of 1938, Beria was already Stalin's right hand in many affairs. He has persuaded the latter to remove Yezhov from the NKVD altogether. The reformation of the NKVD made it possible for Beria to take the chairmanship of the Committee and to push Yezhov out, who has then dismissed at his own request. With the abolition of his other position, Yezhov found himself jobless, was arrested two weeks later with incrimination of having protected Uspensky, one of the commissaries of the Ukrainian NKVD.
Subsequently, Yezhov has been blamed for multiple deeds related to his chairmanship, much of which he had to accept because the new apparatus has been infiltrated with Beria's men. He testified against Babel, and both of them were executed in 1940.
I don't see how this can be the fault of anyone else but Yezhov. I mean sure, the Purge was conducted by the whole NKVD, and even so after Beria's arrival, but Yezhov is definitely responsible for the 1936-1938 period of these events. You could even say that Stalin wasn't interested in Yezhov's future past 1938 because his inner circle of men was already reformed using the same committee. Most likely (and this is my deduction), Beria was charged with removing Yezhov as a first task, and he did what he could.
--Whydoesitfeelsogood (talk) 15:40, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The current text certainly could be improved. Stalin was the ultimate guiding hand of the purges, and this article should try to convey that. One line saying that he "realized that they had gone too far" is so sparse as to be misleading to the reader. That's like saying that Beethoven realized that his piece had crescendoed enough and it was time for a decrescendo, so he reined in the violin player and signaled the piano player to eclipse. One can't present the violin and piano players as the prime agents, nor act like the conductor was unaware of what they were doing. It was still the conductor who was running the show. — ¾-10 22:42, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Of course Stalin was behind the Purge, but he gave too much liberty to Yezhov, and eventually had to have him removed in fear of losing control over him like he did over Yagoda before Kirov's assassination. There is a reason why part of this period is called Yezhovshchina in Russian. Yezhov was single-handedly conducting torture and executions and his reports were overly scrumptious. --Whydoesitfeelsogood (talk) 06:01, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

text: Um, you're asking me to do this. For free. As if I got time on my hands to burrow myself in home literature to find the exact historians I've read it from? I mean nobody's getting paid here, I could understand a little 5 to 10 minute edit here and there, but doing this? Sorry I've got my life to handle. Take what you want from my text. No hard feelings. --Whydoesitfeelsogood (talk) 05:53, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Um, that's what we are doing here. For free. Infreakingbelievable. Stupid are we, no? In any case, thank you for bringing the attention to the issue. Your 5 minutes are appreciated: I deleted the claim you found dubious, i.e., the article was improved a bit. As for burrowing in home literature, some of y\us do just that. Me personally, I just edit wikipedia whenever I stumble upon an interesting fact while reading, so I have a reference at hand without wasting time on "burrowing".  - üser:Altenmann >t 16:30, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Take it easy, guys—valid points on all sides. What Altenmann said is often true ("edit wikipedia whenever I stumble upon an interesting fact while reading, so I have a reference at hand without wasting time on 'burrowing'"), but also, sometimes it happens the way it did for Whydoesitfeelsogood—you run across something while reading Wikipedia that makes you think, "Whoa, I know that's inaccurate/misleading/wrong, based on my own past reading of books, but I couldn't lay a finger on a citation without hunting for one." In this case it worked out OK for now. The current version removes the misleading phrase. No doubt it's true that additional citations could be added later (if/when people have time), but it's decent for now, too. Thanks to you both for the volunteer contributions that add up to improvement. At least each of us pecking away at improving Wikipedia is still better than with many people who never bother at all. I still feel like it's good dharma and karma after all these years, even though a part of me is always auditing the time expenditure. But another part of me just can't help "setting the record straight." Cheers. — ¾-10 22:37, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  /* End of The Great Purge */ 

message: Years and years ago, I visited Moscow and went round the Metro with a group tour. Our guide pointed out a picture of Trotsky on the murals. Someone asked about that and she said that painting out Trotsky wasn't necessary - he just had to be made not too important. I've often wondered about this so thought I'd ask here - is this a myth or was she right? Blythwood (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  A question 

message: For sake of drama style of writing the article was noticeably corrupted.
Simple example: "Their children were put in orphanages to be brought up as Soviet, with no knowledge of their origins." That's bullshit. If you are puzzled, please be puzzled for a sec and then look here for a hint. I will review the whole article later. - üser:Altenmann >t 07:18, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article broken by somebody who knows shit 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I noticed that the autoarchiver for the talk page on this 
article was set to two months.  Vast numbers of persons 
are controlled by money, just as vast numbers of persons 
fear death, and so this will introduce intrinsic bias 
and censorship on Wikipedia for politics, economics, 
and religion related pages.
This article has a link to Moscow Trials and Article 58 
and so it gives a good idea of what governments can and 
often do when they twist 'due process of law'.
Nonetheless I have one quibble with the article.  It 
says in the opening paragraph, 'It has been estimated 
between 600,000 and 1.2 million people were murdered 
by the Soviet government'.  A murder is an illegal 
homicide.  Since governments determine what the law 
is, by definition they can not murder.  
The 'Great Purge' was also not 'genocide' as defined 
by international treaties after WWII.  This is because 
lobbying and veto power by the Soviet Union after WWII 
made explicitly sure that politics and economics as 
legal criteria for mass executions by the government 
were not included in the legal definition of genocide 
when it was created.
Therefore, the mass extermination of the Russian people 
by the government of the Soviet Union during the time 
of the 'Great Purge' was not 'murder', because it was 
completely legal under the laws and court procedures 
of the Soviet Union at the time.
71.34.105.13 (talk) 10:12, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The strict legal definition isn't the only definition of 'murder' available. See for example genocide or democide. The definition the article uses is not Wikipedia's own original definition, it is a definition already established by others, and it seems you're taking issue with that definition, not the article's use of the word "murder". --BurritoBazooka (talk) 15:15, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: If people can use shifting definitions for the meaning of words then nothing is true and nothing is false.  Sometimes Wikipedia uses the term 'weasel words' to refer to unclear language, referencing an untalking animal with the term to promote the idea that using unclear language as a rhetorical device is a bad thing.  People proclaiming themselves to be courts when they are not actually courts in order to issue pejoratives is also very common. As far as replacing the word with 'killing' it would at least slightly imply that the actions were unorganized or not done en masse.  Using the term 'execution' might at least slightly imply a viable and due process of law in the court system.  Perhaps failure to find a proper word is the result of Newspeak.71.34.105.13 (talk) 18:51, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As definysjes nea feroare, dan elk fan ús soe noch wêze prate Frysk - or some other old European language. :) Wouldn't it be nice if English speakers could agree on some central authority? Though I agree to change the wording to something like "died at the hands of the Soviet government" because some of these deaths could possibly be described as manslaughter, as debated in one of the cited texts. --BurritoBazooka (talk) 23:38, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Pretty sure that inventing evidence and then executing people on the most spurious of grounds counts as murder. Maybe I'm wrong though, and while we're here, let's replace all the instances of 'torture' in the article with 'enhanced interrogation'. BTW, invoking linguistic nihilism just because the Anglophone world doesn't all use the same legal definition of a word is rather melodramatic.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.27.115.93 (talk) 02:15, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Governments can not murder 

message: Missing Evgeny Bronislavovich Pashukanis (1891-1937), author of 'The General Theory of Law and Marxism'  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.67.107 (talk) 20:12, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pashukanis? 

message: I have noticed that there is an edit war about the estimated casualty being before 200-600 thousands and 600-1750 thousands. The edit war does not change the cited sources so one of the sides is certainly wrong. I have not checked all the sources but e.g. Conquest "The Great Terror Reassesment" certainly gives much higher numbers. Check e.g.  pages 485-487. Thus, the version of 200-600 thousand is certainly misrepresenting sources. Alex Bakharev (talk) 07:08, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualty figures 

message: Just thought I'd leave this here. Apparently the Russian Federation is still whitewashing the purges. Wolcott (talk) 06:15, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-rights-free/russian-stalin-era-great-terror-exposer-freed-from-jail-pending-trial-idUSKBN1FG0UE 

message: This section is a mess, it mixes old and new estimates, it presents a discussion that occurred between Conquest, Wheatcroft and Rosefielde, and which was summarised by Ellman, just as independent estimates. If we want to discuss a history of this question, let's do that, however, the consensus views have been summarised by ERllamn, so I would prefer to remove everything else.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:15, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of people executed 

message: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
There was a poorly sourced claim about Stalin personally taking part in torture, and his hands "being bloody" afterwards on a regular basis.
How very dramatic!
Stalin sitting there smoking a pipe, blood of tortured people literally dripping off his hands.
The problem is, that none of the best and most reputable sources about Stalin (Court of the Red Czar and the Stalin biography by same  author.) 
The only two sources given for this remarkabe claim, is page 111 in "Stalins Loyal Executioner" and a book by a Russian Marxist historian.
I just looked up the first source, and there is nothing of the sort on page 111.
As for the second source, the author is a Trotskyist Marxist historian (pr his wikipedia page) and therefore can't be said to be unbiased.
Given that more reliable sources say nothing about Stalin personally taking part in torture (a claim that's rather dubious just considering his workload) I've deleted that part in the article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.38.143.54 (talk) 15:46, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted part about Stalin personally torturing people.  

message: To give them their due, their book 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilization' was originally published with a question-mark after the title. Valetude (talk) 13:49, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beatrice and Sidney Webb 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

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message: Should there not be some mention of the intentionalist and revisionist arguments concerning the reasons for the Purges. NMO
:Related to this, I was thinking of adding the perspective of modern Socialist historians on the reasoning and conceptualizing of the Purges. Would this be a valuable addition to the article? TheRushingRussian (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Adding more perspective using reliable non-fringe sources may be quite valuable. But that is hard to tell in advance. Let's try.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:52, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historiographical debates 

message: A severe famine and genocide of Ukrainians are two absolutely different things. Please, refer to Holodomor and its references in case of any hesitations. V9k8 (talk) 22:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Replace severe famine to Holodomor 

message: I am not sure Snyder provides an adequate summary for the great Purge as whole, because he focuses on what he calls "Bloodlands", not the whole USSR. A better source is needed.
In addition, I fixed some edits that are too Polonicentric. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:29, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Snyder

message: I Removed this recent addition  per WP:BRD. The reason. It tells: "J. Arch Getty has criticized the approach of some historians writing that "For no other period or topic have historians been so eager to write and accept history-by-anecdote" and that "as long as the unexplored classes of sources include archival and press material, it is neither safe nor necessary to rely on rumor and anecdote."
Nowhere this mentioned the subject of this page. If someone want to criticize historians (which historians? why?), pleas place such info to pages about such historians. My very best wishes (talk) 00:21, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Irrelevant text

message: Did I not give references to the works of the historian on the repressions of Zemskov? Why is this photo used (why didn't the corpses rot in 5‒6 years in the warm climate of Ukrainian SSR with black (chernozem) earth? what are people looking at there?)? Gnosandes (talk) 08:35, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , in this edit you defended Stalin's purges by labeling the victims  and asserted  because ostensibly that is the percentage that escaped formal conviction or execution. I'm sure you can understand, however, that there are many forms of political repression that fall short of outright imprisonment in a gulag or execution by firing squad, and that your edit bears no relationship to how literally anything works. Also pinging , who is involved in this dispute.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:55, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, even the term “convicted criminals” is way over the top fringe POV in this context. Volunteer Marek  20:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   It does not follow from this edit that I defended “Stalin's purges”. All that follows from this edit is what I have labeled the “victims” “convicted criminals”. This is where we need to finish. You probably did not notice, but the conclusion of  is given by Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Zemskov. I gave a link and pointed a page to his work. Zemskov pointed out that in 1937 and 1938, 353,074 and 353,074 people were sentenced to death by the courts. In total, this is 681,692 people. In 1937 and 1938, 437,591 and 225,640 people were sent to prison. In total, this is 663,231 people. A total of 1,344,923 people in 2 years. By the decision of the courts, they are criminals. After the arrest of Yezhov, the so-called “by Beria rehabilitation” began. 837 thousand people were rehabilitated by the courts. My edit is based on the research of Zemskov, who was the first to introduce these documents into historical science. Instead, the article uses the works of the pseudo-scientist and obscurantist Robert Conquest… This is very remarkable… Zemskov also showed that the Soviet people welcomed such repressions, especially against the kulaks (but this is a different topic). With the coming to power in 1991 of such people who were not repressed, an excess mortality of 23 million people appeared in post-Soviet countries. Therefore, one part of the repression was justified, and the other was criminal and was rehabilitated. An excess mortality of 23 million from 1991 to 2020 can be called a “capitalist's purges”? Gnosandes (talk) 21:41, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

text:  I will also have to compare with the USA. According to Zemskov, American jurisprudence deliberately qualifies individual crimes with a political background as purely criminal. In the USSR, the murder of Sergei M. Kirov was considered a political offense, in the USA, the murder of John F. Kennedy is a criminal offense. In the USSR, identified spies were convicted under a political article, and in the USA a criminal article. Is this approach taken into account in this article? Gnosandes (talk) 22:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:OR. Volunteer Marek  00:59, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   I repeat once again that Zemskov was the first to introduce these documents into scientific circulation. WP:OR has nothing to do with it. I will also say, if you are going to participate in a dispute, then please use the laws and logic of dispute. If you do not know how to do this, please leave this discussion, for it was not you who canceled my edit. Gnosandes (talk) 10:21, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Does Zemskov compare the assassination of Kirov to that of Kennedy?  Volunteer Marek  17:12, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Undo edits

message: As I understand the original concern was that half of the section belonged to the gas vans. Under the close review of the code it looks like most of the info belonged to a note that somehow lost its opening ref tag while the closing tag still present. After inserting the tag the section does not look very biased to me (although maybe the executioners and the execution methods belong to a separate section, not introduction?). I have removed the undue weight tag Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:47, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undue weight in introduction 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: This entry should be retitled "The Great Terror".
That is now the established and generally accepted title in Russia and elsewhere for the intense and indiscriminate period of arrests and executions between August 1937 and October 1938. The title "purge" is outdated and misleading. Evidence accumulated over the past 25 years and published in regional Books of Remembrance and online in Memorial's database of the "Victims of Political Terror in the USSR" shows that Party members were not the main targets of Yezhov and the NKVD during those 16 months.
The public aspect of the great Show Trials in Moscow overlaps chronologically with, but does not explain, the Great Terror. The two should be treated in separate articles. Arrests and executions after October 1938 should also not be described here -- that only confuses the specific nature of the Terror which culminated in Yezhov's own arrest and removal.
The figures cited in Conquest's original 1968 book and, even, in his 1990 revision are not realistic. Drawing on participant and eyewitness accounts, like Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, he tells the truth of events but the statistical generalisations both classic accounts contain do not accord with the careful research of the past quarter century. In "Crimes against Humanity under Stalin, 1930-1953" (2009), French historian Nicolas Werth, an editor of The Black Book of Communism, has recently provided a clear overview of the events of 1937-1938, based on Western and Russian research since 1990. 
An English summary of what Werth wrote about the Terror is available here -- https://en.mapofmemory.org/great-terror-1937-1938 -- with a link to his original French article online.
John Crowfoot 
Rustat99 (talk) 09:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename and Reduce 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: The article at least twice asserts that Stalin’s paranoia about Trotsky was the primary motivation for the purges but offers no evidence.
Other arguments include the realisation that the new constitution, if faithfully enforced, would destroy Soviet rule due to popular anger, the idea that the failures of the five year plans were due to intensification of class struggle (and thus the work of wreckers) and an older Russian paranoia about being surrounded. Yet none of this is discussed and we are simply told it is because Stalin (who never acted alone even if he often murdered his accomplices) thought Trotsky would take his job. Not very good. 2A02:C7C:362A:E200:994E:FB3B:8FFD:6A69 (talk) 17:35, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Aren't the aspects regarding Trotsky discussed in other articles that are specifically about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky? The articles Trotskyism and Rise of Joseph Stalin for example mention that Stalin targeted Trotsky and his supporters. Nakonana (talk) 15:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trotsky