Talk:Agnes Smedley

message: There is a new piece by Smedley scholar Ruth Price in the July 29 2005 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education that could be mined for material for this entry. The article can be found here. It particularly highlights her espionage activities and general service to Communists. --Varenius 19:32, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to read that, but you can't get in unless you're a subscriber. The last piece I read on Agnes told of how she took money from the Comintern to start a newspaper in China, then refused to do anything they asked, and told them all to go to hell. The Comintern sent out an angry message intructing all party members to shun her. Sounds like an enterprising woman to me. --Grif FarielloGrifross 05:48, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Source Material 

message: She was no "American, accused of spying", she was a spy and a lifelong traitor, first for the Indian liberation movement (and thus also the German Reich and Kaiser), then for the liberation of mankind and of the chinese masses (and also for the Komintern). Why can't the communists leave this fact alone and start to care about more important things?--Radh (talk) 06:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agnes Smedley was no "American accused of spying" 

message: Ruth Price's biography provides extensive documentation of Smedley's work with the Comintern. All mention of this has been repeatedly deleted from Smedley's page without any discussion or justification, usually by anonymous users.  Before deleting this material again, please provide discussion of reasons for deletion.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rgr09 (talk • contribs) 05:59, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repeated deletion of all mention of Price biography 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The suggestion Agnes Smedley was a spy is disputed.  It is the opinion of one source, Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday, widely criticised as fanatical and unreliable on the subject of Mao and Chinese Communism.
They are also turncoats.  Wrote a sycophantic biography of Madam Sun, which they leave out of their bibliography in their Mao book. Halliday also wrote Korea: The Unknown War, which took the North Korean side and ignored the general view that Kim Il-Sung was made by Soviet power and was wholly responsible for starting the war.  Their view flipped after the collapse of the Soviet system. Thereafter, everything pro-Soviet was wicked, which they had not said while it was still in a position to dole out rewards.--GwydionM (talk) 08:01, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree (except with your view that they were in the pay of the USSR!). According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "In 1949 General Douglas MacArthur released an army intelligence report that outrageously charged her with being a Soviet spy. She threatened legal action, whereupon the secretary of the army admitted that the charge rested on no evidence."--Jack Upland (talk) 08:33, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  They were sympathisers, openly supporting.  No paid but getting favours.  Including unusual access to people for their Mao book, since they were expected to support the mild line Deng had taken.  Wild Swans fitted that.--GwydionM (talk) 07:20, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Clearly they were sympathisers, but that's irrelevant at this point. Jung Chang and Halliday have been criticised as biased and unreliable. In any case, it's only one historian's opinion.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:20, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't trust Jung Chang 

message: I am making a bold shortening of the lead. The issue has been discussed in the past (see above), and the main problem as I see it is that the text appears cluttered and not very reader-friendly. In addition, there are the following issues:
* Daughter of Earth is known, but not "well known."
* It states that Smedley is also well known "for her sympathetic chronicling of the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War." However, the period that Smedley lived and worked in China (1928-41) also coincided with the Second Sino-Japanese War, from which she reported as well.
* There is a touch of sensationalism in the line about Richard Sorge, and it also reduces Smedley to a sub-servient or enabling role, as if she was notable only in relation to his spy accomplishment.
* Why is it necessary to list the nine (9) publications that Smedley wrote for? Considering that she was a productive journalist, these are not the only ones she published in either; as such, it's also an invitation to coat-rack.
Therefore, I have replaced the lead with a shorter, more concise text. Alternatively, some material could be kept - with the above issues addressed - but then it would have to be split into two paragraphs. 92.34.117.237 (talk) 17:46, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I heartily agree that the previous lead was long and wooly, but a one-sentence lead is not helpful, so I tried to hit a balance.ch (talk) 20:56, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - it reads considerably better now. I will do some additional adjustments of the article in the days ahead, for example fixing that cluttered bibliography at the end (I've never seen translations and foreign editions included in an author bibliography on Wikipedia). 92.34.117.237 (talk) 23:37, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Good, thanks. Though it is not uncommon in situations like this, where the author's foreign reputation is pertinent, to list translations as a way of showing it without necessarily drawing a conclusion, which would be OR. If instead you want a citation, you could cite the WorldCat page, which will say "such and such number of titles, including translations into such and such a number of languages," but that might be more work than it's worth.ch (talk) 06:01, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - I am pleased to see this article improve. Ok, then I will pare down the bibliography. As I said, I've never seen translations and foreign editions included in a bibliography here. Hemingway and Faulkner even have separate articles for their bibliographies, but you won't find any of that information there. Edgar Snow is perhaps a better parallel, but his page doesn't list translations either. And Smedley did not have a greater foreign reputation than any of those. What's more: the listed translations are not exhaustive (no Chinese ones, for example); so, it's also another invitation to coat-rack. (To find out about translations, you would go to the article devoted to the author in the target language). If you don't mind, I will also fine-tune the lead a little; then, I will address the "see also" section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.34.117.237 (talk) 11:58, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead 

message: I reverted a change, because you can't be a spy if you are entirely open about which side you are on.
She did work with Sorge, but helping him collect publicly available information.  It seems very unlikely she was seen with him when he was an actual spy in China, posing as a Nazi supporter to Germans helping the Kuomintang.  Whether other activities count as spying is not clear, and the older statement is valid.
--GwydionM (talk) 08:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spy?