Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 40

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Cuba since 1959

Latest comment: 6 years ago23 comments6 people in discussion

30,000 'went to the wall.' Another 60,0000+ died by other means, including drowning on their way to Florida. There are sources, but all of this is unmentioned in this article. It should be included. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:34, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Could you start by bringing in these sources that you mention. Wikipedia is built on reliable sources and generally accepted facts. Without them nothing can be included anywhere on Wikipedia. RhinoMind (talk) 16:54, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

That being stated, people drowning while traversing the straits of Florida are definitely not mass murder. That one is pretty clear and straightforward. RhinoMind (talk) 16:54, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Your request is fulfilled.

1. Goldman, David P. (November 28, 2016). "Fidel Castro's Mass Murder by the Numbers". Retrieved August 8, 2018.
2. Chacona, Robert L. (October 1, 2017). "How many deaths was Fidel Castro responsible for?". Retrieved August 8, 2018.
3. Lazo, Mario. Dagger in the Heart: American Policy Failures in Cuba. 1968 estimate at 50,000 deaths.
4. Faria, Miguel A. (2002). Cuba in Revolution. pp. 415–416. "Since Fidel Castro took over the island in 1959, the best figures that we can glean is that between 30,000 to 40,000 people either have been executed en los paredones de fusilamiento (in the firing squad wall) or have died in the hands of their communist jailers. Faria estimates: "The best conservative estimate is that between 30,000 to 40,000 Cubans have perished attempting to flee Castro's regime, mostly succumbing in the treacherous waters of the Florida Straits.
5. Clark, Juan. Cuba: Mito y Realidad. “estimated that more than 16,000 Cubans had made it to freedom since 1959 up to the time of the publication of the book in 1992. Clark estimated that figure represented only one out of three Cubans who attempted to make it to freedom. Countless thousands of others have died indirectly as a result of Fidel Castro's collectivist policies, unspeakable privations, malnutrition, and the general desolation of a once more prosperous island."
6. Garvin, Glenn (December 1, 2016). "Red ink: The high human cost of the Cuban revolution". Miami Herald. Retrieved August 8, 2016.

To dismiss those who died n the Gulf of Mexico fleeing the regime and its policies is not unlike excluding those who died at the Berlin Wall leaving East Germany.

True, this is about killing,not murder. And those who starved during the "famine" in Ukraine would seem to qualify, too. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 17:29, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Definitely agree that Cuba be included, the sources are compelling. --Nug (talk) 22:13, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Most if not all of them fail as reliable sources. An article in PJ Media, a newspaper column, a readers answer in Quora, a fifty year old book by a prominent political opponent of Castro, a self-published book by another emigre. And I can't find any information about the Spanish language book, although generally we would want more recent sources. TFD (talk) 23:07, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Several appear to be by people notable enough to qualify as "reliable sources" and I would not deprecate such as much as you do. "50 years old" does not invalidate a book about events at the time. I would point out that the NYT has published articles asserting deaths under the Castro regime as well. [1] WSJ, and human rights organizations differ only on exact numbers, not on the nature of the deaths, nor on the number being in excess of 30,000 total, and possibly treble that.. Collect (talk) 23:25, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

When sources are unreliable it does not necessarily mean they are wrong but that they cannot be used as sources. I don't think any of the writers are experts on genocide or Cuban history or politics. And more recent sources are better. I'm sure you wouldn't prepare to give a college lecture by reading a 50 year old source, while ignoring subsequent scholarship. TFD (talk) 23:54, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Nope. First hand accounts by people whom Wikipedia deems notable are usable as such. And the age of a reliable source dealing with events at the time of writing are also acceptable. Recent sources are not "better" by some sort of magic rule, by the way. Is there a reason why you would want to ignore the documented substantial death toll in Cuba which is even accepted by Reliable Source newspapers and the like? Collect (talk) 01:47, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Could you please stay on topic. My comments were about whether or not these sources met reliability standards for Wikipedia, not whether the claims were accurate. Metapedia's article on Cuba for example seems accurate (and yes it mentions human rights issues), but would not be acceptable as a source. If you think this should be included then please provide reliable sources. TFD (talk) 20:52, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

[2] Genocide Watch appears to meet RS as an organization. [ https://books.google.com/books?id=3BDH9FK6grMC&pg=PA207&dq=cuba+executions&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc5czK8N7cAhUJQ6wKHdXFDlIQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=cuba%20executions&f=false] up to 70 executions a day in Santiago alone. And so on. Omitting this is silly. Collect (talk) 02:09, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't think Castro's Cuba's systematic killing of dissidents — and others who didn't fit in with their plan or were seen as 'counter revolutionary — is rug-sized. We can debate the numbers. We can juxtapose the sources and analyses. But we should not bury this. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 02:16, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

There isn't much detail in the Genocide Watch source. It says that the Castro government killed thousands of dissidents but offers no further information. The other source is a book about the Bacardi rum family. If you want to add a section about Cuba, you need to find a reliable source that provides a little more detail. TFD (talk) 10:10, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

In short, you do not like the sources. The problem is, the sources still exist, and Wikipedia policy says we use them. Collect (talk) 11:03, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy still says that we do not use them. I notice too that Wikipedia articles on creation and climate change still reflect scientific consensus rather than the alternatives provided by PJ Media. PJ Media also ran a story saying that CNN staged a Muslim demonstration.[3] TFD (talk) 23:49, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I was wondering what date we should use as the beginning. The Communist Party of Cuba remained loyal to Batista and opposed Castro during the revolution. Castro only adopted communist ideology after consolidating power. TFD (talk) 23:58, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Straits of Florida, indirect deaths and systemic failure

Hi. I really feel a need to make a general comment about some of the fundamental issues that just keeps occurring over and over again in all these debates. I would like to say that I find it quite sympathetic how engaged and concerned some editors are about human suffering. They keep pushing for this and that to be included here and there, most likely in an effort to get the information out so it can be seen and heard, I guess. And me, I am among the editors that keeps saying no and wants to cut things out and tell them that this or that can not be categorized as mass killings in spite of their efforts. That seems a bit ironic; why am I doing that when I actually feels that what is attempted is coming from a sympathetic place? Well, let me try to explain.

For one thing, as editors we need to understand that this is an encyclopedia. We can not state interpretations as fact. We can not present biassed info that is not generally accepted as if it were generally accepted. We can not draw our own conclusions and include that in articles or limit ourselves to sources that agrees with our own conclusions for that matter. As editors we must maintain certain standards and we must be able to separate our own feelings, interpretations, views and agendas from our editorial role. It might not be easy, but that is really something to aim for, for all of us. Then we can engage with activism, interpreting, drawing conclusions and expressing our feelings and viewpoints elsewhere. There are plenty of on-line places where we can air those needs and urges in a constructive way.

With that cleared away, a very big issue in all of these debates is, that it doesn't seem that the editors pushing for this and that are really aware of the far-reaching consequences their agendas would have, should they be included and realised. Let me mention some examples:

If we start categorizing boat refugees perishing at sea as killings, it would not only be a first, but it would also mean that all other refugees perishing at sea (or otherwise) across the world should also be categorized as killings. This would include the many deaths and disappearances during the current European migrant crisis for example, where about 4,000 people have perished each year for several years now. Perhaps that would be a sympathetic and good idea, since most die because of reckless human smugglers who should know better when they send people off in the worst ships imaginable while taking all their money. But that is not how boat refugees drowning at sea are viewed or categorized in the international community, or anywhere really. Never was.

One of the issues that has been discussed the most here, is categorizing indirect deaths as killings. We just can't. Because it always relies on an interpretation. And interpretations are just that; interpretations, not verifiable fact. If it was so straightforward, it wouldn't be indirect in the first place. We can of course mention how some people views it and how things has been interpreted, but we can not state it as fact, in this case killings. It is fundamentally contradictory.

Linked with the above, deaths due to systemic failures and neglect from authorities has also been discussed endlessly. Be it deaths due to famines, prison labour or contraction of lethal diseases. I am really sympathetic with this attempt, because neglect from authorities has really been a cause of enormous human suffering in this world, and still is. It would be great if authorities were held accountable for their neglect and deadly policies. Here are some well-know examples of deaths due to neglect and deadly policies from authorities and governments:

We KNOW that lack of investment in proper infrastructure leads to huge death tolls in the traffic worldwide. Dying in a traffic accident is one of the top killers in the world. However, many governments choose not to invest in proper infrastructure. Talk about death from neglect or systemic failure.
We KNOW that as much as 40% of all food is lost because of poor infrastructure, yet many people around the world starve or are malnourished. People suffer and die from neglect and systemic failure.
People die everyday across the world from being denied access to proper health care. We KNOW that proper healthcare would save their lives, but they are denied it anyway, whatever the reason. People die from systemic failure and neglect from authorities.
We KNOW that many people die due to medical errors each year. Be it surgical errors or medicinal errors. Yet these large death tolls are not registered as killings.
We KNOW that many people die from air pollution every year. Yet authorities and industries continue to allow air pollution and in some cases rejects to implement proper safety measures and cleanups even. People die from neglect from authorities and systemic failure.
We KNOW that tobacco is a big killer. Yet tobacco is still allowed to be sold and advertised for even. Again, people die in spite of authorities and a government who knows how to avoid it.
We KNOW that unrestricted access to guns and firearms cause huge casualties in the population. As a worst case scenario, in the US, this however is the cause of thousands of deaths each year. The death tolls to gun violence in the US is greater than most civil wars. However, government officials and authorities actively works against reducing access to firearms. Again, people die from neglect and government policies.

I could go on with many more examples of human suffering due to neglect from authorities and systemic failures. But none of these examples are recognized or categorized as killings. That is not how these matters are viewed or categorized in the international community or academia at large. And no matter what any of us believe or feels about it, this is how it is. And we certainly can't change this on Wikipedia.

RhinoMind (talk) 15:33, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

This is very simple. If something was described in RS as mass murder by Fidel government (yes, it was according to sources cited above), then we include it. My very best wishes (talk) 23:54, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
- So if one source adds drowning victims of the Mariel boatlift, while another says they should not be included, we include them without comment. TFD (talk) 14:44, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

There is no general acceptance of that categorization. You can include it on your own activist blog somewhere, but not on Wikipedia. RhinoMind (talk) 18:44, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

There is general acceptance what constitutes mass murder, crime against humanity and a communist country. Therefore, providing a descriptive title (as for this page) is not a problem and consistent with our policies. My very best wishes (talk) 20:02, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi. You posted your comment in the wrong thread. We are not discussing the title of this page here. RhinoMind (talk) 20:23, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I am only saying that I agree with User:7&6=thirteen that the political executions by Fidel should be included in this page (this thread). My very best wishes (talk) 20:32, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on topic scope results in page move without consensus?

Latest comment: 6 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

There was a May RFC on topic scope Talk:Mass_killings_by_communist_regimes#RFC_regarding_primary_topic. It seems that User:Beland has construed that as a page move discussion and moved this article to a new name entirely of his own choice. This is despite the fact that was a later June 2018 page move discussion, now archived, which was closed as no consensus for the page move, see Talk:Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes/Archive_39#Requested_move_21_June_2018. Unfortunately the page move was messed up, see Talk:Mass_killings_by_communist_regimes#Move_fail. The article should be moved back to the original title. --Nug (talk) 00:25, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, someone un-archived the discussion I closed, and I didn't know about the later discussion. That was very helpful; it makes clear that this article needs to serve as a detail subarticle of Criticism of communist party rule. I'm going to abandon any attempt to try to summarize previous arguments, because I don't think I did a very good job of it, and if there was a consensus it was not very strong.

Taking a second read of the article, it looks like it's sort of trying to do two things: 1. explain the criticism of people who think that these atrocities have happened to some degree because of the ideology of communism, and 2. list mass killings arguably caused by communist governments. For (1), the later discussion suggested "Communist states and mass killing" as a parallel to United States and state terrorism, which seems like a good name for a criticism article, and is certainly shorter than something like "Criticism of communist regimes related to alleged mass killings". Should we do a yes-or-no on the question of moving to that title? Any neutrality questions remaining on that aspect would probably be related to lack of coverage of scholars disputing the causal theory. The intro to this article should probably be tweaked and a link to the main criticism article added there.

For (2), grouping state-sponsored mass killings together by the type of government they were perpetrated by definitely does not seem neutral. Aside from not having articles specifically about mass killings by multi-party democracies or capitalist governments or fascist governments, simply making that division seems to endorse the idea that the type of government matters. Which it may, but that's a debatable theory to which it seems Wikipedia should remain neutral. I think the only way to fix this is to expand or better link to Wikipedia's coverage of state-sponsored mass killings in a government-type-neutral fashion, and then offload some of the content from this article or at least point to neutral lists. I'll take a look around and see what we have. -- Beland (talk) 22:58, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

The article parallels the reliable sources. Those sources make clear that certain ideological regimes use killings to enforce their ideologies, thus it would be non-neutral to pretend that they say otherwise. Note that we also have Anti-communist mass killings which just survived an AfD. Please read the extensive prior discussions. Collect (talk) 23:29, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

@Collect: Yes, but there are plenty of non-communist governments which also engage in mass killing for ideological or political reasons, for which there are other reliable sources. That sort of thing is not covered by Anti-communist mass killings. I'm not sure what it is that you're arguing against, exactly, as I'm not proposing deleting this article or deleting the notion that some critics of communism believe is it as a government ideology uniquely or unusually prone to mass killing. -- Beland (talk) 05:35, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Which is not actually a reason for changing the ambit of this article. If you wish a wider article, start it. This article has survived a few AfDs at this point, and that fact that you do not like its ambit is not going to gain consensus at this point. Until then, this article is well-defined, and has reliable sources. Collect (talk) 13:46, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't think there is consensus that this article is neutral, which is different than having the wrong scope or needing to be deleted. It's perfectly possible to have a nice scope and reliable sources supporting a specific conclusion due to lack of context and critical sources. The AFD did not endorse the contents of the article; the closing comment on the latest debate said "there are likely many areas where the article could use improvement" and encouraged discussion of "name choice, sythesis identification, rewriting, and/or merging". I'm not sure we actually disagree, so I'll address neutrality concerns in the discussion below. -- Beland (talk) 15:52, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@Beland:, are you going to fix up the mess you created and restore the article back to its original title Mass killings under communist regimes? The talk page archive remains inaccessible. --Nug (talk) 22:12, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

There's a click-through link to the talk page archives just under the TOC above. For some reason the article and talk page got moved to a third title under an move log message saying they were going back to their original title. I'd actually like to go further forward if we can rather than backwards, since automatically moving the archives doesn't work because there are too many. I'll start a new move discussion and see if we can get some fresh consensus based on ideas generated in the previous discussion. -- Beland (talk) 00:36, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

RFC regarding primary topic

Latest comment: 6 years ago49 comments13 people in discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The current topic "Mass killing under Communist regimes" has several possible interpretations. Would "Non-combatant deaths attributed to communist regimes" reasonably reduce the number of interpretations? This would eliminate arguments as to causality, and intent, being critical to the general topic, as well as arguments as to the definition of "Communist" as a proper adjective. 00:21, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

Oppose. This is not a good idea because these people did not just "die under", but were killed - according to RS currently used on the page. This also includes victims of Holodomor and other man-made hunger. Therefore, I think the title of the article could be actually renamed to something else, for example Democide by Communist governments or Mass killings by Communist governments. Simply telling "deaths under" is misleading because that would include deaths of natural causes, such as flu, which is not a subject of this page. I think the current "terminology" section serves well to properly define the scope. Anything about genocide, democide, politicide, mass murder, classicide, terror or crimes against humanity by communist governments would qualify for inclusion on this page. What is a "communist government"? This is something multiple reliable sources call a "communist government". What is democide? This is something multiple RS call a "democide". And so on. This should not be a problem. My very best wishes (talk) 01:26, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Such renaming would completely change the scope of the page. First, as noted by Vanamonde below, all communist countries would have to be included, because "deaths under" had happen in all of them. Secondly, there are sources which tell about the death from disease and other natural causes in communist countries. So that would also need to be included. Currently, it is not included. My very best wishes (talk) 21:43, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I support the proposed change in title, as it serves to broaden the scope of the article. I've long thought that the page should be retitled to Mass deaths under Communist regimes or Mass mortality events under Communist regimes or the like, and the proposed title seems to suit the page very well. A change in title would also go a long way to solving the neutrality issue over famines, as famines would no longer be called mass killings, but would be rightly and accurately referred to as non-combatant deaths. I might even go farther and change attributed to to under in the proposed title to further "neutral-ize" it. schetm (talk) 15:09, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

schetm, I like your "attributed to" -> "under".--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:31, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

So you guys do not support the title by Collect. This replacement of one word would completely changes the meaning. Everyone who died from the flu in communist countries would fall under this "refined" title. That is not what RS on this subject mean.My very best wishes (talk) 16:45, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I suggest that "attributed" would not cover the common cold, but deaths which were in some way said by reliable sources to be connected with the government. The other part is not using a capital letter for "communist" so that related governments, as named by reliable sources, would be included. Lastly, I suggest that we not make claims as specific claims of fact as to numbers because no one really knows if any given estimate is too high or too low. If we can keep petty argumentation (or argumentation at great length) out of this, we should be able to make a decent article here. We might even link the poor USSR agriculture experiments based on "deep plowing" etc. based on politics instead of actual science, if consensus so decides. Collect (talk) 01:24, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this should be simply by government - that is what sources tell or discuss. Providing range of numbers should be fine. The experiments with "deep plowing" in Kazakhstan are well known, but I do not think any sources connected this with killing by man-made hunger. My very best wishes (talk) 01:51, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

"Attributed to" has strengths and weaknesses. "Attributed" ... by whom? If we define article's scope in this way, the article's focus is opinia: which deaths are attributed? who attributes them, and who disagrees? Etc. In addition, by doing that, we automatically give greater weight to those who attribute, and those who does not become "revisionists". However, "attributed to" excludes, for example, a part of civil war deaths.

"Under" makes a focus on the events: we neutrally tell what happened, and then tell how different historians explain that, and who is responsible for that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:42, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I think you understand now why did I ask for clarification before voting: now your are arguing that my and schetm's "yes" meant "no". I think it would be fundamentally incorrect to imply that a good faith schetm's post significantly changed the meaning of Collect's proposal. That means, in our view, there is no significant difference between "attributed to" and "under", although "under" leaves less space for ambiguity.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:54, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

My very best wishes, I doubt that reliable sources would bear out routine deaths. They would not suddenly proliferate this page. schetm (talk) 18:17, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

No, to the contrary, there are lots of sources about the "routine deaths". If we are going to accept your and Paul title ("Non-combatant deaths under communist regimes"), one can reasonably argue that information and sources about cancer epidemiology [4], infant mortality [5], and generally demographics of these countries must be included in this page. This will be a mess and an article on an entire different subject. My very best wishes (talk) 18:39, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Again, as I already noted, everything would be fine if we clarified all ambiguities in advance. That is why it is always important to agree about the exact formula before voting.

I prefer fair game, and obviously, under "non-combatant deaths under communist regimes" I mean the same as these sources mean, i.e. excessive deaths that normally are not supposed to occur. I believe schetm means the same.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:46, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I generally support Collect's good faith effort, although the wording seems a little bit unclear, and it was not properly explained upon a request. In connection to that, I think, schetm's amendment is an improvement, and I vote for:

Non-combatant deaths under communist regimes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:10, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I support the version proposed by User:Paul Siebert above. A minor improvement, but an improvement nonetheless...--C.J. Griffin (talk) 21:26, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
I would oppose any definition of the article scope that does not make it explicit that we are discussing mass deaths/mass killings/mass murder or whatever. Otherwise, literally every political killing be every communist government ever is going to come under the scope of this page, and it would lose coherence very quickly. (For instance, the Maoist government in Nepal has been accused of, and is likely guilty of, a few political killings; but no RS I am aware of describes those in the same breath as Stalin's or Mao's represssion). Vanamonde (talk) 06:37, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Vanamonde, actually, as soon as Cambodian genocide and Stalin's Great Purge are discussed in the same article, the article's coherence is already lost, because overwhelming majority of sources discuss the Great purge as a separate event, and the sources discussing Cambodian genocide either focus on this event only, or compare it with Rwandian or Indonesian genocides, or with other events.--Paul Siebert (talk) 12:38, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Not again, Paul. I am evaluating the alternative against what's in the article; you are evaluating it against some ideal version in your head, and quite unsurprisingly, find it (and every other proposal) unsatisfactory. For the same reason, your proposals are getting nowhere. I would support an alternative title along the lines of what Collect has suggested if it addressed my concern above, because it would be an incremental improvement. I'm actually uninterested in perfectionism in an article such as this. Vanamonde (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I probably didn't understand what your concern is, but it seems there is some problem in what you say, because literally every political killing, and literally every premature death from any cause has been described as communist mass killing/genocide/democide etc by at least one source (although most sources may say otherwise), so formally it does come under the scope of this page. The problem is that the sources that say otherwise do not. To preserve neutrality, the article's scope may be either the facts (the neutral description of the events themselves) supplemented by a separate discussion of various general theories (e.g. Courtois views) at the end of the article, or the theories themselves (and the events they describe are presented mostly as links to main articles). I'll probably create a draft of the article as I see it to demonstrate my point and minimise misunderstanding, although it may take some time. Meanwhile, can you please comment on this text? It would be easier for me to understand you if I get your comments on this text.

Thanks, --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:31, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Section "Proposed causes" can indeed be moved back - agree. My very best wishes (talk) 17:39, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I support a rename and focus shift to non-combatant deaths under communist regimes, which feels like it would resolve most of the disputes over this article and which more accurately reflect many of the main sources the article uses. This would let us cover and discuss a wide variety of deaths from the perspectives different scholars bring to them without the title carrying an inherent implication that they are mass killings by their inclusion here (which, for some of the famines and other deaths we want to discuss, even the most aggressive sources do not unequivocally state.) I don't think that the concern of every flu getting included is valid - the "under communist regimes" part inherently makes the scope of the topic "what effect do Communist regimes have on deaths?", which the article could then break down into things like diseases and famines with appropriate sourcing and discussion of culpability, intent, and so on for each. (This assumes we are discussing an actual rename, of course. Obviously I could not support shifting the article's focus without changing its title.) --Aquillion (talk) 21:22, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Are you familiar with epidemiology? For example, three million people who died in Russia from typhus between 1917 and 1921 would have to be included after such renaming, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with that; it would provide useful context. If there are few sources relating these deaths to the fact that they were under Communism, they wouldn't need to be discussed extensively, but placing them within the timeline could be valuable. --Aquillion (talk) 22:03, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I think we should simply follow the approach taken by most general sources on this subject, such as "Black Book" and others. They usually count only people who died as a result of violence by the state. For example, this not just any hunger. In the case of Holodomor people died because their food/grain was forcefully confiscated by the government and the people were prevented from moving to other areas by NKVD forces. Therefore, the Holodomor victims were counted, but simply victims of disease were not.My very best wishes (talk) 22:33, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion 2

I propose this as a means to more readily achieve consensus on issues regarding the scope of this article, and to avoid side discussions not directly related to the restated topic. Collect (talk) 00:24, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

The question is incorrectly stated. Is this article discussing attribution or the events themselves? Actually, both answers are ok, but not their mixture: People were killed in Stalin's USSR, but do we include in the article only the work that attribute these victims to communism, or to Stalinism? For example, one of the most important works on that account, Ellman's Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments. Europe-Asia Studies, 54:7, 1151-1172, DOI: 10.1080/0966813022000017177 [6], does not attribute those deaths to communism, it attributes it to Stalinism. Fein does not attribute Cambodian genocide to comminism. Should her opinion be included in the article?

By writing that, I do not argue that the article cannot exist. It can, but just as the list of the events that happened under regimes that can be considered (or are considered by someone) as communist. I already proposed this option before, but Collect opposed to that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:07, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

If there are multiple scholarly RS that attribute Cambodian genocide to "Communist" government of the country ("Communism" has multiple meanings), then we include it, with the references to these RS. Same about everything else. My very best wishes (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, does that means that the article's scope is any mass mortality event attributed to a government that has been described as communist at least by one source? For example, if a scholar A states North Korea government killed N people, and a scholar B call NK government communist, the facts presented in the work of the scholar A belong to this article?--Paul Siebert (talk) 13:16, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

That would be WP:SYN. You need same source telling that the executions or something else was committed by a "communist" government. My very best wishes (talk) 13:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Good. Then does that mean the article should include the views of only those authors who write about mass mortality in states they explicitly call communist, blame these governments in these deaths, and attribute these mass mortality events to communism?--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, any RS that explicitly discuss mass murder by "communist" governments can be used, even such RS that tell the murder did not happen or was overestimated. For example, some sources currently used in the "Discussion of famines" section ([7],[8]) can be used, assuming that they are fine in other regards. For example, we would like to avoid using "opinion pieces" and writings by revisionist historians, e.g. writings by Holocaust deniers would not be appropriate for sourcing page Holocaust. For the same reason we might wish to avoid using writings by J. Arch Getty and his followers on this page. But I am not saying their writings must be completely excluded from this page. This is a matter of balance. My very best wishes (talk) 14:49, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

My very best wishes did you just seriously compare a serious and respected scholar "and his followers" to a Holocaust denier?! -GPRamirez5 (talk) 20:15, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

You didn't answer my question: I was not asking about "mass murder committed by "communist" governments", I was asking about the authors who discuss some mass mortality event and do not attribute it explicitly to communist government (just to the government that happened to be described as "communist" by somebody else).--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:01, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

If the government is called "communist" by a reliable source, then that is sufficient to call it a "communist government" in this proposal. Than a government calls itself "something else" but is referred to as "communist" by reliable sources, then we can say it is called "communist" by "reliable sources." It is not up to us to second-guess what the reliable sources say. Thus, Pol Pot's government is commonly called "communist" by reliable sources. Really. That you prefer to think of Pol Pot as "not a communist at all" means you need reliable sources making that claim. Otherwise we would be engaging in "original research". Collect (talk) 15:07, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

While I agree with you, I think we must absolutely avoid debating on this page if government X was a "communist" or not. That would be waste of time. To avoid WP:SYN we simply need same RS explicitly telling that the executions were committed/not committed/whatever by a "communist" government (see above). My very best wishes (talk) 15:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, for me, it will be easier to understand you if you explained me what is the difference between this your proposal and the subject #2 (all population losses under communist regimes), which I proposed before? I sincerely what to understand that, because before I vote I need clearly understand what I am voting for.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:26, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I do not need to explain differences here. This RFC stands on its own feet. If you can not understand the wording of this proposal, tell us what precisely is unclear in the wording, and why you think different wording will be better. I have repeatedly said we need RFCs on this, and finally decided to actually propose something. Collect (talk) 15:31, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Collect, listen, I need to know what I am voting for. You asked for comments, and I have a right to ask you for additional clarifications before I vote. Your proposal look very close to what I proposed before, and what you objected to, and that is why I respectfully asking about clarifications: do you imply that the article's scope is the neutral description of mass mortality events that occurred in some states that happened to be described as communist by at least one source?.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:37, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Kindly read my posts above. If you have a different proposal, start an RfC. Your posts appear to be a tad argumentative and not likely to result in your assent to the proposal at all, and it is not my task to persuade you to change your clear opinion. No one else seems to find this proposal unclear, as far as I can tell. Collect (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Collect, whether I have a different proposal or not, it does not matter. I am asking you about clarification of your position before I will vote. Depending on your answer, my vote may be "yes" or "no". I believe it is quite a legitimate and polite request, and I am a little bit disappointed with this your response. I am asking again: does my previous post contain a correct summary of your proposal, or you mean something else? If you means something else, please, explain what exactly I misinterpreted?

Regards, --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:55, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

My position is that I asked for discussion under RFC, which is precisely what I am supposed to do. I am not soliciting "votes" but seeking to find consensus wording which will reduce friction in the future. That is the purpose of this RFC. Now do you understand the purpose of the RFC? Collect (talk) 21:14, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:37, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm not overly concerned with the general discussion about article title as I have trust in the engaged editors and their attention to consensus and policy, but would like to draw out a couple of points:

IIRC this article's claimed Notability establishing reliable sources attribute a causative action to a class of agents, where the conflict based consensus of past editors described "Communist regimes" as the agent causative or negligent in relation to "mass killings." To produce a new consensus the appropriate place to look is the notability establishing weighty scholarly discourses for the claimed agent[s] and characterisation of action or neglect.
As such, the article's title ought to reflect the commonality amongst such notability establishing reliable source (preferably from a "Review Article" type field review, all in one place and comparative) about what the categorisation of the agent[s] is/are
As such, if the notability establishing scholarly consensus is around "Communist" regimes, or "communism" as set of philosophies or social movements, or "Stalinism," etc; for whatever that agent is in the scholarly consensus the article title ought to reflect that weighty consensus.
Correspondingly with the typification of the action taken by the agent[s]: whatever the strongest scholarly consensus is in the discourse, this should be the origin of the claim regarding the action
Minor consensuses of weight in the scholarly or reliable discourses ought to be relegated to appropriate sub-sections, for example in the scholarly case, "Scholarly criticism of the concept of "Communist regimes" in the context of mass killing" or "Scholarly criticisms of the concept of "mass killings" under Communist regimes" or "Scholarly criticisms of the concept of "mass killings under Communist regimes." Obviously where only of sufficient weight in the scholarly discourse to justify inclusion; and biased towards theoretical or conceptual criticism, or major in field contributions, rather than narrowly received one-off studies which produced their own theoretical categories.
Even if the topic is narrowly received in the scholarship, if it exists as a notable scholarly discourse with sufficient weight, the article ought to exist. (If not, we should assemble a consensus RFD together.) Even if it is a narrowly received scholarly topic, criticised by wider scholarly discourses, the article therefore ought to reflect that narrow topic, and include the wider criticism drawing appropriately placed attention that it is a narrow scholarly conception.
The narrower the scholarly agreement, the more the article ought to be focused on the scholarly discourse rather than the specifics of the claims made regarding historical processes: the topic grows more about the discourse the narrower the discourse is. Correspondingly with width.
I don't mean to throw a bomb into the room with this—I trust all of you to work well on the title. Fifelfoo (talk) 09:17, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Fifelfoo, imo, the situation can be described as follows:

The topic "exists as a notable scholarly discourse with sufficient weight", but it "is narrowly received in the scholarship".
Since it is received narrowly, it is not criticised widely.

In this situation, the main part of the article should be a neutral description of the events without any generalisations, followed by a section that describes the attempts to make general claims (Courtois's, Malia's et al "generic Communism" as a main culprit; Valentino's "mass killings" as a tool for social transformations, etc), and the reception of these ideas.

In connection to that, the first two steps to do are: (i) deletion of the "Terminology" section, which is a pure synthesis; (ii) removal of the BB figures from the lead, because the usage of these figures in this context is being widely criticized.--Paul Siebert (talk) 12:24, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Unarchived to request closure at WP:ANRFC. Cunard (talk) 23:32, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Closing opinion

Greetings, I'm responding to the administrator close request. For the record, the current title of the article is "Mass killings under communist regimes".

Wiktionary says the difference between Communist and communist regimes is whether or not the governing party has "Communist" in the name. Since both are apparently desired for inclusion in this article, the title should have a small "c". Marginal cases simply come down to sourcing, as discussed.

The objections to "non-combatant deaths" seem reasonable, because this would include unintentional deaths due to infectious disease, etc., as well as individual non-mass deaths, which are not being discussed in this article. This article is already very long, and there does not seem to be consensus to add those things, so perhaps those are best left to articles on specific governments or national historical periods.

The phrases "by" or "attributed to" make causality clearer than "under", which was part of the objection to the existing title. This article is not discussing deaths attributed to non-governmental parties, such as in civil wars; in general, war combat deaths are out of scope. If reactionary mass killings by non-government actors are noteworthy in a given circumstance, they should by all means be mentioned, but if those are minor details they can be left to linked articles due to length concerns. The definition of "mass killing" excludes war deaths outside of war crimes, so that already seems clear enough.

This is perhaps a borderline case for WP:NDESC with arguments on both sides for neutrality ("attributed to") vs. clarity and avoiding weasel words ("by"). In general, articles titled "Foo" and "List of foos" include things that are disputed as to whether or not they count as a foo, without additional wording in the title. We do not do this for categories because there is no room to explain the controversy, but this article can and should explain any such disputes with due weight to various viewpoints. For example, we don't have an article "Historical events described as genocides" just "Genocides in history". Based on that general practice and some questioning of "attributed to" in the discussion, I think "by" will suffice. Friction about which events should be included would be expected even with "attributed to" as editors discover what different scholars have said and attempt to establish due weight for each viewpoint. Editors should not take an active-voice title as an excuse not to mention disputed cases that have a substantial scholarly opinion supporting inclusion.

Editors have proposed both "regimes" and "governments" without much controversy. "Governments" seems slightly clearer.

Putting that all together, I get "Mass killings by communist governments" as an improved title. I will move the article to that. -- Beland (talk) 15:44, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move fail

Attempting to automatically move all archived talk pages caused a database timeout, so these will have to be moved manually. Since that's a fair amount of work, I just want give it a day or two to be sure we're not going to have a revived discussion of moving again. -- Beland (talk) 16:07, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

You have moved this article based upon an older May 2018 discussion about topic scope. How you moved from a discussion about topic scope to a page move is beyond me. There was a later June 2018 page move discussion, now archived, which was closed as no consensus for the page move, see Talk:Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes/Archive_39#Requested_move_21_June_2018. As mentioned in that June RM discussion, "regimes" is preferable to "governments" because governments is too broad a term, whereas regimes are a subset of governments, i.e. authoritarian governments. Also, as you say "by" implies attribution, where as "under" doesn't necessarily do that, so "under" is slightly more neutral. So could you please move it back to the original title Mass killings under communist regimes, thanks. --Nug (talk) 23:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Continuing discussion below. -- Beland (talk) 22:18, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

NB if you retry, you can often overcome this type of database timeout. Dekimasuよ! 18:26, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 13 August 2018

Latest comment: 6 years ago10 comments7 people in discussion

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 20:35, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Mass killings by communist regimes → Communist states and mass killing – Some users have expressed support for this name by analogy with United States and state terrorism or United States and state-sponsored terrorism. The current name with "by" in the title is at one end of the spectrum of clarity vs. neutrality, drawing a clear causality between the governments and the mass killings, and leaving it up to the text to explain to what degree any or all examples might be disputed. The proposed title is at the other end of the spectrum, not implying that any communist government has ever caused a mass killing, but creating a page for such accusations to be made and defended against. It's worth noting this article is needed at least partly as a detail subarticle of Criticism of communist party rule. I'm asking this mostly as a "better or worse?" question. It's still useful to know if you support the proposed title more than the current one even if there is some third title you support even more (and feel free to say what that is). Beland (talk) 00:56, 13 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 15:44, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Procedural comment. A long move discussion for this article concluded a month ago. It can be seen at Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 39#Requested move 21 June 2018. Further, there was a series of moves on August 10 that resulted in the article being moved away from the stable title, Mass killings under communist regimes. I have reverted the page to the stable title per WP:RMTR. Dekimasuよ! 01:36, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for realigning us; I was very sad when the archives got out of whack due to database timeout. -- Beland (talk) 21:57, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Oppose. I don't think the proposed title is an improvement because I don't think there is any dispute that the states in question killed large numbers of non-combatants. The disputes are about the totals (particularly the inclusion of famine deaths) and the best terms to use. As you say, "Communist states and mass killing" does not indicate that any communist state has actually caused a mass killing (just that the intersection of those two topics is a topic itself for whatever reason), which would be misleading and introduce a bias. The WP:AND policy page on article titles gives the example of using "Islamic terrorism" as a preferred title over "Islam and terrorism", which I think is analogous to the situation here. The current title is a descriptive title in keeping with WP:NDESC. It is longstanding and based on the most neutral characterizations found among identified sources (in particular, "mass killing" comes from Valentino's book and "under communist regimes" mirrors the "Crimes against humanity under communist regimes" source). The policy page at WP:TITLECHANGES states "If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed." I don't see a good reason to change the title in any direction unless we are also going to change the scope of the article's topic in some way. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:21, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Just as AmateurEditor, I would oppose to renaming "Mass killings by communist regimes" -> "Communist states and mass killing". I would also oppose to renaming to "Mass killings under communist regimes". Most sources currently cited on the page clearly assert the casual relationship between the regimes and the killings. Hence this must be by. Saying "and" or "under" goes against the WP:NPOV, which is actually a core policy (it overrides consensus). Speaking about procedures, I think the renaming during standing RfC was actually a violation of procedure. After this move, it is not even clear what we are discussing here. My very best wishes (talk) 03:08, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Oppose on both procedural and substantive grounds as iterated so many times in the past. Collect (talk) 21:37, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Support It does move away from the polemical implication that the mass killings were all caused by Communist ideology. It's not comparable to Islamic terrorism because Islamic terrorism is by definition carried out to advance perceived Islamic objectives. We do not call for example the attacks carried out by Arab nationalists in the 1970s Islamic terrorism, even though many if not most of the terrorists were Islamic. TFD (talk) 23:30, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

The article isn't called Mass killings caused by Communist ideology, nor do we have an article Terrorism caused by Islamic religion. This article is about mass killings carried out by regimes to advance perceived communist objectives, just as we have an article about terrorism carried out by groups or individuals to advance perceived Islamic objectives called Islamic terrorism. Hence we also have Communist mass killings which redirects to this article. --Nug (talk) 00:45, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

"[M]ass killings carried out by regimes to advance perceived communist objectives" is the same as "[m]ass killings caused by Communist ideology" (which by the way is not the suggested change of name.) And no it is not "Terrorism caused by Islamic religion" but terrorism carried out by people who believe that the Islamic religion causes them to carry out these attacks. The Islamic State for example is motivated by their desire to create and maintain an Islamic state (hence the name) which means they are motivated by their religious views. And even if the term seems to imply that Islam causes terrorism, we use the title because it is a common name, unlike mass killings under communist regimes which only exists in this article. TFD (talk) 03:14, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Interpretive POV problems

Latest comment: 6 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion

This article appears to have a strong anti-communist bias, and an academic bias in favor of historians who believe that communism is unusually prone to or inevitably leads to mass killing or autocracy. There should be some mention of scholars who criticize that view and the scholars quoted here, as well as discussion of counterexamples and objections to this theory. For example, government-sponsored mass killings have happened under other types of regimes (fascist, capitalist, and even multi-party democracies). Some countries with centrally planned economies remained democratic (India being the best example I can think of), and I would be very surprised to find no scholarly debate pointing that out. There should be some discussion of alternate theories that explain why these mass killings occurred, and other cases outside of communist countries that the theories mentioned also explain. For example, the section "Political system" blames single-party rule for this phenomenon, but there are plenty of non-communist countries with single-party rule that also engaged in mass killings. (Only some of those are be covered by the article Anti-communist mass killings; some have nothing to do with communism, for or against.) -- Beland (talk) 07:12, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

How do you know that this article has a bias in favour of historians who believe that communism is unusually prone to mass killing or autocracy? Can you cite some academic sources with claim the contrary, identifying these historians that claim that communist regimes, for example that of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, weren't prone to mass killing or autocracy? --Nug (talk) 08:55, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@Nug: Do you honestly believe critics of such theories don't exist, even among communist apologists, or are you saying I should do the work of finding those sources? -- Beland (talk) 16:10, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

You made the claim the article is biased, weighted with "historians who believe that communism is unusually prone to or inevitably leads to mass killing or autocracy", so apparently you must know of the existence of other sources that argue the contrary. I've not seen them, so could you kindly cite those sources missing from this article? --Nug (talk) 22:03, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't really answer my question. -- Beland (talk) 00:29, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry if the above sounded terse and unhelpful; I'm asking because I don't think that one editor alone is going to be enough to dig up enough material to neutralize coverage here. I think a bunch of editors are going to have to believe that such sources exist and actively go looking for them. The easiest place to start is just looking for critics of the specific works already cited. For example, The Black Book of Communism#Criticism says a number of commentators disagreed with that work's unfavorable opinion of the communist USSR compared to fascist Germany, and took issue with the number of deaths that "counted" against each. It also mentions the perennial critic of capitalism Noam Chomsky, who objects to say that while China may have killed lots of its people with an induced famine, capitalist democratic India killed more of its people by failing to distribute medical care equitably (in contrast to China). That article quotes him saying "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of [...] Communism everywhere since 1917". The article mentions Le Siècle des Communismes which reportedly says there are discrete movements within Communism, some good, some bad. Other works cited are black books of capitalism and colonialism, which are no doubt full of responses to critics of communism. -- Beland (talk) 01:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

There's a still-open RFC over quoting the Black Book of Communism in the lead above (which looks headed towards no consensus). The line there has an odd history - it was not originally a stable part of the article, but was added shortly before it was locked for six years (in fact, its adding seems to have been one of the things that precipitated the instability), so I'd tend to say that there's never been a clear consensus to include it. --Aquillion (talk) 03:09, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Beland, I am not sure if this article has a strong anti-communist bias, but it definitely has a strong anti-Wikipedia bias, because it ignores the major WP policy, neutrality. The very name of the topic is a magnet for the sources written by the authors who believe that "Communist mass killings" was a separate event, which had some specific common features which make them significantly different from other mass killings. However, the authors who prefer to focus on history of some concrete communist country or on some separate events describe them in totally different terms, they do not use the term "mass killing", and their opinion is essentially ignored in this article (or twisted, as the recent story around Wheatcroft has demonstrated), despite the fact that these authors represent the opinion of a majority of scientific community. We need some fresh idea how to resolve this blatant violation of out neutrality policy, and that should be some strategic decision.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:45, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Any interest in reading alternative sources and adding those viewpoints to the article? I've been a bit sidetracked cleaning up some weapons of mass destruction, or at least articles concerning them. -- Beland (talk) 02:05, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Beland, the problem is much broader than you seem to think: these "alternative" sources are actually mainstream sources. Wheatcroft, Ellman, Maksudov, Snyder etc are mainstream sources for Stalin's repressions, but they do not discuss and do not use Rummel or Valentino in their books or articles. Kiernan is the main source for Kampuchean genocide, but he is not using the Black Book as a source and does not discuss it. O'Grada and others are leading scholars who study the Great Chinese Famine, but it totally ignores the conclusion made in the Black Book, and he ignores Rummel. All these authors ignore the "Communist mass killings" concept at all (they even do not dispute it, they just ignore it, and prefer different explanations of these events, separate for each country). Moreover, each of those events already has its own article, and each of these articles gives a description that differs significantly from what the MKucR says.

The only solution for this problem (I already proposed it here) is to convert this article into the article not about the events, but about the theories of some authors who believe that all these events should be combined into a single category, "Communist mass killings". This theory should be directly attributed to these authors, and it should placed into a broader context and supplemented with a due criticism.

Actually, the "Communist mass killing" theory was proposed by Valentino, who is a genocide scholar whose goal is to explain mechanisms of onset of genocides and other mass killings. He himself does not believe in any connection between ideology and mass killings, so this controversy was noticed in the work of another author who reviewed his work.

Moreover, as another notable genocide scholar, Barbara Harff, says, genocide scholars (she herself, Rummel and others) are not good specialists in any particular country, they just compile all events and all data for all countries worldwide and build mathematical models. (Thus, Rummel was not a good specialist in the Soviet, Chinese or Cambodian history, he is a specialist in statistics, he introduced factor analysis as a tool to find correlations between different regime parameters and a probability of mass killings) They are not good sources for figures, they are not good sources for facts, they just provide some general conclusions that are not necessarily valid for each concrete country and are not necessarily supported by country experts. They are just theoretical speculations. In contrast, this article turns everything upside down: Valentinio, Rummer and similar general theorists are presented as leading theorists, the whole article's structure reflects their opinion as if it were a mainstream one, and concrete facts and figures are added to that from the works of other authors who are real experts in the field, but who actually have a totally different view on the events this article describes. Thus, Wheatcroft, who is cited in this article, does not consider 1932-3 famine deaths or war time civilian deaths in the USSR as "Communist mass killings" victims. Majority experts in Chinese famine (which constitutes about 40-50% of a "Communist death toll" according to the Black Book) do not consider it as mass killings (although agree that it was partially artificial), however, their opinion is presented as significant minority view at best.

Interestingly, many authors who write about Cambodian genocide (if you look at the history of this article, you will see that it started as a "Communist genocide", and it described primarily Cambodian genocide) see much more commonality between this event and Rwandian, Indonesian or Bosnian genocide (which were not communist) than with the events in the USSR. Again, the very structure of this article presents these views as minority views, whereas the views of those who see the commonality between Khmer Rouge and Stalinists are presented as mainstream ones.

The only way to fix that major problem is to write that "some authors (refs ) believe that the various events that happened in different communist countries and lead to mass mortality should be considered as Communist mass killings. Some authors disagree with that conclusion, some authors believe these events were poorly related to each other, whereas many mainstream historians describe these events in a different historical context and provide country-specific explanations."

--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:00, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Sounds like you've already done your reading. If you can add to the intro something like the above with citations, that would be a good start. Does it actually want to say some scholars think "these mass killings were caused by the ideology of communism" instead of "should be considered as Communist mass killings"?

It sounds like it might be worth adding a detailed explanation of under-represented theories (i.e. it's not due to communism) in the "Proposed causes" section. I think it would also be worth adding different sets of numbers to the "Estimates" section from scholars who think that certain types of deaths shouldn't be counted as "mass killings", or to at least show how things break down. Actually, these numbers could be added to the "Debate on famines" section, if that's the only type of death which is disputed. "Death on famines" might be better as a subsection of "Estimates" since it explains how all the numbers currently cited there are disputed. -- Beland (talk) 16:36, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Beland, the problem is that I already added this information to the article or proposed new versions of the lead (see recent archives, for example, this), however all edits of that kind were reverted, and the only result is a long and fruitless discussion on the talk page that gradually dies. We need to find a fresh solution.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:34, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

The summary you link to and proposed earlier had problems with sourcing and neutrality that other editors pointed out. It would need rewriting and possibly addition of supporting material to the article before it would be accepted, I think. Why not start with something small, like sourcing the claims in the above paragraph and adding it to the "Proposed causes" section? -- Beland (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

It had no problems with sourcing: all sources could be provided upon request, but there were no requests. With regard to "Proposed causes", it would be fundamentally incorrect to speak about that in that way, because this is not a mainstream topic. Mainstream authors prefer to discuss, for example, causes of Great Soviet famine (Wheatcroft, Ellman, Maksudov, Kulchitsky, Tauber, et al), causes of Stalinist repressions (the same authors + Werth or Snyder), causes of Khmer Rouge genocide (Kiernan, Fein, et al), and so on, but they do that in a broader historical context and draw parallelisms with different events. None of them see common roots in these events. Majority of them just ignore the idea that there was some general phenomenon called "Communist mass killings", others directly object to the idea of any "generic Communism" concept. Only few authors, including Courtois, Malia and some others, are trying to discuss common causes. The genocide scholars like Rummel see a common cause not in Communism, but in totalitarianism. Interestingly, this aspect of Rummel's concept is ignored in this article.

In connection to that, any "Proposed causes" section should be moved to the very end and discussed as a minority viewpoint.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:33, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

"communist" or "Communist" in article

Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

It appeared that we had settled on "communist regimes" in the title, but there are a great many uses (including recent changes) turning "communist" into "Communist" as a "proper adjective" rather than conform to the article title usage of lower case. Is this what we should have? Collect (talk) 21:35, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Unless the term appears in a proper name for a political party, I suggest lower case at all times. CommanderOzEvolved (talk) (contribs) 01:01, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes

Latest comment: 6 years ago27 comments14 people in discussion

The article duplicates the Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes article. It is apparent that both articles relating to the same subject. Lord Mota (talk) 01:36, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Oppose and note that a proper RfC would be needed. Collect (talk) 12:20, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
An RfC is generally not necessary. The existing tag on the article and this talk page discussion are what usually happens for a controversial move. Wikipedia:Proposed mergers recommends notifying a related WikiProject to get enough attention, but there are already a number of people here discussing it. That said, feel free to advertise the discussion more widely if you prefer; I just don't think there's a procedural reason to stop the merge if there's consensus here. -- Beland (talk) 07:25, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Support. Apart from the procedural requirements mentioned by Collect, I would express a reserved support for a merge. The concept of "mass killings" and how to define them and the confusing variety of definitions by many authors, has created a lot of problems with this article. It has even been discussed several times to delete the whole article because of these issues. The title "Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes" might also have its own problems, but I think it would be a better and more comprehensive title to work from. One important issue with the "Crimes against humanity..." title is how to understand and define crimes against humanity exactly. RhinoMind (talk) 16:22, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Comment: To elaborate on my reservation, as far as I know, crimes against humanity has evolved over time and many of the events we are concerned with here might not have been crimes against humanity in their own time. I am no way an expert on crimes against humanity, but this is an obvious problem to have a look at. RhinoMind (talk) 16:15, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Oppose, though related topics they are different in scope. Crimes against humanity encompasses (according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court):

Enslavement,
Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
Torture;
Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
Enforced disappearance of persons;
The crime of apartheid;
Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Whereas the mass killings article is only confined to murder and extermination. Clearly the crimes of communism is so extensive in its heinousness as to warrant two articles. --Nug (talk) 11:59, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

@Nug: Problem is that THIS article does not confine itself to murder or extermination. If only. This has been a longstanding and fundamental issue. And part of why I express a reserved support for a merge. RhinoMind (talk) 15:51, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Ofcourse it does, or are you arguing that democide, politicide or classicide isn't murder or extermination? --Nug (talk) 20:19, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Democide is definitely not a murder of extermination. According to Rummel, it is any murder of a human by a government. "Murder of extermination" implies some very concrete intent, but democide does not. --Paul Siebert (talk) 12:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

As Siebert says, the vast majority of the deaths in this article were unintentional killings. Some scholars argue that the indirect killings might have been intentional, but that is a debate, not a generally accepted fact. This is one of the biggest problems with this article. RhinoMind (talk) 16:05, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

I think you may have misread, it is "murder or extermination", not "murder of extermination". Killing through omission, neglect or incompetence still implies a degree of intent, because the result of such omission, neglect or incompetence is reasonably foreseeable. --Nug (talk) 22:33, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

That is all your personal interpretation. RhinoMind (talk) 15:15, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Support While crimes against humanity is broader than mass killings, the other article is entirely about mass killings and hence duplicates this one, which makes it a fork. TFD (talk) 12:38, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

All that means is that the other article should be expanded to include those crimes that are clearly in scope, like mass deportation and imprisonment. --Nug (talk) 20:19, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

No point in wasting readers' time because of what someone might do in the future. It's been seven years since The Last Angry Man created this article and since he has been indefinitely blocked cannot update it. How many more years do you suggest we wait? TFD (talk) 21:54, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Five, ten or even twenty years, per WP:NOHURRY does it really matter how long it takes? --Nug (talk) 12:23, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Support per TFD.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:52, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Oppose I agree with the reasoning of Nug the articles have different scopes and breadth. They can coexist, and are not redundant. WP:Not paper. See WP:Before. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:33, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. This article is long and the other one has a lot of room for expansion so I think it is better for both articles to be separate, because a merge would create a very long article, specially if the other theme is expanded. Thinker78 (talk) 21:21, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Support That article is a calque of MKuCR: even the lead wording repeats the MKuKR's lead. A brief look at the "Crimes against humanity..." article demonstrates the subject barely exists: only a single source discussed these crimes as a separate subject. All other sources discuss crimes committed by separate regimes (Stalin's USSR, Pol Pot's Kampuchea etc). Every event described in this article has its own article, and all these events are poorly connected to each other. No content will be lost if the article is removed, and Wikipedia will benefit from that.

In addition, the current article says the term "Crime against humanity" is applied to MKuKR by some authors, which leads to a paradox: if MKuCR can be described as "Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes", why should we have two articles for the same phenomenon? If the term "Crime against humanity" is not the same as MKuKR, why does the "Terminology" section says the opposite?

Finally, there is no information in the Crimes against humanity article that may suggest CAHuCR form a separate category that make such crimes committed by communist regimes different from similar crimes committed by other regimes. Meanwhile, many authors note that, for example, KR's crimes had many common features with the crimes of other regimes of South Asia region, including the regimes that were not communist or even were anti-communist, and see much less commonality between the crimes committed by Asian and European communist regimes.

My conclusion is that the relevant content from the CAHuCR article should be moved to the MKuCR article, and the rest should be deleted. Of course, the existence of that article may please some central-European nationalists, but that is not our goal.

I see absolutely no reason why we cannot delete that article, which was created by a sock of a banned user, who was one of its main contributor. --Paul Siebert (talk) 02:53, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Upon meditation, I came to a conclusion that merge can be avoided if the scope of the MKuCR article will be made more narrow, and focused on killings sensu stricto. However, that would require deletion of about a half of content.--Paul Siebert (talk) 12:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Oppose. There were numerous crimes against humanity by Communist governments, and mass murder was only one of them. This is a legitimate sub-page. One could also create a page, Political repression in communist countries, but again, this page would be a legitimate sub-page. My very best wishes (talk) 23:50, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Support. While it's true stuff could be written about non-mass-killing crimes against humanity in that article, no one has. It makes sense to merge the articles for now, and create new articles later only if actually needed. If content is going to be added non-mass-killing crimes against humanity by communist regimes, maybe it would make more sense to write about "torture by communist regimes", etc., rather than re-creating an article with a scope that inherently overlaps this one too much. Though I think talking about crimes against humanity by type of government is not the most useful way to divide up content (especially given some POV issues this can create), and I would prefer to see this content put in articles that apply to all types of government, like Torture#History and Use of torture since 1948 instead. Unless there's some particular crime against humanity only communist governments have committed? -- Beland (talk) 07:25, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Actually, the small amount of material about alleged crimes other than killing can be merged with Criticism of communist party rule#Forced labor and deportations. -- Beland (talk) 14:01, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Support merge of this article into that one. Their current content is almost entirely redundant, as others have said, and the title of this one has caused constant problems (many of the things that sources in this article define as "mass killings" are WP:FRINGE in what they lump under that term or ascribe to the regimes; and as a result this page has faced constant debates over what that term means.) Crimes against humanity are broader but better-defined, and broader scholarship of the exact same events that this page covers exists under that title. --Aquillion (talk) 03:18, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Support, rename and expand I suggest merging the mass killing article into crimes against humanity article, rather than the other way round. Mass killings are a type of crime against humanity, while crimes against humanity also encompass torture and arbitrary detention, for example. The crimes against humanity article needs to be expanded in other areas. CommanderOzEvolved (talk) (contribs) 00:58, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Support: the two articles appear to be unnecessary content forks and one article is a good solution. --K.e.coffman (talk) 08:46, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Should we remove the "85 and 100 million" number from the lead?

Latest comment: 6 years ago83 comments21 people in discussion

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Participants point out that the lede should be a summary of the article. Points were made both that these statistics are an important part of the article which should be summarized in the lede, and that the range of estimates in the body is wider than the range of estimates in the lede. It is hotly disputed as to whether the single source chosen is representative of a scholarly consensus. Several opponents of removal did support modification of the summary, and I think this is compatible with the objections of many of the supporters of removal. In the meantime, it seems there is not a strong consensus that the current text is an unbiased or reliable summary. Since the lede can get by for a while with just "Death estimates vary widely" as a very broad summary, I'll remove the text as proposed while a new summary of the numbers can be written, which presumably would reflect more sources, and possibly scholars using different definitions of "mass killing". -- Beland (talk) 19:32, 30 August 2018 (UTC) Converted to use RFC close templates, no content change from original close. Primefac (talk) 19:27, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Should we remove the "85 and 100 million" number, cited to the introduction to The Black Book of Communism, from the lead? --Aquillion (talk) 06:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Many of the recent disputes have been over the use of The Black Book of Communism (especially a number from its introduction) in the lead; yet we haven't run an RFC focused on this specific question, which I feel is at the heart of a lot of disputes here. Currently, the Black Book of Communism is used to cite this sentence in the lead: The estimates by Stéphane Courtois's introduction[1] to the Black Book of Communism and by Martin Malia suggested a total death toll of between 85 and 100 million people. The dispute over that is complicated, but some of the controversy over it (and that number, in particular) can be found on our article for The Black Book of Communism.

As aside, please do not respond to !votes in the survey section. Use the threaded discussion section for that. We've had problems with every RFC on this page devolving into arguments from longstanding editors; remember, an WP:RFC's purpose is to attract outside opinions. --Aquillion (talk) 06:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

EDIT: Given the closeness of this RFC, something I'd want to ask the closing admin to consider or decide: As I understand it, this line was added shortly before the article was locked six years ago (the article immediately destablized into edit-warring that got it locked, and happened to get locked on a version that included it.) It's never been in a stable version of the article since then. Therefore, I'd want to know whether it has presumed consensus for inclusion or whether a no-consensus outcome means it must be removed. --Aquillion (talk) 23:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Survey

Support as proposer. Given the coverage that estimate received (even if largely negative), that number might be worth discussing in the body of the article (where we can give it appropriate depth and context), but it is a particularly controversial part of a highly-controversial book, so it's WP:UNDUE for the lead. Even two of the contributors to the book, Werth and Margolin, said that Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million and that he engaged in "sloppy and biased scholarship" to reach it. You can see how controversial and unreliable that number is from the controversy section in our own article on the book - there are two full, well-cited paragraphs of criticism for that one sentence, while the praise section does not mention that sentence at all. It's absurd for us to make that sentence part of the lead of the article or to make it the primary takeaway from that book. Putting it in the lead grants it an authority and reputation that it simply does not have; at a bare minimum, it absolutely cannot be mentioned without also mentioning, explicitly, that two of the book's contributors (which, as the introduction, it purports to summarize) have denounced it and covering the general controversy behind the methodology by which Courtois reached that number. --Aquillion (talk) 06:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Support The source is controversial and there is no scholarly consensus for such an estimate.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 11:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Support removal. Figures can be included in the lead if it is written, for example, as proposed in the the specific version + comments section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. I think the quotation is fine as the most frequently cited numbers of the victims of communist repression. For example, these numbers were cited in book by Richard Pipes "Communism," p. 158. They were also frequently cited in more popular discourse sources like here. The discussions on this talk page above also show that the "Black Book" was frequently cited, even though the citation was one-sided. One could argue the numbers are important part of this page (we have a section about it and we also have numbers in sections about specific countries), so the numbers should also appear in the lead. A possible alternative would be to provide a range of numbers per "Estimates" section, i.e. from 60 to 148 million. It does not matter if participants like or do not like certain sources. As long as something has been reliably published by widely recognized mainstream scientists such as Stéphane Courtois, it should be included per WP:NPOV. My very best wishes (talk) 15:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Keep this ridiculous claim of 100 million since it is widely cited in the right wing media [9]. Then briefly cite reliable academic sources that dispute this claim, ie. Wheatcroft. In a nutshell the higher figures are derived using hypothetical population models that low ball the number of natural deaths and puff up the number of births since there are no are reliable vital statistics, births and natural deaths are estimates. I recommend this article published on the Russian Website Demoscope by the Russian academics Evgeny Andreev and Tatiana Kharkova [10] Don't be intimidated by the fact that it is in Russian, Google translate does a decent job. The figure of 100 million includes about 70 million in China, the issue there were the 1959-62 famine deaths deliberate, that is disputed.--Woogie10w (talk) 15:58, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
SupportI changed my mind because there is a range of figures in published sources. Courtois should not be in the lede which should just mention the uncertainty regarding the total. A new section, not too long and complicated, should explain how the academic sources compute these numbers. Throwing numbers at people is widely practiced by historians and here on Wikipedia. We need to explain how the academic wonks derive their numbers. Thank you User:K.e.coffman, you made me give this matter some additonal thought --Woogie10w (talk) 23:46, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose The lead should consist of a summary of the entire article - and removing that estimate basically ignores a quite large portion of the entire article - the assignment of estimated death tolls. The issue of "scholarly consensus" does not appluy to summaries of what is already in the article. Collect (talk) 20:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose This is one of the most common estimates. Pedro8790 (talk) 17:06, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
Support It might be a commonly cited number, but that doesn't make it neither right nor accurate. If anyone (with mathematical insight) cares to investigate how many of the death tolls were arrived at, many surprises are in store. It is a general problem unfortunately: When it comes to numbers and amounts, they often enters an echo chamber and gets continually cited again and again without any thought about how the numbers were arrived at in the first place. And then the meta-scientists comes along and do all kinds of statistical gymnastics with these already misused numbers and pulls out whatever they want. It can be quite shocking to look into how statistics are misused even in academic circles. Anyway, after this rant, the 100 million stems from a singular and controversial book and might belong at the BBoC page, but not here. Also, the quality of the whole article and subject would be improved if each individual section were treated with care and skill and presented with explanations, proper sourcing and wiki-links. This is much, much more important than stating some kind of "total sum" which can only be inaccurate because of the nature of the subject. RhinoMind (talk) 10:59, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Disinterested work on the bloody body text. Fifelfoo (talk) 11:16, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Disinterested-me tooYes,work on the Fu-en body text--Woogie10w (talk) 17:48, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Support remove. By citing only one source, it implies that those estimates are the most commonly accepted, which they are not. Furthermore, the totals contain a significant mathematical error, which was pointed out by contributors to the book. TFD (talk) 16:33, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Support. Remove the lead and the whole article. Black Book is a discredited work and this article is a derivated work from the same idea. emijrp (talk) 21:15, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose and expand the lead to include lower range estimates. schetm (talk) 16:20, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose the Black Book of Communism is the most comprehensive source on this subject and while there are other sources that cite similar estimates, this is the most well known and reputable. JamesBay (talk) 21:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Oppose inasmuch as the lead must summarize the body, and this content will remain an important part of the body, but expand with a broader range of estimates (e.g., Valentino's 21–70 million and Rosefielde's "approximately 60 million").TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:32, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Support removal, as currently written:

The estimates by Stéphane Courtois's introduction[1] to The Black Book of Communism and by Martin Malia suggested a total death toll of between 85 and 100 million people.[2][nb 1][nb 2]

With respect to Keep this ridiculous claim of 100 million since it is widely cited in the right wing media ..., there's nothing in the current text to suggest this interpretation. Hence my support for the proposal. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:42, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Oppose removal, keep the Courtois figures and if there are alternative figures from WP:RS of comparable quality and prominence, cite as well, as needed (including any relevant qualifications). XavierItzm (talk) 16:17, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Depends. It cannot be given in Wikipedia's own voice. It could be retained in the lead if attributed per WP:PSTS and if balanced by contrary RS, per WP:DUE. (It is Courtois's controversial opinion, essentially an op-ed tacked onto the front of an edited volume; it is thus a primary source). This did not need to be an RfC question; it's a matter of standard operating procedure at all articles. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:14, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. The lede is suppose to be a summary of the article, and the article does discuss death toll. Courtois himself states that this figure is based upon the estimates given by the contributors to his book. Note that other authors give similar numbers within the same ball park. Rummel say up to 148 million, Valentino says up to 110 million and Rosefielde says perhaps up to 80 million. The two critics of Courtois' numbers only have issue with the upper range. Actually this whole discussion is really a bit comical, some here claim 100 million is extremely controversial, as if adopting the lower number of 85 million people killed is somehow more acceptable and puts communist regimes in a better light. --Nug (talk) 22:34, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Support, as a second choice to providing a variety of figures, which is something I've been suggesting for a long time. The figure is controversial in the extreme, and presenting it as the only numerical estimate in the lead is a travesty of WP:DUE. Vanamonde (talk) 06:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Support per NPOV, wikipedia cares about the academic consensus; not how often it is cited, or how popular the estimate is, but how it is received in academia. In the lead we should use either one range that is considered the most accepted, or use a variety of figures with context; the estimate from the introduction to the black book is not one that merits inclusion unless a variety of other estimate are included Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:46, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

@MVBW. 60 million is not the lowest estimate, it is an estimate made by genocide scholars who are not accurate (see Harff). Inclusion of this figure would require explanations and comments that clarify an origin of errors in this estimate.

The argument that the Courtois figures are widely cited is quite valid. However, that is only a part of truth (telling only a part of truth is one of the most standard form of lie). The full truth is that these figures are frequently cited and equally frequently criticised. That means we either show both figures and criticism (as I proposed earlier on this talk page) or we remove figures at all, and discuss them in the article. However, the idea to tell full truth was rejected by few users who think telling only a part of truth (i.e. to lie) is perfectly ok in Wikipedia. These users are persistently removing any mention of criticism, and are trying to hide it under a link (which directly contradicts to neutrality policy). In connection to that, full removal of BB from the lead seems the most simple way to eliminate a lie (a.k.a partial truth) from the article. Another option would be to incorporate both Courtois figures and criticism. However, that would require us to devote more space in the article to the description of this controvercy. The attempts to explain this controversy in more details were reverted, which means if we include Courtois+criticism in the lead, it would not be an adequate summary of the article in its current state.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Preface to the book by Rosenfelde tells "Twentieth and twenty-first century communism is a failed experiment in social engineering that needlessly killed approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more". If so, author clearly implies that the number could be significantly greater - yes, one can not just say "60 million", this should be carefully phrased. Which lower total numbers of victims in all communist countries were provided by Harff or Wheatcroft? I do not see them. My very best wishes (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Rosefielde is an expert in Soviet Russia, however his estimates are higher than the estimates of other experts (i.e. Wheatcroft). He is not an expert in other countries, so it is quite likely his estimates are not "lowest"--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:06, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

You did not answer my question: Which lower total numbers of victims in all communist countries were provided by Harff or Wheatcroft? If they were "lower", by how much? If it was a number about USSR, it should be included in the section about USSR. My very best wishes (talk) 16:10, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I answered your question many times: they do not provide low estimates, because they do not think these events are too connected to discuss them together.

I am also asking you a question: do you agree that a partial truth is tantamount to a lie?--Paul Siebert (talk)

Woogie10w, I would be interested to see your opinion on the RfC I started earlier (see the "RfC on figures presented by Courtois in the Black Book introduction"). It specifically discusses how exactly these figures should be presented. Please, keep in mind that there are four independent questions there, so the answer should be in a format, e.g. "Yes - Yes -Yes -Yes". By the way, the Russian source you cite tells about excess deaths, not mass killings. This is not necessarily the same. Since you mentioned Wheatcroft, did you see this? It is interesting reading. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:06, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Paul Siebert I have read and own both Courtois and Rosefield. The Courtois figure I believe comes from Robert Conquest. You wrote Rosefielde is an expert in Soviet Russia Rosefielde created his own population model for the USSR, his figures for unnatural deaths is far higher than those published in Russia in 1993 by Andreev, Darski and Kharkova. According to Rosefielde the natural growth in population (births less natural deaths) from 1927-49 was 56.8 million, according to Andreev, Darski and Kharkova the growth was 37.7 million. The difference of 19 million are victims of Communism. Rosefielde made up his own numbers for population growth and iced the cake with strident anti-communist propaganda. Rosefield believes that the 1990's Glasnost data is a forgery.--Woogie10w (talk) 16:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

(I slightly formatted you, hope you don't mind :-)). Woogie10w, that is exactly how I see it. The general issue is that people like Rosefielde or Courtois, who attribute deaths to Communism (a.k.a. "generic Communism"), compile the data of other authors to obtain a cumulative "communist death toll", and they frequently use figures that are skewed to high values. Other authors, such as Wheatcroft, who see this problem differently, provide lower figures, but, being narrow specialists, they do not bother to compile the figure for all "communist countries". That is why the figure of "global Communist death toll" is intrinsically ideologically charged, and we must explain that every time when this figure is cited. Do you agree with that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Rosefielde makes up his own numbers using an analysis of the population. The book is tedious and poorly organized. I suspect that the editors here have not bothered to read Rosefielde, except for snippets in Google books. But from a Wikipedian perspective he is a reliable academic source. His analysis should be mentioned. There are other reliable sources, the best analysis in Russian is Naselenie Rossii v XX veke in 3 Vols. I have copied the sections relating to Soviet repression. I own the books by Otto Pohl The Stalinist penal system and Ethnic cleansing in the USSR. As well as A century of state murder? by Michael Haynes. Anyway I have other fish to fry.--Woogie10w (talk) 18:44, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. To that, I would add that population losses and mass killings are two different things. Thus, Rosefielde concludes premature deaths in democratic Russia (the deaths he attributes to Yeltsin) were up to 6 million [11]. Does it mean there was a "democratic mass killing" in Russia in 1990s?

Anyway, I would be grateful if you shared with us your ideas on how all these complicated things should be presented in this article. I would beb grateful if you respond above the horizontal line, because the thread becomes complicated.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:59, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

___________________________________________________________________________(MVBW, I anticipate to get a responce from Woogie, so please, do not remove this line that makes our discussion with Woogie easily seen by others.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:01, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

The big difference in Rosefield's figures is the period 1939-49. He puts the total excess deaths at 36.5 million vs. the 26.6 million in the 1993 Russian statistics of Andreev, in 2001 Andreev bumped the number up to 29 million excess deaths. Both sources estimate total births and natural deaths because the records are incomplete. --Woogie10w (talk) 19:14, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Also Rosefield's figures for 1941-45 indicate a natural growth in the population of 9.4 million vs 1.8 million in Andreev. Rosefield plugged in these absurd figures to arrive at his higher total. His Red Holocaust is a sham.--Woogie10w (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

"we must explain every time" - what exactly? Can you briefly write down what exactly "we must explain every time"? My very best wishes (talk) 17:49, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Since I already answered you many times, I am not sure is this is a good faith question. However, I explain that again. The statement should convey three separate ideas: "(i) Courtois combine deaths from different causes in a single category "Communist death toll", (ii) Courtois estimates this "Communist death toll" was in between 85 and 100 million, (iii) this approach is widely criticised, and the figures are considered inflated and misleading." Taking (ii) out of this context means telling a partial truth, which is tantamount to lying. --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

(i) and (ii) should be simply mentioned in "Estimates" section (probably already mentioned). (iii) is incorrect summary of "majority" view on this subject. But the question was about the "communist death toll" in all sources, not specifically by Courtois. Should we always tell "intrinsically ideologically charged" about all these numbers? No, because it is widely accepted in the literature which countries belonged to the communist states. My very best wishes (talk) 18:09, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

If it is incorrect, please, prove it. Several users provided a large number of sources that contains criticism. Several of those sources say this particular figure and the very idea to combine all deaths in one category is widely criticised. That means this summary reflects majority views, and it is correct.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:18, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I am sorry, but you did not suggest any specific text that "we must" include "every time". There is nothing to discuss. My very best wishes (talk) 18:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

That statement is not true, because not only I proposed the new version of the lead on this talk page, but you commented on it, which means you are quite familiar with that text. --Paul Siebert (talk) 19:25, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

This edit is unacceptable taking into account that two RfCs are still open. Many users disagree with that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Which RfC do you mean? My edit was not about "Black Book". My very best wishes (talk) 18:44, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

My very best wishes|My very best wishes, the figure of 100 million is a catch all that includes all the folks that fell through the cracks. In his memoir Crusade in Europe Ike mentioned that the Russians used infantry to clear minefields, I read this to my father in 1967, he was shocked. He said show me the book I want to see that, he then said Ike made it a point that the men in his unit would take good care of their feet.--Woogie10w (talk) 18:54, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I can't tell about other countries, but the number for the USSR in "Black book" (~20 million) appears also in others sources, and not the largest number. And yes, I think the "documents" fed by the KGB to Zemskov and others were almost certainly a forgery or at least extremely incomplete, exactly as Steven Rosefielde, Anton Antonov-Ovseenko and some others claimed. My very best wishes (talk) 19:12, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

My very best wishes I see that you read Russian and have made a good point, a very good point. Zemskov came up with his 1.1 million Gulag deaths in 1991, the Cognoscenti in west were pleased with his definitive research. Zemskov a party member was given a culled file in order to discredit Antonov-Ovseyenko who annoyed comrade Gorbachov. Nine years later Kokurin came up with an additional 700,000 dead in labor colonies and prisons. To Ice our cake Popov in 1992 came up with exactly 779,142 persons who were executed. Oh sorry folks but that does not include the Poles at Katyan or military executions. In the Stalin era vital statistics were incomplete, the figures of Krivosheev are not taken seriously. No doubt the number of “free”people who were worked to death were never recorded. Ann Applebaum in her Gulag was skeptical of these Gulag stats, she lists them “reluctantly” --Woogie10w (talk) 20:33, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmm... you know this subject much better than me. Nice talking to you. Yes, I noticed this in the book by Applebaum. My very best wishes (talk) 20:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

On page 126 Rosefield breaks out a summary listing 12.4 to 26.6 million repression deaths in the USSR and China at 72.3 million. China is the big number that needs to analyzed here. Rosefield puts the Great Chinese Famine toll at 48.7 million, bingo there is 1/2 of our total. --Woogie10w (talk) 20:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

(ec)Woogie10w, I am a little bit confused. As you probably noticed, noone here claims Zemskov's figures are correct. We use Ellman's data, who summarised Weathcroft vs Rosefielde dispute and proposed a figure that takes into account a possibility of various falsifications. Scholars correctly argued that is it quite possible to forge a single archive, but it is not possible to forge a whole archival data. Anyway, since we do not speak about Zemskov here, I do not understand what relation does this your comment has to this discussion.Paul Siebert (talk) 20:48, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

The official data is listed in Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, which Applebaum and Haynes summarize. Rosefielde has a different approach, his figures are derived from an a hypothetical population model. Are the official figures complete? were all the deaths recorded? based on our knowledge of Stalin era statistics, a dose of healthy skepticism is in order here. In any case the real problem here is that I seem to be the only editor who has a hard copy oy Rosefielde.--Woogie10w (talk) 21:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Usually, the book like Red Holocaust combine several articles the author published earlier. I have all Rosefielde's articles, so I have an impression of what he says, and of his methodological approach. Anyway, that is absolutely not a problem that only you have an access to this book, because we trust you. The question is different: what Rosefielde calls Red Holocaust means "population losses", and he had a dispute with Wheatcroft, and both sides were making valid points. How do you propose to present all of that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:38, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for trusting me, send me an email at berndd1122@gmail.com and I will sent a jpg of Rosefielde's summary on page 125. Again he crunched his own numbers. BTW Maksudov is a skeptic, he does not endorse the official repression figures. In his recent article he points out in the 1940s Но как ни невиданно огромны полученные цифры, сверх 10 млн бойцов и 7–9 млн мирных граждан, остаются еще потери в 6–8 млн, приходящиеся на те же годы, но не связанные прямо с фашистским нападением[87]. Это потери от сталинских репрессий. Их изучение является одной из важнейших задач, стоящих перед нашей наукой и публицистикой. [12] --Woogie10w (talk) 22:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

In the same document, I read a fresh (2018) note, explaining these 7-9 million (+ google translation):

" Примечание 2018 года. Сегодня мне кажется важным разъяснить из чего складываются эти 8 миллионов потерь за которые отвечает главным образом преимущественно сталинское руководство. Это повышенная убыль заключенных, депортированных народов и спецпоселенцев 1,6 млн. Расстрелянные за дезертирство и другие военные преступления – 300 тыс. Погибшие при подавлении антисоветской партизанской борьбы 200 тыс.. Не вернувшиеся в СССР из оказавшихся на западе - 600 тыс. Повышенная смертность населения на неоккупированных территориях – 5,3 млн. человек"

"Note 2018. Today it seems important to explain what these 8 million losses are for which mainly the predominantly Stalinist leadership is responsible. This is an increased loss of prisoners, deported peoples and special settlers 1.6 million. Those killed for desertion and other war crimes are 300,000. The 200,000 people killed in the suppression of anti-Soviet guerrilla warfare. 600,000 people who did not return to the USSR from those in the west were 600,000. The increased death rate of the population in unoccupied territories - 5.3 million people."

That roughly corresponds to Zemskov's data on Gulag mortality (corrected by Wheatcroft, Ellman and others, because there were attempts to conceal mortality) + official statistics of war time executions + statistics of deportation deaths + increased mortality due to food and medical help shortage (at least two of my direct relatives fall into the later category). Was Stalinism responsible for that? Without any doubts. Was it a "mass killing"? Definitely, no.

That roughly corresponds to Zemskov's data on Gulag mortality (corrected by Wheatcroft, Ellman and others Do you have a source for that statement?--Woogie10w (talk) 01:42, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I cannot name the source right now, but that is my impression that I got from the articles (Wheatcroft, Conquest, Rosefielde and others) that discussed the GRZ article. They concluded that a significant part of those who were released from Gulag in 1941-43 died soon after that, which gives about 0.5 to 1 million. If we add deportation victims, 1.6 million are not look unrealistic. At least, I am not surprised.

Woogie, I know that you are primarily more interested in numbers (because you maintain the WWII casualties article, however, the primary subject of this RfC is not only the figure itself, but the claim that all these deaths were result of mass killings. I am still waiting for your opinion on how this problem should be resolved. --Paul Siebert (talk) 02:09, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

In addition, Maksudov writes about 6-8 million deaths during the war, that were not connected with Nazi directly. However, a peak of Gulag mortality in 1942-43 (which is seen even in Zemskov's data) was directly connected with the desperate food shortage in the country. Stalin was responsible for not releasing majority of those prisoners, however, it would be incorrect to blame only Soviet regime in those deaths (and Maksudov is not doing that). The same can be said about other deaths.

More importantly, this does not explain us what should we do with the Black Book figures. Can you please explain us more clearly, what do you propose?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:20, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Regarding Antonov-Ovseenko, as far as I remember, many factual and methodological errors were identified in his works (although I have to refresh my memory about that; will return to that later). In connection to that, Maksudov (who is a good mathematician and demorgaph, and a son of a communist who protested against Stalin's repressions and was executed) seems to be more reliable. BTW, he works in collaboration with Ellman.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:48, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Antonov-Ovseenko was given an incomplete file from the 1937 census and jumped to the conclusion that 14 million died in the famine. Maksudov has a new and informative article on Demoscope [13] This information belongs on Wikipedia, we have editors who read Russian, lets go for it.--Woogie10w (talk) 21:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Woogie, let's separate two things, because we are talking about two separate things in parallel. The first thing is the actual figure of excess deaths. In regard to that, Maksudov doesn't say anything new (around 10 million during a Civil war period, 7.5 million during Stalin's repressions and collectivisation, and other losses are WWII related deaths). Maksudov&Ellman generally support official death estimates during the WWII, although they add some civilian deaths to the military death category (you know that better than I do). In summary, all what Maksudov writes is consistent with Snyder's summary (already presented in the article), and, probably, is even lower. That means this source reflects a consensus that exists among western scholars on that account (although Rosefielde maintains the figures were higher).

However, that is only a part of the story, because Maksudov's figures tell about "excess deaths", whereas this article tells about "mass killings". Obviously, these two categories do not necessarily coincide, so Courtois is being criticised both for inaccuracy and for the claim all "excess deaths" were a result of Communist mass killings. How do you propose to resolve this problem?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:31, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

The numbers by Courtois do not include "excess deaths". Maksudov (yes, good source for the USSR! - it can be used here) tells about them, but separates such numbers from others. My very best wishes (talk) 02:55, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It is not clear what Courtois numbers include at all, and Suny says:

"Admirably, Werth gives figures for the victims of the various forms of repression based on the archives opened in the 1990s that are significantly lower than those of Robert Conquest and other historians who did not have the benefit of the archives. They are also lower than those in Courtois’s introduction, which would certainly have benefited from a closer reading of Werth." (RONALD GRIGOR SUNY, Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography. Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 53, Number 1, 2007, pp. 5-19. 2007 School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.)

Taking into account that the Werth's chapter is a “rock on which the rest of the book stands” (ibid), it seems Courtois simply forged his figures. --Paul Siebert (talk) 04:16, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Your problem us that Courtois was published by a reliable source. Asserting that a reliable source uses "forged figures" is something which means we are asserting that we, personally, are a better source. Which is contrary to Wikipedia's Five Pillars. Collect (talk) 11:20, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Your problem is that my "assertion" about forgery is actually not my assertion, but a statement made by several reliable sources. Taking into account that (and that is, again, not my assertion, but a statement found in many reliable sources) the BB as whole is considered a serious book due to the chapter written by Werth, and not due to the introduction written by Courtois, it is strange that you are persistently pushing a POV advocated by Courtois and pretend that Werth's words are my personal POV.

In connection to that, I am wondering why are you so persistently defending the most controversial statement in the most frequently criticised part of this collective volume and persistently ignoring the opinion of the author who made the most valuable contribution to this book, and whose opinion is being criticised much less frequently? What do 5 pillars say about this behaviour?

The BB is considered a good source because of Werth and is being criticised because of Courtois, but you prefer to cherry-pick what Courtois says and ignore Werth's opinion. And after that you dare me to teach what 5 pillars say...--Paul Siebert (talk) 12:00, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Um ---- Please try not to attack other editors personally Secondly, Wikipedia does not allow us to "cherry-pick" the truth" from "reliable sources." In fact, it encourages us to include disparate opinions from sources, not to delete the ones we do not like as being "forged." Collect (talk) 14:42, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Re: "Please try not to attack other editors personally" - you commented on my problem (as you see it), I commented on your problem (as I understand it). If you think you can express your opinion on my problems (real or perceived), why cannot I do the same? (BTW, I don't see any problem neither in your nor in mine post)

Re "cherry-picking", that is good that you understand that. The problem is that two different ways to "to include disparate opinions from sources" exist in that case: we can either (i) keep Courtois in the lead and include detailed criticism (because criticism of Courtois is at least as prominent as Courtois himself), of (ii) remove Courtois from the lead, but leave it in the main text along with criticism. Note, the question is not in removal of Courtois's figures from the article, but its removal from the lead only. You must agree that the fact that Courtois is a reliable source per WP:V does not warrant presenting of this particular view in the lead. You also must concede that widespread criticism of Courtois does not make it non-reliable, but it does make it controversial, which means it cannot be used as a source that even remotely represents scholarly consensus. That means it should be in the article, but it should not be in the lead. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:03, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

This whole thread is real sad, nobody is discussing the sources,Courtois & Rosefielde, I suspect because they have never read them. This thread is nothing but a POV storm.--Woogie10w (talk) 16:30, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Woogie10w, I respectfully disagree. This thread is not discussing what the sources say because it was not the main issue this thread was created for. The main question is not "what exactly Courtois or Rosefielde say, and how all of that should be reflected in the article?", but "whether Courtois's figures should be presented in the lead?" One option is (as you yourself formulated it) to present the figures and supplement them with criticism. Another option is to remove it from the lead and keep in the article, where the figure will be placed in a proper context. Indeed, when I looked at recent Maksudov's writings (by the way, thank you for pointing at Demoscope, it seems it is a source published by the best academic institution in Russia, and it contains a lot of fresh and interesting data), not only Rosefielde, but Maksudov too speak about mass excess death in 1990s. He is even more categorical, he says about the "forth demographic catastrophe" (along with Civil war, collectivisation and WWII) that killed 6 million people. However, nobody speaks about "democratic genocide" in Russia (by the way, there should be a catastrophe of a similar scale in other post-Soviet states, but I am not aware of any sources on that account, so the total death toll is even greater than 6 million). Meanwhile, a total figure is quite impressive, and if we do not speak about "democratic genocide" or "democratic mass killings" in this case, there is a logical reason to consider more seriously those sources that do not describe all excess deaths during a communist period as "mass killing" deaths.

In other words, the Courtois's figures should be discussed in two independent contexts: (i) how reliable the figures are (some sources say they are not), and (ii) what exactly do these figures mean (because they include those who were executed, deliberately starved to deaths, as well as those who died due to malnutrition, war time overwork, or lack of medication, and this category deaths do not differ significantly from the 6 million deaths during the democratic rule of Yeltsyn in 1990s.

In connection to that, I have a question: does Rosefielde discuss post Communist mass deaths in Russia in his "Red Holocaust", and if he does, does he use the same terminology or he makes some difference? I am asking because Maksudov calls them "killings".--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:53, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The big enchilada here is Asia with 70+ million deaths in China that are estimated by analysing the population balance. As for the USSR Courtois, Rosefielde as well as Conquest estimate excess deaths based on a hypothetical population balance since vital statistics are lacking. This is criticized by Getty,Wheatcroft and Haynes who consider the Gulag statistics published in the 1990's as being a realistic view of Stalinist repression. This whole issue was drawn out in Soviet Studies(I have hard copies of these dreary arguments). What is the the big deal? Just mention Courtois, Rosefielde and Conquest(BTW they are reliable sources) then contrast that with the criticism of Getty,Wheatcroft and Haynes(BTW they are reliable sources). ADK and Maksudov (BTW they are reliable sources) in Russia should also be mentioned because they present detailed population balance to support their arguments. China is your real problem, I cannot comment because my only source is R. J. Rummel, China's Bloody Century. I need to have a better understanding of the 1959-61 famine. I should order those books on the China famine and avoid Wikipedia, its a waste of time.--Woogie10w (talk) 17:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Woogie10w, first, the question is: "do we mention all of that in the lead, or in the main article only?" I personally think there in not enough space in the lead for that. Second, it is always better to make a difference between old and new estimates: for example, Conquest reconsidered his earlier estimates after new evidences had been found. It is not a good style to present old and new data as alternative and independent estimates in a situation when old data are obsolete.

And the last and very important question is (you probably missed that in my previous post): is it correct to call everybody who died prematurely as a direct or indirect result of government policy "mass killing victims"? Many sources disagree with that, and we should explain this disagreement. We just have no space in the lead for that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Regarding China, can you open this link ?. If yes, I can drop you several other links from this database. Many authors believe it was a partially natural disaster and partially man made famine. All authors agreed it affected the same area that were traditionally being hit by historical famines, so it was not something that Mao created purely artificially. The question of intentionality is also a subject of serious debates.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@Woogie10w, Pedro8790, RhinoMind, schetm, JamesBay, TheTimesAreAChanging, K.e.coffman and other users who voted here. Can you please voice your opinion regarding the way the figures from the Courtois's introduction should be presented the in the lead (and elsewhere). I asked four questions in the previous RfC ("RfC on figures presented by Courtois in the Black Book introduction"), and I would like to see your answer in a "(Yes/No)-(Yes/No)-(Yes/No)-(Yes/No)" format. Thank you in advance. --Paul Siebert (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

We really need to explain how the these figures are derived. Back in the 1970s Dyadkin, Iosif G. published UNNATURAL DEATHS IN THE USSR, 1928-1954. He estimated the number of births and deaths due to natural causes (old age, childhood disease ect.) He estimated that roughly 40 million people died of unnatural cases 20 million in WW2 and c.20 million due to Soviet government policy. Soviet policies would include deliberate killings and economic mismanagement of the command economy. Historians in the west, Conquest and Rosefielde, used this figure of c.20 million deaths due to Soviet government policy. Courtois more than likely is using this figure also derived from a population balance. The plot gets the plot gets thicker with R. J. Rummel, he consulted numerous sources. We have to give him credit for publishing literally hundreds of estimates in scholarly sources estimating unnatural deaths. Rummel believed that Soviet population figures were forged and worked up his own estimates based on the cold war era sources. During the cold war there were exaggerated estimates of unnatural deaths in the USSR, for example Solzhenitsyn 66 million and Antonov-Ovseyenko 30-40 million.

Readers of the article need to be informed of the methodology of how the numbers are derived. The sources pro and con need to be presented in a clear and concise manner, the long winded 1990's debate in Soviet Studies detail the arguments.

In a nutshell I am saying is that we should explain how the numbers are derived rather than just throwing an number at readers. Above all our POV and opinions should not be mentioned at all on this page, only reliable sources.--Woogie10w (talk) 21:52, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Woogie10w, all what you say is correct, but the problem is that it is only a part of truth. First, many (if not majority) of scholars do not equate "mass killings", "unnatural deaths" and "population losses". Only very few people (including Courtois) say that all unnatural deaths were the result of mass killing.

Second, we must separate old and new data.

I already explained at this talk page the methodology that was Rummel used to obtain his estimates: he collected all sources that contained some figures and calculated "low" and "high" estimate. After that, he converted it to some median figure. This procedure, as Dulic demonstrated, and Harff confirmed, has a very strong bias to highest values. In addition, Rummel refuses to reconsider his early estimates, even in light of fresh evidences.

Third, as Maksudov and Wheatcroft noted, in XX century there was almost 2-fold growth of life expectancy in Russia/USSR. In that sence, it is not completely clear what is seen under "unnatural deaths": the death from the lack of medication in mid XX century may be considered unnatural, whereas the death from the same cause in the beginning of XX century was seen as a natural. In any event, I cannot understand how these two things (40+ million unnatural deaths and 1.8 fold life expectancy growth) can be compatible.

One way or the another, the question is not in what the real figures were. The fact is that Courtois' figures are being widely criticized, and we need to decide how these highly disputable figures should be presented in this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:11, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Courtois' figures are being widely criticized, by whom? how do we explain this to readers who watch Fox News? it is not completely clear what is seen under "unnatural deaths" readers need to know that there is wiggle room that gives us a range of unnatural deaths in published sources, not a correct absolute figure. --Woogie10w (talk) 23:28, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

This talk page cites at least 10 reliable sources that say that Courtois's figures are exaggerated, or Courtois plays with definitions, or that Courtois combines apples and oranges. For example, many authors argue that it is fundamentally incorrect to combine Stalinist repressions and Cambodian genocides in a single category, because Stalinism directed its represssionan against peasant to create an industrial and urbanistic society, whereas Khmer Rouge eradicated urban population in attempts to turn the country into a rural commune, and one important factor in the KR genocide was racism (which played no role in Stalinist society). In addition, the genocide in Cambodia was stopped due to military invasion of ... Communist Vietnam (a Soviet client), and it was a Communist propaganda who initially provided an exaggerated figures of 3 million deaths. How all of that can be combined in one category? --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:15, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

A Communist regime's justification for its murders are irrelevant: some Communists may ostensibly wanted to create a rural utopia and some Communists may ostensibly wanted to create an industrial utopia. Their ostensible or real motives are beside the point: the only issue topical to this article is that they killed a lot of people in their totalitarian pursuit of power over their fellow man.XavierItzm (talk) 20:32, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

You are wrong again. Khmer Rouge killed people not because "their totalitarian pursuit of power over their fellow man": the genocide had started after they came to power and there were almost no opposition. The mechanism of genocide was analysed by Kiernan, and he outlined three factors that caused it, most of them have to relation to Marxist doctrine. This genocide had more common traits with other mass killings in this region that with Stalin's purges. The most devastating event described in this article, the Great Chinese famine, was also not dictated by Mao's pursuit of power: he a;ready suppressed all opposition by that time, and the reason of that famine was totally different. Your view is too teleological and superficial.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:21, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Again, a distinction w/o a difference. These were mass killings under communist regimes and therefore must be grouped in this article. Perfection with regard to Marxist doctrine is irrelevant. Will you next argue that oh, "genuine Socialism hasn't yet been tried!"? XavierItzm (talk) 02:49, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Frankly, I am not sure I want to reproduce the same arguments (and sources) I already presented on this talk page a couple of months ago. Briefly, only few historians group all genocidal events or mass killings that occurred in communist states together. Majority of them put each of those events in its own historical context. Indeed, almost no books exist that propose a concept of "democratic mass killings", because it is senseless: each "democratic genocide" had its own historical roots. The same approach is used by overwhelming majority of historians who study communist states, and only few of them (including Courtois, but not Werth or Margolin) see significant commonality between mass killings in each communist country. Please, familirise yourself with recent talk page archives to avoid long discussions.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:44, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

No valid consensus found on TP Arch. for deletion of Courtois from lead para. Courtois remains "most influential" and as such ought to be mentioned on lead. XavierItzm (talk) 13:18, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Also the title is tacky and ridiculous, POV Communism is real bad folks, we have the dirt for you here--Woogie10w (talk) 23:31, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 18/08/30 Move from "Mass killings under communist regimes" to "Catastrophes under communist regimes"

Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Catastrophe can be a connotation genocidal crimes like:

Shoah had earlier been used in the context of the Nazis as a translation of "catastrophe". For example, in 1934, when Chaim Weizmann told the Zionist Action Committee that Hitler's rise to power was an "unvorhergesehene Katastrophe, etwa ein neuer Weltkrieg" ("an unforeseen catastrophe, comparable to another world war"), the Hebrew press translated Katastrophe as Shoah.^[1] from Names of the Holocaust#Shoah

The Asia Minor Catastrophe, a Greek name for the 1923 Greek defeat at the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the defeat

OR

It can refer to more unintentional types of events such as:

The Chernobyl Catastrophe, a name of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster
Blue sky catastrophe, a type of bifurcation of a periodic orbit, where the orbit vanishes into the blue sky
Catastrophic failure, complete failure of a system from which recovery is impossible (e.g. a bridge collapses)
Climatic catastrophe, forced transition of climate system to a new climate state at a rate which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing
Cosmic catastrophe, thought experiment about what would happen if the sun were to suddenly disappear
Ecological catastrophe, a disaster to the natural environment due to human activity
Error catastrophe, extinction of an organism as a result of excessive mutations
Impending climatic catastrophe, conjectured runaway climate change resulting from a rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system

See the wiki page Catastrophe

Since mass deaths under communist regimes are both called intentional and unintentional I think "catastrophe" would envelope both ideas well. There is also a suggestion to merge this article with Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes which includes events other than mass killings which I also think would be covered under the word "catastrophe" in a way "mass killing" doesn't. A similar word like "disaster" isn't associated with genocides in the same way "catastrophe is as mentioned above so I think catastrophe would be a good fit. The Chernobyl Catastrophe only killed a few thousand people, so the article if changed to this may not have to be as restrictive with what regimes it includes (Like Castro's Cuba) when it comes to death toll.

User:2001:558:600A:45:81EC:7995:93DF:CAE1, 30 August 2018.

Requested move 18/08/30 Move from "Mass killings under communist regimes" to "Catastrophes under Marxist-Leninist regimes"

This is more of a secondary suggestion, but isn't "Marxist" or "Marxist-Leninist" a more technical name for these types of regimes then "communist?" I guess that would exclude the anarchist in Spain but this article doesn't include them anyway so I don't see how that's a problem. The article on Marxism–Leninism#Marxist–Leninist revolution includes the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam and various Latin American countries as examples of Marxism-Leninist regimes so I think this title will cover all of the communist regimes listed here.

User:2001:558:600A:45:81EC:7995:93DF:CAE1, 30 August 2018.

The Requested move and related comments above were posted by User:2001:558:600A:45:81EC:7995:93DF:CAE1. He/She didn't sign, so I took the liberty to do it. It appears that the user is currently blocked. RhinoMind (talk) 16:50, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Oppose "Catastrophes" includes earthquakes, hurricanes etc. Thus it is a "major change" to the topic of the article. Secondly, the name has been discussed recently, and near-monthly proposals to change an article name are unlikely to reach a consensus. Third, the discussion about the adjective use of "communist" and capitalization was also quite recent. Collect (talk) 13:48, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Oppose as this proposed title is far less descriptive than the current one. schetm (talk) 14:22, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Wheatcroft's credibility must be questioned as a source.

Latest comment: 6 years ago26 comments7 people in discussion

The article when I came to it included the following:

According to Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Stalin's regime can be charged with causing the "purposive deaths" of about a million people, although the number of deaths caused by the regime's "criminal neglect" and "ruthlessness" was considerably higher, and perhaps exceed Hitler's.

This can mean only one of two things. Either Wheatcroft (as he admits in the sourced material) is not an expert on one of the areas, and is making comparisons based on figures he doesn't understand, or that he is deliberately misleading people. Wheatcroft clearly lays out the deaths he's describing above as including purposeful deaths, such as executions, and deaths from criminal neglect and ruthless policies. So this could be seen to easily include all the deaths in the higher estimates for the Stalinist regime ... the often cited 20mn figures, which include Holodomor, and all many of other preventable deaths during Stalin's time in power.

But if you were to apply the same standards to Hitler, you'd have to include the entire 42 million who died in the wars he started, and in extermination attempts he initiated at a bare minimum, before you could get to those who perished incidentally due to the catastrophic economic consequences of such a massive war.

He states in the source:

But other scholars who have been most careful to insist on the
'singularity' of Nazi crimes against the Jews have nevertheless accepted comp arisons in which the Stalinist system is presumed to have killed two or three times as many people
as Hitler's regime.

So according to his own criteria, Hitler killed at minimum 42 million people. And Stalin's figure according to his words, is 'presumed to be' two or three times as high. Not 20mn, but 84-126mn. The vast majority of the Soviet Union's population at the time. The only reasonable understanding of this, is that he's compared the well known figure of 6 million victims of the Holocaust, to the higher estimates for Stalin's regime, which given the specific mention of the 'singularity' and Jews, this is almost certain.

A 'historian' who is hosted on Tripod, and whose understanding of WW2 is so astoundingly poor, should be discounted entirely from this article.--Senor Freebie (talk) 15:04, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm reading through more of his paper, and it is some pretty concerning material, to be cited, as a defense of Hitler. He directly compares all the deliberate exterminations by the Third Reich, to the collective total of all 'reckless, deliberate or neglectful' deaths by the Stalinist regime, with no mention of reckless, neglectful deaths, let alone those that died as a result of German invasions. This historian should be deleted entirely from the article in my view. I'll stand by until someone else takes the time to look at this source.--Senor Freebie (talk) 15:10, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

GoogleScholar shows that Wheatcroft has 1493 cites. This is a non-trivial number, and your distaste for something a recognized scholar writes is interesting, but not a valid reason for excluding them as a source. His books on the old Soviet Union are widely cited, and were written with RW Davies. Davies is also a "recognized scholar" with over 5,000 GoogleScholar links. [14] WP:IDONTLIKEIT fails. Collect (talk) 19:35, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Completely agree with Collect. Senor Freebie's assertions that Wheatcroft is not a real historian and that his paper, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Europe-Asia Studies, is basically an op-ed completely falls flat. This is indeed a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 19:45, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

While I am not able to enter the current discussion about Wheatcroft's credibility in this context, I certainly can say that your (Collect) approach is a dead-end alley.

To your knowledge, David Irving has 494,000 hits on Google Scholar, Fred A. Leuchter has 1460 and Erich von Däniken has about 1860. Credibility in controversial cases will have to be established by looking at the general scholarly literature on the subject.

There are a couple of interesting wiki-articles on the subject of pseudo-science that are quite interesting: Pseudohistory and Pseudo-scholarship. RhinoMind (talk) 19:49, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Nope. WP:RS applies. WP:IDONTLIKEIT does not abridge policy. Wheatcroft's works ascribed to and cited to Wheatcroft is a reliable source. That you find articles on Soviet misdeeds to be Pseudohistory is interesting, but the requirement is that you must provide reliable sources making that claim. Editors here are not a "source" for anything. "von Daniken" is totally irrelevant in this case at hand, as one can find reliable sources which can be cited with different results. Who do you propose as a provably more reliable source than Davies and Wheatcroft? Collect (talk) 20:22, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

You don't understand my comment, please read it again. I am reacting to your approach above on establishing someone's credibility. And I think I can safely say I won the argument. RhinoMind (talk) 23:16, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you. Cites alone don't determine the universal credibility of someone's material, let alone paraphrased interpretations of that material, in a Wikipedia article. Take a critical look at what is actually said in the source, and the passage I deleted cannot stand. I hope the other users actually address the source material, as requested.--Senor Freebie (talk) 08:29, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Apples and oranges. The paper in question was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal; in fact much of his work is published by academic journals and publishing companies. He is recognized as a notable scholar of the former USSR by his peers, especially for his work in the archives post-1991. Any accusation that his work is pseudohistory or pseudo-scholarship on par with someone like David Irving would be complete nonsense. And quite frankly, Senor Freebie's accusation that Wheatcroft is a defender of Hitler is the most absurd thing I have seen in some time, and you'd be hard pressed to find even one reliable source that puts forth any such claim.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 20:31, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

He's a notable scholar on the USSR, but by his own admission is not an expert on WW2, or the Third Reich, yet this wiki article cited pages of content, which never explicitly makes the statement that was used. I find it striking that none of the above users have actually commented on that fact, or the content of the source material in question; something I was very clearly requesting people do.--Senor Freebie (talk) 08:25, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

My reading is that Wheatcroft is merely saying "some" scholars include these other deaths and is not commenting on their accuracy, which is irrelevant to his paper. The representation of his comments therefore appear to be misleading. TFD (talk) 22:42, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Though it is not irrelevant to his article. He talks about this at length, and in fact, opines at length about why he is doing this, and why he thinks it's important to make comparisons of total death tolls, before going on to compare completely different sets of numbers as if they are the same thing. Thank you for addressing the source material. It is still my ardent view that the source is indefensible, and does not accurately make the claim that attributed to it in the Wiki article.--Senor Freebie (talk) 08:25, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Try at RS/N - but here you have not gained consensus for removal of the source. Meanwhile be cognizant of edit war rules. We have enough time to discuss material here without iterated reverts by an editor. Collect (talk) 15:01, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Edit war rules? I'm not the one constantly re-adding information that is clearly controversial. It is others that are edit-warring. Further, I have no objection to the use of Wheatcroft in his alleged area of expertise; the USSR. This is clearly why I did not delete the entire passage that references him. I have a problem only with the material that the source does not support. Why did you not address the source in your reply to me?--Senor Freebie (talk) 16:43, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

(Personal attack removed) I suggest that from this point forward they are disregarded entirely from the conversation until those allegations are resolved.--Senor Freebie (talk) 16:50, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

EXAMPLE OF BLATANT PERSONAL ATTACK. Thank you for showing such colors, as defending Wheatcroft is not "anti-semitic" in any way shape manner or form. Congrats. Collect (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

No. This is a blatant example of a personal attack;

Like your rambling and incoherent talk page message, this is WP:OR.

What I stated was that there is suggestions by other users about you, on your talk page, that may be pertinent to this discussion. Can I ask that in future, you address the specific points that other users ask you to address, and you refer to the sourced material, rather than your opinion of the author, or the passage in question.

What exactly does Wheatcroft say?

It seems now, when Senor Freebie has been blocked for a personal attack (not for the edits), it is a good time to discuss what does Wheatcroft says in his article. In my opinion, one of his main points is that it would be fundamentally incorrect to combine all deaths caused by Stalinist regime in a single category and compare this combined number with the number of Nazism victims. Wheatcroft clearly says that "the nature of Soviet repression and mass killing was clearly far more complex than normally assumed," and if we want to compare the number of "victims of Stalinism" with the number of "victims of the Holocaust", we should compare the number of executed by Stalin and the number of Jews killed by Hitler. According to Wheatcroft, even this comparison is not fully correct, because "the purposive deaths caused by Hitler fit more closely into thecategory of 'murder', while those caused by Stalin fit more closely the category of 'execution'. " With regards to other deaths caused by Stalinism, which were mostly a result of "criminal neglect", the comparison with the victims of Nazism is totally incorrect, according to Wheatcroft. In connection to that, my conclusion is that Wheatcroft, being a renown expert in the Soviet history, definitely cannot be blaimed in what Senor Freebie says. However, the edit made by Senor Freebie (I mean this [15]) is absolutely correct: Wheatcroft's words were taken out of context: the original quote is:

"It is only when we get into the broader categories of causing death by criminal neglect and ruthlessness that Stalin probably⁷⁴ exceeds Hitler, but here we have to remember that the USSR was much larger than Germany and that death rates in the best of times had always been significantly higher in Russia than in Germany"

and the footnote 74 specifies that that would be correct if the famine and war time deaths are included as Stalin's death toll (the idea Wheatcroft himself objected to). That means we need to bring the article's text in accordance with what Wheatcroft says in reality, and, probaby, group together Wheatcroft's and Snyder's words, because they seem to say essentially the same (and the later probably used the former as a source). Before doing that, I would like to know your opinion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:46, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I am somewhat puzzled by this. The words are definitely taken out of context, the Wheatcroft's reservation as well as his own opinion are ignored, and all of that has been done despite the fact that the discussion is still in progress on the talk page. Is this behaviour acceptable?

In general, this section, as well the article in general, is obsessed with figures and ignores the fact that serious scholars, such as Wheatcroft, Ellman and others maintain that Stalinist repressions were much more complex event, and before speaking about "mass killings victims" it is necessary to understand what all those figures reflect in reality. All of that is amateurish, and it is a violation of our policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:45, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree it should be reverted. Also, we should have a section about Soviet-Nazi comparisons. TFD (talk) 18:35, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Obviously I agree that it should be removed. But there's been subsantial backlash, and attacks against me, for attempting to improve this article, so I'll leave it to someone else to make the change. I personally don't agree with your reading of Wheatcroft; Siebert. He does make direct comparisons, between figures for deliberate extermination programs, and criminally negligent deaths, and he describes this comparisons as important, and useful. You can find those quoted in my initial talk page edits. Further; even in the statement you provided he says:

Stalin probably exceeds Hitler,

Which MUST absolve Hitler and the Third Reich of blame for the Second World War, as no figure I've seen blames Stalin for more than 42 million deaths, whether deliberate, through incompetence, or through the cruelty of his policies.--Senor Freebie (talk) 05:02, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Senor Freebie, frankly speaking, I see much less personal attacks against you than personal attack made by you. You may disagree with me regarding Wheatcroft, but your claim about unreliability of this author does not add weight to your opinion: Wheatcroft is one of the most professional and balanced authors who writes about the USSR, his opinion is taken seriously by many other renown authors, such as Conquest, Ellman, Rosenfielde and many other, he is definitely a mainstream author and renown expert in the field. That means, if you believe that Wheatcroft's writings understate Hitler's responsibility in the Secong World war, you definitely misread Wheatcroft. Please, read it again, and, if you want, we can continue this discussion on my or your talk page.

Cheers, --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:40, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

I think you have misread Wheatcroft's article. Certainly certain sections of the Right have used comparisons of mass killings with the objective of proving that Communists killed more people than Fascists. Wheatcroft examines the information available to see if that is a valid comparison and determines it is not. He does not however explore the motivations of the "double genocide" theorists or the role the theory plays in modern Europe. And you must avoid personal attacks. All that come of them is that you are blocked from editing. TFD (talk) 19:30, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Wheatcroft's claim seems to be based on a strained definition of "purposive," especially insofar as the Holodomor was concerned. The Soviet government intentionally and with malice aforethought orchestrated a famine to target and eliminate its political enemies. This, to me, seems to be a purposive attack. On its own, this brings the number Wheatcroft cites several million higher. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JakeTheKing42 (talk • contribs) 00:28, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

There is no scholarly consensus about that. Some authors believe it was intentionally organized, others see no intentions at all, whereas those who analyzed this question deeper think that it was partially unintended consequence of collectivization (famine in Kazakhstan is a typical example), partially a criminal neglect, and partially (in central Ukraine, and in 1933) an attempt to break a political resistance.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:25, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

There is hardly ever scholarly consensus on such things, but there is an extremely strong case to be made that suggests that the Holodomor was primarily an attempt to break a Ukrainian nationalist movement, which would make it an act of genocide targeted against a well-defined national group (one which yielded death tolls similar to the Nazi Holocaust, and yet is hardly ever mentioned in the same breath, primarily because of this same lack of scholarly consensus).^[2]JakeTheKing42 (talk) 06:29, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Not exactly. The death toll is calculated for the whole grain producing area in the USSR (which includes the territories populated by ethnic Russians). When food requisitions were planned initially, the plans were not to cause starvation. Originally, it was more a miscalculation (the expected grain stocks were higher than actual ones). At the end of the famine, the attempts were made to provide some help to starving regions. However, many authors agree that when the scale of famine (and peasant resistance to collectivisation) in some regions became known to Stalin, he decided to continue this deadly policy to break the neck of resustance of Ukrainian rural areas. In that sense, part of famine victims may be considered the genocide victims. --Paul Siebert (talk) 21:00, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

^ Setbon, Jessica. "Who Beat My Father? Issues of Terminology and Translation in Teaching the Holocaust", workshop from a May 2006 conference; see Yad Vashem website. Yadvashem.org ^{[dead link‍]}
^ "UKRAINIAN FAMINE". Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved 22 September 2018. {{cite web}}: |first1= missing |last1= (help)

[Setbon-1] Setbon, Jessica. "Who Beat My Father? Issues of Terminology and Translation in Teaching the Holocaust", workshop from a May 2006 conference; see Yad Vashem website. Yadvashem.org ^{[dead link‍]}

[2] "UKRAINIAN FAMINE". Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved 22 September 2018. {{cite web}}: |first1= missing |last1= (help)

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