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Proposed edit

The current first sentence of the article presents the estimated death toll from the introduction, written by Courtois, of the Black Book of Communism, in Wikipedia's voice. This is a problem, because this estimate is controversial among scholarly sources, and WP:NPOV therefore requires that we attribute it. Examples of sources which take issue with the estimate include the following:

  • Golsan, Richard. French Writers and the Politics of Complicity. JHU Publishing. p. 146 states that Courtois exaggerated the figures in the introduction. Also states that Courtois' co-authors also found this to be an exaggeration.
  • Margolin, Jean-Louis; Werth, Nicolas (1997-11-14). "Communisme : retour à l'histoire". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 2015-06-14. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help) Source from Le Monde, where two of the co-authors disagree with Courtois' summary.
  • Aronson, Ronald (May 2003). "COMMUNISM'S POSTHUMOUS TRIAL". History and Theory. 42. This journal article says that the standard of scholarship within the book varies a lot; whereas the study of the USSR is accurate, those of south-east Asia and China are much poorer. It also says that the authors frequently ignore context, attributing deaths to communism where there were many other factors involved.
  • Murphey, Dwight D. (Fall 2000). "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression". The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. 25 (3). This is a highly positive review, which nonetheless says "At present, there are wide variations in the estimates made," and goes on to say that the variation in the death toll in China alone is 23 million.

I could provide more sources if necessary, but even just these make it clear that a single estimate cannot be presented sans attribution. Therefore, I propose the following change. Remove the first sentence of the article, and replace it with the following; "Mass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, depending on the methodology used." In addition, after the sentence ending "...however, the validity of this approach is questioned by other scholars.", add the following; "In the introduction to the Black Book of Communism, Stéphane Courtois foreword to the Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia estimates the death toll at 85-100 million people." "In his summary of the estimates in the Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia suggested a death toll of between 85 and 100 million people." Additionally, tweak citation 1 to link to the foreword of BBoC, instead of the introduction; the google books link is here.

In addition, I would suggest inserting a paragraph break after the second added sentence, and move what is currently the second sentence down after the break. @Eaglizard:@AmateurEditor:@The Four Deuces:@Prinsgezinde:@Smallbones:@Guccisamsclub: you have participated in recent discussion on this or related topics, and so I am pinging you for input. Apologies for the length of the post; the restrictions here make it inevitable. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:53, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Survey

Discussion

I think the proper place for these criticisms (which are entirely fair) is The Black Book of Communism, which is a reasonably good article and does not have an edit block. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:46, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

As far as this article is concerned, I think it is beyond salvation: necessarily poor coverage of individual topics, over-reliance on non-specialist sources, dubious claims, flagrant bias in many places etc. Only the section on Soviet Stalinism is reasonably good. Real improvement would require extensive work by several highly knowledgeable people, and even then it would be impossible to get much done due to inevitable edit warring on every point. I think it's better to keep this article the way it is, with all of its red flags. For example, the sections on Communist Hungary and Vietnam border on insanity. The one on East Germany seems dubious. That's all well and good. Serious readers can spot these red flags and move on to the more in-depth higher-quality articles. Let's just leave this slice of Conservapedia alone and focus on improving the more focused and factual articles. Better use of one's time. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:46, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Guccisamsclub, I think perhaps you misunderstood the thrust of the proposal. I do not wish to include the criticisms here; I am providing the criticisms, because they demonstrate why we cannot present BBoC statements in Wikipedia's voice. Yes, this article is in terrible shape; is this a reason not to improve it? If WP:TNT were an options, perhaps you would be correct; but it isn't, and so we need to make this the best we can. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, Ok, I did misunderstand your proposed edit, sorry. After considering your proposed edits more carefully, it is difficult for me to sustain my original objection. However, I still think that correcting the apparent bias in the lead is a waste of time. The lead should reflect the content of the article. The altered lead will assert that BBoC methodology in not universally accepted, while the meat of the article will continue to rely on Rummel, BBoC, and Final Soultions. The BBoC is actually one of the better sources in the whole article. The new lead will promise one thing, but the article will deliver quite another. I therefore urge you to reconsider.Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:35, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub, I agree to an extent; in general, I would always prefer to fix the body first. However, I am limited in that by the protection of the article; getting consensus here for each of the edits required to fix the body would be impossible. At another level though, the lead is supposed to be a summary; and it is my view that it is currently not just a summary of imperfect content, but an imperfect summary of imperfect content. This is the point made in a couple of the sources above; that when Courtois summarized the book for the introduction, he mis-represented it. We are relying on his summary for our summary; so at the very least, we must attribute it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:46, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Feel free to present other documented estimates. We've always invited the folks who want to delete this article to present their own documented estimates, but they haven't done it. I believe their point was meant to be "this whole thing is made up. We don't have to pretend that this mass killing stuff was real." But of course it was real, and well respected academic sources give documented estimates. If you've got better estimates, let's see them. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:37, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Smallbones, I am not saying "oh, the actual figure is only 50 million." I don't know what it is, because there are not many sources which make overall estimates. My point is simply this; when Courtois used the constituent articles of the BBoC, he misrepresented them. I could use the same articles to come up with a non-exaggerated estimate, but that would be synthesis. Therefore, I am not even asking that the figure be changed. All I am saying is that we need to attribute Courtois' statement, because even the sources he is relying upon are saying he is exaggerating. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:43, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
    • Sorry, we always use information that has some limitations (since all information has some limitations). Our job is to find the best information possible. Previous dissenters on this page have refused to come up with any information, they just say "we don't like the information you've presented." It looks like simple denial after awhile. Please come up with a better estimate, or just bow out. I don't play the denial game. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:00, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
If we have reliable sources questioning Courtois's figures, we are obliged by Wikipedia policy to inform our readers of the fact, regardless of whether such sources have come up with an alternative figure. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:04, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Beyond the usual academic discussions of "maybe this partial figure is 5 million too high" or "maybe that figure is 1 million too low", I haven't seen any reliable sources claiming there is a problem. The 100 million figure claimed by Courtois is clearly an order of magnitude estimate. Previous deniers wanted some shaved off of that and forced it through by rather dubious means. Please review the history of the article and the 6 or so AfD attempts. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
If you insist on referring to people who suggest that this article should comply with Wikipedia policy as 'deniers', I may very well consider raising the matter at ANI. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:56, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
I am not interested in denial, Smallbones. You seem to be suggesting that anybody who does not accept the page in its present form is denying the killings, which is incorrect, because I definitely believe that they happened, and were horrific. All I am saying, like AndyTheGrump, is that the veracity of source has been brought into question; the least we can do is attribute the content from it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 02:12, 2 August 2015 (UTC).
The number is presented as an estimate, the footnote attributes it to Courtois. You wish to bury it at the bottom of the intro. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Citing a source is not the same as attribution. It is the language that is at issue here, as well as the fact that the range of estimates, even simply based on an accurate synthesis from the BBoC, would be different from what our lead says. The way it is phrased does not suggest that it is an order-of-magnitude estimate. Vanamonde93 (talk) 02:42, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Actually, citing a source is a form of attribution - you just wish for a different form.
Feel free to present a whole proposed introduction. There's a whole lot of bull in the current one and I see you wanting to weaken the strongest part. We can work out a full introduction if you want that fits both the facts as presented in reliable sources and the text. But much of the current intro summarizes neither. As a start let's try:
"Mass killings occurred under Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million.[1] The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[2] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries."
Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:06, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

I would be happy to present a reworked lead; I did not, because I did not want to the proposal to collapse because people got caught up on details which were not, in my opinion, the crux of the matter. I cannot support your version of the lead, because it does not address my chief concern, that of a single estimate presented without in-line attribution to its author(s). WP:UNDUE and WP:YESPOV apply here. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Please do present a version of the introduction and we can talk about it. If you are worried that only a single estimate is presented, please find another documented estimate and include it. It's not enough to say "some people have criticized that number" and then remove or bury it - some people will criticize anything. Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:30, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Smallbones, you appear to be misunderstanding my suggestion. I am not removing the estimate. I am proposing to say who made it. Since the estimate has been criticized, and not just by "anybody" but the authors themselves, intext attribution, as per WP:YESPOV, is a necessity. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:27, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
  • The existing citation for the first sentence of the lead is incorrect. The "estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million" comes from page x of the foreword by Martin Malia, not the introduction by Stéphane Courtois. Presumably it is the range of the various estimates by the various contributors to the book. Courtois gives his list of estimates on page 4, saying "The total approaches 100 million killed" (his list adds up to 94.36 million, by the way). He also calls it a "rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates", i.e. take it with a grain of salt. It is probably not appropriate to favor one source over all the others by including it in the lead so prominently, even if it is the most popular or famous estimate, but I think the best way to deal with the disputes over the numbers is to include all of them in the article and show the wide range that they produce. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:23, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
AmateurEditor, it is my understanding that the figure in the foreword is taken by Malia from the introduction. Even if that were not the case, however, the larger point that the figure is more variable still stands, and so it sounds to me like you support the proposal above? Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:47, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Here is more of the sentence by Malia, which you can read in for yourself in the Googlebooks link I provided in my previous post: "...with a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million." Malia is not just repeating Courtois here, he is giving the range of the various contributors. And so, obviously, I cannot support your proposal to add the sentence "In the introduction to the Black Book of Communism, Stéphane Courtois estimates the death toll at 85-100 million people." Also, this is far from the highest range I have come across in my reading on this topic, so it doesn't seem so unreasonable to me. I would be fine with just fixing the reference for the first sentence and replace the word "an" with the word "one". But honestly, I don't think this article is ready for a lead, yet. There's too much more to add to the body that will change what the lead should say. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:50, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
AmateurEditor: I still dont see what the lead has to with BBoC, actually. The headline range of 20-70 million is very wide, and has little to do with BBoC. Its a range that can satisfy everybody besides Rummel, and I fail to see the problem. As far as BBoC is concerned, the crux of the problem is that Margolin's essay on China gives no "Number", only a range of estimates from diverse causes: 6-10 million victims of repression and 20-43 million for famine (pp. 463 - 464). How Cortois gets 65 million from that is anybody's guess. Margolin and Werth have spoken out about Cortois's editorializing, as Vanamonde93 already mentioned. But again, what does this have to do with the the stated range? If you dispute the 70 million, the 20 million will have to go as well. It's really impossible to find any "rigorous" methodology behind either number, although 70 million (interpreted as "excess deaths") is certainly closer to the mark under any standard set of assumptions. Of course what these numbers tell us about the human cost of state-socialism relative to its alternatives, is another matter entirely. Perhaps the "Section:Comparison to other mass killings" (very misleading IMO) is the place to do so, but it's a colossal topic and cursory coverage would not be terribly enlightening.Guccisamsclub (talk) 05:53, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Are you mixing up my comments with those of Smallbones? I never mentioned the 20 - 70 million figures. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:09, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Not my figures either. Smallbones(smalltalk) 12:36, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub appears to have rounded off the "low of 21 million to a high of 70 million" that you included in your alternate lead, above. I changed the indentation there to make it clear that my first comment was not a continuation of that thread. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
AmateurEditor Yeah I my reading comprehension is a really off tonight. You have a point: the global 85-100 million claim in the lead can only be attributed to Cortois [sorry, again reading comp/poor memory: Malia of course!]and not the actual content of the case studies in BBoC. Cortois's 65 million for China is not based on anything written by Margolin. FWIW, Werth and Margolin have spoken of a range of 65-93M for all excess deaths under communism. Cortois has no authority for his numbers, while Margolin and Werth emphasize the very preliminary nature of their range. Ideally neither range should be used in the lead, because it invites the reader to draw conclusions before doing any research.Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:37, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub, you wrote "You have a point: the global 85-100 million claim in the lead can only be attributed to Cortois and not the actual content of the case studies in BBoC." That is actually more like the opposite of my point. That range is actually of all the contributors to the BBoC, Courtois included. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
AmateurEditor, yes, I can see that now. Obviously, I will need to tweak the proposal, to read "foreword by Malia" rather than "introduction by Courtois." However, I think the broader thrust of my proposal still stands; there is enough controversy over the figure, and enough of a range presented, that we should not prioritize one estimate, especially sans attribution in the first sentence. I agree the article needs an overhaul; however, as I pointed out to Guccisamsclub, how do we overhaul it, while it is protected? Five of us have had a page-long discussion, and haven't come to a consensus about just two sentences; how do you plan to overhaul the whole thing? Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:04, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, there are two issues here, right? One, your specific proposal, which I cannot support in its entirety because of the error I noticed and on which I am lukewarm in general, and which Smallbones does not support in the belief that it will just substitute one bias for another (if I am following correctly) by holding BBoC to a higher standard than any other source. Two, how should we even approach improving the article? One way would be to reduce/remove/alter the sanctions to allow at least some editing of the article without prior consensus approval on the talk page, but this idea has gone nowhere in the past. Another way, which I also briefly pursued, was to have a workpage where the involved editors could edit or assemble material intended to replace or expand upon material already in the article; more of a put-up-or-shut-up approach. Rather than endlessly discussing proposals, we would make them, out of public view on this workpage, and see where it took us. That page is here, called "dumping-ground" because I though it could work if we focused on additive edits only, but it didn't attract much activity. Another way would be to follow the sanctions procedures and just make proposals as you have done. This has been successful for only the smallest, most uncontroversial edits, which is likely to continue to be the case. A proposal to change the most prominent sentence or section of the article is the least likely to be successful, if that pattern holds. Therefore, ignoring the lead for a while and making small, ironclad, proposals for the body of the article could be a way forward. Lots of small edits over time will make a big difference and, when we run out of them, it should be easier to propose a lead that is a simple summary of the article without any new information requiring its own citations or any new emphasis that isn't already established by the body of the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
AmateurEditor, in a sense yes, there are two issues. To address the first one, though, I did tweak my proposal to address the error you point out; please give it another look. As to the rest; I would be willing to participate in those proposals. I think combining the two would be effective; using the workpage to create a better version, and then proposing it here incrementally. However, like I said above, I think the lead is not only a summary of content which needs improving, but an inaccurate summary thereof. This is why I think we are justified in changing the lead, even as we prepare to tackle the rest of it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:27, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Vanamonde93: Yes, I missed that change. I still don't think it is quite accurate to the source. It isn't the estimate of Martin Malia, he is just conveying the range of the BBoC contributors, Courtois included. I will support the proposal if that sentence says "The Black Book of Communism gave a rough estimate of the death toll of between 85 and 100 million people." and also includes the needed correction to the citation. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:42, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Well, I don't mean to suggest that Martin Malia came up with the estimate all by himself, but it is his synthesis of the others work. We know for a fact that some of the others, such as Margolin, did not provide a single number, or even a single range, but a series of ranges. We also know that they took issue with Courtois introduction, where he uses the 100 million figure. All of which makes me feel that we need to mention Malia's name. How about the slightly wordier, but IMO more accurate, "In his summary of the findings of the Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia states that the death toll was between 85 and 100 million." Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:57, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
We are close. Here is the link again for convenience. How about "In his summary of the estimates in The Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia gave a death toll range of between 85 and 100 million people." With the fixed citation. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:26, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I would support that, with the appropriate Wikilinks. Perhaps "states," or "suggests," in place of "gave"? Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:45, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
I think it should be past tense. "suggested" is ok. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. I will amend the proposal according to this discussion in a minute. Vanamonde93 (talk) 23:03, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to see the whole lede written out. You're not trying to bury the estimate are you? How about

"Mass killings occurred under communist regimes during the twentieth century with The Black Book of Communism giving a rough estimate of the death toll of between 85 and 100 million people.[1] The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[2] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries."

BTW the 21 to 70 million is from Valentine, and is in the current lede, obviously only for 3 countries, and I can't check it without the full book. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

(the big three 21-70 million range has been verified to Valentino. page 91 of his book can be read on Googlebooks here.) AmateurEditor (talk) 21:33, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
It's a good thing you got thru to the right page. IMHO our current text is a copyright violation, almost word for word. It is *not* however, plagiarism - we are not trying to fool anybody that we wrote this. I think a basic restatement or paraphrase is all that's needed, I'll likely be able to get to it tomorrow. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:57, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Alternate version

@Vanamonde93: I actually can't believe that you are still proposing this version given the discussion below and the full versions of the lede that I proposed there. You really do need to show the entire lede for folks to see what you are talking about, i.e. burying the numbers. Here's my proposed version, the lede in full.

"Mass killings occurred under communist regimes during the twentieth century. The Black Book of Communism gives a rough estimate of the death toll of 85 -100 million people.[1] The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, have the highest documented death tolls. Estimates for the total non-combatant deaths in these three countries range from 21 million - 70 million. Similar mass killings occurred on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and African countries.[2]

Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:51, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones, hasn't the Black Book been debunked and exposed to have overly-inflated numbers? Socialistguy (talk) 00:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

for the same reasons as the 6 pings above - we need opinions from editors who have actually worked on this article - I'll ping 5 (still active) editors @Nug, Collect, TheTimesAreAChanging, Stumink, and Vecrumba:

This is canvassing of the highest order. I only pinged editors who had participated in the most recent discussions on this page, without regard to the positions they took (as evidenced by the fact that I pinged you, the most vociferous opponent of my proposal). You are pinging a very clearly hand-picked set of editors, who were uninvolved here, which is not acceptable behavior. I recommend you strike the pings immediately. Vanamonde93 (talk) 02:25, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Things have been quite slow on this talk page for quite some time, and it seems like the only people to stop by are the occasional folks who want to delete referenced material. Folks who have worked on this article over time know that that's not going to hapen. I just went back to inform those folks who have worked on the article a year or two ago (in archive 34) and pinged everybody who was still active. Paul Siebert is long gone, as is Zloyvolsheb. I missed User:Staberinde and User:Kurtis. would you like to ping them, or should I? BTW, you missed User:Nug. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:00, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Except that if you had actually been interested in bringing involved editors here, you would also have pinged AnieHall, Nyttend, MSGJ, C.J. Griffin, Petri Krohn, and any number of others who were involved with the page around the same time. You haven't done so, which is clear evidence of canvassing. If you want your claim to be taken seriously, you should ping every active editor who made a similar quantity of contributions at around the same time. Until you do so, I am going to ignore this section. Vanamonde93 (talk) 03:19, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't see them in archive 34. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:50, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
And you think that only participation at archive 34 qualifies people to comment here? Look at the article history during roughly that period, and look at the talk pages archives before and since. Moreover, AnieHall most certainly is in archive 34; you clearly did not look hard enough. Vanamonde93 (talk) 05:11, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

@Staberinde, Kurtis, and AnieHall: Smallbones(smalltalk) 12:08, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous. Not only will you not admit the selection, but you refuse to correct it, because somehow the participants of archive 34 are more qualified to comment here than the people in the other 35 talk archives? Well then, @Nyttend:@MSJG:@C.J. Griffin:@Petri Krohn: (for starters), we would be glad to have your input. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:21, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Then suggesting changes to lede please either post full new version of new lede, or post complete new/changed part together with clear indication from where unchanged part starts. That way it is easier to unambigiously understand what exactly was proposed and also to suggest additional tweaks.--Staberinde (talk) 15:06, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

  • Sorry about the extended absence; I've been dealing with a few personal demons over the past couple of years. I have a bit of a tendency to bite off more than I can chew, and my ambitious goal to rewrite the whole article was daunting enough for me to be intimidated out of it. I'm still willing to collaborate in making this article better; hopefully we can develop it to a point where it is both thorough and unbiased. Kurtis (talk) 12:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Implementation request

Replace the lead with the following version. This version incorporates the changes proposed in the above section "Proposed edit," and which had clearly gained rough consensus. The discussion has been dormant long enough to make this edit-request a valid one per the guidelines at the top of this talk page. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:32, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Mass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, depending on the methodology used. Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made. Some higher estimates of mass killings include not only mass murders or executions that took place during the elimination of political opponents, civil wars, terror campaigns, and land reforms, but also lives lost due to war, famine, disease, and exhaustion in labor camps. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion combine all these deaths under the categories "mass killings", democide, politicide, "classicide", or loosely defined genocide. According to these scholars, the total death toll of the mass killings defined in this way amounts to many tens of millions; however, the validity of this approach is questioned by other scholars. In his summary of the estimates in the Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia suggested a death toll of between 85 and 100 million people.<ref name="Malia 1999">Malia, Martin (1999). "Foreword". In Courtois, Stéphane Courtois; Kramer, Mark (eds.). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. pp. ix–xx. ISBN 9780674076082. Retrieved 24 August 2015. ...with a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million.</ref>

As of 2011, academic consensus has not been achieved on causes of large scale killings by states, including by states governed by communists. In particular, the number of comparative studies suggesting causes is limited. The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.<ref name="Valentino">Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 91.</ref>[dubious – discuss] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries.

[User:Vanamonde93|Vanamonde93] The main problem is that estimates for the grand total "death toll" are both extremely rare and - almost inevitably - come from non-specialist and/or biased sources. This is simply a statement of fact. Of these grand estimates, the only authoritative ones come from the BBoC. Because this is all we have to work with, it is important to handle these very carefully and be as precise as possible about where these numbers come from. For this reason, I find Malia's range to be unacceptable. We know 94 million comes from Courtois, based on his work as the editor. We know that the 65-93 million come from Werth and Margolin, based on their work as the major specialist contributors. Where does Malia's 85-100 come from? From his painstaking work in writing a preface? It's the product of an unspecified "synthesis" of everything in the BBoC, but appears to be essentially Courtois's 94M retrofitted with a confidence interval (95% eh?). In my view, the inclusion of Malia's range serves only to obscure the underlying sources and any possible divergence between them. This probably explains its popularity (a single number from Coutois does not sound "scientific" or "neutral" enough, while reading the entire BBoC to make up one's own mind about the numbers is too much work). Just stating "Courtois estimated 94M deaths would have been far more honest than using Malia's not-notable, derivative and frankly pseudo-scientific range. Ideally, we should replace Malia with Courtois and Werth/Margolin.Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub, you're not far wrong; it's just that even getting consensus for this one proposal was so painful that I'm not inclined to go through the process again, and I am not one to reject an incremental improvement (which this is) because it does not go far enough. Were you to propose your change, I would support it, but let's at least wait until an admin acts on this edit request, and we can close the "attribution vs non-attribution chapter. Vanamonde93 (talk) 15:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough. However, I don't see how anyone can object in principle to replacing Malia with Courtois and M/W. I mean we are still operating entirely within the BBoC's unimpeachably "anti-communist" framework, and not citing any "less anti-communist" viewpoints. I propose the following change:
RM "In his summary of the estimates in the ... Malia suggested" ADD "In his introduction to Black Book of Communism, editor Stephane Courtois suggested a death toll of 94 million {citation}. Werth and Margolin, two the volume's principal contributors, gave an estimate of 65-93 million {citation}." .If you chose to use it, feel free to tweak as needed.Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:50, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

 Done, I have made the requested changes. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:26, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't get it

Why is Mass killings under Communist regimes still available, when Mass killings under capitalist regimes got deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Limngalsavigo (talk • contribs) 00:20, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

This article is still available because it meets Wikipedia's standard for inclusion, which is "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", and there has been a consensus among editors (established in the most recent deletion discussions in 2010: this one and this one) that the topic is suitable for a stand-alone article. For "Mass killings under Capitalist regimes", you can read those two deletion discussions here (2010) and here (2012), but the short version is that sources were not included in the article or produced during the discussion which justified the article's existence according to the standard for inclusion. That is not to say there never will be, but the mere existence of this article does not alone justify that one. Since I have never seen sources discussing a topic even remotely like that outside of reacting to the Black Book of Communism or similar sources, I would argue that it is best treated as a component of this topic, rather than as a stand-alone topic with its own article. It is already very briefly touched on in this article in the "Comparison to other mass killings" section and the "Inclusion of famine as killing" subsection of the "Controversies" section, but expansion will probably have to wait until the editing rules for this article are relaxed. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:40, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
Neither article meets Wikipedia policy, it's just that more editors have supported this article than the capitalism one. I note btw that the far right wiki, Metapedia has an article with the same name, but otherwise it is not a real topic even in anti-Communist literature. TFD (talk) 17:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
And not only Metapedia[1], but also Conservapedia[2]. Both wikis and Wikipedia use The Black Book of Communism as reference. It is easy to know what is the purpose and quality of that book. emijrp (talk) 18:43, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
The reason for the consensus to keep this article had little to do with the majority favoring it. A majority favored deletion in the first discussion in August 2009 but that did not cause it to happen. A majority opposed deletion in the second discussion in September 2009 but the result was "no consensus". A two-to-one majority favored "keep" in the third discussion in November 2009 but the result was still "no consensus". Deletion discussions are not votes. This is stated explicitly in the deletion guide here: "Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any)." The consensus to keep this article was only established during the fourth deletion discussion, in April 2010, because literally every argument in favor of deletion was shown to be without merit in the course of the discussion. Even the nominator changed their mind. A key part of that was the presentation of several high-quality, reliable, academic, secondary sources addressing the topic in detail (these four in particular). If you are serious about getting this article deleted, you owe it to yourself to read that deletion discussion (and the one after it, which reinforced the consensus determination but mostly retreaded the arguments) and come up with credible, Wikipedia-policy-based responses to the points made there.
The second point about the contents of Metapedia and Conservapedia proving the inherent bias of this article ignores a few things: one, I am sure there are plenty of articles in those wikis that also have counterparts here that you would not object to; two, this article is not based on those articles, is worded differently, and uses a different set of sources written by different people to meet a different standard; and three, and most importantly, Wikipedia articles are to be judged on their own merits and sourcing, based on Wikipedia policies, not on what other articles may or may not exist elsewhere (including elsewhere in Wikipedia). AmateurEditor (talk) 00:33, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Certainly deleting administrators are supposed to only consider policy based arguments, but if one editors says keep, it is a valid topic in rs, while another says it is not, both views must be considered. Your mention of 4 sources discussing the topic is inaccurate. Valentine for example, while noting that mass killings have occurred under Communist regimes, provides no theory about the connection. It would be the same as if he said that there have been mass killings in Asia and we created an article called "Mass killings under Asian regimes." Also, he identifies mass killings as over 50,000 people intentionally killed in a 5 year period, which is not the definition used here. He concluded that most Communist regimes did not carry out mass killings and only three definitely did (Soviet Union, China and Cambodia). Furthermore his book does not group mass killings in Afghanistan under MKuCR, but under counter-terrorism mass killings.

I think it is significant that Metapedia should choose to copy this article's title, althoug certainly they make an explicit connection between Jews and Communism, which this article does not. While there surely are articles in Metapedia that are about legitimate subjects, it is significant that the only other encyclopedias that chose to include this topic are Metapedia and Conservapedia. (Incidentally, the link goes to the wrong Conservapedia article.)

The inherent weakness with this article is that it begins with a thesis then seeks sources to back it up, rather than beginning with sources and developing an article about what they say. That creates a huge problem with weight. We cannot know how widely held your views about Communism and mass killings are, because the subject is ignored in mainstream and even most fringe sources.

TFD (talk) 01:15, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you that deletions discussions are to be judged on policy based arguments, not majorities. Valentino (not "Valentine") certainly does identify a connection between the mass killing under communist regimes. You can call it a theory if you want, but I would rather just call it his opinion. He says "I argue that radical communist regimes have proven such prodigious killers primarily because the social change they sought to bring about have resulted in the sudden and nearly complete material and political dispossession of millions of people." I think the article is right not to limit itself too strictly to his 50,000 killed within 5 years standard, because it is an arbitrary boundary that even he acknowledges as such. He himself uses the term to also refer to smaller events, saying "Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa." And you are mistaken about Afghanistan: he attributes the mass killing there to multiple overlapping causes, one of which is communism.
I don't think what is copied or written in Metapedia or Conservapedia is in any way significant to our discussion here.
There are more than enough good sources to justify this article by Wikipedia's standard. The four sources I presented were published by mainstream academic presses (Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press), so it is very far from fringe. I agree with you that this article was started poorly. It has, however, improved a great deal since then and you are welcome to propose edits to improve it further. Better yet, why not push to relax the editing restrictions so we can improve it faster? AmateurEditor (talk) 02:17, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
While Valentino does say that, he does not elaborate on his theory. Furthermore, it would only justify creating an article on his theory, although the lack of secondary sources covering it meets it fails notability. Max Weber presented a theory, the protestant ethic which says that Protestants are more industrious than Catholics due to their religious beliefs, and rightly that article explains his theory. But it does not attempt to prove his theory by coatracking in articles about economic success in the UK and U.S. and economic failure in Italy and Spain. Furthermore to reach good article status it would need to present opposing views. Note too that Valentino refers to "radical Communist" regimes, which presumably would be Stalinist USSR, Maoist China and Pol Pot's Cambodia rather than for example Gorbachev's Soviet Union. TFD (talk) 03:16, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Valentino elaborates quite a bit, he dedicated an entire chapter in his book to it. And he is just one of several academics who have studied the observed phenomenon of these killings. His "theory"/explanation of why these killings occurred shouldn't be confused with the topic of the killings themselves being somehow theoretical, or the topic being somehow outside of the academic mainstream, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
No, he provides three case studies (USSR, China and Cambodia) and other than the one sentence in the intro, does nothing to tie them to communist ideology. And he puts Afghanistan into a separate section (counter-insurgency, which btw is also carried out by non-Communist regimes.) The Black Book incidentally does the same thing. Different scholars were invited to write separate chapters about mass killings in USSR, China and Cambodia, but none of them tied them TFD (talk) 13:47, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
We agree that Valentino ties this to communism (and he used more than that one sentence to explain himself, by the way, I just didn't see the need to copy it all to prove the point). If he structured his chapter with case studies of the big three, and others did similarly in their publications, then we were right to have structured this article that way. Establishing due weight in the article for the components of this topic is not so difficult after all: we focus on the big three (U.S.S.R, China, and Cambodia) and give less space to the others examples. You are right that Valentino discusses Afghanistan in a different section of his book (chapter 6 on counter-guerrilla mass killing), but wrong that he does not also relate it to communism. You can see here on table 5 on page 83 that he lists "communist" as an additional motive for the events there. Having different authors invited to write different sections of a book on communism as a whole is a practical way of concentrating expertise, not a trick on the part of the publisher or something. The writers of the Black Book of Communism knew what the project was about and signed on with that knowledge, whatever their later misgivings about the overall numerical estimate provided by Courtois. Controversy about particular estimates or causes is not the same as controversy about the topic as a topic. As a topic, I don't think this is controversial at all outside the left. There is lots of legitimate dispute about the details, and this article must accurately reflect that. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:40, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
That's a flimsy basis on which to build an article. In a table, Valentino puts the word "communism" in the field "other causes" for Afghanistan, yet never explains what the extent was. He did not mention it in the article. The authors of the articles in the Black Book knew that Courtois would compare and contrast mass killings in the various countries, yet none of them did so themselves. Even if you used original research and synthesis, the connection would be flimsy,
The other problem is that if a notable theory exists, we are able to report it, but we should not assemble information in order to prove it. That is why "Jews and Communism" was deleted. It pulled together a bunch of examples of Jews who were Communists in order to imply a connection between Judaism and Communism, just as this article pulls together mass killings to draw a connection.
TFD (talk) 16:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
The sourcing basis of this article has nothing to do with Valentino's treatment of Afghanistan, and I don't know why you would expect an extended explanation from him in a chart. I pointed that out to demonstrate your misunderstanding of his views on the events there, where he clearly considers communism to be a secondary motive (but not irrelevant). I also don't know why you would expect someone assigned to write a specific chapter in a collaborative work to color outside their lines. The Black Book of Communism is rightly treated as a whole because it was created that way. We would be right to wonder at their relevance if those chapters were copied from earlier unrelated publications without their authors' permission. That was not the case here. And why are you ignoring all the other academic sources presented to you here that "draw the connection" between communist regimes and mass killing, and which actually do serve as the basis for this article, along with those two? No original research or synthesis is needed to write this article. What is needed is a large number of edits to heal the scarring and mutilation that resulted from several years of rushed writing, lazy reading, partisan bickering, bad faith argument, and disruptive editing. I think the article is actually remarkably OK considering the circumstances, but there is a lot to do and all of it can be improved. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree with the argument that "if there's no articles of capitalist regimes, then this one should be deleted". Capitalism and communism are completely different concepts. Capitalism is merely a system of economics and ownership, while communism is political ideology and state system. Unlike communism, capitalism has no single canonical description, it's rather a loosely knit catalogue of economical concepts. Communism on the other hand had a number of canonical authors (Marx, Engels, Lenin), manifestos and a few branches, that can be clearly distinguished but come from the same origin. These canonical works of communism also clearly visible tendency towards violence and class cleansing, which was the very reason why mass killings were happening in the regimes described in the article. This article should perhaps discuss in more details the topic of systemic violence in marxism and communism, but the current description of historical killings has also its value. Kravietz (talk) 20:11, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You might be right, but you would need sources that explain the connection between Communist violence and canonical works. If such a view was notable then we would be able to establish the degree of acceptance it has and write a neutral article. Some violence by capitalist states have been attributed to capitalism, at least by some writers. (See for example Chomsky's writings.) TFD (talk) 20:46, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
I think that Kravietz is correct in saying that the comparison between Capitalism and Communism is not a symmetric one, and a bit of an apples vs oranges situation. I am still unsure of how I feel about the existence of this article. On the one hand, the topic is clearly notable, and has received coverage in reliable sources. On the other hand, treating these mass killings as a unified subject is not common among scholarly works, (I think) primarily because communism is not remotely unified. I think it was TFD who said that really the mass killings which have received significant attention are those in China, Cambodia, and the USSR, and even there the scholars making the connection between them are basically just Stephane Courtois....Vanamonde93 (talk) 22:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
I've done quite a bit of reading on this for this article, and I am not confident in saying that treating these killings in a unified way is uncommon among scholarly works (assuming you mean scholarly works where you would expect to see such treatment, rather than in narrowly focused works, which would be more numerous almost by necessity). In fact, I think the sentence in the lead that says "Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies,..." is technically synthesis, as it is not specifically stated in any source I am aware of (although I would bet it's true). The Black Book of Communism is definitely the impetus behind the surge in scholarly attention on this, but I don't think it is right to attribute everything to Coutois. Even where other scholars are citing Courtois, they are making their own contributions. I hope we can all agree on this: everything in the article should have a citation backing it up and the sourcing should determine the article's shape and content. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
In the first place, "sources that explain the connection between Communist violence and canonical works" were not subject of this discussion. It started from "capitalism vs communism" and this is precisely what I responded to. Then, the connection between communism and violence is pretty well documented in articles on Dictatorship of the proletariat, Revolutionary socialism and Red terror. And finally, you don't really need any formal "proof" (which is impossible in such vague topic as social science), because the article is about communist regimes that explicitly self-declared themselves as communist. And this is correct approach - otherwise one could deny practically any connection between theory and practice of any ideology (sample: was Germany a real nazism? and what was actually nazism about? did they actually finish building nazi state? etc) Kravietz (talk) 22:57, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
If we were able to create articles about "communist regimes that explicitly self-declared themselves as communist" then we could throw the notability policy out the window. The fact that social sciences are not exact sciences does not mean that our own opinions are as valid as ones published in reliable sources. Anyway we do have articles such as "Slavery" because social scientists unanimously believe that slavery did exist. And of course we could write about capitalist regimes that carried out mass killings, because Nazi Germany and South American dictatorships were capitalist. The neutrality problem with that article is that it would imply these events were connected to capitalism, yet provide no sources. That is the same propaganda technique used in "Jews and Communism" - the listing of Jewish Communists and stats gave the impression that Communism was a Jewish project without providing any sources that made that analysis.
Incidentally, one of the sources used for this article, the Lost Literature of Socialism does draw an explicit connection between the canons of socialism and mass killings. According to the author, obscure writings of Marx and Engels called for mass killings, which Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot carried out. Unfortunately it does not jive with the standard anti-Communist ideology, because it sees socialism and nazism as conservative.
TFD (talk) 02:09, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
If I remember that discussion correctly, it was agreed that while Watson's book, The Lost Literature of Socialism, met Wikipedia's standard for inclusion, the views expressed there were outside the mainstream and it should both be given the lowest weight in the article and be paired with criticism from other reliable sources (which is how it sits today). I think that was the right decision. We didn't anticipate at the time how stunted the growth of the article would become under these wrong-headed sanctions, so the relative low weight of that source is not as obvious now as it should be. The solution is to resume building out the rest of the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:27, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Watson is an expert on Victorian English literature and his book was published with a professional publisher (there is even a second edition), and reviewed in a literary journal but otherwise ignored. I suppose that makes it meet a low threshold for rs, but there is no reasonable basis for presenting the opinions it expresses. Why has no editor called for his views to be included in articles about conservatism, liberalism, socialism, etc.? TFD (talk) 02:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
It turns out that he died not too long ago. Here's an article about him in the New Statesman. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:38, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Vanamonde93, the comparison will never be symmetric on an english language wikipedia, but not primarily for the reasons that Kravietz mentions. The asymmetry is primarily a product of the very long Cold War (spanning 80-odd years), which was itself asymmetric. This cannot fail to influence the overall balance of the literature that most editors rely on. It also cannot fail to produce some editors who will zealously defend the American hawk's eye view of history, even in places where they are on very weak ground. This in my view is reason why both of the "mass killings" articles do more harm than good: they essentially reflect the balance of political forces and encourage bias and generalization.
For example the article on capitalist mass killings could have easily included slavery, the industrial revolution, the bourgeois revolutions, world wars, colonialism, the holocaust, ethnic cleansing, famine and malnutrition, the Vietnam War, inequality etc etc. Contrary to TFD, sources plenty of sources describe the regimes responsible for these unspeakable crimes as capitalist, some even draw a connection between capitalist dynamics and the said crimes, which is trivial to do. You'd get quite a few corpses that way. This does not even touch upon the fact that the business of flashing the numbers of human rights violations has been targeted disproportionately at Communist regimes. Producing body counts and atrocity stories is both difficult and labor intensive. Due to the cold war, millions of man hours have been spent documenting and publicizing the crimes of the other side. No remotely comparable effort has been directed towards disputing these numbers or cataloging "our" crimes. This is the reason why many of the lesser-researched and fringe communist atrocity stories make their way to wikipedia without any challenge. One would expect that they would strain credulity and require proper verification, but they don't because they fit the general narrative established during the cold war. I am speaking here from extensive personal experience. To channel Chomsky (sorry): incriminating the enemy requires less evidence than incriminating one's own regime. This is simply a fact of life.
All this is NOT to dispute the fact that Communist regimes were responsible for tens of millions of deaths, which they most certainly were. I am simply urging caution when approaching the "reliable sources" on commie atrocities. An article such as this one simply encourages one to compile a list of the more extreme "anti-communist" sources - which are in plentiful supply - regardless of their merit. Take a look at the sections on Vietnam and Hungary. Would such blatant black propaganda be acceptable on any other issue? How to explain the weight that Rummel (who charged the post-Stalin USSR with killing 7 million people) is given throughout Wikipedia?Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
And actually Kravietz, if you want to be pedantic about the ideological foundations, all the regimes you mention described themselves as "democratic", "popular" and god knows what else. Interestingly, none of them claimed preside over a communist society. But remember Stalin's slogan? Hint: it's not Communism in one country. Of course "communism" remained their purported goal and was one common thread. My goal for example is six-pack abs. As for the "dictatorship of the proletariat", I never knew that auto-workers were a significant presence in the Khmer Rouge, or in Cambodia as a whole. Sorry, I know this tongue in cheek is not terribly constructive, but I couldn't resist. After all this thread won't really affect the article anyway. Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:53, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Capitalism has no "canonical works", especially ones that would propose disappearance of a whole social class to achieve equality. Communism has well-defined canonical works which propose precisely that: and if you follow the history of communist movement between 19 and 20th century, you will see that the mainstream communism (Marxism, then Marxism-Leninism) made a number of critical decision choices that were always pro-violence. First, it was the Critique of the Gotha Program and Marx's opposition to any form of evolutionary socialism, then Lenin's State and Revolution. The connection between the ideology and further actions of these government is in these cases quite clear and IMHO justifies an article that documents practical outcome of these choices. You might write a huge articles listing all possible atrocities in the history and blame it on vaguely defined "capitalism" (actually using it as a synonym for "greed"), but pointing out to any canonical works would be difficult. In the first place, there are no "canonical works" for capitalism, second, none of those I know call for extermination of people. And those for communism do. Kravietz (talk) 05:30, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub, You are not correctly reflecting what I wrote. I wrote, "Some violence by capitalist states have been attributed to capitalism...." Sometimes that violence has resulted in mass killings. What we do not have is a body of literature that connects "mass killings" with capitalism, as opposed to specific case studies. I notice that Pluto Press published Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Genocide in 2013, but that does not constitute a body of literature. Even if we had dozens of similar books, it would be tendentious to present detailed accounts mass killings carried out by capitalist regimes rather than explain why some people think they are connected.
Kravietz, no communist canons call for extermination, but lots of pro-capitalist texts, especially in the age of imperialism, can be read that way. It may not be greed either. It could for example be justified if primitive races or communists stood in the way of property rights.
TFD (talk) 06:39, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
There are plenty of marxist canons for extermination, please refer to the articles mentioned above. A wide selection of citations is also available in Wikiquote. Kravietz (talk) 19:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
None of the quotes say that. Please provide a single source that backs up your view. TFD (talk) 15:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Here you go: "The working class must act in such a manner that the revolutionary excitement does not collapse immediately after the victory. On the contrary, they must maintain it as long as possible. Far from opposing so-called excesses, such as sacrificing to popular revenge of hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful memories are attached, such deeds must not only be tolerated, but their direction must be taken in hand, for examples' sake." (Karl Marx, Address to the Communist League (1850)) or "there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror." (Marx, 1848) or "The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward." (F. Engels, "The Magyar Struggle"), or "Under all conditions well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points" (Trotsky, 1940). This is just a small sample, I didn't bother to quote Derzhynski or Latsis. Kravietz (talk) 20:06, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
If you read entire the "Address to the Communist League (1850)", Marx was daring the "radical democrats" - read NOT the Worker's League or workers in general - to carry out their "terroristic phrases" in their struggle against the dictatorship. He was not calling upon the Worker's League to engage in wanton murder, which would have been absurd, but rather to egg on the "radical democrats" in their attack on the old regime. So what was the task of the Workers League? To "Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’ clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers’ suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself." Later, the attitude of Marxists toward petty-bourgois "terror" evolved into one of outright hostility. It is no accident that you cite the early Marx here. Regardless, the connection between Stalinist terror and a few phrases from the early Marx is tenuous at best, especially given the context. What were the main characterictics of Stalinist terror and what did they have in common with these phrases from Marx, other than the general acceptance of violence, which was and remains universal? Did Marx in 1848-50 call upon the workers to murder all rich peasants or to murder left and right deviationsists within their own ranks? In any case Marx was not much of a terrorist in his day. Like "dictatoship", terror was a generic term back then. There were far more appeals to terror in non-Marxist radical literature (anarchists, radical democrats, narodniks etc), and mass violence was practiced by all political forces. To bring it all back to WP, you can certainly cite any source that explicitly makes the connection between Marx and Stalin, but there are also tons of sources which view it as being highly problematic.Guccisamsclub (talk) 02:23, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Marx called for a violent revolution and explicitly rejected possibility of a peaceful transition (like Gotha). Because he believed he discovered 'universal laws of history and economics' and the revolution is unevitable, he didn't call for an immediate uprising, because it should have happened by itself. But where it would happen, he fully approved use of violence. The objective was 'disappearance of bourgeoisie as a class', and since he did not leave many precise instructions on what should happen after the revolution, these proposals were freely interpreted by their interpreters. Many variants of which we have seen in 20th century. My authority on Marxism, Leszek Kolakowski wrote in his Main Currents of Marxism that while Marx's intentions were generally to achieve a democractic state, the 'logic of the ideology' he described was such that allowed quite extreme interpretations and this is precisely what happened in USSR in his opinnion. I can only add to that that Marx's definition of 'democracy' was also not really compliant with today's definition of democracy. When saying about 'true democracy' Marx meant rather something like ochlocracy, and absolute rule of majority (the working class), but not neccesarily the whole set of democratic institutions like freedom of speech, public debate, free elections etc. This fitted the logic of marxism, because he believed after the dictatorship of the proletariat there will be 'classless communism' but, again, this was as scientific as Terry Pratchett's books. Kravietz (talk) 21:31, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
User:Kravietz, you are blowing the existence of supposedly "canonical texts" out of all proportion. We are not talking about religious sects. Colonialism had no canonical texts, does that mean it never existed? Same goes for New World slavery. Same for feudalism. Disputing the existence of capitalism as a distinct politico-economic system because it has no "canonical documents" is clearly fringe and absurd. Systems exist primarily for material reasons, not because some guy draws up a model and everyone agrees. Capitalism is very diverse, but that does not mean it's undefinable. Indeed the term is familiar and recognizable the world over. There is hardly ever serious disagreement about whether a country can be described as capitalist, through there is plenty of bickering about "true capitalism" among the faithful (just as there was the same kind among Communist regimes.)
Just go and read Lenin's State and Revolution to see why 'canonical texts' are important. Lenin is approaching writings of Marx and Engels in the same way as salafites approach texts of Muhammad and Witnesses of Jehova approach Bible. They pick up specific sentences, take single words, to come to their decision-making conclusions - in case of Lenin, that "Engels' historical analysis of its role becomes a veritable panegyric on violent revolution", for example. Also you're not that much wrong about the religion - sectarian character of Marxism has been pointed out by Karl Popper and Leszek Kolakowski. Kravietz (talk) 19:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
IMO there is indeed an asymmetry "capitalism" and "socialism" (in the revolutionary sense), namely that the former arose to describe an existing system, while the latter arose to describe a future system. As far as I can tell, the only thing that follows from this is that it is much more straightforward to describe the USA as capitalist than the USSR as socialist. We don't have to qualify our labeling of a country as "capitalist" with "but according to Von Mises, true capitalism is X Y Z..." or "some people prefer it be called the Free World", because capitalism as a developed social system preceded the actual term. On the other hand, while Marx's did not invent the socialist movement, his writing clearly preceded the establishment of any "socialist" regime that claimed him as its own. So if we follow your emphasis on canonical texts we would have to qualify socialism each and every time by highlighting the differences between the original vision and the reality of 20th century Communist regimes. Before too long, every article will begin to sound like a Trotskyist pamphlet.
The words 'socialism' are so overloaded with meanings that they're now pretty much meaningless, especially socialism, as it's used to describe spectrum as wide as from public healthcare, through social-democracy to 'real socialism' in USSR. Communism is simpler, as it's mostly used to describe the marxist-leninist fraction simply because they called themselves as 'approaching communism', and were considered as the most successful of all fractions (of course, untill 1990). And all 'communist' states indeed shared the same core of marxism, similar methods and aims. With capitalist states it's much more difficult: can you see find many similarities between capitalist Sweden and Russia, China and Germany, US and France? They are indeed very different political and social systems, but tend to call them all 'capitalist'. Kravietz (talk) 19:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
I'll just respond one last time: what I had in mind was socialism as envisioned by revolutionaries in the 19th century. It is only appropriate to ask what the original meaning of the term had to do with Marxism-Leninism. I completely agree that state-socialism (Marxist-Leninist variant) is a less diverse category than capitalism, but its is still fairly diverse. Indeed it is possible to see the Cuba as vastly different from Democratic Kampuchea. As for capitalism, of course all of these countries have a capitalist economic system, coupled with a political system that perpetuates it. This is not even debatable. The existence of a welfare state or dictatorship does not mean that a country is not capitalist. Again capitalism is almost universally accepted as a valid category. Guccisamsclub (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Turning to the particular documents you mention, are you aware that the Gotha Programme was founding document of the Social Democratic Party of Germany? Or of the fact that canonical texts of the Bolsheviks included Kautsky's works? The State and Revolution is almost universally seen as a libertarian document, in stark contrast to the actual workings of the future Soviet system. In any case few scholars pretend that the connection between the wording of the founding documents and the resulting social system is trivial to make. Usually conservative people just borrow the argument of Edmund Burke: that any social revolution will lead to terror and misery, regardless of the revolutionaries original intent. This of course makes any analysis of the canonical writings irrelevant, as all revolution are expected to lead to lead to the same disaster anyhow (be they anti-colonialism, anti-slavery, anarchist, bourgeois, peasant etc.)
I'm very well aware of both Gotha Program and Kautsky's position, and you missed the key point: Marx totally rejected Gotha Programme (thus "Critique of...") and Bolsheviks considered Kautsky to be a "renegade" (lital title of Lenin's article). This is precisely what I meant when I wrote about key decisions points made by Marx and Lenin towards more violent variants - social democracy went the very other way and was never called "communism" in the mainstream, because this word was used to describe Bolshevik movement. Kravietz (talk) 19:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Sorry I misread. As far as the mainstream German social democracy is concerned (including Kautsky) it certainly took the Critique of the Gotha Programme to heart, after it became a more Marxist party (Lassalle was not a Marxist). The Renegade Kautsky was written after the fallout of the war, which resulted in a split in the word socialist movement. Lenin considered German Social Democracy as a model before the war, and greatly respected Kautsky. Also as far as founding texts are concerned, consider the prestige of Plekhanov in Soviet Marxism, particularly from Stalin onwards.Guccisamsclub (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
By the way one of the more convincing connections between the model and the result was drawn by a Communist named Nicos Poulantzas in "State, Power, Socialism". Poulatzas argument is that Lenin, and to a far lesser degree Marx, were dangerously wrong in calling for the complete destruction of the capitalist state and its replacement with workers' councils. Like Rosa Luxemburg before him, he advocates a middle road between parliamentary and soviet democracy.
Ok. I think its time to stop writing because this thread is already too long. An interesting but futile debate.Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:34, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Kravietz, you are taking quotes and adding your own nonstandard interpretation. Following your reasoning, when Michael Harrington said there should be no poor people in America, that was a call to take out all poor people and shoot them. TFD (talk) 18:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Minor change to ref -- edit protected request

Page has been protected for a while, so requesting this minor reference format change please, change ref at end of Further Reading from:

To

This adds the DOI and corrects the volume/issue parameters. Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:07, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:43, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Proposed additions to section "Comparison to other mass killings"

I would like to seek consensus on adding the following materials to the section Comparison to other mass killings for the purpose of counterbalance:

Mark Aarons contends that right-wing authoritarian regimes backed by Western powers committed atrocities and mass killings comparable to the Communist world, citing such examples as the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Indonesian killings of 1965–66, the "disappearances" in Guatemala during the civil war, and the torture and killings associated with Operation Condor throughout the Southern Cone of South America.[1] Daniel Goldhagen claims that during the last two decades of the Cold War, the number of U.S.-backed regimes practicing "mass-murderous politics" outnumbered those of the Soviet Union.[2] John Henry Coatsworth suggests the number of repression victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc during the period 1960 to 1990.[3][4]

References

  1. ^ Mark Aarons (2007). "Justice Betrayed: Post-1945 Responses to Genocide." In David A. Blumenthal and Timothy L. H. McCormack (eds). The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (International Humanitarian Law). Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 9004156917 pp. 71 & 80–81
  2. ^ Daniel Goldhagen (2009). Worse Than War. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-58648-769-8 p.537
    • "During the 1970s and 1980s, the number of American client states practicing mass-murderous politics exceeded those of the Soviets."
  3. ^ "The Cold War in Central America, 1975-1991" John H. Coatsworth, Ch 10
  4. ^ Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (2014). The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I. Haymarket Books. p. xviii. ISBN 1608464067

--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:28, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose Sounds like trying to make this a "POV-fork" - as articles on the other categories already exist on Wikipedia. Perhaps you would do better improving those other articles instead of crating a faux balance in this one?Collect (talk) 15:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
the current section already suffers from POV, clearly. What Griffin proposes are a few quibbles, that cannot possibly derail the overall narrative presented the article - which is carved in stone thanks to the imposed restrictions. But what Griffin is proposing is that we balance short opinion statements with other short opinion statements, neither of which ultimately serves the best interests of readers. The section is practically bound to be both highly contentious and short on substance (due to length constraints and the very nature of the problem), making it unencyclopedic. It's only purpose it to serve as a flashpoint for POV disputes. I therefore see no reason why it should not be deleted outright - in fact your point that comparisons to other social systems is irrelevant is simply an argument for deleting the existing exisiting section outright. For more on this issue - see my response to user 'Volunteer Marek'. -Gucci81.88.116.27 (talk) 01:17, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:DUE. Comparisons between such killings are frequent in the literature, and form a significant portion of academic coverage on this subject. Therefore, it needs to be covered. The current version does not adequately cover the diversity of academic views on the subject. Collect, POV-forks refer to separate articles; Griffin's addition is required by policy, which states that "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources." Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:39, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
The "other articles" already exist - thus if we add this here, we should also add the material from this article to the others. This addition is thus not "required by policy" - it flies in the face of the practice under which each article can be separate. Anti-communist mass killings already exists. If you wish it to be included here, propose a merge at AfD. And add all the articles in the Politicide and Genocide categories whilst you are at it <g>. Sorry -- hard enough to have a simple article on a single topic without infusing it with every killing under the sun. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
The article you mentioned does not have a section comparing anti-communist mass killings to others (perhaps it should); this article does. This section is inadequate and POV as it omits what scholars have to say on the subject of comparing Communist mass killings to those of Western-backed regimes in the context of the Cold War. I did not make this up out of whole cloth as a POV-fork; the scholarship mentions these incidents in that specific context. No one is trying to infuse the article "with every killing under the sun."--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:18, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
I do not think they compare "Communist mass killings," since that topic does not exist outside this article, but they compare mass killings by the USSR or Eastern European countries. TFD (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Aarons does compare the "mass repressions and killings occurred throughout the Communist world" (including the USSR, PRC and DK) to those of Western backed regimes (see the link in my last comment). As the proposed additions above indicate, Goldhagen and Coatsworth are comparing such killings only to those of the USSR and/or Eastern Bloc.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:46, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Other than saying "These atrocities have been matched by those committed by Western backed or sponsored dictators or regimes," he does not say anything. His article is about the lack of prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The article for example does not explain how MKuCR differs from Western supported mass killings. TFD (talk) 19:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
TFD, your long-standing denial that this topic exists at all, despite the clear "Keep" outcomes of two consecutive AfD discussions, verges on trolling. But to assume good faith, here are excerpts of four sources that address this topic directly, one of which has a chapter literally called "Communist Mass Killings". AmateurEditor (talk) 03:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Accusing another editor of trolling is a personal attack. Despite two consecutive decisions to keep, there were three consecutive decisions of no consensus. The article was created by a troll, who has been indefinitely blocked[3] and his user and talk pages have been deleted. After I nominated this article for deletion you set up a page about me, User:AmateurEditor/thefourdeuces, which has been deleted, but clicking it one can still see the advice it was deleted. This article has been protected from editing since 2011[4] based on enforcement of WP:EEML of which you were a party.

I have already commented on your sources. It reminds me of the subject who is shown inkblot pictures and says, "Why are you showing me dirty pictures." The dispute between Russia and Ukraine etc. is ethnic/nationalist based, not ideological, and we should not conflate them. That the dispute remains despite the ideological shift proves that.

As I explained, there is literature about mass killings in each of these countries, and some articles connect mass killings by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, but no one (except us) has put them all together.

TFD (talk) 15:06, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, your behavior has been more like civil POV pushing than baiting people for fun. But you have demonstrated a pattern of tendentious behavior with this article that is absolutely appropriate to discuss. I'm not disparaging you personally, I'm telling you that your refusal to accept the well-established consensus here is disruptive to the process. Those three "no consensus" determinations preceded the two clear "Keep" determinations, which are the most recent ones (and the most relevant, since they included the sources I just again provided to you). It's true that I was assembling a case about your behavior to present on a noticeboard back in 2009 (your claim it was an attack page was dismissed at the time, see here), but I thought your behavior then was too similar to the behavior of others involved here on the other side of the dispute to justify singling you out. However, you're completely wrong that I had anything to do with the EEML group; you may remember that those editors were blocked while the "Keep" consensus was established, and I participated in both of those "Keep" AfDs. If you have honest problems with those four sources, then you should address the excerpts in detail to try to convince others. Dismissing them as "inkblot" tests for the reader does nothing to convince anyone and serves only to disrespect those who disagree with you. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:32, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Probably best to avoid personal attacks on the article discussion page. A large number os editors have always found this article problematic and it is the longest protected article in Wikipedia history, so there is no real consensus on the article content, which is why we continue to discuss it. TFD (talk) 16:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
As I recall, the last time it was proposed to ease the protection level, you opposed it. But the length of the article protection doesn't reflect badly on the article itself so much as it reflects no clear consensus to change the protection level. Maybe that's what we should be discussing. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:13, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
The reason that I opposed unprotecting was that without any general agreement on how we were to proceed, there could be no improvement. Administrators have kept this article protected because there is disagreement about it. It's not a matter of they thought this article was so outstanding that any changes could only weaken its excellence. TFD (talk) 23:00, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, the article protection doesn't reflect on the article at all, one way or the other. But you have not been trying to improve the article, you have been denying its legitimacy despite the "Keep" consensus and despite the plain evidence that the consensus is based upon being presented to you. Rather than trying to convince others that you are right, which would certainly be appropriate for a time despite any consensus, you make empty assertions over a span of years that the topic doesn't even exist, and when (repeatedly) presented with the quoted evidence you ignore, dismiss, or strangely belittle it as "inkblot pictures". Disagreements over how to improve the article would be no problem at all, but you want it deleted, despite everything to the contrary.
You don't have to change your opinions, and you don't have to stop criticizing, but refusing to acknowledge reality doesn't make it go away. When even showing you use of the term "Communist mass killings" in a reliable source doesn't get you to acknowledge that the topic exists, and even - and I'll link to them again - emphasizing in bold font the use of the generalized term "communist regimes" in quotes from several reliable sources doesn't make an impact on you, and even posting a quote using the generalized term "communist regimes" to this talk page, as Collect did below, so that you don't even have to take the effort to click on the link to the academic source gets no reaction from you, then disruptive POV pushing on your part is the only reasonable explanation.
And yet, still, I think you could contribute to improving the article. Constructive criticism of it is valuable and I don't actually want you to get blocked. Half a loaf is better than none, and you've gotten none here for a long time. C.J. Griffin's proposed edit makes a significant contribution to diversifying the perspectives on the topic in the article. Surely you would rather accomplish something with your time on Wikipedia other than beating a dead horse. There's plenty to do. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:30, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support. The sentences add missing perspectives that improve the article's coverage and neutrality, and the citations check out. Citing sources with points of view is appropriate for that section of the article and is done appropriately in the proposal. The views are clearly attributed to their sources and not in Wikipedia's voice. That section is explicitly for sources that have made these comparisons and it is not altering the subject of the article to include them. Collect's concern that it would create a POV fork does not apply because this is not a proposal to create an article focused on one POV of the topic, it is more like the opposite of that: it is filling out the various diverse POV's on this topic found in the sources. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment In addition to the "Black Book", other places using this as a defined topic include Rummel's many works, Valentino's Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century, Rosefielde's Red Holocaust, Travis' Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations: Exploring the Causes of Mass Killing Since 1945, Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, and slews more including [5] which says that "communist regimes, when they do engage in mass killing, kill large numbers of people." And so on. Wikipedia is not the only place noting the issue. Collect (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I imagine you were replying to me. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin discusses mass killings by Stalin between 1933 and 1945. As I said above, "there is literature about mass killings in each of these countries, and some articles connect mass killings by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, but no one (except us) has put them all together." The same discussion came up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination). As I wrote there, "The article fails notability because no books or articles have been written about the topic. In the few cases where the subject is mentioned in reliable sources, it usually contains the statement that no studies have been conducted on this topic. Of course there are various articles about Jews and Communism in different countries at different times, for example Jews under Communism in Stalin's Soviet Union or Communist Jews in the United States between the two world wars. But nothing links them, making the article implicit "synthesis."" TFD (talk) 00:01, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - this article is about mass killings under communist regimes, not about cold war. What's next, shove Holocaust in here and conclude that Stalin wasn't really that bad after all? If people want to add extra content about anti-communist massacres then there is whole separate article for that: Anti-communist mass killings. Feel free to expand that.--Staberinde (talk) 16:45, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, but the section in question compares communist mass killings to other (non-communist) mass killings. The Holocaust is already mentioned there, btw.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 23:29, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Exactly. Comparisons to other killings are made in a variety of directions in sources about this topic, so we shouldn't be excluding these based on our own personal preferences. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:32, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
To second the above remarks - the article did shove the Holocaust in there - it's right there in the very section we're discussing. And what does the article tell us? Communist atrocities were "at least as heinous" as the Holocaust (and according the very source the article quotes for this breathless POV (Rosenfielde) - they were 10 times more murderous than Hitler and Hirohito combined). Not one quibble, not one contrary opinion to this near-revisionism of the Holocaust and WWII is presented - not one. That is where things stand with current section.81.88.116.27 (talk) 23:31, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
I think that as long as the points of view are correctly sourced and accurately represented, we are actually obligated to include them if they are on topic, per WP:YESPOV. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
True as long there is due weight to include such a comparision. And that's dubious with this kind of "gotcha!" commentary. Every instance of human rights violations by communist states does not warrant a mention of US foreign policy. --Pudeo' 02:01, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Oppose. C.J. Griffin is scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel with worthless sources like Chomsky, Coatsworth, and outspoken genocide denier Edward Herman to promote his anti-American agenda. It is profoundly telling that three of Griffin's four examples are civil wars (in Indonesia, Guatemala, and East Timor; the latter conflict also involved foreign occupation by Indonesia and extensive atrocities by communist rebels who were responsible for 49% of the violent killings in 1975; for the purposes of this article, it would be more relevant to discuss the brief period of communist rule in East Timor) while the fourth, Operation Condor, is a laughable far-left hoax article that collapses upon even a cursory examination and should probably be deleted. ("At least" 60,000 to 80,000 killed, based on citogenesis with mainstream sources that say "as many as 60,000" and blogs used for the higher figures? How is that possible, when the official estimates for all killings perpetrated by the juntas in Argentina and Chile combined account for only a meager 16,000 and none of the other countries included in the definition committed atrocities of any statistical significance? BTW, not even the actions of Argentina or Chile would constitute "mass killing" as defined by Valentino et al.; "repression victims" is not "mass killing", but a selective POV WP:COATRACK.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:19, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Do you have any sources for your statement about Indonesia? TFD (talk) 04:23, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Which statement? If you are talking about the events of 1965-66, the communists attempted to seize power by force, and it backfired horribly. Rather than an organized purge, what followed was a chaotic campaign of vigilante violence enjoying broad popular support, with killings conducted face-to-face and using the most primitive and brutal methods. As the main article says, the role of the army has never been fully explained; in some cases, the authorities had to intervene to put an end to the bloodbath. The communists fought back and in some areas continued guerrilla warfare for years afterward: "In a number of areas communists regrouped. Bali, like parts of Java, was almost in a state of civil war until military groups came in and tipped the balance in favor of the anti-communists....In parts of East Java, conflict lasted for years. In Blitar, Sukarno's birthplace, PKI survivors regrouped for guerrilla action before they were crushed in 1967 and 1968."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:19, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Of course, this isn't merely a semantic point; the point is that Suharto's regime did not commit mass killings as part of its normal process of domestic rule (in fact Indonesia under Suharto was characterized by many of the systems of social consultation that constitute a democracy).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:32, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Your last argument carries zero weight. If we were to judge Stalin's regime by the last years of his rule, he would not go down in history as a mass-murderer. If someone cherry picked a citation to this effect, shoved it into Wikipedia to advance the POV that "Stalin was not a bad guy" - they'd be universally regarded as insane or worse. But somehow your utterly clumsy whitewashing of Suharto is supposed to be taken seriously? And what did this "social consultation" consist of under the late Suharto? Massive looting of public funds and awe-inspiring corruption a la Mobutu (who also implemented a sham "parliamentarism" in his latter years)? 81.88.116.27 (talk) 19:48, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support The current section is laughably POV. It quotes Goldhagen - selectively. It quotes Rosenfielde at length - including a flippant remark about mass death under Capitalism being "fashionable nonsense". I also like his quote about the "Red Holocaust" being "as heinous" as the Holocaust. Yep - nothing contentious about that innocent little remark. Also, while Rosenfielde's section on the USSR - his area of expertise - is well sourced and accurate (though very little of the research is his own) - his section on Vietnam is FRINGE garbage. And yet he's a "reliable source" on the entire history of Communism, whose claim that Communism was "ten times as murderous" as Hitler and Hirohito is in no way reflective of extreme bias. If that's really the case, maybe the US and Britain fought on the wrong side in WWII - Hitler and Hirohito would have saved tens of millions from the "Red Holocaust". C.J. Griffin does NOT propose OR or SYNTH - he simply quotes the sources, as far as I can tell, so I don't see any reason to block his changes. Is the current section really so perfect? Guccisamsclub 81.88.116.27 (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Further Comment If the proposed additions are inappropriate, then neither is the entire section. In fact, I don't think these questions can be adequately addressed in this article - so if the existing section is deleted that'd be fine too.Guccisamsclub 81.88.116.27 (talk) 20:00, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • In regard to Guccisamsclub's comment, my initial reaction to the presence of a section with such a title was similar - that it just shouldn't be there. However, looking at it, it's limited to broad, general statements, which I think makes it ok.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:23, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for noticing the issue. The section is small relative to the article - as it should be. But that's precisely the problem. It's a huge and contentious issue that cannot be addressed in the space of a a few sound-bites. Of course it is possible to say "Communism was the most diabolical social system in human history. Period" in one breath - and that is precisely the breathless POV that the current section adopts. Clearly this POV is very far from being non-controversial - it comes within an inch of Holocaust and WWII revisionism and arguably crosses that line. It explicitly compares Communism to Nazism and Colonialism (not capitalism as a whole), and clearly insinuates that Communism was much worse, using highly polemical sources to make that case (according to Rosenfielde, Communism was "ten times more murderous" ... such myopic rigor). What C.J. Griffin proposes is that we include some quibbles and opposing views, saying that Communism was not always and everywhere the most murderous political movement. That is fair enough in my view - but it merely changes the section from "he said" to "he said, she said". Neither of those is useful to readers, and each is bound to be nothing more than a collection of short opinion statements on what is one one of the biggest questions of 20th century history. Such a simplistic outline is not only contentious and POV-laden, not only useless to serious readers - it is downright dangerous, because a little (pseudo)knowledge is a very dangerous thing. So -Alternate Proposal (whosoever has not read my argument please do so - carefully - before commenting): just delete the section and stop wasting time on this nonsense Gucci81.88.116.27 (talk) 01:00, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment Many of the arguments here, particularly the last few, are not based in policy. The argument that any "comparisons between mass killings" would be coatracking is a legitimate argument, and one that I would accept; however, that would require the removal of the current section on "comparison of mass killings," which has been conveniently ignored. So long as that section exists, it needs to present all reliable comparisons of communist killings to other mass killings, giving due weight to all reliable sources which make such a comparison. The current version does not give due weight, and Griffin's proposal would bring the text much closer to a balanced presentation. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Mass killings under Capitalist regimes

Just a quick note. The article Mass killings under Capitalist regimes which was deleted in July 2010 after Afd discussion, was re-created in 2012 and again deleted after afd discussion, was again re-created in August 2015 and deleted as G4, which deletion was confirmed by deletion review closed on 7 September 2015. --Bejnar (talk) 22:04, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

And good thing, too. That categorization is far, far too broad, not to mention vague. Kurtis (talk) 01:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I have a feeling that the consensus for deletion was based on the feeling that such an article should not exist in "principle". Of course the actual article was pathetic. But I stongly disagree that such an article should not exist in principle. Capitalism is not a vague natural phenonomenon; its a distinct social system that has existed for only the past <500 years of human history. To say capitalism is too vague a word is actually an extreme form of apologetics. Such deconstructionist view on capitalism is also fringe.Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Well actually, "capitalist" can apply to a very, very broad range of economic systems used by an equally wide variety of different historical societies. That's because capitalism involves some degree of private investment in the market, from simple mercantilism through to full-out plutocratic hegemony and everything in between. If such an article were to exist, there would need to be a clearly defined scope, which is next to impossible to achieve. You would have some obvious additions to the list - Augusto Pinochet and other Operation Condor regimes, Park Chung-hee, etc. But where is the line drawn? Do we include the likes of Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, or Benito Mussolini, who did allow a few private enterprises to exist but within very strict parameters (i.e. "private" in name only)? Does the system of governance necessarily have to be dictatorial? Do we exclude any government that espouses some form of socialism? Communism was a very specific political and economic movement that took hold in the 20th century and has come to be associated with oppression, mass killings, and the complete absence of private enterprise. It is very easy to delineate communist regimes - they were self-identified as such and conformed to the centrally planned economic model established by the Soviet Union. It is therefore much easier to define the scope of this article; Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, Vladimir Lenin, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Le Duan, Siad Barre, probably Ho Chi Minh and Josip Broz Tito as well, etc. Kurtis (talk) 11:49, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Kurtis, that's not a bad point. Would the article get accepted if we name it Mass killings caused by capitalist relations, or something similar? Socialistguy (talk) 26 February 2016 (UTC)
There is about as much similarity between Lenin and Siad Barre as there is between Napoleon III and Nehru, both of who presided over CAPITALIST regimes incidentally. This business about seeing the enemy as a monolith and everyone else as diverse is ideology pure and simple. Naturally the scope of the capitalism article would be "broader": Capitalism is a 500-year old worldwide social system. Does the capitalist regime have to be dictatorial? No. Does the capitalist regime have to promulgate an ideal "neo-liberal" capitalism? No. Arguably, no such regime has EVER existed. You also missed the big one in your list: Nazi Germany. You want to pin all the crimes of Stalinism (even third-word regimes whose leaders barely knew who Stalin was) on the socialist left. OK. But you have to be prepared for the fact that on the other side people will grind another axe, and will tell you that the Holocaust is a product of European capitalism.Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
The cases you mention: Assad and Hussein, as well as Algeria and Libya: these are borderline cases. However they differed with the Soviet model in the following way: they arguably did not set out to replace capitalism with a completely different social system. The "direction" of these regimes different. This is not a minor point, because if you judge capitalism by solely by the size of the private sector, you'll find that Soviet Russia under the NEP was "more capitalist" than the Arab nationalist and kleptocratic regimes you mention. But this, as I think many experts would agree (including CIA analysts), would be a pretty nonsensical statement because it looks at snapshots and not at the historical processes. Yeltsin's Russia also had a huge state sector, especially early on. But everyone knew which way the wind was blowing and the sort of model the Yeltsin regime was trying to establish. You can just as easily find Marxist-Leninist regimes with largely private economies: eg Angola in the 1980's and perhaps a few others. Oh yeah: China today.Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:22, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
But more to the point: what would be our criteria for inclusion? Well we'd have to examine the borderline cases one at a time and see what the RS' say. This would be preferable to some rigid static criteria. But either is preferable to denying that capitalism exists (as something distinct from human nature, which is tens of thousands of years older than capitalism) and assuming that "communism" is the only politico-economic "system" in human history that can be held responsible for crimes of one kind or another. That way the case is bound to rigged.Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:54, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Can we compile sources about capitalism and its crimes in another talk page (perhaps a stub article or user subpage)? This has been discussed several times here but always ends archived after it falls inactive. I can help with sources in Spanish. emijrp (talk) 13:34, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I categorically reject each of your assertions. For starters, Lenin was not a capitalist by any stretch of the imagination; he allowed for limited mercantilism and private ownership of land because it was more pragmatic than having the burgeoning Russian government attempt to control all the means of production itself, which would have exacerbated what was already a humanitarian catastrophe wherein millions of people starved to death. In what way was the regime of Siad Barre capitalist? Is it because he aligned himself with the U.S during the Cold War? I don't know where you got the idea that I want to "pin the crimes of Stalinism on the socialist left", or that I see communism as "a monolith"; neither of these are true. My opinion is that the countries mentioned in this article should be ones that openly identified themselves as communist, and are recognized as such by reputable sources. The subject of mass murder under communist regimes has received extensive mainstream academic attention, and as I've said before, is much easier to define than a parallel list of mass killings under capitalist regimes. Kurtis (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I never said Lenin was capitalist. I said the opposite. Nor did I say that Barre was a capitalist. Apologies Kurtis, had you confused with another user. You're categorically rejecting a straw man, just as you've done with the writings of Marx and Lenin. Your case boils down to the self-identification of the regimes, which makes it easy to treat them as a single category. But just because something sounds simple does not mean it's correct or accurate or has any explanatory value, something that is understood among serious scholars. As for "pinning the crimes of Stalinism on the revolutionary left", I think smearing the classics of Marxian thought as religious and genocidal screeds is doing exactly that.Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread your reply. I thought you were referring to Siad Barre and Vladimir Lenin as "capitalist regimes", when you were actually talking about Napoleon III and Nehru. Kurtis (talk) 16:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Sure emijrp, set up a place and ping the participants. But Kurtis is correct that an article about "Capitalist Crimes" - especially on an english wiki - would be very tricky business. Many people are critical of both types of Mass Murder articles for the same reasons, including myself. But then you have many people who will only have it one way: communist regimes are guilty of mass murder until proven completely innocent in the vast majority of sources (good luck there), while capitalism is innocent until proven guilty, and even then with a ton of caveats. This side has a sort of monopoly on the issue of "mass murder" and I think its wrong to let it go uncallanged. At least we can try to provide some balance.Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:00, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
A couple of points; Guccisamsclub, I don't think you're far wrong in your analysis, but the trouble is that we're dependent on secondary sources making the connection between Capitalism and mass murder, and more importantly, between the various regimes that were both capitalist and murderous. Not many such exist. Any article built on individual examples is likely to be SYNTH. There's not many for communism, either; but given that we are on the English 'pedia, we tend to be dependent on English (read "US based") sources, which naturally have a certain tilt to them. If it were purely up to me, neither would exist, because they would both be viewing their respective systems as monolithic. But it's not up to me; we have to work with what we have, and reliable sources are reliable sources, regardless of their biases. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:27, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I recognize the problem, Vanamonde93. On the issue of RS' that draw the connection between capitalism and cases of mass murder, that's where you are wrong. No RS' agrue that the enclosure movement, colonialism, new world slavery, settler colonialism and genocide, America's wars, Fascist and other reactionary bloodlettings, or indeed the great bourgeois revolutions themeselves had something to do with capitalism? How about a few million deaths after the collapse of the USSR? All this can be sourced. Or let's take a failed state like Haiti. Capitalism and capitalist regimes had nothing to do with its predicament? And these are just cases where the connection between capitalist dynamics and mass suffering is self-evident and can be sourced. But we could also take the whongheaded approach employed in this article and complile a list of crimes that occurred in capitalist countries, regardless of the reasons. Of course we'll never be able to complile an simplistic indictment along the lines of Courtois and Rummel, because such idiocy is largely the provenance of the Cold War right. But yeah I doubt it'll ever get off the ground. RE SYNTH: that is a major problem. Thanks for pointing it out. Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Crimes listed in this article were not committed "regardless of reasons". They were committed in most cases because this was how these governments, openly declaring themselves as communist, interpreted the marxists concepts of communist revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, categorically denying any form of evolutionary social changes — this is the essence of marxism. You can't really find anything like this in capitalism. First, none of the states I know declares itself as "capitalist". Second, no state cites some lunatic prophets in their constitutions, like communist countries did with Marx, Engels or Lenin (neither has mumified their presidents too). You might have more luck with openly theocratic states, either referring to Islam (a wide selection today) or Christianity (not sure if there are any). But I'm not sure if it's really worth the effort, as now it mostly looks like "oh, they wrote something bad about our communism, let's find something equally bad for their capitalism". The difference is that capitalism is an open system, that constantly evolves, and large part of it nowadays incorporates many social-democratic proposals. Communism was a closed system, because its beginning and end was defined in 19th century and, as we know today, it was completely detached from reality in both its means and objectives. Kravietz (talk) 20:22, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm sure Khmer Rouge decided to wipe out the cities, because that's what the ghosts of Marx, Kautsky, Lenin and Luxemburg commanded. Is this the new academic consensus on the Khmer Rouge genocide? You think Communism was the worst thing since the plague, ok I get it. I am not keen on it myself. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Ghost are bourgeois metaphysical superstition, so definitely not ghosts, but this was definitely their understanding of speedy way from bourgeoisie to a form of agrarian socialism. Kravietz (talk) 21:19, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
@Guccisamsclub: Rather than an article purely about capitalism and mass murder (with a list of massacres and figures), I would like to start one about repression in capitalist countries against working-class, labour movements, strikes, students, etc, and that can include murder, torture, imprisonment, banning of organizations and publications, espionage, etc. Of course there are many examples like Marusia massacre but capitalism crimes are more complex and broader than just a list of massacres. And not only capitalism per se, but also imperialism (imperialist wars, etc) and (neo)colonialism crimes (slavery, etc). Unemployement (25 million in Europe), refugees (current news), coup d'etat and killing of head of states (Allende, Lumumba, Gadafi), ties between bourgeoisie and fascism (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco), supporting of dictatorships like Pinochet, etc. So, if someone is interested in all that, we can set up a place to discuss the article(s) schema. emijrp (talk) 15:20, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Now, why didn't you continue the list with Shooting of the Romanov family or Novocherkassk massacre? Seem to fit your definition of capitalism: coup d'etat and killing of head of states plus repression against working-class Kravietz (talk) 21:19, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
"Seem to fit your definition of capitalism: coup d'etat and killing of head of states plus repression against working-class". Oh no, but then how do we define capitalism???!! After your a brilliant refutation, I have to concede - with great sadness - that capitalism in fact cannot be defined as "the act of killing of a head of state". Now why did I believe such nonsense all these years? Thanks for opening our eyes Kravietz.Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:59, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

There is actually article Anti-communist mass killings, it is not very good though.--Staberinde (talk) 20:03, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

This is actually quite good article from scoping perspective: it has precisely defined scope (murders of supporterts of communism) and is well-documented. This is why it's not being deleted, as compared to the Mass killings under Capitalist regimes strawman. If you really care about the subject, go and expand it. Kravietz (talk) 20:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Kravietz Sorry to bicker again, but it it really that great from a scoping perspective? Take the "White Terror" in Spain. Even if Franco succeeded in killing every PCE member, which is absurd, that would still be half the total death toll. So is it correct to see it as an "anti-communist" mass killing? It may be correct that these massacres were carried out by professed "anti-communists", but the lede promises an article about the killing of communists, while the article delivers something entirely different. And besides, "anti-Communism" is indeed a very broad tent. Also, that article makes no mention of the guy who shot more known Communists than anyone else, by a landslide: Joe Stalin during the Great Purge. Quite an oversight, if you ask me.Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:12, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
The pair of you are still arguing from first principles; "no government identifies as capitalist!" "capitalists do not deify lunatics!" it doesn't matter what you "know". Are there sources which describe governments as capitalist? If so, they are capitalist for our purposes. Similarly with communism. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:35, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
This was sort of a different topic, but I'll take the bait, Vanamonde93: Haiti was a capitalist state. The victims of Duvalier's reign of terror numbered in the tens of thousands. So we have the first section of "Mass Killings under Capitalist Regimes" then and there. And did I really have to source the claim that Haiti was a capitalist state? Now moving on the USA... The USA was a capitalist state {disputed, the US self-identifies as "free"}, Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. So we got section two. And section two+1... And section n. Do I think this is quality article in the making? Hell no. Can it be sourced? Hell yes. Should it exist? If "mass killings under communist regimes" exists, hell yes. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Okay folks, with all due respect, the discussion has veered very far from a) changes to this article and/or b) possible other articles. Unless this gets back on track, I am going to invoke NOTFORUM and hat this thread, because this really isn't the place for general discussions on Marxism and Capitalism. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:54, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Good call. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:08, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
The talk page reflects the quality of the article, in my view. My goal here was only to demonstrate that a comparable article could have been written about mass killings under capitalist regimes, not to argue about which was "worse", which would have been silly. I think I've at least partly demonstrated that it was possible. The fact that it was not reflects the "ideological" balance in the community above all else. To most here, "mass killings under communist regimes" is just good common sense and requires little to no evidence (again, take a look at the Vietnam and Hungary sections for an illustration). On the other hand, "mass killings under capitalist regimes" is seen as gibberish along the lines of "bestiality under fiat money." Indeed the very concept that capitalist regimes can preside over "mass death" appears bizarre (reminds me of a NYT editorial about Pol Pot - no not saying he's "capitalist" - when he was on our side: "Brutal Yes, Mass Murderer No"). For any "capitalist mass killing" you better have conservative numbers and extensive proof; no Rummel number-mongering will cut it. But again, in principle a well-sourced and circumspect article on capitalist mass killings is possible (at least one that's far more nuanced than this article here). What is lacking is (wo)man-power, enthusiasm and ideological bluster. Much of the ideological energy here is being directed in the opposite direction: opening people's eyes to the horrors of the red revolution and exposing its lies about capitalism. Something to think about about as we continue to teach from the establishment cold-war canon, the victors' version.Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:59, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub's dishonesty is breathtaking. "Pol Pot: Brutal, Yes, but No Mass Murderer", The New York Times, August 17, 1990, was written by the radical left-wing activist Richard Dudman, who accompanied Malcolm Caldwell on his infamous trip to Cambodia. The New York Times also published editorials by avowed communists supporting the Khmer Rouge during 1975-1979, for example Daniel Berstein's "On Cambodia", The New York Times, November 21, 1978, which described reports of genocide as "a consciously organized, well-financed campaign to spread lies and misinformation about Kampuchea". For Gucci to attempt to rewrite history in a way that casts Dudman as a conservative pawn in a vast right-wing conspiracy is, simply, ludicrous.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:57, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Dudman was not an "radical left-wing activist" but a journalist. The rest I won't touch - anyone interested in the "Left" and "Right" positions on Cambodia in the late 80's (when these debates actually had any consequence for the Cambodia people) can easily find out what they were. I should note that when Dudman was writing, US policy was already beginning to shift "to the Left" on Cambodia. Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:45, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Change Name of Article to Marxist-Leninist or Socialist regimes

Their is no mention of any left-communist, anarchist, or even orthodox marxist regimes in this mass killing article. Then why is it called communist. The least it should be changed to is self proclaimed "communist regimes."

We all know this article is biased and most of the sources are not reputable either. Therefore, it seems clear the mass killing under capitalist regimes page must be remade, the criticism page of this page should be extended, or the name should be changed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.105.35 (talk) 02:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not about what you know, it is about what has been published in reliable sources, as Wikipedia defines them. "Communist regimes" is a conventional term found in these sources, maybe even the conventional term, and none of them qualify it with "self proclaimed". See here for examples from some excerpts. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:13, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Many of these sources are scholarly but are not exactly scholarly. Almost 1/2 of the sources come from the black book of communism a oft criticized and biased source — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.209.13.245 (talk) 16:17, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

No, I count 2 lines in the bibliography from that source, out of 20. And I count just 10 citations from it, out of 202. And I don't think it is inappropriate as a source. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:58, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
It is big "C" Communist, which refers to countries under control of the CPSU and allied (at least originally) parties. It is debatable whether they were Marxist-Leninist or socialist and of course they were not small "c" communist and never claimed to be. TFD (talk) 05:37, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
AS I've said before, this article would be a little more balanced and accurate if it had relied exclusively on the BBoC. Many of the others are even worse.Guccisamsclub (talk) 09:57, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that "Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes" be merged into "Mass killings under Communist regimes". It is apparent that both articles relating to the same subject, whilst the latter is more developed than the first. I think that the content in the "Crimes against humanity under Communist regimes" article can easily be explained in the context of "Mass killings under Communist regimes". 177.45.142.39 (talk) 18:23, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposed reference

In April 2016 another (after Memorial) good register of over 2.4 million victims of political repressions in USSR was published by Russian historians at [7]. I think it's worth adding to the article since it's very well sourced (NKVD or other official archives) and lists all victims by name and other personal details rather than aggregations seen in other sources. Cloud200 (talk) 21:50, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Yugoslavia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.217.69.168 (talk) 00:16, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 2 June 2016

விஜயமூர்த்தி (talk) 14:38, 2 June 2016 (UTC) hi guys this page completely false propaganda. please give proper evidence each one of incidents.

  • Please read the bit about giving specific suggested changes here Your editorial knowledge of the "truth" does not count as an edit suggestion. Collect (talk) 14:53, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:03, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 18 June 2016

To <ref name="harffgurr"> please add |last2=Gurr, per jstor.

  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:18, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

 Done Nakon 23:40, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 18 June 2016

Please change

Cite book comparison
Wikitext {{cite book|author=[[Anne Applebaum|Applebaum, Anne]] (foreword) and [[Paul Hollander|Hollander, Paul]] ([http://www.isi.org/books/content/384intro.pdf introduction] and editor)|isbn=1-932236-78-3|page=xiv|publisher=Intercollegiate Studies Institute|title=From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=zyaDAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn=1932236783|year=2006}}
Live Applebaum, Anne (foreword) and Hollander, Paul (introduction and editor) (2006). From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States. Intercollegiate Studies Institute. p. xiv. ISBN 1-932236-78-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); External link in |author= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

to

Cite book comparison
Wikitext {{cite book|editor-link=Paul Hollander|editor=Hollander, Paul|isbn=1-932236-78-3|others=[[Anne Applebaum|Applebaum, Anne]] (foreword) and Hollander, Paul ([http://www.isi.org/books/content/384intro.pdf introduction])|page=xiv|publisher=Intercollegiate Studies Institute|title=From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=zyaDAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn=1932236783}}
Live Hollander, Paul (ed.). From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States. Applebaum, Anne (foreword) and Hollander, Paul (introduction). Intercollegiate Studies Institute. p. xiv. ISBN 1-932236-78-3. {{cite book}}: External link in |others= (help)

which preserves all the information in the original citation, but in a way more compatible with {{cite book}} and without a citation maintenance message & category.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:39, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I have no problem with this. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:45, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 11 August 2016

Could we replace Jimmy Fell's Red Holocaust image with that of Twelve Responses to Tragedy? The photograph of Fell's artwork was taken and uploaded to Commons by the artist himself, and I can find no citations as to its significance; it appears to be a pile of stones next to a crude hand written sign. Gareth E. Kegg (talk) 07:23, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

ludicrous estimate for East Germany

The number of 80,000 to 100,000 deaths for East Germany seems very high, bordering on the outright ludicrous. It obviously is a wild guess several orders of magnitude beyond what other historians could confirm by actual research. Even German historians who are particularly critical of the GDR have very recently put the number at 1841, including 486 deaths of fugitives at the borders, furthermore including Soviet Army deserters, victims of the Berlin Blockade and relief airlift operations, and capital punishment. Other historians put the number even lower and can confirm no more than 138 border victims (here the other mentioned categories would have to be added). Source: German news report, rbb, August 10, 2016 -- Seelefant (talk) 17:56, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. There is much in this article that is overblown, this being one of the best examples. The article should be updated based on the above information.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:22, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

AFAICT, the number included residents of East Germany who died outside of Germany during the "relocations" after WW 2. The number of Germans who dies as a result of relocation to Gulags or Siberia was deemed considerable. Population transfer in the Soviet Union. Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) seems on point here, with millions of Germans being "relocated". From that article, using the sources cited therein:

The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000, up to a West German demographic estimate from the 1950s of over 2 million. More recent estimates by some historians put the total at 500-600,000 attested deaths; they maintain that the West German government figures lack adequate support and that during the Cold War the higher figures were used for political propaganda.<ref>Ingo Haar, "Herausforderung Bevölkerung: zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denkens über die Bevölkerung vor, im und nach dem Dritten Reich". ''"Bevölkerungsbilanzen" und "Vertreibungsverluste". Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der deutschen Opferangaben aus Flucht und Vertreibung'', Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2007; ISBN 978-3-531-15556-2, p. 278{{de icon}}</ref><ref>Rüdiger Overmans, "Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung" (a parallel Polish summary translation was also included, this paper was a presentation at an academic conference in Warsaw in 1994), ''Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik, XXI'' -1994</ref> The [[Deutsches Historisches Museum|German Historical Museum]] puts the figure at 600,000, maintaining that the figure of 2 million deaths in the previous government studies cannot be supported.<ref name="dhm.de">[http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk2/kriegsverlauf/massenflucht Die Flucht der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45], dhm.de; accessed 6 December 2014.{{de icon}}</ref> The current official position of the [[Cabinet of Germany|German government]] is that the death toll resulting from the flight and expulsions ranged from 2 to 2.5 million civilians.<ref>[http://www.volksbund.de/fileadmin/redaktion/BereichInfo/BereichPublikationen/Reihe_Allgemeine_Reihe/Erweiterungen/0100_Band_10/0%20Band10%20Narben%20bleiben.pdf]|Willi Kammerer & Anja Kammerer -- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005, p. 12: published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross; the foreword to the book was written by German President [[Horst Köhler]] and the German interior minister [[Otto Schily]]</ref><ref>Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in [[Germany]]'s Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions in [[Deutschlandfunk]] on 29 November 2006, [https://web.archive.org/web/20080210034644/http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/kulturheute/569560]</ref><ref name="bpb.de">[http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/dossier-nationalsozialismus/39587/die-vertreibung-der-deutschen "Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus den Gebieten jenseits von Oder und Neiße"], bpb.de; accessed 6 December 2014.{{de icon}}</ref></mpwiki> :''<nowiki>The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the [[Flight and evacuation of German civilians during the end of World War II|organized evacuation of ethnic Germans]] by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing [[Red Army]], from mid-1944 to early 1945.<ref name="Gibney197198">{{cite book|title=Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present|author1=Matthew J. Gibney |author2=Randall Hansen |year=2005|pages=197–98|isbn=1-57607-796-9|publisher=ABC-CLIO|location=Santa Barbara, Calif.}}</ref> The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the [[Wehrmacht]]'s defeat. The third phase was a more organized mass population removal and ethnic cleansing following the Allied leaders' [[Potsdam Agreement]],<ref name="Gibney197198"/> which redefined the Central European borders and approved mass removals and ethnic cleansings of ethnic Germans from preexisting German territory given to Poland, the prewar territory of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/psources/ps_potsdam.html|title=Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference, 17 July-2 August 1945|publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]]|accessdate=29 August 2009}}</ref> Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as [[Forced labor of Germans after World War II|forced labour as part of German reparations]] to countries in eastern Europe.<ref>{{cite book|title=Germany: 2000 Years: Volume III: From the Nazi Era to German Unification|editor1=Gerhart Tubach |editor2=Kurt Frank Hoffmeister |editor3=Frederic Reinhardt |edition=2|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|year=1992|isbn=0-8264-0601-7|url=http://www.google.de/books?id=glMpTyiRXDoC&pg=PA57|accessdate=28 August 2009|page=57}} *{{cite book|title=Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-century Europe|author=Norman M. Naimark|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2001|url=http://www.google.de/books?id=L-QLXnX16kAC&pg=PA131|accessdate=28 August 2009|page=131|isbn=0-674-00994-0}} *{{cite book|title=Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study|first1=Arie Marcelo|last1=Kacowicz|first2=Paweł|last2=Lutomski|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2007|page=101|isbn=073911607X|url=http://www.google.de/books?id=ovck_g0xwX0C&pg=PA101|accessdate=27 August 2009}} *{{cite web|author=Tomasz Kamusella|title=The Expulsion of the German Communities from Eastern Europe|page=28|publisher=EUI HEC|year=2004|url=http://cadmus.iue.it/dspace/bitstream/1814/2599/1/HEC04-01.pdf|accessdate=27 August 2009|format=pdf}}</ref> The major expulsions were complete in 1950.<ref name="Gibney197198"/> Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in [[Central and Eastern Europe]] in 1950 range from 700,000 to 2.7 million.

Which seems to be even higher than the figures being questioned here. Collect (talk) 22:15, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Except for the fact that no Germans were "expelled" from East Germany. Some German civilians were sent to work projects in USSR, and some of them died. That's about it, unless you include the deaths of German POW's in Soviet camps in the category of "democide in East Germany", which would be absurd for a whole host of reasons. Finally, most of this has rather little to do with "Communism". One of the largest acts of ethnic cleansing took place in Czechoslovakia, under the Benes government. Mass spontaneous revenge killings took place throughout Europe as aftershocks of the most destructive war in human history. This is where you get silliness like "30,000 killed by the Bulgarian Communist regime", despite the fact that less than two thousand were killed by the regime proper, with many killed before the "regime" came into existence. By the same standard the French "Gaullist regime" is responsible for 10,000-30,000 deaths.
As a side note, I do have to wonder about how many of these 500K deaths are in fact killings or excess deaths. This is something that would have to be sourced—if it is mentioned at all.Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:49, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
No Germans were relocated from East Germany? Really? "Some Germans were sent to work projects" sure sounds like "Gulag time" from here. And you then use the French as the excuse for the Soviet acts in East Germany? The only problem with such a position is that the standard scholarly works do not support your position, thus we can not use your knowledge as a reliable source alas. And I love the term "excess deaths" as though "excess deaths" are caused by no one at all - they just magically occur. Collect (talk) 01:12, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Nice rant. I expected nothing more. I like how all you got from Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) and [[8]] was "Gulag time". The stuff about using the French as an "excuse" and excess deaths as "deaths caused by no one" is beneath comment. Guccisamsclub (talk) 02:02, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
The text says that it is an estimate by Valentino and in fact that was the estimate he provided. If there are different credible sources, they should be added and if Valentino's estimates are no longer considered credible they should be removed. These figures btw would not include deaths of ethnic Germans in the Baltics, within the modern borders of Poland and other areas of Eastern Europe. There is a problem too in that the numbers begin in 1945, while East Germany (officially the German Democrtic Republic) did not come into existence until 1949,) Most of these mass killings were carried out by the soviet occupation in 1945-49. Furthermore, some were carried out in the Soviet Union itself rather than the Soviet Zone of Germany. TFD (talk) 01:46, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Those are good points and I actually intended to say something similar: the misdeeds of the Soviet forces (or revenge killings) cannot be ascribed to the national Communist parties. But be that as it may, I recommend closing the discussion. These issues are adequately addressed in the serious articles. This one's a complete joke and the playing field for those who want to change it is hardly a fair one.Guccisamsclub (talk) 02:22, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm wondering if it's worth starting a discussion here about reducing the protection of this page. Full disclosure: I was not around when it was full-protected, but it seems to me that a) controversy has died down, b) many of the recent discussions here have been productive, and c) the new extended confirmed protection should minimize the number of purely disruptive editors here. Thoughts? Vanamonde (talk) 05:52, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
    • None of the issues that made this article controversial in the first place have ever been resolved. TFD (talk) 06:58, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
      • Not saying they have been resolved; but they are not going to be resolved when the thing is uneditable. I'm saying we've maybe matured enough to resolve them, and if the article is ECo protected, disruption might still be manageable. Vanamonde (talk) 07:19, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
        • There is not a lot of literature about any aspect of Communist regimes (such as health care, education systems, housing, union membership) owing to the diversity of Communist countries and their long duration. Of course it is easy to find information about specific examples, but no sources that discuss the topic as a whole. It would be more productive to identify the literature, summarize the various views, and begin from there. So to start, could you please provide a book or article that discusses the topic. I know that Valentino's book has a chapter called "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes," but it provides little that connects them and only discusses Stalinist USSR, Maoist China and Kampuchea. Furthermore it only discusses specific instances where over 5,000 people were killed and excludes "counter-insurgency" mass killings, which he groups in his book with similar killings by capitalist regimes. IOW they were not ideologically driven according to him but resulted from the same motivations as non-Communist states. So if we were to use his article as a model, it would restrict the scope of the article. TFD (talk) 07:50, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
          • Don't forget these four. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:14, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
            • I have not forgotten them. The first is Valentino's article. which I mentioned. The next source (Mann), says, "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not. I discuss the three that caused the most terrible human losses: Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia." That is consistent with what I said about Valentino's article: "it provides little that connects them and only discusses Stalinist USSR, Maoist China and Kampuchea." TFD (talk) 06:47, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Just a side-note, but an important one. Why does it matter what motivated the killings? The page just says "Mass killings UNDER Communist regimes". If anyone believe they have the ability to discern what was related to communism itself, what was related to regular power struggles, what was related to other conflicts, I think they are too arrogant and needs to ground themselves in reality. Could we please try to present facts, other than interpretations, otherwise these pages will continue to be a misleading mess. RhinoMind (talk) 17:57, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
The article title implies a causal connection between Communist regimes and mass killings. Unless we can show that reliable sources have made that connection, it is synthesis or the topic lacks WP:Notablity. Note we do not have an article "Languages in Communist countries" although we might have articles about languages in North America or languages in the EU. If there is no connection, then what is the point of an article? We had a similar discussion about Jews and Communism, which implied that there was a connection between Jews and Communism. (See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination).) TFD (talk) 18:50, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for this overview. My point was that under the assumption that this title even makes objective sense (which is indeed worth a debate), shouldn't the article just list the mass killings that actually took place? Then it could be mentioned/discussed what motivated each one of them, if at all possible, which is also very much worth a debate in each case. RhinoMind (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
As an example, I would encourage people interested in the connection between mass killings and communism to dive into the case of Cambodia. A very important driver for the outrageous violence was a fear of Vietnamese infiltration. And Cambodian-Vietnamese animosity has a thousand year old history. On top of that, the Maoism from nearby China and the new communist regime in Vietnam was in conflict at the time, with actual battles fought, complicating and intensifying the Cambodian conflict even further. The background or the motives if you will behind mass killings under communist regimes can not automatically be linked to communism itself. Contrary to some other totalitarian ideologies, communist theory does not promote any violence officially. So to link it would require some form of interpretation of events. I would like the article to make clear what are the facts and what are interpretations. Perhaps some interpretations are justified, perhaps they are just opinions or POVs, but it would require sourcing and at least an explanation in the article, otherwise it would be no more than synthesis as you also mention. I personally think the mass killings are interesting and significant events in world history of course, but we owe the readers to present interpretations in a nuanced way. RhinoMind (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
I can see that the controversies of this article are not small and even extends to its very existence, so perhaps the best way would just be to provide a more nuanced description of the motives behind each mass killing event? Not so much for the sake of principle, but because many of these events actually are complicated matters. Just a thought. RhinoMind (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Ok, this one actually is settled. And the link doesn't have to be causal to be a connection (although I would argue that). See the last two AfDs that resulted in "Keep", where this point was brought up. The article title is not synthesis because we do have sources that address this topic in Communist countries as a whole, even if they choose to focus on particular ones for the sake of concision. I just gave you a link to excerpts from four of them. I have bolded their use of "communist regimes" to make this clear. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:37, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

AfDs are not binding, which is why they do not debar further AfDs. Jews and Communism for example was deleted on the second application.

If we did use your four sources as a guide, notice what "Balancing aspects" says, "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to the weight of that aspect in the body of reliable sources on the subject." Since none of the reliable sources have sections on Bulgaria for example, it is undue weight to include them here. The problem is that you want to write an article that does not look like anything one would find in a reliable source and therefore there are policy and guideline problems with virtually everything you want to add.

TFD (talk) 00:00, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

In your example, an article had one AfD that resulted in "no consensus", then a second AfD that resulted in "delete". That is not an example of AfD results being non-binding or of consensus changing. In the case of this article, there were three consecutive "no consensus" results, followed by two consecutive "keep" results. None of the facts or arguments have changed since then, as far as I can tell, so we wouldn't expect the existing consensus to have changed, either. Our discussions and disagreements should now shift to focus on the particulars within the article, rather than bringing up old and resolved arguments that the topic itself is illegitimate.
You say that Bulgaria should not be included because it is not mentioned in the excerpts I linked to, but please don't misunderstand that I think the four sources I presented are the only ones that can be used here. This article, like any Wikipedia article, should try to be better on its topic than any subset of its sources. Otherwise, what's the point? I agree that undue weight means Bulgaria should not get the same level of attention that the big three get, but I don't agree that it can't be included. And, in any event, Bulgaria is in fact specifically mentioned by one of those four reliable sources (Valentino, p. 75), as the first citation from its section of the article shows. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:23, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
"Primary, secondary and tertiary sources" says, "Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight...." You cannot provide any reliable sources that provide a broad summary of this topic and may be helpful in evaluating due weight. The problem is that for some reason you think this article should exist and are searching for sources but the correct approach to articles is to find out what topics are out there and create articles about them. That's what happened in the Jews and Communism article. An editor felt that the connection between Jews and Communism was obvious but could not find any literature that made the connection. Of course there are articles about American Jewish Communists and German Jewish Communists, but no one yet has written a book or even an article about Jews and Communism. TFD (talk) 02:47, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
"The problem is that for some reason you think this article should exist". We've been through this several times now. You're beating a dead horse. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:25, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
I explained to the new editors what were the problems with unprotecting the article. Your argument is that it passed AfD so none of these issues are valid, although you have made no reference to policy. We are all entitled to our opinions, but if that were what guided us in writing articles, they would never get written. TFD (talk) 03:42, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
"none of these issues are valid"? No, what I actually said was, "Our discussions and disagreements should now shift to focus on the particulars within the article, rather than bringing up old and resolved arguments that the topic itself is illegitimate." Relaxing the editing restrictions would help with that, I think. We don't have to get rid of them all. And we can do it incrementally, to make sure there is no problem with edit warring.AmateurEditor (talk) 04:19, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
We cannot resolve the particulars until we resolve the scope. So to start, could you please provide a book or article that discusses the topic. I know that Valentino's book has a chapter called "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes," but it provides little that connects them and only discusses Stalinist USSR, Maoist China and Kampuchea. Furthermore it only discusses specific instances where over 5,000 people were killed and excludes "counter-insurgency" mass killings, which he groups in his book with similar killings by capitalist regimes. IOW they were not ideologically driven according to him but resulted from the same motivations as non-Communist states. So if we were to use his article as a model, it would restrict the scope of the article. TFD (talk) 06:23, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
I'd love to have a productive discussion on this, but I'm actually not sure you aren't trying to troll me. Every assertion you just made about Valentino's book is inaccurate. The chapter is called "Communist Mass killings", it actually does discuss the connections between the regimes as well as the differences, does mention regimes other than the big three, uses a standard of 50,000 killed within 5 years, does not exclude counter-insurgency killing of non-combatants, says nothing about "capitalist regimes", and discusses the significant role of radical ideology. It's like you're not even trying to get this stuff right. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:53, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

See Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century, "4. Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China and Cambodia," pp. 91 ff.[9] Indeed it "does mention regimes other than the big three," but it merely says, "Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa." The title of his article should provide a hint that he is writing about Stalinist USSR, Maoist China and Kampuchea. Sorry I wrote 5,000 instead of 50.000, but the effect is that your scope is even narrower. Valentino also writes, "I will not describe [mass killings for a variety of other reasons unrelated to communism itself] here, although one such case, the mass killing during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988 will be discussed in chapter 6. ["6. Counterguerrilla Mass Killings: Guatemala and Afghanistan"]" (p.97) (Guatemala had an anti-Communist government that carried out mass killings with U.S. support.)

And please avoid personal attacks. ("I'm actually not sure you aren't trying to troll me.") I posted the reasons this article cannot proceed and you chose to enter into a discussion, despite the fact we have discussed the issue before. The fact remains that for any encyclopedic topic, I can find an existing book or article that could provide an example of how such an article could be written. The correct approach to creating articles is to first find subjects that authors have written about. If you decide to write an article about a subject, then look for sources, it will always have problems of notability, synthesis and lack of neutrality.

I notice that this conversation has attracted little attention from editors who have been active on the talk page before, so we are unlikely to make any progress. I'll let you get the last word in. If anyone wants to know my reply, I have answered all your questions in this discussion thread or one can look in the archives.

TFD (talk) 14:52, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I will have very limited availability through Friday this week, so I'm fine with not continuing this conversation any further right now. I would just recommend to any new interested editors, to not take anyone's word on anything here. Always, always check the sourcing. Even good faith editors can make mistakes or misinterpret things. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:01, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
attempting to fix anything on this article is a nightmare.AnieHall (talk) 07:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be. But I don't think the editing restrictions have helped. Let's start small, like fixing a dead link. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:26, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 14 August 2016

Please change

Cite book comparison
Wikitext {{cite book|author2=Schoenhals, Michael|first=Klas-Göran|isbn=978-91-977487-2-8|last=Karlsson|pages=111|publisher=Forum for Living History|title=Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review|url=http://www.levandehistoria.se/files/forskningsinventering_EN.pdf|year=2008}}
Live Karlsson, Klas-Göran; Schoenhals, Michael (2008). Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review (PDF). Forum for Living History. p. 111. ISBN 978-91-977487-2-8.

to

Cite book comparison
Wikitext {{cite book|author2=Schoenhals, Michael|first=Klas-Göran|isbn=978-91-977487-2-8|last=Karlsson|pages=111|publisher=Forum for Living History|title=Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review|url=http://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/research-review-crimes-against-humanity.pdf|year=2008}}
Live Karlsson, Klas-Göran; Schoenhals, Michael (2008). Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review (PDF). Forum for Living History. p. 111. ISBN 978-91-977487-2-8.

in citation 24, found in the subsection "2.1 Ideology" (it replaces the dead link in the original citation). AmateurEditor (talk) 04:03, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

AmateurEditor I don't know why this simple request has stood for 16 days, but I have now made the change. Thanks for your patience — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:51, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
No reason at all. Thanks for stepping up. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
The reason is, I guess, that all that was requested was an url change and a whole lot of redundant context was added. Too confusing. Anyway its fixed now, so not a problem anymore. RhinoMind (talk) 09:52, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

How is it considered even remotely historical to compare the entire history of the Soviet Union to one single event under the Third Reich?

Nazi Germany killed >42 million during World War 2, through direct violence. The closest comparison, in terms of direct repression, in a single instance, is Stalin's purges, which killed 2-3 million. If we're going to start looking at the consequences of failed economic policies, we need to contrast them to the economic consequences of WW2. The stunted development of China, and much of Europe & Africa... The post-war exploitation of colonies by Britain & France...

This article verges on Holocaust denial and is incredibly unencyclopedic.--Senor Freebie (talk) 05:43, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Senor Freebie: the existence of this article is not in and of itself a comparison. This is an article because several reliable sources have treated it as a single topic. Now some of these undoubtedly have an ax to grind and need to be treated with a pinch of salt. Nonetheless, the topic is a notable one. If "The post-war exploitation of colonies" has received similar attention, then an article can certainly be created there, too, and would need to be mentioned in the appropriate places. Vanamonde (talk) 06:43, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
I was not referring to the existence of this article. I was referring to direct comparisons made IN this article. The comparisons made are between apples and oranges, and serve, largely, to validate Nazi and/or Cold War propaganda. They're completely ahistorical, and worthless from a NPOV perspective, and it's utterly ridiculous that they're there.--Senor Freebie (talk) 02:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
In this case, the comparison is only in the article because it is in reliable sources. Our own opinions on what is apples vs oranges or what is ahistorical are irrelevant. From WP:DUE: "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." You can check the references to make sure that the sources aren't being misrepresented, or you can argue that the sources aren't reliable, or you can present other perspectives from other reliable sources that should also be included, but keep in mind that Wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
What comparison? The Holocaust is not mentioned anywhere in the body of this article. The only reference to the Nazis is "According to the laws of the Czech Republic, the person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or Communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or Communists will be punished by prison of 6 months to 3 years." Senor Freebie is the one with an ax to grind, yet for all of his manifest outrage he has yet to articulate a single specific cause for complaint. Until he does, his rants do not merit further comment.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:31, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
To be fair, the Holocaust is mentioned a couple times in the "Comparison to other mass killings" section, as "Ha Shoah" and "Hitler's genocide". AmateurEditor (talk) 04:55, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Okay, never-mind. I didn't see that; it's a big article.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:09, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 23 October 2016

Per this RfC, find all http://books.google.** and replace with https://books.google.**. Thanks. bender235 (talk) 15:41, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Done. Bender235, shouldn't that be done by the bot? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:56, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Moved to User talk:Bender235 § Bot edit request
 – Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:33, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Deaths of women

I found one source discussing deaths of women and mentioning mass killings in Communist regimes. Is a section about women worth including? --George Ho (talk) 04:08, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Nice find, George Ho. I see the following passage on page 913 of that source that is relevant to this article: "There is a difference between genocide aimed at ethnic, racial, and national differences, where membership is reproduced genealogically, and systematic extermination of ideological and sexual minorities, in which people become members on an individual basis, even if their numbers reach millions. For example, the labeling of Stalin's victims as 'enemies of the people' was used to legitimize the communist regime. Soviet and communist genocide and mass state killings, sometimes termed politicide, occurred in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and the People's Republic of China. In Cambodia, Marxism served as an ideological justification for the massacre of one-third of the Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979." That comes from a broad overview of the history of genocide and has statements that could be included in the article, but I don't see passages there that specifically discuss this topic in relation to women. If I missed something, let me know. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:32, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
I am not seeing the relevance of the article. It is an entry for "Genocide" in the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women. The material quoted summarizes the concept of genocide, before mentioning how it relates to women. The first part is really a tertiary source, a summary of the literature by an expert with sources. For that material we are better to rely on secondary sources. Since it is an encyclopedia about women, sources are provided for the issue of gender and genocide, but none ot that relates to Communist regimes. TFD (talk) 00:49, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Yes, women died under communism. And? I'm willing to bet that well over over ninety percent of those killed in Stalin's great purge were men. At the same time Communist regimes were invariably characterized by their particularly aggressive and radical stance in pushing for women's rights. The only case of violence directed against women in particular was mass-rape by the Red Army during WWII (whatever the exact numbers are), but it was not a "mass killing", not did it have much to do with totalitarian Communism. Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:01, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Killings in Cuba

I can't propose a downgraded protection until I participate more and more in improving this article. Therefore, that leaves me researching for something, like the killings in Cuba. However, I can't propose yet a section about killings in Cuba. In fact, I found sources claiming executions or killings, including an activist and historians. Are the sources reliable? If so, shall I propose a statement about Cuba, or shall I wait for someone else to do the job? George Ho (talk) 01:51, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I do not think executions are necessarily mass killings. The last ones for example were the 2003 executions of 8 people for hijacking a ferry.[10] TFD (talk) 02:20, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
correction: 8 were arrested, 3 were executed. Guccisamsclub (talk) 09:24, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
What about this source? It uses the phrase "mass killings". So does that one. A magazine article says that El Salvadorian and Guatemalan guerilla were trained in Cuba. ...Wait a minute, one source says that Castro's killings amounted to "between 35,000 and 140,000 people," equivalent to "between 0.5 and 2.2 percent of [Cuba]'s entire population[,] [e]stimated at 6.4 million." Is this source credible? George Ho (talk) 03:21, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
The vast majority of those are boat people deaths (estimated by one source at 77,000). Outright executions are under 6,000—which is not necessarily "mass killing."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
I was able to retrieve this Spanish-language article, translated into that source, because the link to the article changed. Furthermore, I found this source describing deaths in Cuba. I'll find more if I can. Also, I was researching the terminology of "mass killings." This source says what the article already says. Unsure about that one. George Ho (talk) 04:04, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Also, this source rebuts Benjamin Valentino's terminology of the killings. However, after reading Valentino's passage, if information of deaths in Cuba do not belong here, to where else does it belong? George Ho (talk) 04:13, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Another: [11]. George Ho (talk) 04:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
I agree with what Anton Weiss-Wendt says, "The more cases scholars incorporate into their analyses, thee more problems it may create." That's the problem with this article. we need to follow the scholarship, which precludes sources not by experts on the subject of mass killings under Communist regimes. The author of The Great Big Book of Horrible Things for example is a journalist and his methodology does not seem to have a lot of support. TFD (talk) 04:42, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
I think we should continue to attribute by name in the body of the article any unique assertions found in any sources that meet or exceed Wikipedia's minimum standard of reliability. However, if two sources contradict one another on a statement of fact (rather than opinion or interpretation), we should then evaluate which source is more reliable and use that source in the article. I am not opposed to including material from The Great Big Book of Horrible Things if it is relevant (and it does include a chapter called "The Black Chapter of Communism"), but I agree that the highest quality sources are preferred. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:48, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
What policy or guideline says we should "any unique assertions found in any sources that meet of exceed Wikipedia's minimum standard of reliability?" Certainly "Balancing aspects" says we should not. TFD (talk) 01:20, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
The policy you just linked to does. It says to achieve a balance in the article among all the reliable sources, literally "the body of reliable sources". "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to the weight of that aspect in the body of reliable sources on the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially in relation to recent events that may be in the news." In other words, giving reliable sources proportionate or due weight implies inclusion, even requires it, although the weight assigned may be minimal. Balance can't be achieved if both items being balanced are not on the scale. Sources would only be excluded for being unreliable; if they meet the reliability standard, they get included and then balanced. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:01, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
It has no weight in the body of reliable sources. No textbooks quote his estimates of deaths or his reasons whether in Communist countries or anywhere else. There are literally tens of thousands of books by journalists published in popular media that mention mass killings and no reason why we should single this one out for inclusion. TFD (talk) 04:39, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
If it's a reliable source then the weight of it in the body of reliable sources is non-zero, so it's wrong to say "no weight". And there are not tens of thousands of books that address this topic specifically (it's more like dozens, as far as I can tell). Including this book among the the ones used in the article is not that big a deal, but I agree that it does not appear to be among the highest quality sources identified so far. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:36, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
When I search "Stalin" "purges" in Google books I get 116,000 hits. ("Cuba" "killings" yields only 6,530 hits.) By your reasoning the views of each book should be presented in this article. Why don't you work on it and we can look at it when you're done. TFD (talk) 07:07, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Those are not sources that address this topic of killing under "communist regimes" as a group. We have something in the range of dozens of sources addressing this article's topic specifically and serving as its justification. While the sources you googled may not be core sources for this article, they could conceivably contribute a fact here or there, as they could in any number of other articles. But I am sure there is an enormous amount of duplication of information among those sources. I deliberately said "unique assertions" should be included from all reliable sources for this topic, not that every reliable source should be mentioned or cited. If a source meets Wikipedia's reliability standard and can contribute to the article in a way that is not duplicative, then we have no policy-based justification to exclude it, as far as I can tell. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:22, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
George Ho, thank you for making the effort to contribute productively here. I hope you continue. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:51, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
You're welcome. I see you and TFD disagree about something. I'm just here out of curiosity. I don't know whether I should propose the passages with disputed sources. However, if you two can figure out how to include the proposed text with the sources, that would be great. George Ho (talk) 05:46, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
These astronomical aggregate numbers all seem to come from Rudolph Rummel who is a crackpot and is treated as such by all specialists. They have no connection to reality. You know if the theory that the Cuban govt really did kill however many tens of thousands (why no millions?) you'd find this in every authoritative book on the history of the country. Instead, the best one can find is a figure of roughly 8,000 from cubaarchive.org, which has not gotten much traction either, and is not a good source: exiles and the US govt have untold hundreds of millions waging a campaign of psychological warfare against the Cuban govt. Propaganda may be true or false, but it's not a quality source for an encyclopedia. The Cuba Archive's methodology is to take reports from Miami exiles as face value, without ever taking the time to explore the Cuban govt's side of the story (or really anyone's outside of Miami), so the if anyone claims someone was killed or died in prison in Cuba, he or she automatically becomes an innocent victim of the regime. By that token the "US regime" has mass-murdered tens of thousands by police shooting, prison neglect, chain gangs etc over the same time period, regardless of the circumstances. I am sure there are some crackpots who think that as well, but only foreign propagandists like Sputnik News who know nothing about America could possibly take them seriously.
The claim that any govt is guilty of mass murder is a WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, and you need infinitely better sources to back it up. At the moment, the only genuinely well-sourced and neutral sections in the article are those about USSR and Cambodia. But I don't really care if it goes in. This article claims that: Hungarian communists were responsible for "multiple genocides", that Vietnamese communists killed up to 900K people during the 2=3 year land reform campaign, that Communists massacred 100K people in East Germany, that Communism was infinitely worse that Nazis and Japanese imperialists put together etc, all of which are clinically insane claims. Adding some nonsense about Cuba will just be a drop in the bucket. Guccisamsclub (talk) 11:53, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
If we report Rummel's numbers, we should source them to academic writers who are able to expain their credibility and acceptance among experts, rather than a journalist who reports them uncritically. I note that Saudi Arabia has executed 134 people this year,[12] and the U.S. other allies continue to execute people, while Cuba has had no executions since 2003. Yet no one has suggested have articles about mass killings in those jurisdictions. It is more appropriate to "Death penalty in..." articles. TFD (talk) 16:19, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Rudolph Rummel is not treated as a crackpot by specialists. Valentino, for example, cites his numbers. I agree that journalists are among the least reliable sources and if we do not need to use them we shouldn't. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:22, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Valentino's not a specialist. A specialist is someone who studies a specific historical subject in some depth. Rummel estimate for deaths caused by the Soviet regime have no relation to anything put out by historians of the USSR. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Rummel is combines crackpot history with crackpot political analysis.Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:39, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Valentino's specialty is the study of violent conflict. He teaches on genocide at Dartmouth. I'm sure you could say he's not a specialist on the USSR, but I don't think that's necessary. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:47, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Both Valentino and Rummel are experts on mass killings. Valentino did no original research but is helpful in summarizing the existing estimates. Rummel never published in the mainstream and is the source of extremely high numbers quoted in right-wing sources, but is frequently mentioned in mainstream sources for high-end estimates. In the end however his estimates went even higher and even right-wing sources stopped publishing his works, and he resorted to self-publication on his website. I think we should quote his figures, along with explanations, when they appear in mainstream sources (such as Valentino's book) but not use his books published outside the academic mainstream. TFD (talk) 03:24, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Helpful? I am surprised by your consistently gracious attitude TFD :) Guccisamsclub (talk) 09:24, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 14 November 2016

The image at "Legal prosecution for genocide and genocide denial" section must be moved to right by either changing from |left to |right or blanking |left out. Also, the image sizes of all images should be utilized from |###px| to |upright=1.##| per WP:THUMBSIZE policy. --George Ho (talk) 05:58, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Partly done: done the first. If you want image sizes changing, please specify exactly what size each image should be. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:30, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

File:Vinnycia16.jpg, the image at "Great Purge (Yezhovshchina)" section, must move into between 1st and 2nd paragraph. It also must switch from 270px to upright=1.23 (or a more appropriate size rate).

There are two images under "Soviet killings during World War II" section. File:Victims of Soviet NKVD in Lvov ,June 1941.jpg must be moved to right, and its size must change from 300px to upright=1.36364 (or whatever you prefer as a better upright number, smaller or larger). File:PlaqueMemorizingEstonianGovernment.jpg must be moved to left, and its size must change from 250px to upright=1.15 (or whatever you prefer).

File:Choeungek2.JPG, an image under the "Cambodia" section, must have the 200px removed. Therefore, a default thumbnail size will vary, depending on a user's image size preference. George Ho (talk) 11:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

  • These seem to be uncontroversial edits that don't affect content itself, do  Done:
  1. File:Vinnycia16.jpg moved up from between 2nd and 3rd to 1st and 2nd paragraph within section; size changed from 270px to upright=1.23
  2. File:Victims of Soviet NKVD in Lvov ,June 1941.jpg re-aligned from left to right and size changed from 300px to upright=1.36364
  3. File:PlaqueMemorizingEstonianGovernment.jpg re-aligned from right to left and size changed from 250px to upright=1.15
  4. File:Choeungek2.JPG: removed size parameter
☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 15:35, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
I've not seeing "thumb" removed from the fourth image yet. George Ho (talk) 19:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Sorry; I've now removed the 200px from it. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 23:59, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
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