Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 51

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"Proposed causes" section

I decided to check schetm's statement that this section is well soured and well written. Let's see.

Ideology The section draws some general connections between Communist ideology and "mass killing". That means the views of each cited author should be represented in such a way that it should be clear (i) what connection the author draws between Communist ideology and mass killing, (ii) what exactly each author means under "mass killing" (e.g. they do not mean some broader phenomenae, such as "human right violation" or "mass violence" (including non-lethal one), or do not writhe about, e.g. Red Terror only), (iii) the author's views were not taken out of context. If all these criteria are met, we can claim this section is properly sourced. Let's see:

1. Since one of the cornerstones this article rests upon is Valentino's writings, it seems his opinion deserves to be presented first. The current version provided lengthy quotes from Valentino, however, the section completely distorts Valentino's concept. I already provided the analysis of evidences in the previous section, and I am not going to repeat it here. Let me just re-iterate a conclusion: Valentino's view clearly and obviously distorted to advocate a totally opposite idea. Correct description should be "Valentino concludes that leader's personality is the key and primary cause of mass killings, and he sees no significant linkage between ideology and mass killing, although he admits that Communist ideology can affect certain decisions of some leaders. Valentino's view of the role of ideology should go first, because his book served as one of the cornerstones of this article.

2. I don't see how Karlsson's quote helps understanding a linkage between ideology and mass killings. It is a trivial statement that carries zero information ("Communists committed numerous crimes, and they were Communists". So what?) Conclusion: remove

3. Rudolph Rummel is mentioned twice. I see no reason to mention him here Conclusion: remove a non-referenced and duplicated mention of Rummel.

4. Goldhagen does see Communist ideology as a significant factor in mass killing, but, how he defines it? At p. 28, he defines "mass killing" differently that Valentino (more than few hundreds of people, and without any specific time frame), he also adds an eliminationist outcome as a trait, but he specifies that an explicit intent to kill is a mandatory trait of the term "mass killing". That means, Goldhagen's assertion about the role of ideology is applicable to only a small subset of "mass killings" (as defined by Valentino) or "democide" (per Rummel). That means these three authors speak about different categories of events (obviously, Great Chinese famine or Volga famine do not fit Goldhagen's definition of "mass killing", whereas they fit Rummel's "democide" category). The current text does not explain that nuance, which makes it a misleading piece of original research. Conclusion: re-write the statement totally, expand and clarify what concrete category of events Goldhagen means in his analysis.

5. Pipes. I am not sure what exact text at the page 147 supports this claim. I would also like to see a clarification of what category of mass killings/death/murders is seen by Pipes as motivated by Communist ideology. Conclusion: I would like to see an extended quote demonstrating the linkage between mass killing and ideology per Pipes, and his vision of what he considers a "Communist mass killing".

6. Gray. I couldn't find that (pretty outdated) book, and I would like to see what kind of "mass killing" that author means, and how his definition of mass killing related to more recent definitions proposed by Valentino and other modern authors. Without having that information, it is hard to tell if this Cold War era book authored by a political philosopher (not a historian or genocide scholar) is relevant, and what additional information it carries. And, since the very concept of "mass killings" was formulated by Valentino and other genocide scholars in 1990s and later, how can we make sure Gray speaks about the same events? Conclusion: this book is used to demonstrate th elinkage between "mass killing" and ideology, despite the fact that the very concept of "mass killing" was proposed long after that book was published. Remove this outdated source.

7. Bradley. In the provided quote, the author confirms there always was a tension between Communism and human rights (although by the end of the quote he conceded the situation was more complex). He also says Communists committed mass killings. However, it is unclear from the provided quote if the author says Communist ideology was a cause of mass killings. He says Communists sometimes dismissed human rights, sometimes celebrated human rights, and sometimes committed mass killings. But where he says Communist ideology was a cause of mass killings? Conclusion: the source was misused to create a false impression the author draws a linkage between mass killings and Communist ideology. Remove.

8. Finlay. This source says a pretty trivial thing: that Marxism justifies revolutionary violence. However, if you read any source from this list, and the sources presented there are pretty good quality secondary sources, you may see that most of them agree that violence is a necessary component of most revolutions. In addition, the most deadly "Communist mass killings" (as defined by Valentino) took place long after revolutions, and, therefore, it is not clear what relation between the Finlay's notion about revolutionary violence and Valentino's "mass killings" that happened many years after Russian or Chinese revolution. Conclusion: the source was misused to create a false impression the author draws a linkage between mass killings and Communist ideology, whereas it confirms that Marx was advocating revolutionary violence (the same thing that other, non-Marxist revolutionaries did). Remove.

9. Watson. It is a very, very controversial paragraph. Yes, at the first glance, it looks like a propaganda of genocide. However, Watson clearly takes Engels out of context, and it is not a surprise the next author severely criticises him. Indeed, that article by Engels discusses national bourgeois revolutions in Europe, the processes that, according to Marx and Engels, are predecessors of Communist revolutions. According to Engels, many, many cruel things must happen before Communists come to power, and some of those cruel things are good (i.e. they accelerate social transformations that lead to proletarian revolution) other are bad (i.e. they decelerate that process), however, all of that is not a description of what Communists should do after they come to power. Conclusion: We should either provide a neutral and detailed discussion of this article by Engels, or remove the paragraph completely. We have no space for such a discussion, which does not seem directly relevant to the topic. Remove.

10. Rummel. This author does see a linkage between his "democide" and totalitarian ideology, so he is the first source in the section that was used correctly without any serious reservations. However, Rummel is a pioneer and an expert in application of Factor analysis to social sciences, so his own findings are correlations, whereas his other theorizing are less valuable (and less cited). IMO, the focus in the text should be shifted to real correlations found by Rummel, whereas his weasel words are much less valuable.

11. Valentino. Already discussed. This author was dramatically misinterpreted and misplaced.

12. Semelin. It is absolutely unclear from the presented quote what linkage the author (Semelin) draws between Communist ideology and mass killing. The quote implies some linkage exists, but WP:SYN says: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Conclusion: We should either clearly explain what is the relationship between mass killings (in general) and ideology per Semelin, or remove it completely as SYN.}

13. Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley write about fanaticism of leaders, which, in my opinion, is, at least partially, in agreement with Valentino's ideas. It would be interesting to check who proposed this idea first, and who took it from whom (if time allows, I'll check cross-references). However, whereas the linkage between mass killings and leader's personality is clear from the provided quote, the linkage with Communist ideology is not. Conclusion: Re-write and probably put into a different section.

14. Mann. The quote literally says: " Ordinary party members were also ideologically driven (...). Killings were often popular (...)." In other words, "they were ideology driven. They killed." What type of connection the author draws? How he explains the linkage between Communist ideology and killings? It is absolutely unclear from the quote, and the quote was provided to imply some linkage that the author does not describe clearly. Conclusion: we should either explain what was the linkage between mass killings and Communist ideology, according to Mann, or remove it completely.

15. Tismăneanu, Bellamy, Katz, Shaw. These authors seem to discuss some concrete instances of Communist mass killings, e.g. mass killings by Stalin, mass killings in the USSR, China, Cambodia and Albania, etc. That means all of that are some specific examples. In connection to that, I am wondering why all other specific causes are discussed in country-specific sections. Conclusion: all sources that discuss ideology as a cause of mass killings in a selected group of states or a separate group of events cannot be discussed in the section that describes common causes.

I think it is a time to take a break. As we can see, this "well sourced" section is full of marginally relevant sources, and most sources that are relevant are misused or directly misinterpreted here. In addition, since many sources discuss not mass killings in general, but some specific categories of Communist mass killings and their relation to ideology, the section must be expanded by moving all country-specific causes here. We must do that, because that is required by WP:STRUCTURE.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:57, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

P.S. It seems obvious that the section about the linkage between Communist ideology and mass killings should start with brief description of that ideology, and those aspects of that ideology that cause mass killings. So far, I found no good sources, but I found several sources that discuss a linkage of ideology (in general) and mass killing. That confirms that the main part of this content belongs to Mass killing article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

There's an obvious weight issue, because we are presented with a number of opinions without any indication of the degree of their acceptance in mainstream sources. schetm, could you please provide a link to a review study that explains this. TFD (talk) 02:05, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

A discussion of weight issues will be dramatically facilitated after all SYN and direct misinterpretations will be removed. My analysis shows that more than a half of the text should be removed, and the rest should be re-written.

With regard to weight, if we clearly separate general theories (that discuss Communist mass killings as a single phenomenon) from case-specific explanations, the weight issues do not look really dramatic, because the number of authors who seriously discuss common causes is relatively small. Overwhelming majority of sources discuss causes of each case of mass killing/mass mortality separately, and, in each specific case, the mainstream viewpoint of causes of each event is pretty easy to establish. Thus, a mainstream view of causes of Great Chinese famine is that the famine was a result of a combination of natural and antropogenic (communal dining rooms, disrupted communication between local and central authorities, poor statistical apparatus etc) factors, and it was a mass mortality event, not mass killing. In contrast, a mainstream view of causes of Cambodian genocide is that it was caused by a combination of three factors: huge social tensions between desperately poor Khmer rural population and (predominantly non-Khmer) rich urban population, historical tradition of revenge, and KR's ultraMaoism. All of that is not a problem at all. If we combine common causes and case-specific causes in a single section (as NPOV advises us to do), the weigh issues will be resolved automatically.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:25, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

For a review, try to read this: Rethinking the role of ideology in mass atrocities. J Leader Maynard - Terrorism and Political Violence, 2014 - Taylor & Francis.

It is not about "Communist mass killings", but about mass killings in general, and, obviously, it does not cover famine, but the review is good, and it is well cited, which implies wide acceptance.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:57, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't Maynard's book say that sources don't draw connections between ideology and mass killings, or at least do so only superficially? TFD (talk) 04:12, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

He cites a number of works authored by several scholars, part of whom have already been cited here, but those works either discuss mass killings in general (not MKuCR) or focus on some specific examples (some concrete MKuCR). Non of them discuss ideology as a cause of "mass killings under Communist regimes" as they are defined here. In addition, most works speak about ideology as a justification of mass killings, not ideology as a cause of mass killings. To me, that is an important nuance. The claim that ideology was used for justification of some killing, and the claim that ideology was a cause are two totally different claims.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I am busy for the next two weeks, but I will have time to respond this weekend (and next weekend, if needed). AmateurEditor (talk) 04:27, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, take your time. You definitely need some time ti find fresh and strong counter-arguments, because my arguments are totally new. I was able to demonstrate that, whereas you were persistently defending NPOV violations with numerous references to NOR, your own edits are totally inconsistent with NOR, and you make generalizations not found in the source (Valentino) you yourself are using as a core source in your work. If you disagree with that, please, address this criticism. If you have no counter-arguments (which is quite likely, because the sources cited by me clearly support my claims), let's think together how can we fix all of that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Please check Dictatorship of the proletariat as it also discusses numerous references for justification of mass terror in communist regimes. Marxist sources in this aspect were quite prevalent, especially in Marxism-Leninism, with Lenin's The State and Revolution being practically one large compilation of quotes from Marx and Engels in support of mass terror, especially chapter 1, part 4 "The Withering Away of the State, and Violent Revolution" which can be found in whole here[1]. So while vagueness of parts of M&E writings could be now used to claim they didn't directly justify violence, their followers like Lenin clearly chose the most violent possible interpretation of M&E teachings, and they did so largely in compliance with their authors' intentions. This is further confirmed by reading of Critique of the Gotha Programme where Marx unrolls a scathing attack on a social-democratic program that specifically did not postulate a violent revolution, and includes the famous quote on the need for dictatorship of the proletariat: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one with the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". Which Lenin of course did read correctly as "panegyric of violent revolution" and quoted in "The State and Revolution". Cloud200 (talk) 08:08, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Again, I see nothing unusual in Marxist attitude to revolutionary violence. In XIX-early XX century, most revolutionaries supported violence, and that was not a specific trait of Marxists. The problem is that majority of the events that article is discussing took place long after socialist revolutions, so it is hard to tell how Marx's or Lenin's views of revolutionary violence are related to post-revolutionary events.

By saying that, I think that some "theorizing" of self-appointed Marx's successors, such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc, can and should be considered as a "theoretical" base for mass killing. The most pure example is the infamous Stalin's "theory" about permanent exacerbation of class struggle. There is a direct linkage between this "theory" and the Great Purge, and this "theory" was criticized and debunked by Communists themselves during de-stalinization. I think it is quite necessary to add discussions of this type "theories" in the analysis of concrete mass killings or mass mortality events, but all of that must be placed into a proper context, to avoid unneeded generalizations. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

FYI: Red Terror unrolled literally one year after Lenin wrote The State and Revolution. Not seeing the link between one and another approaches the verge of denialism. Cloud200 (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

FYI. Red Terror unrolled literally few days after an unsuccessful attempt of Lenin's assassination and after killing of Uritsky. Assassination (even unsuccessful) is the event that may have a profound effect on human mind. If Lenin's original plan was to unfold a mass killing campaign, what he was waiting for? And, FYI, the infamous CheKa was created not in addition to an ordinary police: in reality, all police forces were disbanded by Bolsheviks, who initially believed there were no more need in them. Therefore, CheKa's function, among other purposes, was to maintain order.

I am not arguing Bolsheviks rejected the idea of violence. Yes, they were ready to resort to violence when needed. However, it is clear that their policy was more reactive (the violence level was increasing). Thus, literally one day after the overturn of the Provisional government, Lenin's government banned a capital punishment, which is inconsistent with the idea that they planned the mass killings campaign from the very beginning. Their attitude to violence can be seen from the Lenin's reaction on Fyodor Kokoshkin (politician)'s murder. Yes, Lenin was not a dove, and he quickly changed his position when the opponents' resistance increased. However, to draw the roots of mass violence from his ideology would be incorrect.

@Paul Siebert: Lenin and Uritsky (chef of CheKa) assassination attempts happened in August 1918. What was the background of these assassination attempts? It was because already in April 1918 Bolsheviks, using CheKa, started to ruthlessly eliminate all internal opposition: "Of all the revolutionary elements in Russia it is the Anarchists who now suffer the most ruthless and systematic persecution. Their suppression by the Bolsheviki began already in 1918, when — in the month of April of that year — the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow and by the use of machine guns and artillery “liquidated” the whole organisation."[2] Cloud200 (talk) 21:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Second, Red Terror or Kronshtadt rebellion are the Civil war events, they fall under a "revolutionary violence" category. Meanwhile, this article discuss much broader range of events, and the most deadly events are separated from the revolution by more than 10-20 years period. How these events are connected with Lenin's "State and Revolution"? It follows from S&R letter and spirit that Lenin believed no state would exist in such a "distant future", and no state violence would be possible at all.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:12, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: The postulates of Kronstadt rebellion were exclusively political and they originated specifically from the opposition to the Bolshevik methods and elimination of all opposition: "reduction in Bolshevik power, newly elected soviet councils to include socialist and anarchist groups, economic freedom for peasants and workers, dissolution of the bureaucratic governmental organs created during the civil war, and the restoration of civil rights for the working class". Kronstadt rebels argued these were the true Marxist ideals abandoned by Bolshevik, the latter argued by crushing Kronstadt they were merely implementing Marxist recipe of establishing ultimate rule of the proletarian party over "reactionaries". Dialectically, both were right. Cloud200 (talk) 10:47, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

That is true, but one has to keep in mind that the rebellion took place almost immediately after the end of a very bloody Civil war, when many purely political actions had quite concrete and very violent military continuation. Those time people had a different approach to resolution of political disputes, but that approach was shared by all parties of the conflict.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:46, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

You would need a secondary source that linked support of violent revolution with mass killings. The U.S. came into being as a result of a violent revolution, yet its government has never carried out mass killings of its own citizens. TFD (talk) 20:54, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

American revolution never postulated dictatorship of the proletariat or anyone else, so it's logical it didn't end up in a dictatorship. Bolshevik revolution postulated exactly that, and it ended exactly there. For a detailed first-hand analysis of ideological background and practice of Bolshevik revolution I recommend Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism" available in full on Gutenberg[3]. Cloud200 (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Apart from what others have already said, that same article mentions Marxist criticism and the rest is based on your personal reading of primary sources ("Which Lenin of course did read correctly as 'panegyric of violent revolution' ...." How convenient that of course Lenin's interpretation is the correct line and only reading of Marx, that is so... 'Stalinist', to say the least). Marxists debated about the Russian Revolution even before the Bolsheviks took power, and as soon as they did, they already criticized them (such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain), so Marxists were not like a monolithic who threw all their support behind the Bolsheviks and when things went bad, they retracted; they, among other socialists and communists, criticized them in the first place and correctly predicted the state-capitalist development. It is ironic that anti-communists and 'Stalinists' agree that Marxism is Leninism/Stalinism. When it is pointed out the democratic Social Democrats, who were also Marxists, apparently they were not real Marxists (again, agreeing with the 'Stalinists'), not because of a rational reason but because it contradicts the link between an absolutist and extremist Marxism and mass killing.

In short, this alleged link is almost as bad as claiming that there is no link between revolutionaries and violence. Both views are extreme, and reality, including academic reality, is much more nuanced than that. As noted by Siebert, Marxists are not the first nor the last in their attitude to revolutionary violence, which is more nuanced than you think, and many Marxists totally rejected it, alongside the use of terror and the like. Or were they not real Marxists? You see, the argument can go both ways. It is much more complicated than you and the synthesis, NPOV-violating, original research-section is describing. And these are very serious policy violations, including the strenuous defense of, and support for, such policy violations. Davide King (talk) 23:01, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Because Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik party it's rather obvious that he pushed his interpretation of Marx and Engels outlined in The State and Revolution. Of course, there were disagreements and there were numerous criticisms - from anarchists, from Socialist Revolutionaries, from Marxists in Europe such as Karl Kautsky. Lenin did the only logical thing he could derive from his interpretation of Marx and Engels - physically eliminated anarchists[4], Socialist Revolutionaries, unrolled Red Terror, crushed Kronstadt rebellion and called all critics "renegades"[5]. And it worked - the Bolshevik party gained power according to Marxist recipe, which was the ultimate confirmation of his interpretation being correct. Cloud200 (talk) 19:56, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Regarding "real Marxists" — since there's no single or canonical interpretation of Marx-Engels writings, and such interpretation cannot be presented due to their dialectical vagueness and ambiguousness, you can't really deny Lenin the right to claiming his interpretation as right or wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's just one of many equally right interpretations of the Scripture that happened to be the most successful in establishing political power due to its ruthlessness. Oh and many Western Marxists actually supported it exactly for that reason ("you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs"). Reactions to reporting by Gareth Jones (journalist) and Malcolm Muggeridge are especially teaching on that aspect. Cloud200 (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

"Lenin did the only logical thing he could derive from his interpretation of Marx and Engels." That is your interpretation, which still read as your original research rather than tertiary sources summarizing that for us, and at best it is only one side of historiography. "... you can't really deny Lenin the right to claiming his interpretation as right or wrong." Except you are doing it exactly this by positing it was right, contradicting yourselves. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not supported by all Marxists (at least insofar as many Marxists support it as a direct-democratic state, not as the dictatorship of the party). Social Democrats, who were also Marxists, did not result in Lenin's dictatorship of the party, something that you did not respond to because it contradicts the link, so you are engaging in original research in positing a link that does not exist, and as noted by TFD, we need "a secondary source that linked support of violent revolution with mass killings", or in this case communism and mass killing. Siebert demonstrated that there is not for the latter. All this reeks of Cold War era anyway. Davide King (talk) 23:28, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Davide King: After Marx himself in Critique of the Gotha Programme described Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany as "revisionist" and broke all ties, specifically for refusal to support the violent revolution, describing them as "Marxist" is a very long stretch. Not every socialist movement in history was "Marxist", socialism existed before Marx, and Marxian version of socialism is specifically distinguished by features such as violent revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, none of which were supported by social democrats. They certainly were inspired by Marx writings, but chose radically way of social change. Cloud200 (talk) 08:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

While Marx was unhappy with the compromises of the Gotha program, his followers continued in the SDP. The split between socialism and communism took place over the Russian Revolution. Who's to say that Lenin was closer to true Marxism than Kautsky? TFD (talk) 00:43, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: Nobody here argues he was. Quite the opposite, I demonstrated how the concept of "true Marxism" is irrelevant in the absence of any ultimate compliance check. What we're arguing about is whether Bolshevik terror was inspired by Marx and Engels, and once again I believe I demonstrated that it undoubtedly was. Cloud200 (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

You just said that "describing them as "Marxist: is a very long stretch." TFD (talk) 19:44, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying "Lenin's interpretation was right". I specifically explained that "right" or "wrong" is not applicable in the context of Marxism due to its dialectical character. That was the very point of Marx and Engels use of dialectics - you can't argue on the Scripture based on its reading and applying "bourgeois" logic alone, because it's composed of contradictory, vague and ambiguous statements. Lenin certainly believed his interpretation was correct, as did many other authors, but in a system like Marxism there's no objective criterion that allows you to judge which one is objectively correct, it was just not designed this way. So when Lenin wanted to start the revolution and his comrades argued there's not suitable proletarian base in Russia, he just quoted passages from Marx letters to Vera Zasulich where Marx says farming communes can replace proletariat and voilà. When he wanted to unroll Red Terror, he also had suitable passages from Marx and Engels. When he wanted to start New Economic Policy (contradicting both Red Terror and war communism), here you go with Marx passages about the need for development of proleterian base first. Stalin also quoted Marx a lot, if you haven't noticed, every single Stalinist postulate was supported by extensive selection of quotes from Marx and Engels, as well as brilliant analyses of leading Marxist philosophers in the USSR and abroad. And they have all followed Marx himself who in 1857 wrote the following tongue-in-cheek letter to Engels:[6] "As to the Delhi affair, it seems to me that the English ought to begin their retreat as soon as the rainy season has set in in real earnest. Being obliged for the present to hold the fort for you as the Tribune’s military correspondent I have taken it upon myself to put this forward. NB, on the supposition that the reports to date have been true. It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way." Cloud200 (talk) 08:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

"Marxian version of socialism is specifically distinguished by features such as violent revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat." Again, you are generalizing; this was not the case for the Social Democrats, who also did the same thing as Lenin et al. and claimed support from Marx both directly (Social Democratic party) and through his works; later in their life, both Marx and Engels came to argue that in some countries workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means (Gray, Johnson, & Walker (2014), pp. 119–120), and Engels was skeptical of "top-down revolutions" and later in life advocated "a peaceful, democratic road to socialism." (Hunt 2009) Of course, Engels also harshly criticized Kautsky for misrepresenting his views, but the issue seemed to be more that it gave the impression Engels rejected any form of revolution ("a peace-loving proponent of legality [at all costs]") than anything (Steger 1999, p. 182). So I do not see why you should exclude Social Democrats as Marxists just because they do not subscribe to your personal interpretation of Marxism. "[Bolshevism] falsely claims a share in the Socialist tradition. In fact it has distorted that tradition beyond recognition. It has built up a rigid theology which is incompatible with the critical spirit of Marxism." (Frankfurt Declaration 1951). Even today where most mainstream social-democratic parties renounced Marxism as a doctrine, they still loosely held to be valuable for its emphasis on changing the world for a more just, better future (Berman 2006, p. 153). You are simply proposing one side of historiography, which is mainly supported by anti-communists, and passing it off as the be-all and end-all (of course, all Communists leaders justified their policies on ideology, but that is the thing, justified, not caused; again, it is mainly anti-communists and 'Stalinists' who agree on 'Leninism–Stalinism' as true Marxism, while I am presenting the other, more nuanced, and in my view accurate, side. Anyways, this is all interesting but we are diverging, and none of what you wrote answered, challenged, or debunked the great critical analysis and issues raised by Paul Siebert. Davide King (talk) 10:17, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

"why you should exclude Social Democrats as Marxists" - because they were 1) excluded from Marxism by Marx himself who called them "reactionary" (Stalin called them "social-fascists"), 2) because later social-democratic movements carefully separated themselves from Marxists (calling them "Communists") which is nicely highlighted in the Frankfurt Declaration. Cloud200 (talk) 22:16, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

"both Marx and Engels came to argue that in some countries workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means" - no, they didn't. There's one quote of late Marx or Engels, who - when confronted with a question why the world revolution hasn't arrived yet after decades, in spite of being "scientifically" predicted by "iron laws of dialectics" - reluctantly answered that maybe communism can arrive without revolution. And that's it. I'm not aware of any other their significant statements on that subject. Cloud200 (talk) 21:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

P.S. It looks like you treat Marxism solely as a doctrine and ideology, rather than a method of socioeconomic analysis, which is why you see it as a Scripture or teleological. Davide King (talk) 10:21, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

You can find the answer to why I treat it as a doctrine in the same Frankfurt Declaration you referred to above: "Communism falsely claims a share in the Socialist tradition. In fact it has distorted that tradition beyond recognition. It has built up a rigid theology which is incompatible with the critical spirit of Marxism". And while it's hard not to agree with the second part, the reason why I find the first part unconvincing is that the voice of LSI and other non-Bolshevik socialist movements was marginal in 1917 and beyond. Bertrand Russell, quoted above, was one of the very few communists who dared to criticise Bolsheviks back then, and he was of course criticised for that by his comrades in UK. The majority of Western left accepted the Bolshevik way of "pragmatism" and happily supported it well until 30's. People like Berthold Brecht or Jean-Paul Sartre openly supported Stalinism well into 50's. For Sartre, even the Khruschev's lecture wasn't enough. So once again, the "spirit of Marxism" they're talking about was a feeling of minority of the people back then while dominating position was that "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" (Communist Manifesto, foundational document by Marx and Engels!) is the right way to go, and Bolshevik were pioneers in that approach. Cloud200 (talk) 21:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

The sources I actually provided say otherwise about Marx and Engels. 'Communists' was an euphemism of Bolshevism, and they still supported Marxism. As noted by TFD, "[w]hile Marx was unhappy with the compromises of the Gotha program, his followers continued in the SDP. The split between socialism and communism took place over the Russian Revolution. Who's to say that Lenin was closer to true Marxism than Kautsky?" Note that it says: "In fact it has distorted that tradition beyond recognition. It has built up a rigid theology which is incompatible with the critical spirit of Marxism." While you emphasize only the theology part, you ignore the rest, which show they could still be rightly called Marxists (in a neutral, non-pejorative way). Also describing Russell as a 'communist' is a bit of a stretch; he has always been a socialist (especially guild socialist), and prior to that a Georgist. He admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eduard Bernstein, and had expressed great hope in "the Communist experiment", which is much different and more nuanced, but I have not really seen described him as a 'communist.' You mention Brecht and Sarte as if they are they are the be-all and end-all. What about Rosa Luxemburg? What about Otto Rühle? You also provide no context for why they accepted it (I wish Paul Siebert would respond you on this, as they did for the Red Terror), and ignore the many who did not, and well before, during, and right after the revolution. Unlike you, I do not pretend to know which is the real Marxist, or to say that Lenin was closer to true Marxism than Kautzky and vice versa; ironically, you are being dogmatic and determinist, which is very 'Marxist'-like according to your own interpretation of it. "... while dominating position was that 'violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie' (Communist Manifesto, foundational document by Marx and Engels!)", as if that is the be-all and end-all of Marxist communism, and Marx and Engels did not write anything else. As I wrote, this is contradicted by the good, reliable sources I provided, which you have not addressed. Davide King (talk) 01:50, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

To add, what you are ascribing here only to Marxism is true of every revolution, as noted again by both TFD and Siebert. Davide King (talk) 23:31, 2 September 2021 (UTC) I also completely agree with what Siebert wrote here. That is precisely the context we need but this whole article, as currently structured and understood, precludes us from doing that precisely because most scholars do not see ideology as the cause, or link, for mass killing, but as concisely explained by Siebert, they see it as a justification for it, which is not the same thing as it being the cause ("I do not see how the sources [c]ited in this section support the claim that the most deadly events, such as the Great Chinese famine can be explained by Lenin's or Marx's view of revolutionary violence. I see a clear WP:SYN problem here."), and scholars do not treat it as the same thing, and do not generalize for communism; for some scholars, ideology can be used to justify, say, mass killing A (not mass killings in general) but it is mainly other factors that explain mass killings in general, which cannot be reduced to communism = mass killing. Therefore, I support Siebert's proposals below to clarify this and correctly reflect reliable sources and authors. Davide King (talk) 03:02, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a valid criticism, how far has Maoism gone from Marxism and whether the former's policies can be directly attributed to the latter. In case of Marxism-Leninism it's trivial to demonstrate as both Lenin and Stalin directly referred to Marx and Engels extensively. I don't have sufficient knowledge of Maoism to judge on that matter but I will check in my favourite encyclopedia on that subject — Main Currents of Marxism. Cloud200 (talk) 08:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Regarding WP:PRIMARY — Lenin's book quoting Marx is secondary source just as Pipes or any other scholar quoting Marx. Cloud200 (talk)

Regarding your comments at 19:47, 2 September 2021, are you saying that it's not violent revolution as advocated by Marx and U.S. Founding Fathers that leads to mass killings, but only if it is combined with advocacy of the dictatorship of the proletariat? But why would that necessarily lead to mass killings? I can see that it could if the leaders decided to kill non-proletarian elements, but every revolution has opponents loyal to the old order. TFD (talk) 23:00, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Davide King: "as if that [the 'violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie' Communist Manifesto] is the be-all and end-all of Marxist communism, and Marx and Engels did not write anything else" - what else they wrote is irrelevant in this article because specifically that violence factor in Marxian revolutionary socialism was what distinguished it from the other fractions, and which ultimately led to the atrocities we're talking about it. If you take the NSDAP programme, it has 25 points and only a few of them praised racism, eugenics and violence. Can you think of a reason why we aren't we discussing all the remaining good things they proposed? It's specifically these few points that differentiated NSDAP program from programs of other parties (including SPD), exactly in the same way as the tirades on the need of "purge" and "violent revolution" differentiated Marx and Engels from less radical socialists. And these differences had consequences. Cloud200 (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

As written by Siebert, "the only issue that has a relation to the current section is the relationship between Marxism and mass killings." What you are doing is projecting your personal views and interpretation without using any secondary or tertiary source; we have yet to see a source for it, after Siebert demonstrated current source fail that. I find it ironic that you went for that argument. If you think that is primary document of Nazism, you are solely mistaken; yes, the reason why is that the economic program was just propaganda to gain Communist and working-class voters, and indeed privatization was coined after the Nazi's privatizations in the 1930s. Do you also believe that the Nazis were socialists and left-wing? If so, you (not me, TFD, or Siebert) are presenting fringe views, which can explain your comments here and below. Davide King (talk) 20:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Cloud200 and TFD, it seems you are missing the major point.

The "Causes" section (in its present form) is not discussing concrete cases. Each concrete case is discussed in country-specific sections. Therefore, when we claim that the author X says M-L ideology was a cause of mass killings, we imply this author is speaking about mass killings "in general", which includes the Great Purge, the Great Chinese famine, etc. Whereas I agree that some sources see Lenin's advocacy of revolutionary violence as one of the causes of the Red Terror, I do not see how the sources sited in this section support the claim that the most deadly events, such as the Great Chinese famine can be explained by Lenin's or Marx's view of revolutionary violence. I see a clear WP:SYN problem here.
Of course, all of that can be resolved if we switch to the format: "A scholar X links the theory Y with the mass killing Z (not to "mass killings" in general)" (for example, Lenin's views with the Red Terror). However, if we do that in this section, what is the reason to keep country-specific sections? In connection to that, the most reasonable way would be to remove this section completely, and move all properly sourced content to the sections that discuss each concrete event. In that case, only few authors, who, like Rummel, discuss mass killings in general, can be moved to the bottom into the section named "Attempts to propose common causes", where their view of common causes (which explain a whole range of mass killings, starting from the Red Terror and endidng with the Great Chinese famine) will be presented, and supplemented with a due criticism. Thus, the same section must explain that Valentino does NOT see ideology as a primary factor.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:52, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't mind that approach. I see I need to re-read Main Currents of Marxism as he was looking at this aspect (=how much various "communist" movements' policies were inspired by Marx) in great detail. Cloud200 (talk) 08:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Cloud200, Davide King & TFD. I have a feeling that the discussion started to deviate from the original topic. Don't you mind me to put the "arbitrary break" section and, which would be even better, to move all the text in this subsection to the separate section? It seems we achieved a consensus on the overall structure, and the discussion that followed the 08:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC) Cloud200's post is just blurring that fact. I will gladly join that discussion, but, since I don't like arguments for sake of arguments, it would be better if we summarized the interim agreement. Let me ask it again Do we all agree that the approach proposed by me (Description of country-specific and/or case specific causes, followed by a discussion of proposed general causes) is seen as a reasonable alternative to the current structure?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:25, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I do. Anything would be better than what we have. I liked your proposed lead (see here) and I am really curious about a whole article, neutrally written based on such a lead. I am also curious about TFD's Victims of Communism narrative article, which could either be incorporated here, or be a separate article, where we discuss the estimates and criticism, while this article mainly focuses on authors who "link those events together under a category 'Communist mass killings', 'Global communist death toll' etc, whereas others (a long list follows) see no direct linkage between them, or group them with other mass killing/mass mortality events." Or where this article will be only scholarly, while the other will include the narrative very popular in the popular press, with criticism from scholars of course. Davide King (talk) 21:38, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I was just going to propose the same. We can actually start re-drafting the section right here using excerpts from sources you laboriously collected above. Cloud200 (talk) 10:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Cloud200, what excerpts are you referring to? The only excerpts from Paul Siebert above that I see are the book reviews of Valentino's mass killing book, all of which discuss Valentino's overall thesis and none of which discuss the topic of this article directly. Rewriting the article based on those book reviews seems indefensible from a policy standpoint as well as a dramatic redefinition of the article's topic. Paul Siebert has been saying that the wikipedia article is about Valentino's term, but that is incorrect. The descriptive title "Mass killings under communist regimes" was chosen as a neutral descriptive title because generic mass killing is a neutral descriptor of all the various terms preferred by different authors (genocide, politicide, etc). Valentino's specific definition of mass killing also falls under the generic mass killing umbrella but is not what is intended when the generic term is used when used in other sources to describe genocide, politicide, etc. AmateurEditor (talk) 16:40, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Cloud200, I think the first step is to rename the section, because the title implies some specific casual linkage. In reality, we should discuss some factors and their relationship with mass killings (both positive and negative). Thus, as soon as Valentino is one of the core sources, we should just describe what his theory says in general, and what he says about the three Communist regimes analyzed by him.

Second, in a discussion of ideology, the stress should me made not on ideology as a cause, but on its role as a justification of mass killings. Whereas the former is a big question, the fact that some leaders used references to Marx as a justification of mass killings. Thus, a famous Marx words about liquidation of bourgeois as a class were interpreted by some later leaders as "physical extermination of them", which is a total nonsense and directly contradicts to the spirit of Marxism: for Marx, membership in some class means involvement in a certain type of economic relationships, and not as some biological trait, so if, e.g. a bourgeois becomes deprived of their assets, they cannot act as a capitalists any more, which means they stopped to be capitalists. In that sense, "liquidation" meant "deprivation of all capitalist possessions". However, when taken literally, this phrase could be (and was) used by some later leaders as a justification of mass killing.

(a side note. You refer to Marxism as a quasireligious concept. Yes, to many people it was a kind of religion. However, the same can be said about many other things. Thus, science in general became a religion for many people in XIX-XX centuries. That is a legacy of Enlightenment, whose latest reincarnation Communism was. Many, many people expected too much from science, and many of them believed in it in a religious manner. Hence a disappointment, which we are witnessing now. That is normal.).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:58, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Marxism and mass killing

For a comprehensive scientific and historical analysis of links between the Soviet system and Marxism, I recommend Main Currents of Marxism, especially volume III that can be found here[7]. Unfortunately, no copy-paste. For a general introduction I recommend pages 2-4. Then he goes through lengthy recollections on Stalin's biography, and interesting analysis against starts on page 41 explaining how Stalin came up with the "rigid theology" that we now call Stalinism:

"As long as the bulk of the population was economically more or less independent of the state, and even kept the state in some degree of dependence on itself; the ideal of an indivisible dictatorship could not be fully realized. Marxist-Leninist doctrine taught, however, that socialism could only be built up by a completely centralized political and economic power. The abolition of private ownership of the means of production was the supreme task of humanity and the main obligation of the most progressive system in the world. Marxism held out the prospect of the merging or unification of civil society with the state through the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the only way to such unity was by liquidating all spontaneous forms of political, economic, and cultural life and replacing them by forms imposed by the state. Stalin thus realized Marxism-Leninism in the only possible way by consolidating his dictatorship over society, destroying all social ties that were not state-imposed and all classes, including the working class itself. This process, of course, did not take place overnight."

This is clear link between the Marxist doctrine and Stalin's policies that Kołakowski describes. You may not agree with that, but Main Currents of Marxism is one of the fundamental monographs on the subject so at least it has to be respected. Now, this imperative of "completely centralized political and economic power" takes us logically to dekulakization, Great Purge and other well-known mass killing campaigns:

"The destruction of the Soviet peasantry, who formed three- quarters of the population, was not only an economic but a moral disaster for the entire country. Tens of millions were driven into semi-servitude, and millions more were employed as executants of the process. The whole party became an organization of torturers and oppressors: no one was innocent, and all Com- munists were accomplices in the coercion of society. Thus the party acquired a new species of moral unity, and embarked on a course from which there was no turning back."

Then, in Chapter III, especially pages 95+ he goes in great detail through the version of Marxism laid out as canonical by Stalin in History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), and concludes the following, which I believe is highly relevant to the discussion:

"It should not be supposed, however, that Marxism as codified by Stalin differed in any essential way from Leninism. It was a bald, primitive version, but contained scarcely anything new. Indeed, very little that is original can be found in any of Stalin’s works before 1950, with two exceptions. The first, of which we have considered the import, was that socialism could be built in one country. The second was that the class struggle must become fiercer as the building of socialism progressed. This principle remained officially valid even after Stalin declared that there were no longer any antagonistic classes in the Soviet Union—there were no classes, but the class struggle was acuter than ever. A third principle, which Stalin seems first to have enunciated at a plenum of the Central Committee on 12 January 1933, was that before the state ‘withered away’ under Com- munism it must, for dialectical reasons, first develop to a point of maximum strength; but this idea had already been formulated by Trotsky during the Civil War. The second and third principles, in any case, were of no significance except as a Justification of the system of police terror. However, it should be emphasized once again that what mattered about Stalinist ideology was not its content—even though it was expressed in catechetical form—but the fact that there was a supreme authority from whose judgement on ideological matters there was no appeal. Ideology was thus completely institutionalized, and virtually the whole of intellec- tual life was subordinated to it. The ‘unity of theory and practice’ was expressed by the concentration of doctrinal, political, and police authority in Stalin's person."

Which is, in my opinion, quite honest and convincing analysis of the logic between Marx -> Lenin -> Trotsky -> Stalin development of the original Marx's postulates, that can be summarised as "first develop to a point of maximum strength". Cloud200 (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Actually, we may argue about details of Marx -> Lenin -> Trotsky -> Stalin etc, but the only issue that has a relation to the current section is the relationship between Marxism and mass killings. The quotes provided by you fully confirm my initial claim, namely that the two exceptions (socialism could be built in one country, and that the class struggle must become fiercer as the building of socialism progressed) are related to mass killings, and they, especially, the second one, were a justification of mass killings during the Great Purge, dekulakization and other later events (which took place during the deadliest part of Stalin's rule). These two exceptions are the only thing that are directly relevant, and I am glad that we have no disagreement on that matter.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:04, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

As you correctly noted, it is "your initial claim" - and it neither changes nor falsifies the view of Kołakowski and numerous other authors quoted here that these additions did not really matter much for the Bolshevik policies ("completely centralized political and economic power") and that it did not even appear under Stalin exclusively ("this idea had already been formulated by Trotsky during the Civil War"). If you have published your views in the form of scholar articles, I'm sure we can include them in the article as one of the competing views on that subject. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Actually, there is a logical error in your claims. The fact that some author see a continuity between Marx and Stalin, does not mean it relates to our topic (namely, that mass killings can be derived from the original Marxism). In reality, the differences between the society created by Stalin and the society that existed in Russia in 1925 or in 1965 were relatively small, however, there were NO mass killings in 1925 or 1965, despite the fact that state economy, Gosplan, five years plans and other traits of the society were the same. In reality, very small difference in the society may lead to a shift from a grim murderous state (like STalin's USSR), to a quite peaceful autocracy (Khrushchev's USSR). Similarly, the analysis of political organization in the US and Liberia shows that formally these two societies are pretty similar (market economy, free elections etc), but the actual difference is huge.

Again, even if the overall organization of the Soviet state can be traced back to the Marx's writings (which is not necessarily the case, but I am not going to argue with Kołakowski), that is not sufficient for drawing a linkage between Marxism and mass killings.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I hope Siebert can respond you on this (they just did and is the same point I made in this message I wrote before their published their response) but I do not see how this is relevant. Kołakowski and Main Currents of Marxism are about Marxism, not mass killing, and he did not discuss mass killings because, well, the concept only became proposed in the 1990s. In addition, while I find it useful and good, it is not the sole or definitive authority on Marxism. Kołakowski was criticized for omitting discussions of particular authors or topics, his hostility to Marxism, his adherence to Lukács's interpretation of Marx, his failure to explain Marxism's appeal, and for giving a misleading impression of Marxism by focusing on Marxist philosophers at the expense of other Marxist writers. This is also a good and fair summary of criticism, and the latest point is the criticism I gave to you. You are essentially presenting this, and state it as fact. You are only presenting one side (anti-communist, orthodoxed, etc.) of historiography, and even I think you are giving more extreme views than some scholars who belong to such side.

You are presenting Communist leaders as faithful and accurate followers of Marx, that Leninism was the correct interpretation of Marxism, that Stalinism is the inevitable result of Marxism, that Lenin and Stalin were essentially the same, and the Soviet Union was totalitarian since the beginning, which is a view not supported by all scholars, including those who belong to the anti-communist side which, as in the case of Valentino, are distorted to present much extremer views than what they actually hold. Just like mass killing, totalitarianism is a proposed concept, not a fact; the fact is that many people have died and that they were ruled authoritatively, the theory is that some killings which do not fit the category of genocide can be categorized as mass killing, and something similar for totalitarianism, with countries that go beyond authoritarianism through the use of mass politics and an elaborate ideology (it dates back to the 1950s and was used as a tool to convert anti-fascism into anti-communism during the Cold War, so as to equate Nazism with Stalinism and support their efforts; this may surprise you, since you are proposing the anti-communist paradigm of historiography, but the equation between the two is also a theory, not a fact, not shared by all scholars, and is a revisionist view, though it is legitimized by political institutions, which is why I believe many users are confused when they found out the academic view).

I believe The Four Deuces was onto something whey they said that anti-communists and 'Stalinists' share much more than they would like to admit, or something like that (they are free to correct me and better clarify this). They are both dogmatic and determinist, and present their views as the true and sole facts. Incidentally, it is mainly anti-communists and 'Stalinists' who agree that Communist states were socialists, of course for vastly different reasons but also sharing the same misconceptions about socialism. Davide King (talk) 02:11, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@Davide King: "You are presenting Communist leaders as faithful and accurate followers of Marx, that Leninism was the correct interpretation of Marxism" - as I explained above, I am not since there is no "correct" interpretation of Marxism. That's the whole point of dialectical materialism. As every quasi-religious movement based on reading of one Scripture, you can create infinite number of competing interpretations and you have no authority to rule which one is correct. Marxism-Leninism ultimately came out to be the most effective in achieving its political goals, and most widespread in geographical and economical terms, and because of that for a period of time it was supported by vast majority of Western left, some of which ultimately got disillusioned. As a counter-argument you're presenting some marginal movements that rarely achieved any political power and try to present them as mainstream alternatives to Marxism-Leninism. The key question in the article we are discussing is - did Marxism inspire mass killings and I believe it is already proven beyond any doubt that it did, by glorifying violence and the need to eradicate a whole class of society as the required step for the bright future. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

"he did not discuss mass killings because, well, the concept only became proposed in the 1990s" - what?! Mass killings in Bolshevik Russia have been widely discussed since they started, that is from 1917 (see this poster from 1920) and continued through the whole period of the existence of the USSR as it was marked by mass killings. You have clearly missed a whole piece of literature on Red Terror, Kronstadt rebellion (whose objectives were exclusively political, not military), Great Purge, writings by Arthur Koestler, Malcolm Muggeridge, Gareth Jones, Victor Kravchenko (and related court case called "trial of the century" in France), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the whole Gulag literature and debates on all other massacres in the Soviet Union. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

It is necessary to discriminate "mass killings" it its colloquial meaning and "mass killings" as defined by genocide scholars such as Valentino and several others. This article pretends it discusses the latter (as some separate scholarly concept/phenomenon, which had its concrete definition, like "genocide" and a concrete set of common causes). When we mix these two approaches, we inevitably have problems. For example, it is universally accepted that the Great Purge was a mass killing, and we all know that the actual number of victims was ca 1.2 million. However, some (very few authors) claim that the Great Chinese famine was a mass killing too. By combining these two events in a single category, we make a blatant logical error: "1. All scholars agree that the Great Purge was a mass killing; 2. Valentino claims the Great Chinese famine and similar event was a mass killing; 3. Therefore, everybody (implicitly) agree that the Great Purge, the Great Chinese famine, and other "Communist mass killings" lead to the death of 80+ million". In other words, we take some indisputable claim about some narrow topic, add an opinion of few authors (who dramatically expand the topic), and present this expanded version as universally acceptable one. In fact, the lack of criticism does not necessarily means a support. (If we abandon flawed this approach (and it seems you are agreeing with that), many contradictions will be easily resolved.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:21, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

[User:Paul Siebert|Paul Siebert]], you say "It is necessary to discriminate "mass killings" it its colloquial meaning and "mass killings" as defined by genocide scholars such as Valentino and several others. This article pretends it discusses the latter (as some separate scholarly concept/phenomenon, which had its concrete definition, like "genocide" and a concrete set of common causes)." This is the key disagreement. I agree it is necessary to distinguish between generic "mass killing", which is a term used to describe genocide, politicide, classicide, etc., from Valentino's proposed definition of "mass killing" as 50,000 noncombatants deliberately killed within 5 years. But the article title and topic references the former, not the latter. Valentino's specific definition of mass killing is really just another of the genocide, politicide, classicide, etc. defined terms, all of which fall under the generic mass killing as used in the title. AmateurEditor (talk) 16:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

"Just like mass killing, totalitarianism is a proposed concept, not a fact" - I assume you're writing it from a country that never directly experienced either Nazi or Soviet occupation, and for you it might be indeed a "proposed concept, not a fact". For people who lived under either of regimes, it was actually a very much life-or-death experience, and in USSR or generally Eastern Bloc every family had someone who was at someone point subject to repressions for "anti-socialist agitation" as a minimum (read: complaining about shortages or prices in public). Go talk to Holocaust survivors about anything they gone through being "a proposed concept" or "wrong interpretation of national socialism", you will have the same reactions. Ignoring this sensitivity is widespread in the West, where some people still tend to believe you can postulate a "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" without mass-scale violence which breeds new waves of violence, which breeds more violence etc. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

"equate Nazism with Stalinism" - if you look at their methods and numbers of dead people, they were absolutely equal in scale of the atrocities. This is confirmed by historic sources as well as testimonies of those who survived repressions under both totalitarian regimes (Margarete Buber-Neumann: "Between the misdeeds of Hitler and those of Stalin, in my opinion, there exists only a quantitative difference"). The only difference was the motivation - it's an argument raised by people who subscribe to "goal justifies means" logic, and believe that the "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" could seriously lead to establishing of a peaceful, egalitarian democracy. It's a rather weak argument however, if you start with millions of dead people. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Too primitive. They were different in many aspects, see, e.g. Wheatcroft. In reality, they were different in almost all aspects: Nazism didn't kill its own citizens (except Jews), Stalinism was killing mostly its own people. Nazism was killing people by their biological traits - Stalinism was intrinsically non-genocidal (I recall I saw one source that explicitly said Marxist ideology was a restraining factor that didn't allow Stalin to unleash a true genocide; you also may read "Affirmative action empire" a broadly cited book. Finally, genocidal activity of Nazism was quickly stopped (mostly thanks to Stalinism), so we don't know the actual scale of potential Nazi mass murders, whereas the murderous potential of Stalinism had its natural limit.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

"the Soviet Union was totalitarian since the beginning" - it was, as clearly demonstrated by the Red Terror and War communism that followed immediately after the revolution in compliance with the doctrine of dictatorship of the proletariat. The fact that you're dismissing them as "oh that was just civil war" doesn't change anything in the views of those who see a clear link between the ideology and the actions of Bolshevik. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

"which is a view not supported by all scholars" - so what? You have scholars who deny Holocaust ever happened, and you have scholars who say Great Purges were justified, and you have scholars supporting literally every bizarre view on any subject in existence. The primary rule of WP:NPOV is not to find a single compromise interpretation of described events, or somehow average them, but to present all notable interpretations without undue weight bias. The claim that mass killings in communist states were not inspired by Marxism certainly has its place in the article (it's notable) but it certainly is not the view held by majority of the scholars. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

"anti-communists and 'Stalinists' share much more than they would like to admit" - please do not resort to ad hominem. Cloud200 (talk) 10:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Most leading anti-Communists were originally Communists: Furet, Courtois, Kołakowski for example. They merely switched one irrational, conspiratorial, authoritarian ideology for another. I find it strange that people who would not listen to them when they were Communists treat their views as gospel truth once they convert. TFD (talk) 16:30, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

"Most leading anti-Communists were originally Communists" - this could be a fact if somebody did the maths, but it's at least feasible. This however: "They merely switched one irrational" is simple ad hominem nothing else. Kołakowski, Koestler, Orwell, Russell - all were disillusioned communists (aka revolutionary socialists, aka Marxists) who however held to social-democratic or socialist views. They rejected the violent part of Marxism that made it so distinctive from social-democracy, and I really can't see how this is "irrational" after all they have seen with their own eyes in the states that followed the Marxist-Leninist path. Cloud200 (talk) 18:45, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Orwell and Russell were not revolutionary communists or anti-communists, although ant-communists may claim them, particularly Orwell. If you recall, the farmer in Animal Farm was actually raising animals for food and the revolution initially improved the animals' lives until it is highjacked by a pig modelled on Stalin. There are a range of positions between Stalinism and anti-Communism. Part of the irrationality of both Stalinism and anti-Communism is that their adherents don't know that. So the first group calls all their opponents fascists, while the other group called all their opponents communists. That's why it is so easy to flip from Stalinism to anti-Communism. TFD (talk) 21:16, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

While the 'former Communist' label may be well-applied to Kołakowsk and Koestler, it does not to Orwell and Russell, who were a social-anarchist-leaning democratic socialist (Orwell) and simply a socialist (Russell), respectively, and were not Marxists. If you conflate Marxism with any form of revolutionary socialism, it may explain such misunderstanding of Orwell and Russell, both of whom were never members of a Communist party, unlike Kołakowsk and Koestler. P.S. TFD just anticipated me. Kudos to them for further clarifying and explaining this. Davide King (talk) 21:20, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

What you did here was simply presenting the anti-communist, double-genocide, and Eastern European POV.

As every quasi-religious movement based on reading of one Scripture, you can create infinite number of competing interpretations and you have no authority to rule which one is correct. You are doing it again, you are treating Marxism as a "quasi-religious movement based on reading of one Scripture", as if that is a fact or the one and only mainstream interpretation; it is not.

The key question in the article we are discussing is - did Marxism inspire mass killings and I believe it is already proven beyond any doubt that it did, by glorifying violence and the need to eradicate a whole class of society as the required step for the bright future. And this has been debunked by TFD and Siebert. What you have proven is that you are presenting your own interpretation and reading as fact; you have provided no source to back up your claim. If any of this comes from Main Currents of Marxism, it is even more extreme than what the book actually said, and is irrelevant because that book is not about mass killings.

Mass killings in Bolshevik Russia have been widely discussed since they started, that is from 1917 This just shows that you have no idea what mass killing actually is; it is a proposed concept, just like genocide, for real events, in this case for events which do not fit the category of genocide. Only Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's may fit the category of mass killing, not communism as a whole or any Communist state. And yes, it mainly originated in the 1990s. I know that Wikipedia is not a reliable source but you seriously need to read Genocide studies and Mass killing, for all those sources certainly are. Here, Siebert perfectly explained what I was referring to.

I assume you're writing it from a country that never directly experienced either Nazi or Soviet occupation, and for you it might be indeed a "proposed concept, not a fact". I come from the country where fascism originated. But I do not think I am representing the Western European POV because there is no such thing as this; it is just mainstream scholarship. On the other hand, Eastern European POV is a real thing (double genocide and Holocaust memories studies).

Go talk to Holocaust survivors about anything they gone through being "a proposed concept" or "wrong interpretation of national socialism", you will have the same reactions. You seem to ignore the fact that concepts are applied to real-life events; in this case, totalitarianism is applied to real-life events but is not a concept accepted by most scholars and is more useful as a word. I am not the one who is engaging in Holocaust trivialization by supporting the concept of a Communist or Red holocaust and the double-genocide theory, as it looks like you are doing. I think it is much more respectful for all victims to truly understand what happened, as historians and scholars do (without acting like ideology alone or long-dead dudes are to blame as the main cause of 20th-century tragedies, or applying a double standard in capitalist and Communist-led atrocities), and avoid such things from happening ever again; what is truly disrespecting is engaging in body-counting and trivialize the Holocaust.

if you look at their methods and numbers of dead people, they were absolutely equal in scale of the atrocities. Again, this is the double-genocide theory. That they were absolutely equal is something proposed by some authors, not most scholars. What you are presenting is the equivalence of class and racial genocide as proposed by Courtois (Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009, p. 37). This is not a view accepted by most scholars, though it is very popular in Eastern Europe, which is likely why you misunderstand it. See also this.

it's an argument raised by people who subscribe to "goal justifies means" logic, and believe that the "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" could seriously lead to establishing of a peaceful, egalitarian democracy. It's a rather weak argument however, if you start with millions of dead people. I actually personally agree on this, which is why I consistently oppose all forms of authoritarianism, and that alternatives to capitalism should be popularly supported and not forced; a peaceful, egalitarian democracy, if one has the goal to establish it and make it work long-term, it simply will not come out from authoritarianism; however, this is mainly an argument against revolutions, and TFD and Siebert are right to contextualize revolutions. You seem to blame it all on the revolutionaries, and ignore the role of counter-revolutionaries. Revolutionary violence mainly results because counter-revolutionary forces oppose it; it goes both ways, it is not a one-sided show, or limited to Marxism.

it was, as clearly demonstrated by the Red Terror and War communism that followed immediately after the revolution in compliance with the doctrine of dictatorship of the proletariat. Wrong. Again, you are presenting this as an undisputed fact when this is the anti-communist side of historiography. Most scholars mainly cite Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot's eras as totalitarian. Some scholars propose a continuity between Lenin and Stalin but some is the key word; you are treating this as fact or clear majority view.

The fact that you're dismissing them as "oh that was just civil war" doesn't change anything in the views of those who see a clear link between the ideology and the actions of Bolshevik. That you think this shows the problem and your bias. Neither I nor Siebert are justifying what they did, we are simply contextualizing, which ironically is what historians do. Shocking, I know?!

so what? You have scholars who deny Holocaust ever happened, and you have scholars who say Great Purges were justified, and you have scholars supporting literally every bizarre view on any subject in existence. That you think fringe authors who deny the Holocaust are scholars is telling; they are not scholars. Saying that the Great Purge was justified, which is also a fringe view but is not as extreme, is not the same thing as denying the Holocaust, and is an example of false equivalence and balance. Most mainstream scholars do not say this, they simply contextualize the Great Purge but do not justify it, so your point is irrelevant.

The claim that mass killings in communist states were not inspired by Marxism certainly has its place in the article (it's notable) but it certainly is not the view held by majority of the scholars. See? We do actually agree on this, it is your generalization and treating some interpretations as undisputed facts that I disagree with. The problem is that the current article does not do a good or neutral job, and I believe Siebert's rewriting and suggestions would be much better and improving. Davide King (talk) 20:52, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Response to Paul Siebert

You say "The section draws some general connections between Communist ideology and "mass killing"." No, the section is about the subtopic of ideological causes for the mass killing in communist states. It should contain whatever reliable sources have said related to that, pro or con.

1) You say "Since one of the cornerstones this article rests upon is Valentino's writings, it seems his opinion deserves to be presented first." The order of the sources should be whatever allows us to most effectively and neutrally present the material in all the sources. It should have a logical order that flows as well as possible from one sentence to the next. Placement of sentences should not be based on what a source "deserves". It should be justified by the content of the particular sentence(s). You say "The current version provided lengthy quotes from Valentino, however, the section completely distorts Valentino's concept." Please note that the first few Valentino sentences were very recently altered by Davide King with this edit, which I don't think is a good edit. Your proposed sentences are about Valentino's overall mass killing thesis, rather than being strictly about what he has to say about the article topic specifically.

2) You say "I don't see how Karlsson's quote helps understanding a linkage between ideology and mass killings. It is a trivial statement that carries zero information ("Communists committed numerous crimes, and they were Communists". So what?)" The sentence serves the purpose of introducing the section. The information it carries is Karlsson's view that communist crimes were committed "in the name of communist ideology". This is directly relevant to the section.

3, 4, 5, 6) The second sentence ("Scholars such as Rudolph Rummel, Daniel Goldhagen,[48] Richard Pipes,[49] and John Gray[50] consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings.") should be replaced with more detail of what those authors specifically say, I agree. The individual author's views should be either grouped with their other sentences or grouped by subject, whichever makes the most sense from the reader's perspective. But, again, "mass killing" is a generic term for genocide, politicide, and other large scale killing terms. It was not invented by Valentino or anyone else recently. Valentino simply adopted it and assigned a more specific definition to it so he could use that instead of genocide or other terms. Let's not remove Gray until we see what is being referenced and can conclude it is inappropriate.

7) You say "But where he says Communist ideology was a cause of mass killings?" Bradley talks about "communism", not just communist regimes, so he is talking about the ideology. He talks about Marx rejecting the very idea of human rights and the regimes following suit. He talks about "state-orchestrated mass killings and what have come to be called gross violations of human rights being "almost commonplace in communist-led states." That is accurately reflected in the sentence he is being cited for and it is directly relevant to that section.

8) You say "This source says a pretty trivial thing: that Marxism justifies revolutionary violence." It is not a trivial thing to say that Marxism in particular justifies "any action, however atrocious" and "the total legitimation of violence in revolution, with no principle of restriction". What other sources say is only relevant to the extent they are talking about this article's topic. If you want another view represented in the article, find a reliable source for it.

9) You're allowed to personally disagree with a source's analysis, but you are not allowed to impose that view on the article. Just as you drew you own conclusion when presented by Watson's opinion and Grant's criticism of it, so will other readers.

10) I don't know what "weasel words" you mean, regarding Rummel.

11) You have misinterpreted Valentino's relation to the topic. The article topic is not Valentino's theory and never was. "Mass killing" is a generic term for large scale killing. Valentino took that :generic term and is trying to define it more rigorously so it can replace genocide, politicide, etc.

12) Semelin states that the populations of communist countries were destroyed because the regimes "aimed to restructure the 'social body' from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and recarving :it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire." That is an ideological motivation.

13) It's about ideological fanaticism: "Under no circumstances could it be admitted that the vision itself might be unworkable, because that meant capitulation to the forces of reaction."

14) You keep insisting on "linkage", whatever that means. We only need to accurately reflect what the source said related to an ideological component of the killing.

15) You say "These authors seem to discuss some concrete instances of Communist mass killings". Each discussed killing by communist regimes generally, as can be seen in their excerpts.

It has taken me hours to respond to each of your points. If the past is any guide, you are going to object to at least some of what I have said. This is not a practical way to write an article, especially if you still do not agree with the most basic of premises: that the article must be based on sources that discuss the topic of communist killing generally and NOT a synthesis of what sources on individual communist regimes say. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:51, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I cannot accept your arguments, because they are focused on minor details without addressing my main concern.

With regard to your last sentence, you distorted my position. In reality, I do NOT object to the idea that the article must be based on sources that discuss the topic of communist killing generally. My objection is totally different: I object to that idea if that leads to numerous NPOV and NOR violations. In reality, this your premise (which is, formally, quite legitimate and quite correct) ALREADY LEAD to numerous NOR and NPOV violations. Thus:

Valentino's main idea was blatantly distorted in the article. This author openly claims (and that is the central idea his concept is based upon) that the regime type is not a good predictor of the onset of mass killings, and he finds an explanation of mass killings in personality of concrete leaders. He never wrote about Communists regimes as whole, in contrast, he clearly says that some Communist regimes engaged in mass killings, whereas majority didn't. This CORE idea of this author was totally distorted and attenuated in the article, because it DIRECTLY contradicts to the article's concept. Meanwhile, this author is the core source that gave the name to this article. You are persistently opposing my attempts to fix NPOV issues by making references to NOR, but your own position is a direct violation of NOR.

I would fully support your concept ("that the article must be based on sources that discuss the topic of communist killing generally"), if it were applied consistently and correctly. For that, several criteria must be met:

1. The terms "mass killing"/various "-cides" must be universally accepted, and different authors interpreted them in the same way.

2. All authors writing about "Communist mass killings" in general meant the same range of events and apply the same terminology to them.

3. The authors writing about those events belonged to the same field of knowledge (which meant they were interconnected by a network of cross-references).

In reality, NO those conditions are met. We have NO evidences that all authors ostensibly writing about "Communist mass killings" in general mean the same. In contrast, numerous evidences exist that some authors (like Valentino) exclude Afghanistan, other authors (Harff) exclude Great Chinese famine, and so on. In reality, lion's share of ostensibly "general" sources are not general at all. In reality, just few general sources exist: (i) "Red Holocaust", (ii) Courtois introduction to the Black Book (but not the book itself), (iii) Rummel (the latter is, actually, writing about totalitarianism, not Communism). All other sources mean some subset (or superset) of mass killings, even if they speak about "Communist mass killings" in general. Therefore, if we follow your approach, we must base this article on these three sources, each of which already have their own Wikipedia articles, so if we limit ourselves with those sources, there will be no need in that article.

Actually, I see no value in your further arguments until you either admit that the current version of the article grossly misinterprets Valentino's main idea, or prove that it does not (which will be virtually impossible taking into account all quotes presented by me). You are constantly repeating the mantra "We only need to accurately reflect what the source said", but the article, of which you are a main contributor, contains blatant misinterpretations of the core sources. --Paul Siebert (talk) 21:55, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, you say I need to "admit that the current version of the article grossly misinterprets Valentino's main idea, or prove that it does not". First, Valentino's specific definition of mass killing is not the generic mass killing from the title/topic. Valentino's definition is just one of many more defined terms used in genocide studies, along with genocide, politicide, etc., and just one of the terms used specifically when discussing killings by communist regimes generally. We must agree on that before we can have a productive conversation on anything downstream from it. Second, you say I must "either admit that the current version of the article grossly misinterprets Valentino's main idea, or prove that it does not". The current version of the article is attempting to neutrally represent all of the reliable sources on the topic, not just Valentino's book, so I think your premise is wrong here. If you accept that and still believe that Valentino's views are being misrepresented in the article in just the sentences about Valentino's views, then I can address that specifically. Let me know.

You again say that Valentino "never wrote about Communists regimes as whole, in contrast, he clearly says that some Communist regimes engaged in mass killings, whereas majority didn't." This is frustrating. I thought I had demonstrated very clearly that he does write about communist regimes as a whole in the very first page of his "Communist mass killings chapter" because he references The Black Book of Communism and other sources that clearly are talking about communist regimes as a whole. I will quote the first paragraph of page 91 (the first page of his dedicated chapter) and the associated endnotes from page 275, as well as the "table 2" on page 75 referenced in the endnote:

Page 91: "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million.¹ In this chapter I focus primarily on mass killings in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia - history's most murderous communist states. Communist violence in these three states alone may account for between 21 million and 70 million deaths.² Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Documentation of these cases in secondary sources, however, remains inadequate to render a reliable judgment regarding the numbers and identity of the victims or the true intentions of their killers.³"

Page 275: "1. Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994), p. 15. A team of six French historians coordinated by Stéphane Courtois estimates that communist regimes are responsible for between 85 and 100 million deaths. See Martin Malia, 'Foreword: The Uses of Atrocity,' in Stéphane Courtois et.al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. x. Zbigniew Brzezinski estimates that 'the failed effort to build communism' cost the lives of almost sixty million people. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), p. 16. Matthew White estimates eighty-one million deaths from communist 'genocide and tyranny' and 'man-made famine.' See Matthew White, 'Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century,' http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm [June 2002]. Todd Culbertson estimates that communist regimes killed 'perhaps 100 million' people. See Todd Culbertson, 'The Human Cost of World Communism,' Human Events, August 19, 1978, pp. 10-11. These estimates should be considered at the highest end of the plausible range of deaths attributable to communist regimes.

2. Author's estimate based on numerous sources. Estimates vary widely regarding both how many people died and how many deaths were intentional. See table 2.

3. Relatively high estimates of mass killings by these smaller communist states can be found in Rudolph Rummel, Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (Charlottesville: Center for National Security Law, 1997). See also Courtois et al., Black Book of Communism."

Page 75, Table 2: "Communist Mass Killings in the Twentieth Century

Soviet Union (1917-23) ... 250,000-2,500,000

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1927-45) ... 10,000,000-20,000,000

China (including Tibet) (1949-72) ... 10,000,000-46,000,000

Cambodia (1975-79) ... 1,000,000-2,000,000

Possible cases:

Bulgaria (1944-?) ... 50,000-100,000

East Germany (1945-?) ... 80,000-100,000

Romania (1945-?) ... 60,000-300,000

North Korea (1945-?) ... 400,000-1,500,000

North and South Vietnam (1953-?) ... 80,000-200,000"

In addition to that, Valentino does speak to ideology playing a significant role. See this sentence from Valentino's book about communism's ideological impact on the killing on page 4:

Page 4: "I contend that the adherence of communist leaders to a pseudo-Marxist notion - that resistance to communist policies was motivated by the immutable 'class consciousness' of certain groups - greatly magnified the scale of communist mass killings."

You say "All other sources mean some subset (or superset) of mass killings, even if they speak about "Communist mass killings" in general. Therefore, if we follow your approach, we must base this article on these three sources, each of which already have their own Wikipedia articles, so if we limit ourselves with those sources, there will be no need in that article." We must base the article on the sources that address the article topic, which is mass killings under communist regimes. If some sources speak about communist regimes in general and also choose to focus on specific regimes in more detail, it is not original research to include their general comments and their specific comments in the article. We do not have to limit ourselves to sources that give details on every single regime. Valentino says he focuses on the USSR, China, and Cambodia in his dedicated chapter, but it is clear from these excerpts that he does not limit himself to those and he acknowledges that the topic is not limited to those regimes. The three criteria you propose are not based on wikipedia policies and I don't see why we should impose such a restriction ourselves if we are trying to follow WP:NPOV, which states that articles should include "all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." AmateurEditor (talk) 17:52, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

(This is my responce to the two posts made by you here and in the above subsections).

What I see here is your attempt to present your own vision of Valentino's concept, whereas I present its interpretations made by professionals. You must admit my arguments have much more solid ground.

Yes, the quotes picked from Valentino seemingly confirm your point. However, taking into account a clear contradiction between your views and the interpretations made by professional scholars, there is a strong reason to suspect your interpretation if WRONG.

To understand what is wrong with your arguments, let return to the main Valentino's concept. You carefully avoid its discussion, but the concept is clear: "Mass killings happen when a leader of some regime decided to do so. Regime's type, or other factors, are much less important than the leader's personality. That was demonstrated by comparing similar regimes, one of them committed mass killing, whereas another didn't." Yes, some additional factors may make mass killings more probable, or increase their scale, etc, but those factors are less important than leader's personality. Therefore, to speak about "Mass killing under Communist regimes" as a topic defined based on Valentino's book is a piece of original research. He analyzed EIGHT cases, THREE of them were grouped in one chapter (and one, which also happened under Communist rule in another chapter). That does not give you a right to claim he outlined a specific type of mass killings, which is typical for Communist states, had common causes and common mechanism. Instead of resisting to the obvious, you must admit you made a mistake, and join a discussion about possible ways to fix it.

Regarding colloquial meaning of "mass killings". Colloquially, "mass killings" means just "killing of many people". Therefore, if we interpret the article topic as all cases when people were massively killed (or died from hunger) under Communist regime, then we just need to do what I was proposing before, and to what you were persistently resisting: to collect all mainstream sources about each event, and to describe what they say. However, if we use this approach, we must remove the following sections:

1. Total estimates. Separate sources provide different data for separate events, and most of them are not represented in Rummel's/Valentino's staistics. Instead, we should present the most recent, the most accurate, and the most universally accepted figures for each event. Rummel's data (especially for the USSR) have only historic value.

2. Causes. Each event had its own cause, and only a very small subset of sources draws common causes for such different events as Red Terror and teh Great Chinese famine.

3. If we speak about mass killings in a colloquial meaning, it is illogical to speak about a general scholarly term for that. We can speak about usage of some specific term for some specific event, but that belongs to country specific/case specific sections. In reality, in a situation when overwhalming majority of authors do not apply the terms described in the terminology section to more than 90% of total deaths, this section is deeply misleading.

In future, please, be consistent in your approach, for some your statements are mutually exclusive and contradict to each other.

Thus, your recent argument about "mass killings" in a colloquial meaning TOTALLY kills your previous argument about the topic. Can you tell me, how many author write about just "killing of many people by Communists" IN GENERAL? Courtois? Who else? 99% sources discuss some specific cases (like Valentino), or, like Rummel, some broader categories. Therefore, your interpretation means we must include only those authors who write about Communism as whole, which is less that 1% of all sources. I see absolutely no logical ground in it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:40, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert,

Have you ever heard of the game of telephone? It plays on the fact that no interpretation is perfect and errors will magnify over time if you chain interpretations in series. That is, person 1 whispers a sentence to person 2 (who partially understands it). Person 2 then whispers their partial understanding of person 1's sentence to person 3 (who partially understands person 2's distorted version). And so on. In the game, at the end of the chain the sentence has often been changed beyond recognition relative to the original sentence from person 1. That game is an exaggerated version of what you are proposing we do here. You are proposing that we try to be accurate to Valentino's views by paraphrasing book reviewers' interpretations of Valentino's book and then applying those interpretations to where we cite Valentino in this article. In other words, we would be person 3 in the interpretation chain, instead of person 2. That cannot help but increase the distortion of Valentino's views and should only be done if we do not have access to Valentino's views ourselves. However, since we do have access to Valentino's views, it is better to consult them directly when trying to understand and paraphrase them for the article. That is what I meant when I said elsewhere on this talk page that "there can be no more reliable source for Valentino's analysis than Valentino himself (and likewise for the other authors' views)". In addition to that, those book reviewers are focused on Valentino's overall theme and conclusions in the book, rather than what he has to say on the specific topic of mass killings under communist regimes and their generalizations of Valentino are simply not as useful for our purposes as the specifics we can find from Valentino ourselves. If a book reviewer does mention what Valentino thinks about mass killings under communist regimes, it is fine to include it in the article, but there is no point in replacing a reference to Valentino's book with a reference to a reviewer of Valentino's book. If there is a contradiction between what the book reviewer says Valentino says and what Valentino himself says, then we should obviously favor Valentino himself as the more reliable source for Valentino's views and not cite the book reviewer at all for that. I quoted Valentino's exact words related to this topic. You seem to agree with me that the sentences I cited do support my interpretation of Valentino's views. But citing a book review that is trying to compress his entire book into a few pages is not a better source on Valentino's views by a long shot. If you think the way Valentino's views are cited in the article is inaccurate, then prove it from Valentino's book. For example, if you can find where he says that communist leaders are the key determinant of communist mass killing, then by all means add that to the article with a proper citation. I don't claim the article or any section or sentence is perfect or perfectly complete.

You say " Therefore, to speak about "Mass killing under Communist regimes" as a topic defined based on Valentino's book is a piece of original research. He analyzed EIGHT cases, THREE of them were grouped in one chapter (and one, which also happened under Communist rule in another chapter). That does not give you a right to claim he outlined a specific type of mass killings, which is typical for Communist states, had common causes and common mechanism." You're putting words in my mouth. I did not say he "outlined a type of mass killings", I have been saying only that Valentino has written about the topic of this article, which is described via descriptive title as mass killings (generic term) under communist regimes. The topic of mass killings under communist regimes is found in sources prior to Valentino's 2005 book and after it. It is NOT a topic created by or limited to Valentino, although his book is a good source for the article. Every use of it in the article has in-text attribution to Valentino so that we do NOT attribute views from him to others and vice versa. He is simply one of the sources.

Since you are responding to both of my comments here I will repost my first comment with my response to your second bullet (which is the one that seems to be responding to it): "I agree it is necessary to distinguish between generic "mass killing", which is a term used to describe genocide, politicide, classicide, etc., from Valentino's proposed definition of "mass killing" as 50,000 noncombatants deliberately killed within 5 years. But the article title and topic references the former, not the latter. Valentino's specific definition of mass killing is really just another of the genocide, politicide, classicide, etc. defined terms, all of which fall under the generic mass killing as used in the title. " Now to my response:

You say "Therefore, if we interpret the article topic as all cases when people were massively killed (or died from hunger) under Communist regime, then we just need to do what I was proposing before, and to what you were persistently resisting: to collect all mainstream sources about each event, and to describe what they say." You were proposing collecting sources about each individual event/regime that do not discuss the topic of mass killings under communist regimes generally at all and discuss only a specific event/regime. Such sources can obviously only be used in the article for information about what they discuss: their specific event/regime. They cannot be the basis of an article on communist regimes in general if they do not mention communist regimes in general. They can be used in a supplemental capacity in the section for their event/regime. There is no way around that without violating OR/SYNTH. But I am not actually sure that there is a great gap between the event/regime-specific sources and the aggregator sources on numbers to begin with. I certainly don't remember you proving it.

1. You say, for estimates: "Instead, we should present the most recent, the most accurate, and the most universally accepted figures for each event. Rummel's data (especially for the USSR) have only historic value." All the estimates in the estimates section are "historic" in the sense that they all are listed chronologically, which is the best/most neutral way to do it, in my opinion. All event/regime-specific estimates should be in event/regime-specific sections. If there is a contradiction between a documented majority view for an event/regime estimate and the overall estimates, then we will need to make sure that is made clear in a way consistent with wikipedia policy on NPOV, weight, etc. That has not yet been demonstrated. But all we can do is find reliable sources that claim a majority view on a particular point and search for sources that contradict that. We cannot determine what sources are "accurate" (or inaccurate) ourselves.

2. You say, "Each event had its own cause, and only a very small subset of sources draws common causes for such different events as Red Terror and teh Great Chinese famine." Our job is to write the article on a topic based on sources that discuss the topic. The topic is about communist regimes generally. Details about each event/regime are subtopics. Sections for subtopics should follow after sections for the overall topic. You keep trying to reverse this, and I read this sentence from you as arguing for that again: that the causes section should be made of the event/regime-specific sources instead of the sources that discuss communist regimes generally. You keep returning to the Great Chinese Famine in your examples. Would you be placated if we moved all the country-specific famine sections to the "Debate over famines" section? Would that be an improvement, in your view?

3. You say, "If we speak about mass killings in a colloquial meaning, it is illogical to speak about a general scholarly term for that." If you need me to copy and paste the excerpts where the scholarly sources are referring to these various terms using undefined/generic "mass killing", I can do that.

You say "your recent argument about "mass killings" in a colloquial meaning TOTALLY kills your previous argument about the topic." What previous argument are to talking about? I believe I have been very consistent over the last few years at least, but I can't say I have never misspoken or been misinterpreted. I have been learning about this topic over time myself, so let me reiterate my current understanding: the term "mass killing" is a common English term for large scale killing. It has been used by scholarly sources in a casual way to describe genocide, politicide, etc., as a synonym. Some scholars, in the face of the various terms and definitions in what has become known as "genocide studies", have created their own definitions of "mass killing" (not just Valentino) to avoid using other terms and all the baggage those terms carry with them (the term "genocide", in particular, is very politicized and problematic). The title as a whole is a "non-judgmental descriptive title", per WP:NDESC. As I have found additional sources, the choice of "mass killing" for the title has looked better.

You say "Can you tell me, how many author write about just "killing of many people by Communists" IN GENERAL? Courtois? Who else? 99% sources discuss some specific cases (like Valentino), or, like Rummel, some broader categories. Therefore, your interpretation means we must include only those authors who write about Communism as whole, which is less that 1% of all sources. I see absolutely no logical ground in it." If you want me to copy and paste excerpts here on the talk page for all the sources so far identified that write about killing by communist regimes generally, I can do that. Comparing the number of sources that write about communist killing generally with the number who write about specific events/regimes is not a useful metric. Single event/regime sources are not an appropriate denominator in that fraction. A more appropriate denominator would be sources that discuss mass killing generally, where it appears that the ratio of communist killing to general killing approaches 1/1. The 2007 Straus article called "Second-generation comparative research on genocide" was in error when it said that two of the six sources it reviewed did not include communist regimes (both did mention communist killing generally, as I showed in my comment here). And according to Michael Mann, "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes." AmateurEditor (talk) 21:05, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

All of that is becoming increasingly confusing. AmateurEditor, can you please explain me what is, in your opinion, the topic of this article: 1. "Mass killings (in a colloquial meaning of this word) that happened in Communist states", i.e. a broad range of events, starting from Red Terror and ending with the Great Chinese famine, which were described as "mass killings" by at least one author, or 2. The "mass killings under Communist regimes", which were defined as such in at least one source? I am asking because I have a feeling that I either didn't understand your old posts, or your position has changed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:06, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I don't think my position has changed, so I believe there has been misunderstanding. I am not entirely clear what the intended difference is between your two options, so I definitely think there is some miscommunication between us and I apologize for my part in it (I am aware that English is not your native language, but you write so well that it is easy to forget). If I understand you correctly that the only difference between the two options is that number 1 is generic mass killing and number 2 is proper noun/defined "Mass killing", I would choose number 1 because the sources sometimes use genocide, politicide, democide, or other terms despite all talking about the same topic and even citing each other regardless of the different terms being used by the other sources they cite. For example, the quote from Michael Mann I included in my last post used "mass murder", rather than generic mass killing, but obviously meant the same thing ("All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes."). However, if you mean that number 1 is a variety of individual events each called "mass killing" (with a separate source for each event/regime, presumably) and number 2 is a single group of events called "mass killing" (with a single source including multiple events/regimes), then I would have to choose number 2. In my own words, the topic of the article is mass killing (in the generic/colloquial sense) by communist regimes as a group. That is what is meant by the descriptive title "Mass killings under communist regimes". I believe my comments have been consistent with that understanding of the topic. It is a subtle distinction because the sources that describe mass killing by communist regimes as a group also describe details of individual regimes/events. It's an important distinction, though, because if all we had were sources that described individual regimes/events, then there would be no justification for the article. It would be synthesis to base the article on a variety of sources about regimes/events that do not speak about communist regimes generally. Of course, I believe that Wikipedia policy does allow us to include those individual regime/event sources in this article in a supplementary capacity, however, on the basis of WP:COMMONSENSE, if nothing else. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The difference is simple. The first option does not imply any theorising, it just means "Mass killings that happened in Communist states". Accordingly, we should just select the best and most recent sources telling about each event (either grouped together or taken separately), and tell, neutrally and without distortions, what they say. The second implies we are writing about some strictly defines concept. In the latter case, before writing the text, one has to prove this concept represents a majority view.

Note, ALL current participants of the talk page discussion, including me, Cloud200, schetm, Davide King & TFD support the option 1. It seems you are the only person who disagrees with that. In connection to that, can you please tell which source covers ALL mass killings described in this article and describes it as a single topic, covered by a single term and linked to a single cause?--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:27, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I have been clear that this topic is NOT a theory, so I also support option 1 in that sense. I recall TFD in particular arguing that this WAS a theory not too long ago, which seems to be where the recent primary/secondary source nonsense began. But the topic definitely does CONTAIN theories (meaning analysis/interpretation) about what the best term is to describe the killing, how many were killed, and what events should be included. For that reason it is not a strictly defined concept, as the sources themselves discuss (and the various terms they use reflect this). You say, "Accordingly, we should just select the best and most recent sources telling about each event (either grouped together or taken separately), and tell, neutrally and without distortions, what they say." That is not what WP:NPOV tells us to do. It says we MUST include "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." It is original research for us to pick and choose the "best" source in our opinion among several different reliable sources that disagree with each other on this topic and use that source in wikipedia's voice as truth. It is synthesis for us to assemble a variety of sources on individual events/regimes that do not discuss the topic of killing in communist states generally and use them to build the article about communist killing generally. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, some agreement between us here cannot override the policies against OR and SYNTH: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope."

But even ignoring that, the current participants of the talk page are not the only ones who should be involved in any local consensus determination to begin with. This recent spate of posts began with Davide King pinging all the critics of the article he could find after scouring the talk page archives for critics (which was disruptive WP:CANVASSING, but he was new here and I assumed good faith). If you want to prove consensus on some proposed change, then make a formal proposal and allow time for all interested/involved editors to comment. As a reminder: I will not be available much in the coming workweek to participate in any discussions but I will be available again beginning next weekend.

About me having to tell you "which source covers ALL mass killings described in this article and describes it as a single topic, covered by a single term and linked to a single cause", that premise is wrong. The requirement, again, is that the article include "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." If we have two sources that discuss the topic and one includes events A, B, and C and the other includes events A, B, and D, then the article should cover events A, B, C, and D. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:51, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

If you support the option #1, I see no reason to continue this discussion. The main disagreement is resolved, and the article should be re-written (starting from the "Causes" section, as proposed by Cloud200.

Your objection regarding my "most recent sources telling about each event" does not look completely sincere, because you perfectly aware of my approach to source finding: it is MORE stringent than our policy say, so if I select some source, I can guarantee that each of them is a best quality source, and it represents either majority or significant minority view. You perfectly know that my major objection to this article is that it violates NPOV, and I am going to fix it in accordance with the policy's letter and spirit. Therefore, I am surprised to see this your argument.

Regarding CANVASS, if you have any comment on another user, please, discuss them with that user, not with me. I was NOT canvassed, I, as well as many other users, am constantly watchlisting this page, and I am perfectly aware of what happens here. I am sure this page is being watchlisted by many other users, and, as you probably noticed, the list of users named by me at the top of my previous post (Cloud200, schetm, Davide King & TFD) is significantly different from the list of users who were ostensibly "canvassed" by DK (Aquillion, BeŻet, Buidhe, C.J. Griffin, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert, Rick Norwood). Only TWO users are found in both lists (TFD and me), and, as I already explained, I joined this discussion not because my name was mentioned there, but because I am carefully watching this page (although silently). Therefore, this your comment may be seen as an attempt to win a dispute by inappropriate means. I am glad if this my impression was wrong, and I expect you to return to your normal, respectful and productive style.

To summarize, we need to collect ALL best quality and non-outdated sources telling about each instance of mass mortality under Communist regimes (I wrote "mass mortality", because overwhelming majority of good sources do not describe famine, which were the most lethal events, as "mass killing", "democide" ets), and describe, neutrally, correclty, and without editorial bias what they say. Do you agree to join that work?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:47, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

FYI, I can't participate fully right now as my first son was born last week, and I, naturally, have more important matters to attend to. Sleep is also nice from time to time. So, I'll be checking now and again, and will weigh in if a substantive RFC/something like that is put forward and I notice it. Just want to make that clear so that, if that time comes, I won't be honestly accused of bad faith voting and running. I do tend to like a gradual move toward a broader focus on mass-mortality events, if and only if they can be connected to the policies/practices of communist regimes. An inclusion criteria should be put forth if that direction is taken, and a draft of what that article would look like would be most helpful. schetm (talk) 04:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Ops, it seems I missed this comment. Congratulations, schetm. From my own experience, I can tell that we hardly will hear from you in a close future. Anyway, good luck. )) --Paul Siebert (talk) 22:08, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I pasted the below from Paul Siebert's talk page so I could respond to it here without confusing people: Example text

If you agree with the option 1, then the whole article should be rewritten. The reason is very simple: if we are writing about the events, we should reflect what majority sources say about the events. Rummel doesn't say much about events, Valentino doesn't say about events, Courtois doesn't say about events - all of that just interpretations. Majority of good sources say about individual events and about individual countries, and we must follow what they say.

I propose to start with "Causes", as soon as we started discussing it. The new scheme should be as follows:

*USSR

*Red Terror

*Great Purge

*Great famine

*China

*Civil war

*Great Leap forward famine

*Cultural revolution

*Cambodia

* (...)

*Attempts to propose general causes

*Role of ideology

*Leader's personality

* (...)

Of course, the scheme is tentative, and the details are a subject of discussion.

Later, other sections should be rewritten according to the same scheme.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:15, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

But the article is primarily about the events collectively, not the events individually. Individual events are subtopics which have subsections. Per policy, ALL sources about the (aggregation) topic should be neutrally included, but this proposal of yours just looks like a scheme to delete most of the article and all of the aggregator sources. That causes an insurmountable synthesis problem. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:53, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

That is ok if the collective description of the events is consistent with their description in individual sources. However, as we can see, that is not the case in this topic. If the description of some event is different in different sources, we must represent a majority view first. It is easy to see that, for example, majority sources about the Great Chinese famine describe its causes quite differently than Valentino or Rummel (and even do not call it "mass killing"). We must follow what majority sources say about that, because we all achieved a consensus that the events, and not the way the events are being described is the article's subject.

Please, do not restart this discussion again, because all those arguments had been already presented (and debunked).--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:31, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

You know very well that the famines are disputed cases of mass killing. The other events are not. Terms vary; you are attacking a straw man if you are saying a majority of individual event sources use terms other than "mass killing" to refer to the non-famine events. And I suggested moving the famine details to the "Debate over famines" section and you ignored it. Instead, you just keep repeating your google search proposal. It is original research to determine majority views by counting sources. That is not what WP:WEIGHT says at all: "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;" In other words, a tertiary source. Tertiary sources are not required for articles, and in the absence of them we present all significant minority views/non-fringe views from reliable secondary sources neutrally, per WP:RS/AC. Your proposal to use search results is specifically warned against at Wikipedia:Search engine test, specifically at WP:HITS: "A raw hit count should never be relied upon to prove notability."AmateurEditor (talk) 19:50, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Famine are responsible for lion's share of deaths under Communists, and even if only this category is not considered as mass killings by majority sources (which is an absolute truth), that immediately makes the statement that MKuCR scale was 85+ million a minority if not fringe view. But it is not represented as such in this article. I am giving you just one example, and that is by no means straw man. I can give a lot more examples when some individual statements are interpreted in such a way that the look much broader than what the authors say in reality. However, all of that are minor details. If the article is about the events, let's describe events using ALL sources, not only those that group them in a some specific way. This is a direct violation of NPOV and NOR--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:04, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

However, if you believe that the focus is the collective description, that means the topic is a narrative. I personally do not mind that approach, but the talk page consensus is against that. Therefore, stop pushing that idea, please.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:06, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert,

1) Of course we can use all sources with relevant information in the article, we just can't base the article on sources not about its aggregation topic. Individual event sources cannot be added together to draw conclusions not found in any single source. Per Wikipedia:No original research: "Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves."

2) About the nature of the topic itself being a narrative: all topics are narratives in the sense that they are all human interpretations. Majority views, minority views, and fringe views are all at root interpretations. NPOV policy is not about objectivity, it is about neutrally presenting various biased views. There is no difference in wikipedia policy between the article being about the events collectively and the article consisting primarily of interpretations of the collective events by reliable sources. Per WP:GNG, all articles consist primarily of reliable secondary sources ("A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," [...] "Sources"[2] should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability."). And per WP:SECONDARY, secondary sources are "an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources."

3) If you think the 85+ million figure is a fringe view, you need a source to directly support that, you can't just assume it or use keyword searches to determine it because using WP:HITS is not legitimate. Including at least some famine deaths is obviously not fringe based on the sources found so far, so you have a very high bar to meet to treat it as fringe. Finding such a source would mean including that new view in the article, but it would not mean excluding the current views/sources from the article. Per WP:RS/AC: "A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources." Per WP:NPOV#Bias_in_sources "Neutral point of view should be achieved by balancing the bias in sources based on the weight of the opinion in reliable sources and not by excluding sources that do not conform to the editor's point of view." Per WP:BALANCE: "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. This involves describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint." The link in the previous quote points to WP:WEIGHT, which describes sources' relative weight as being between the three broad categories of majority, significant minority, and fringe views. It is NOT based on our own analysis of search engine results.

4) You say "I can give a lot more examples when some individual statements are interpreted in such a way that the look much broader than what the authors say in reality." Then that is what we should be discussing. One example you have raised that I think has some merit is about the famine sections being treated the same as the non-famine sections. I proposed moving those sections to the "Debate over famines" section, but you haven't responded to it. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:43, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Well...

Re 1. This article is already a huge piece of original research, so it cannot become worse. And, importantly, the structure I propose implies no direct or indirect synthesis, analysis or evaluation. In different sections, each source tells exactly about that subtopic: Red Terror sources tell about Red Terror, Chinese famine sources tell about Chinese famine, and General causes sources tell about general causes. It seems your objection is totally artificial.

Re 2. I simply do not understand it. If this article is about events, then we must tell about those events using mainstream sources. If 99% of sources tell about the Great Chinese famine as a separate event, we must describe it as such both in this conrcete article and in a daughter article. Anything else is a direct violation of our policy.

Re 3. Please, do not misinterpret my words. 85 million excess mortality under Communists is not a fringe view, and I never claimed it is. However, the claim that all those deaths fall into the "Mass killing under Communist regimes" is definitely an insignificant minority view, and that can be easily demonstrated, simply because famine, by and large, are not considered as mass killing by overwhelming majority of sources. I am sorry, but I will be very disappointed if that argument will be brought again, for my position on that matter is crystal clear, and it reflects mainstream view.

Re 4. No. Too much discussions. We have to start doing something concrete. We found severe problems with "Causes" section, we know how to fix it, and I proposed a way how it can be done. I am going to start writing a new draft, and you are welcome to join that work.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:25, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

1) There is no original research in the current article at all, that I am aware of, and I can prove it. I will paste here in the talk page excerpts from the aggregator sources with key words bolded for your convenience. Basing this article on single-event/regime sources, on the other had, is pure OR/synthesis. It is trying to imply a conclusion different from what we find explicitly in the aggregator sources by collecting various single-event/regime sources.

2) No, the article is about a particular topic (the aggregate events together) and must be based on sources about that particular topic. Individual events are not the same topic, which is why we have individual articles about each of those events. We need only stick to what reliable sources say about this topic in this article and what reliable sources say about an individual event in that article. I am sure you are exaggerating the discrepancies between the aggregate topic and the individual event/regime topics.

3) It cannot be demonstrated by WP:HITS. Stop ignoring Wikipedia:Search engine test.

4) We'll see. The only significant issue I have seen raised is about the famines and I proposed a simple fix for that by moving that info to the "Debate over famines" section. Your approach is wrong in principle, so your proposed changes can't help but also be wrong. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:25, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Outside comments

AmateurEditor–Paul Siebert

Extract from this that was particularly helpful and clarifying:

1. The terms "mass killing"/various "-cides" must be universally accepted, and different authors interpreted them in the same way.
2. All authors writing about "Communist mass killings" in general meant the same range of events and apply the same terminology to them.
3. The authors writing about those events belonged to the same field of knowledge (which meant they were interconnected by a network of cross-references).

This is precisely why this article violates our policies and guidelines. If this article met all three points, we would not even be discussing here, and the article would be absolutely legitimate as currently written and structured. Unfortunately, none of those conditions are met, per Siebert, and this is why the article fails and violates WP:NPOV, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, and WP:WEIGHT. So no, there is no contradiction between Siebert and I, and if there is any issue, it is mainly on me for not explaining it clearly or is something so minor that it is irrelevant to our shared criticism and suggested restructure–rewriting. Davide King (talk) 22:13, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Here, I did analyze, among other sources and topic, the three sources mentioned by Siebert which I agree with that they are appropriate. Yet, even those sources are misrepresented (Courtois and Valentino), less extreme or more nuanced (Rosefielde), not limited to Communism (Rummel), and all have their own articles; Courtois has Double genocide theory (per Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009, p. 37, Courtois supports the equivalence between class and racial genocide, not MKuCR) and his own article, Rosefielde (who does acknowledge the difference between Gorbachev and Deng from Stalin and Mao, and that "the conditions for the Red Holocaust were rooted in Stalin's, Kim's, Mao's, Ho's and Pol Pot's siege-mobilized terror-command economic systems, not in Marx's utopian vision or other pragmatic communist transition mechanisms.") has Holocaust trivialization and his own page, and Rummel and Valentino have Democide and Mass killing, respectively, alongside their own articles. Davide King (talk) 22:25, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

A possible response may be that we do not actually need to meet any of three points, they just need to discuss Communist mass killings, even though they mean different things, etc. This would be problematic and still violate our policies... but even this would require a restructure–rewriting, especially to the lead. There were many mass killings under communist regimes of the 20th century. This must be totally changed to something like Various authors have written about the 20th-century Communist events, which they characterize as mass killings. And we must then make it clear that there is no consensus about criteria, terminology, events analyzed, etc. It would simply be a bunch of "He said, she said", and minority opinions, some of which even fringe, about 20th-century Communist events that completely ignores historians of Communism. It would be much better to follow Siebert's suggestion and solutions than this. But even if you disagree with their solution, you must agree that a restructure–rewriting is still necessary because even if you say that it does not need to meet any of the aforementioned criteria, the article must still mention those facts; the article in general, and the lead in particular, treat those three criteria as fact, consensus, or majority views, which are fasely supported in the body by a bunch of minority, cherry picked, or irrelevant views which fail NPOV's broadly representation criteria. Davide King (talk) 22:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

In regard to this, in particular This recent spate of posts began with Davide King pinging all the critics of the article he could find after scouring the talk page archives for critics (which was disruptive WP:CANVASSING, but he was new here and I assumed good faith), while I appreciated that you assumed good faith, and you were right in doing that, I take it as an insult what you wrote, as if I have some hidden agenda rather than simply want that our policies and guidelines are respected for all our articles, and we do not have special rules for just one article. I am just very passionate about it because I think that our policies and guidelines are very clear on this, Siebert has been very clear on this, providing time and time again why they are violated, and I just do not get how this article is still in the status it is; of course, I do not assume Siebert, others, and I must be correct but so far I was provided with to rational arguments and evidence that addressed both our arguments and rationales and debunked them.

If you were referring to the users I pinged here, I simply assumed that defenders of the article would appear, and that you were free to do the same; I just could not ping everyone, and I had a right to ping them since I did not comment in months, and I wanted to hear if there were any update, any new thoughts, etc. I believe that all the users I pinged were either neutral on the issue, or gave more than valid reasons to dissent, and since I was dissenting in a new thread I wanted to hear whether they agree. In addition, as noted, it also included three new users (GreenC, Mathglot, and MjolnirPants) who are neutral on this, two administrations (Buidhe and Czar), and Czar is also neutral, while Buidhe expressed their views, and C.J. Griffin was one of the defenders of this article-turned critic. So I believe that your allegations are just that, allegations, and your wording is an oversimplification, generalization, and misinterpretation, ironically enough not much different from this same article. This article's problems certainly have nothing to do with such allegations.

If we have two sources that discuss the topic and one includes events A, B, and C and the other includes events A, B, and D, then the article should cover events A, B, C, and D. As for sources, it is original research and synthesis doing what you suggested. If a source includes only Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and another one adds North Korea and Vietnam, we can only discuss the first three, as there is no agreement or consensus on North Korea and Vietnam. It is not much different from what Siebert argued when they objected using the estimates from The Black Book of Communism in the lead; if sources disagree, or there is no consensus, we do not create a false balance and equivalence in presenting both but we only present what sources agree and there is consensus on. Finally, you write of grouping but that is part of the problem, as repeatedly showed and proved by Siebert; Communist states are not to be treated as a monolithic group, and by doing this we are giving undue weight to the few scholars like Courtois who have done it. So either we treat this as a theory, including the grouping, or we follow Siebert's solutions. Davide King (talk) 04:11, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

2018 peer-review

This June 2018 peer-review by Fifelfoo can be useful and helpful, as it is still relevant and current. Some interesting excerpts:

Biggest problems with the text
He said She said vacillation. Either the topic is an accepted significant scholarly belief about the nature of the external world first and foremost, and therefore claims are put as fact. Or it ain't, in which case the article needs to be refactored to strip fact and discuss the "theory."

Missing sections

Criticism of the concepts and associated scholarship

Scholarly [or other high quality reliable source discourse] criticisms of the theoretical concept, or the application of either the agent assignment or claimed historical process. Should generally come last in the body. Should only be based on field review works. IIRC I cited years ago a ?Swedish field review which proposed high level studies of politically or socially caused preventable mass death was no longer a way forward in studies of preventable mass deaths. This would be a one liner if weighty, "[Widely / narrowly] received study says that in preventable mass death literature attention now focuses on small studies, [due to theory fatigue]," etc. Each major discourse would deserve no more than one line, unless it is a scholarly debate equivalent to the importance the Nove-Millar debate (https://glam.rl.talis.com/items/855C3D93-FBCD-CC19-57F6-D331A8947579.html) was to NEP economics for example, for which we could afford a paragraph at most.

Criticism of poor Scholarship. Throw the fringe, harshly criticised, and narrowly received scholars on the bonfire. Get it out of the body of the article where it is unweighty. If the only claims which give the article notability are unweighty there shouldn't be a section on historical phenomena at all, the article should be about a fringe or rejected scholarly position. If there are some rejected and some accepted scholars, guess where the rejected scholars belong?

Lede

The article positions its subject as an actual historical process, rather than a scholarly discourse. Editors need to be aware of this editorial decision.

Terminology

Fails to deal with "Communist regimes" the other half of the relationship of the articles' topic.

States where mass killings have occurred

Tiresomely too long.

The article's topic is the claimed link between a claimed set of agents and a claimed set of linked processes. This section is coatrack, not because of its existence so much as because it unWEIGHTily dominates the article.

If you're going to play capitalisation games, don't, "Soviet and communist studies" => "Soviet and Communist studies.

Almost all of these sections could be reduced to one well written paragraph each.

Much of the remainder is "Some scholars [believe]" "[Fred] writes that" "According to [Fred]". Again. Either the discourse is a major scholarly consensus appropriate to cite as the circumstances of what is real (within the expected limits that a reader knows that historiography is a process of debate), OR, the article is actually about a narrow or fringe scholarly position, in which case putting weasel words in front of unWeighty claims is garbage editorially. Either way: the text goes, or the weasel words go. They're mutually incompatible.

Davide King (talk) 14:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Karlsson and Schoenhals (2008)

Karlsson and Schoenhals (2008) is the kind source we need but it is also the only one that generalize. This comment by Siebert was insightful:

K & S do not come up with some sophisticated theoretical schemes, they describe their goal modestly: to discuss the crimes of three the most murderous Communist regimes. The same idea can be found in the Valentino's "Final solutions". The sources that try to propose some theoretical schemes connecting Communism in general and mass killings (the BB, Rummel) are either obsolete or not mainstream. Therefore, the article should follow the K&S's and Valentino's scheme, so we, without any theorising, should simply explain that the article is focused on mas killings in Cambodia (Kampuchea), PRC and the USSR. Everything else may be discussed briefly in the separate section.

K & S are more analytic than synthetic, they pay more attention to the analysis of specific features of the three different regimes, therefore, we also should abandon our approach to the discussion of the causes of mass killings in general, and to focus on single society features instead.

K & S provide an excellent review of the historiography of the Soviet repressions, and we should devote serious attention to that in the article, because the development of the views on this subject, especially in a context of the development of the world political situation (end of the Cold War, dissolution of the USSR, "archival revolution", etc) is totally ignored in the article. That is a critical omission.

K & S characterised some sources, which are extremely popular among some fraction of Wikipedians (Rummel's non-peer-reviewed writings, the BB, some pro-Communist books) as fringe, and that is in a full accordance with the opinion of other serious scholars. In connection to that, I suggest to exclude these sources from the main article, and to discuss them in the separate section (as an examples of fringe or obsolete views).

Since the idea to draw parallelism between Communism and Nazism is rather popular, I suggest to devote a separate section to this discussions where all pro et contra will be presented.

Davide King (talk) 14:23, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

AmateurEditor–Paul Siebert: a way forward

In regards to this and this, it appears that I got it right here (see the last two comments), namely that Paul Siebert indeed want to use country-experts and specialists to fix NPOV, while AmateurEditor dismiss this as OR/SYNTH; however, AmateurEditor seem to be perfectly fine with a bunch of political resolutions (Canada, Latvia, Russia's Duma, etc.) which have nothing to do with the topic, and everything to do with their own individual articles, including the resolution we lost a bunch of time with.

If they are consistent, AmateurEditor must concede that they too must be removed, or they must admit that Siebert is right, and we can rely on country experts. Indeed, if the focus is on the events, as AmateurEditor repeatedly stated, it is absurd not to rely on country experts for the events, which are the best sources for them. Yet, I believe that Siebert was onto something here; it is AmateurEditor who want the topic to be the events but then use criteria source for the narrative–theory, which they appear to not understand.

On where we stand on the main topics, it appears to be that Siebert and Schetm support the events, while The Four Deuces and I actually favoured the narrative–theory (the only difference is that TFD and I treat it as a minority view at best, and fringe view at worse, while AmateurEditor either actually believe in it, or treat it as fact or scholarly consensus, i.e. as fitting the events topic, rather than a popular but very controversial narrative–theory, the other one), which may explain some misunderstanding or contradiction which AmateurEditor claimed to have found between Siebert and I. Honestly, I think that we can have both articles, and there is no contradiction.

Now I support this to be about the events since, at least in theory, this article is, or should be, already events-focused, so we can just rewrite it, while for the theory and narrative we can create a separate article, and both could be helpful in improving each other and providing further context, and complement each other, and I believe we are the ones who are accommodating by allowing both types of sources to be used, while AmateurEditor only support one type, and not the right one. On the other hand, AmeteurEditor, despite their words, support the narrative but unlike TFD and I, they actually believe in it or have a view which misread sources and clearly violates NPOV, as demonstrated by Siebert.

Here, AmateurEditor wrote (brakets and bolding is my response):

"No, the article is about a particular topic (the aggregate events together) and must be based on sources about that particular topic. Individual events are not the same topic, which is why we have individual articles about each of those events. We need only stick to what reliable sources say about this topic in this article and what reliable sources say about an individual event in that article."

[Since you said that individual events are, then, not the same topic ... But it is precisely OR/SYNTH to connect individual events like that, when the only link is the narrative–theory you clearly lack understanding of. "... and what reliable source say about an article." Thus clearly violating NPOV and WEIGHT by giving undisputed and unwarranted weight to the proponents of the grouping ("the article is about a particular topic ... the aggregate events together ...", your words, not mine) narrative–theory, and by creating that same contradiction, between what we say here and what their main articles say, Siebert rightly and repeatedly lamented.

It is a coatrack, it would be like separating the Great Purge into two articles—Great Purge (Robert Conquest) and Great Purge (J. Arch Getty)—to push one side of historiography; they would not be titled after their authors but more like Great Terror and Great Purge, with each including only one side of historiography. This may not be the best example, and I believe that Siebert can express the same point more clearly and better, but that is pretty much what you are doing, coatraking the views of a few genocide scholars (minority within a minority) as if they held the same weight of country experts and specialists when it comes to individual countries and events, all the while claiming to uphold our policies and guidelines.]

What they seem to ignore is that this is precisely the narrative–theory they so despise we focus the article about; it is exactly such sources that make the grouping, whatever you want to call it, which ignore the country experts (Harff 2017) precisely to push their narrative–theory. This is what genocide studies does, and is why they are a minority school of thought that rarely appears in mainstream political science academic journals, yet, according to AmateurEditor, we are led to believe that those are the best sources and the only possible sources we can rely on?! If they are consistent, they must follow TFD's lead. Do not even get me started on clearly, non-expert, undue, or fringe ones.

By supporting only sources that clearly do the grouping, like Courtois and Rummell, we must dismiss all the others because they are using completely different criteria. By requiring that we use only sources that either do the grouping or speak in general terms, and by excluding any source to the contrary as OR/SYNTH, they are flagrantly violating NPOV, and also WEIGHT by giving undue weight to them, giving the false impression that this topic is academically accepted and based on consensus, which in turn led this article to be kept in such awful status and many users to dismiss our critiques because the article gives such false impression, which is very effective, so congratulations.

The fact that many scholars and country experts completely ignore it shows that it lacks notability, and their silence should not be interpretated as consent or dismissed as OR/SYNTH, so if we are going to keep this article we must rely on them. OR/SYNTH is not Siebert's proposal to fix NPOV by relying on country experts, which is perfectly fine considering that the agreed main topic is the events themselves, and they are the best possible sources for them; what is OR/SYNTH is pretending the article to be about the events, while misrepresenting theories, and by excluding country experts which would show how OR/SYNTH the article is, the theory of the events is treated as the only fact and majority, mainstream consensus. OR/SYNTH is speaking of "generic mass killing", when the topic should either be on the events or a sub-article of Mass killing, thus no "generic mass killing."

Paul Siebert, could you please explain what they mean by "generic mass killing"? And why it is OR/SYNTH? Davide King (talk) 08:43, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

A "drive-by" remark on original research (evolved into a longer rant)

I have a suspicion that the very hatnote definition is original research: it includes "... and deaths that occurred during forced deportations and imprisonment, and deaths that resulted from forced labor... " into the definition of mass killing for the purpose of this article . I briefly read "mass killing and see there is no unified definition. Is there a distinction between "deliberate" and "byproduct" killing? For example, I am pretty much sure that in the Soviet Union the Gulag camps were pretty much utilitarian establisment to colonize sparsely populated resource rich areas rather than to kill dissenters. I think so because they had no qualms with direct kill-off of the "class enemies". (P.S. I forgot to mention that colonization was specifically mentioned in the early decrees on the establisgment of the GULAG system.)

Even deliberate Soviet mass killings which were in some cases "policide" in appearance, but in fact a "dire necessity". For example at the onset of the German invasion there were numerous NKVD killings of prison inmates and especially egregious Katyn Massacre. They were carried out because the Soviets simply had no time to "utilize" them properly in Gulag, and killing the potential combatant enemies was "a good idea". There were other killings of this "utilitarian" type, i.e., one has to be careful with the classification of killings into -cides.

A yet another case is "man-made famines" On the insistence of Ukraine Holodomor was classified as genocide. However there were quite a few massive famine-related death tolls. I am not even talking about the fact taht Holodowmr was part of a wider famine at ghat time. There were several severe famines in Central Asia, in which collectivization carried out by Bolsheviks sent by Kremlin failed to address the specifics of agriculture in this area. So these man-made famines were the result of stupidity rather than ill will. Shall they be counted as "mass killings", as Kazakh famine of 1931–1933? (Unfortunately our article misrepresents the event describing it as part of Soviet famine of 1932–1933: it was part only superficial coincidence with statewide collectivization; the natural causes were completely different.) Much smaller in absolute numbers but significant in relative numbers were death tolls during efforts to "sedentiarize" the Siberian nomads, which in no way could be counted into "class enemies". Did any researcher consider the category" "mass deaths due to negligence"?

All this leads me to suggest a title Mass deaths and killings in Communist states. Of course "deaths and killings" looks like WP:SYNTH, In quite a few cases it is difficult to draw a line. Once again, do researchers draw a distinction between direct and indirect killings? Such a distingciot would at least decrease the mess with this article. Lembit Staan (talk) 03:38, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Just wanted to thank you for your comment and participation. I believe Paul Siebert can better explain the issue but I can try to show some issues. My issue is that it says and speaks of mass killing but it does not really mean Mass killing but Mass murder, and it mixes the two. Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's are the only leaders under whom events can be categorized as mass killing, yet this article acts like all mass murders by Communist states can be categorized as, or indeed are, mass killings. This article should really be scholarly and focus only on genocide studies and scholars of Communism, not any author who has written about the events of Communist states, which are not a monolithic and the grouping itself in biased in assuming only the similarities between them and not giving enough weight to the many differences, and in general following the totalitarian model, which per sources is outdated. Further problems are that (1) genocide studies is a minority school of thought which has been rarely published in mainstream political science article; (2) they disagree among themselves; (3) Communist scholars disagree with genocide studies. As provided by Siebert, "Barbara Harff gives an explanation that may resolve our dispute: genocide scholars are not too interested in calculating exact numbers, because their major goal is not the figures, but a search of correlations and theoretical explanations of the causes and mechanisms of mass killings."

"Compiling global data is hazardous and will inevitably invite chagrin and criticism from country experts. Case study people have a problem with systematic data because they often think they know better what happened in one particular country. I have sympathized with this view, because my area expertise was the Middle East. But when empiricists focus on global data, we have to consider 190 countries and must rely on country experts selectively. When we look for patterns and test explanations, we cannot expect absolute precision, in fact we do not require it."

Again, I believe Siebert can clarify and explain this much better. Davide King (talk) 04:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Lembit Staan, a real situation is as follows.

1. Some (very few) authors (Courtois and some others) collected all facts of deliberate killings or mass mortality under Communists into a category "Communist death toll", which amounted, according to them, to 85 million.

2. Some (different) authors discuss separate groups of events, which they call "mass killing" (like Valentino), "democide" (Rummel), "politicide", etc. These events include different categories, but usually, with few exception, famine deaths (>50 million of deaths) are not included. Their provide different theories and explanations, and they see some commonalities or differences.

3. Majority (actually, absolute majority) of authors study each event separately. For example, many historians study only the Great Chinese famine, without any connection to any other mass mortality event under Communists, or, for example, discuss it in a context of Irish and Bengal famine. These authors work totally separately from the group 1&2 authors (and do not cite them).

What the current version of the article is doing? By selectively citing and cherry picking fragments taken from the group 2&3 scholars, the article creates an impression of false consensus, and of a nearly universal support of the viewpoint expressed by the group 1 scholars and journalists, so the reader gets an impression that there are just minor disagreement between different sources, whereas different sources provide conceptually different view on the same events, and the opinion of a minority (and severely criticized minority, like Courtois) is represented as the majority view. Thus, 99% sources do not consider the Great Chinese famine (up to 50 million deaths) as mass killing at all: according to them, it was a combination of poor management with natural factors. Significant part of sources explains the Great Soviet famine of 1933 similarly, whereas Volga famine or post-war famine are universally explained as the consequence of devastating wars. Interestingly, specialized Wikipedia articles say the same, and the fact that there is a direct contradiction between two Wikipedia article is a gross violation of our policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:26, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Davide King: - re: "Mass murder" - well, in terminology of Wikipedia, IMO the proper term would be Homicide#By state actors. "Murder" implies unlawfulness, whereas communist states had convenient laws. We can classify them "unlawful" in terms of the international concept of human rights, but that would be an anachronism. Lembit Staan (talk) 04:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Michael Mann uses mass murder. "All accounts of 20th century mass murder include the Communist regimes." Davide King (talk) 19:49, 7 September 2021 (UTC)