Talk:Kengir uprising

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Article Milestones Date Process Result August 23, 2006 Peer review Reviewed September 25, 2006 Featured article candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured article

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Contents 1 Possible smallish discrepancy 2 Machekhovskiy 3 Some suggestions 4 A semantic ambiguity 5 oflag 6 "Coinciding with" 7 Kengir's coordinates? 8 Infuse 650 thieves into (100, 1,000, 1,000,000?) political prisoners 9 Very serious reservations about this article!

[edit] Possible smallish discrepancy

In Russian edition, it was the tanks ("famed T-34's") were hauling long barbed wire trestles, sectioning the zone immediately (which makes much more sense, too, physically), while soldiers were saturating the zone with SMG fire. Tanks were moving with no regard to prisoners, bringing barracks down, running over people (Russian edition mentions at least two women prisoners perishing in such manner). ---Yury Tarasievich 12:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello Yury, my friend! I read an english translation of the book, but I too remember reading that he mentioned that the trestles were brought in on tanks and that they moved with no regard for property or life. I've had a nagging doubt that the "Raid" section was insufficient or without enough detail and I think I'll go and add some of that information. Thanks!--Clngre 12:43, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Machekhovskiy

Know what I'm recalling? Colonel Machekhovskiy, who was the chief of that "lagpunkt", was living in my own town, not yet long ago. I've read his letter in the local newspaper "Grodnenskaya pravda" once, he was denouncing something (at least trying to) in that part of the Solzhenitsyn's book. But darned if I remember at least the year. Could be anything of last 10 years (3500+ issues), so, unfortunately, quite unrealistic to find. Yury Tarasievich 19:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some suggestions

The "Beria crew" were called "берианцы" then, so "Berians", rather, in English?

The tank on photo is of very early (1941-1942) variant, and hardly would be used in Kengir.

Generally, are the photo of tank and the Khrushchev poster (well post-epoch) really needed there?

The "prisoners at work" photo would be much more in place in the start of the Gulag section, aligned left, and "archipelago" book cover should take its place at the end of the article, don't you think?

In the raid, security officer Byelyayev shot about twenty people himself, then was seen putting the weapons into hands of the killed before making of the photos (it's in Russian edition, at least). The people coming from hiding and not shot, were heavily beaten with rifle butts, though (ibid). If this'll go into the article, do you want me to provide references?

There was a play by Solzhenitsyn, dedicated to the Kengir uprising, "Tanks knows the truth" ("Знают истину танки"). Yury Tarasievich 08:05, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello Yury.

• Honestly, I don't know how it would be in english. Solzehitsyn (or, rather, the translator of this edition) only says "Beria-ites." In my personal opinion, "Beria-ites" kind of sounds better and is a bit clearer I think, but if the more accurate translation would be "Berians" than that's what it should be.

• Well, if the English edition is definite on it, then what about adding the ({{lang-ru|бериа’нцы}}) -- that's the informal language, after all?

• OK I updated that image. Please tell me if that version of the tank could've plausibly been used there, because I'm still not totally sure what model it is.

• Yes, now it's late war model and quite plausible. More life-like, not academic, looking photo, too.

• Yes that's actually a good idea with the images, I'll switch them around now.

• Only this Belomor 1930s image is bit too densely packed together with the mugshot. Is it possible to move it about one text section lower?

• I think that part could go in the article, yes. Is your source also Solzhenitsyn? I remember reading something like that from him. (As an important aside, do you know any other major sources on the Kengir uprising other than Solzhenitsyn? The article is going through FA review now and more sources are in demand.)

• Unfortunately, no. I'm recalling reading something in the "thick" (literature) magazines ("Novyi Mir", possibly?) sort of between the 1988 and 1991. And yes, my source is Russian edition. Do you need the reference?

I had no idea there was a play on the uprising, that fact must be included. Thanks! --Clngre 11:46, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, I've misled you. The "Tanks..." is a screenplay by S., written in 1959. He had to hide its existence for a long time. In 1970s a group of young film directors from California pondered the possibility of making the film, but it didn't come to that. Ref: [1]
• In July 1988 - end 1989, there was a notion that then emigree film director Andrzej Wajda would make a film by this screenplay, and Wajda even wanted to make this film, however, he wanted to be able to return to then Communist-ruled Poland, and was afraid that making such film would block him from doing so, and hesitated and didn't make the film after all. In 2001 interview to Moscow News Wajda expressed his regret that he did not make the film. Ref: [2]
• I recall reading something resembling a play on Kengir about 15 years ago, so possibly it was just a screenplay. Or, possibly, there was a play, too? Yury Tarasievich 12:05, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all the info, this quite helpful. I added that bit about the screenplay to the article, in a note. I'll look around online for more info on this possible play based on the revolt. --Clngre 13:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The screenplay sounds interesting, I hope it gets used by someone else. Wajda, almost 80, is currently busy with a film about the Katyn massacre of 1940; I saw this on imdb and had it confirmed by posters there who live in Poland. Strausszek September 1. 2006 21:40 (CET)

[edit] A semantic ambiguity

Very good article, one point I think could be bettered is this phrase: "a conference in Moscow, attended by over 30 survivors including Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's wife, Natalya Solzhenitsyn."

This seems to imply that Natalya was herself a survivor from the rebellion, which is not the case (the article linked for this doesn't make that connection and she would have been in her teens when it happened.)

Moreover, women's family names in Russian are inflected to a feminine -a form: Solzhenitsyna, Krivitskaja, Jegorova. Strausszek September 1, 2006 21:32 (CET)

Yes, I saw that line a few days ago and thought it might be read as that, I'll fix it now. Thanks for pointing that out--Clngre 20:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oflag

What is its reason to be in "see also"? `'mikkanarxi 17:16, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I added it. They're both similarly quirky and unusual things relating to prisons from roughly the same era. That article is what partly inspired me to write this one and I think somebody interested in one would be in the other. --Clngre 23:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Coinciding with"

This sentence - "Coinciding with a rare alliance between the criminals and politicals, the prisoners succeeded in forcing the guards and camp administration to flee the camp and quarantine it from the outside, with the prisoners thereafter setting up intricate defenses to prevent the incursion of the authorities into their newly won territory." - is from the lead. I believe this sentence needs a little work. However, I'm loath to edit the lead of a present FA.

How about this: "The criminals and political prisoners formed a rare alliance, and succeeded in forcing the guards and camp administration to flee the camp and quarantine it from the outside. The prisoners then set up intricate defenses to prevent the incursion of the authorities." Venicemenace 02:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I wrote that and agree that, yes, "coinciding with" isn't right. It implies that these were two unrelated things that occurred at the same time, while the uprising actually took place partly because of that alliance. But I think your proposed replacement, while getting rid of that error, also kind of seems to throw the baby out with the bath water. Perhaps just saying "Following a rare alliance between the criminals and politicals..."? I'll edit that in for the time being while waiting for your thoughts on this, thanks for your help! --Clngre 02:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, "following" is perfect. I think it might also be helpful to make two sentences out of one, although that isn't what moved me to go to the talk page. Any reservations about assuming the reader knows what "politicals" are? Nit picking, of course...At any rate, it's a very interesting article. Venicemenace 03:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I get what you're saying about breaking up that sentence. I'll see what I can do with it, it's kind of oddly constructed. But "politicals" should definitely be clarified, I'll change it to "political prisoners." And thanks, I found the topic interesting myself. Or interesting enough to write such an article on, which is to say very, very interesting.--Clngre 03:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kengir's coordinates?

Just curious. There's obviously a lot of google earthers on Wikipedia, and I noticed neither this or the stub on the camp itself appear to have it. Even if it's just an empty space, it would still be neat (like Manzanar) --Bobak 03:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know its exact location, and I'm sure it's gone now, but I know its right south of the Kazakh city of Dzhezkazgan and somewhere along the Kara-Kengir river. Somewhere in the vicinity of 47°23′68″N, 68°0′93″E --Clngre 03:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infuse 650 thieves into (100, 1,000, 1,000,000?) political prisoners

the infusion of roughly 650 thieves into Kengir

It would be nice to provide the number of political prisoners at the time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Paisa (talk • contribs) 09:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC).

Ok, done. Thanks for catching that!--Clngre 12:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism in section under Gulag. ````chefantwon

[edit] Very serious reservations about this article!

I find this whole article, articuarly the intro paragraphs, laughably biased against the Soviet authorities and prison guards and am horrified that this article made FA status. The entire article is sympathetic to the criminals and critical of the prison guards. In several places, prisoners viewpoints are reported verbatim whereas official acocunts are prefixed with "supposedly" or "officially". The following few sentences - as just a few examples - I find absurd:

• "It was at this point the Kengir uprising started when the guards opened fire on the thieves, killing 13 and wounding 43.[5]". How can an uprising start as an official response to an uprising already underway. This is a frankly incredible attempt to state that the uprising started with the attempted suppresion of the uprising. The uprising started when the prisoners uprose, not when prison officials responded to the uprising.
• "After the murder of some of their fellow prisoners by guards, Kengir inmates launched a rebellion and proceeded to seize the entire camp compound". The causes of any uprising are never so simplistic and this sentence by attributing causation to a single narrow grievance attempts to explain away the uprising as being a reasonable response to this grievance.
• "the uprising was brutally suppressed". The uprising wasn't brutal bu the suprression of it was? Not only is that clearly biased but the facts in the article do not bear out the supression being brutal:

• what about the tanks being used to knock through walls and only using blanks rather than live ammo?
• what about the fact that prisoners were not shot but simply recaptured if they laid down their arms?

It is worth pointing out that the authorities needing to bring back order to government property seized by convicted criminals who had armed themselves with weapons including pipe bombs.

• "the guards busied themselves patching up the broken-down wall. Nevertheless this was an error on their part because it exposed the bad faith of the guards and eliminated all remaining trust the prisoners had in their word" - it is the job of the guards to secure the prison, yet the article blames them for attempting to do so?
• "the supposed rape of the women prisoners" - since the prisoners themselves (for obvious reasons) denied this, it is "supposed"?

Additionally, nearly all the footnotes are form Solzhenitsyn, an aggrieved former prisoner with an agenda. That's like writing the history of WWII solely from the account of Hitler.

The FA peer review was cursory to say the least.

I strongly feel this article's FA status should be down-graded until the bias and single-source nature of the article is addressed. This article is a good effort by a single person but it needs alot of work and is nowhere near FA status in my opinion. - PocklingtonDan 12:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, "stoolies"? Is that short for "stool pidgeon"? How about something a little less POV such as "informer". - PocklingtonDan 13:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, you first comment regarding "at this point the Kengir uprising started" is reasonable, however this form of words was introduced by me in the last few hours. If you want to copy edit, then go ahead - the article isn't protectd. If you look at the history, I've removed some colourful language already. Regarding the use of "brutally", if you want to remove it, then go ahead. However, I don't share your moral outrage, not least because the various sources agree that many prisoners were killed. Also, I don't agree that all governments throughout history are more reliable sources than all political prisoners, which you seem to be implying. Lastly, I would suggest, the work required to improve this article so it's genuinely of featured quality is similar to the effort required to downgrade it. Thanks for your comments. Be bold! Addhoc 13:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I'm not stating that the official account is more reliable than that of an ex-prisoner (althought that wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption) but rather that the article assumes the opposite and treats any official informaiton as suspicious, whilst quoting the prisoner's accout unquestioningly. It should be noted that both of course have an agenda and both be treated with suspicion. The whole article is almost wholly unquestioning of the prisoner's account. That means that it is not neutral. I'm not going to get involved in editing a feature article that's currently front-page (I think they should be locked while featured) but just stating my amazement that this article made not only FA status but front-page linkage. I think it needs substantial work to bring up to FA status, the whole article needs rebalancing to take into account more than one POV. It is clear at present that the whole thing has been written from an anti-Soviet government stance. I see from the edit history that the article was in fact even worse when it hit the fornt page and since then several editors have in fact toned down its biased slant. That just makes it more incredible that the article was even more biased than now when it made FA and was front-page featured. - PocklingtonDan 13:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear PocklingtonDan,
Is there such a thing as being biased against the Soviet authorities with something like this? I mean, I know it is possible but my question is more about at what point does a simple retelling of the facts (very unfavourable to the Soviet authorities) end and active slanting (really unnecessary, if slandering the authorities is one's aim) begin? I would definitely not like it for the article to be in the latter's direction and we should make sure none of that exists, I agree. But I get the sense that you're taking anything negative about the camp administration as, in an of itself, evidence of bias. There is an important distinction to be made, though. A good comparison would be to concentration camps in Nazi-Germany, which is to say that the brutality and inhumanity that existed is unequivocally negative and can't and shouldn't really be diluted down in the name of balance or whatever. The conditions in gulag, by many measures, were much worse than that in Nazi concentration camps (not worse than Nazi extermination camps, surely) and it's important to keep that in mind. It's very difficult, I think, to actually be "biased against" this in a way that isn't indeed merited or true.
In regards to your points:

• You're right to catch that, but its just a semantic discrepancy that I'll get on. Before the guards killed those prisoners, it wasn't an uprising per se, just (mostly) the criminals chasing after women and the like, pure hedonism. There was no intention of seizing and holding the entire camp as they did at this point, and that only came about after the murder of the prisoners, which incited all of the political prisoners to join up with the criminals and turn it into a full-time rebellion. The "uprising" refers to those 40 days of prisoner controlled camp, but I understand that the word "uprising" can equally apply in another sense to the day before the seizing of the camp.
• I absolutely agree with what you are saying about that quote in your second point, it is too simplistic, but I disagree that that is necessarily a problem. It is as simplistic as it is for, and only for, brevity's sake as it appears in the introduction where space is limited. The article itself goes on to lay a much more nuances picture of the "why," explaining the history to this, the nature of the gulags, and what string of events this event was a culmination of, but I truly couldn't find a way to encapsulate all of that so tersely. If you can, please, I urge you to.
• I personally have no qualms with the use of the word "brutally" to characterize the suppression, it strikes me as accurate if not generous, but I do also think that that need not even be said and that the facts can speak for themselves. I'll remove that.
• In regards to this point "It is worth pointing out that the authorities needing to bring back order to government property seized by convicted criminals who had armed themselves with weapons including pipe bombs."
  

Again, just replace gulag with concentration camp and you can see things clearer, where I don't think it would possible to reprimand prisoners from destroying government property or whatever. I really do get the impression that you just aren't really aware of the severity of the conditions in these camps and the Soviet regime under Stalin (he died a year earlier but it was still very much in his mold at this point). Even if the will was there, it would very difficult to cut them as much slack as you seem to be asking while remaining within the confines of fact. Everything is very much lined up against them.

• I said it was an "error" on their part, which is correct. Error insofar as they did go against their word and exposed their bad faith and that this was a decision that came back to haunt them. Maybe saying "strategic error" would get at it more and circumvent this question over whether or not the guards were right to secure the prison, and just casts it as being something counterproductive to their actual intent of doing so.
• Well saying just "rape" wouldn't be very accurate. I think this problem could be cured with "alleged rape" since that is strictly accurate and not fraught with the connotations of "supposed," which is kind of ridiculing and casting doubt on it at the same time.
• A great deal of the citations point to Solzhenitsyn, but thats only because he was my first source on this. Later sources corroborated virtually all of what is there that is attributed to him (if they didn't I removed them in favour of the new source) and I could just direct footnotes to other sources that make the same assertion. The Applebaum source is as reliable as anything we could imagine on something like this and she echoes Solzhentisyn on every major point. It's important to note, though, that Solzhenitsyn wasn't even a prisoner at this specific camp, but, insofar as being a prisoner of any Gulag will do, he is an "aggrevied source," yes, but that doesn't in itself determine the truth of some claim he may make. It takes more than that. The source of his information were the dozens of interviews he had with former prisoners at this camp.
• The peer review was as cursory as it was against my will. I would've preferred a more thorough review but that didn't materialize.
• It isn't single source, but it is based on relatively few sources, but this is more a symptom of the obscurity of the topic than anything else. Very little is written about it in the english language, as I'm to understand, but that doesn't mean what is written about it is suspect. If you accept that an article on a topic as esoteric as this can be said to be reliable with a relatively small amount of major sources, than I think this is very close to that, and you can't reasonably attack the credibility of an article on the fact of its relatively few sources alone.--Clngre 14:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Clngre, thanks for such a detailed and measured response. I think the suggestions you make to address the points that I raised are fair. Don't get me wrong, the article clearly represents a lot of hard work and effort, and it is a strong article, I just feel that a lot of the issues being ironed out now and things that really should have been ironed out prior to it being declared a feature article, rather than afterwards. I think its a shame that the article didn't get a more full peer review and I supose that reflects both the obscurity of the topic and also the relative low-volume of the article's associated wikiproject compared to more trafficked projects. I really would like to see a wider variety of sources but if they aren't available, if something has a single reference, then rather than stating a point as a consensus viewpoint it might be more applicable to mention it as a viewpoint. Eg, rather than "X did Y", have "Z states that X did Y". I understand that this could become cumbersome in an article with little variety of source. Please don't take my comments personally, you've done a grand job on the article and it is being refined even now, I just think it was featured with issues that should have been ironed our earlier. Thanks - PocklingtonDan 14:21, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Pocklington,

Well we are in total agreement when it comes to the ends we have in mind. I think it would be, if not anything else, a disservice to the article and topic for it to be biased and we should root out anything in it that is.

We also agree on means as well, it seems! I like the idea of saying "x states that..." and I will go over the article later today (damn work!) and try and use that wherever appropriate.

And (I sound ingratiating now) our opinions are aligned when it coems to the peer review, as I too was made wary by how relatively un-thorough the peer review seemed. I solicited many comments outside of the normal channels, leaving notes on the talk pages of "high-ranking" Russian wikipedians, and anticipated a lot of talk before it went on the main page, but nothing was coming. I assume this is due to the length of the topic, which might deter some.

But I'm willing to improve this article any way it can be, so keep any suggestions coming, they are very welcome and appreciated.--Clngre 14:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

This is biased against Soviet authorities in much the same way that the Auschwitz entry is biased against Nazi authorities, and for much the same reason.

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used a very particular method of a historic analysis. "If two unacquainted persons said any identical statement, that statement is true". I wonder if "Архипелаг ГУЛАГ" can be used as a reliable source. --Boleslav1 20:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)