Talk:Great Purge

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Contents

[edit] A Larger Context

In The Gulag Archipelago by: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he writes:

"When people today decry the buses of the cult, they keep getting hung up on those years which are stuck in our throats, '37 and '38. And memory begins to make it seem as though arrests were never made before or after, but only in those two years."

(Chapter 2: The History of Our Sewage Disposal System)

He goes on to say that the wave of '37 and '38 was not the only one, or even the largest but that others (for example 1929-30) are not widely known because "peasants are a silent people, without a literary voice". (Chapter 2)

I think that it's important to acknowledge that persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin did not begin and end with the Great Purge.

Padington (talk) 20:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Astonishing Death Toll

[[The number of people who perished in the purges is subject to hot disputes with death toll estimates ranging from 1 to 100 million people, depending on who counts and what is counted as a purge.]]

This has got to be a joke. You couldn't convince a 10 year old that a median of 50 million would be executed out of a population of 160 million. Such is unfeasible. Demographic data does not remotely correspond to such allegations. Countless sources have correctly specified the death toll from executions to total 681,692 including the Russian Viktor Zemskov, J.Arch Getty, Robert Thurston and Stephen Wheatcroft. Archival data must be given priority over hearsay, rumours, and crude arithmetic.

Some sources place the number at about 20 million, which includes approximately 5 million kulaks and other peasants killed between 1929 and 1933; 5 million who died during the Ukrainian Holodomor, 5 million executed between 1933 and 1953 (including military personnel executions during the Great Patriotic War), and 5 million dead in gulag camps.

This has been debunked by archival material. It's been revealed that 150,000 kulaks died during 1930-1931; 3 million died during the rural famine of 1932-1933; 786,000 executions from 1930-1953; a 1 million deaths in the GULAG. The total figure is not quite 5 million. Again, we must give priority to archival sources over second-hand estimates. Sources include "Years of Hunger" by Stephen Wheatcroft and RW Davies and "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence" by J.Arch Getty.

Then don't talk about it. Fix the article with your data, adding sources with every claim. Remember: be bold. -Kasreyn 22:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

"The main evidence for the gendercidal impact of the "Great Terror" lies in the Soviet census of 1959. In a fascinating addendum to the original edition of his work on the Purge period, The Great Terror, Robert Conquest uses the census figures to argue that the Soviet population "was some 20 million lower than Western observers had expected after making allowance for war losses." "But the main point," he notes, "arises from a consideration of the figures for males and females in the different age groups." He then unveils a striking table indicating that whereas age cohorts up to 25-29 displayed the usual 51-to-49 percent split of women to men, from 30-34 the gap widened to 55 to 45 percent. Thereafter, the disparity became massive, reflecting the generations of males caught up in the purges and the Great Patriotic War. From 35-39, women outnumbered men by 61 to 39 percent; from 40-54, the figure was 62 to 38 percent; in the 55-59 age group, 67 to 33 percent; from 60-69, 65 to 35 percent; and 70 or older, 68 to 32 percent. [...] [...] The estimates are "only approximations," Conquest notes, and "anything like complete accuracy on the casualty figures is probably unattainable." But "it now seems that further examination of the data will not go far from the estimates we now have except, perhaps, to show them to be understated"; and "in any case, the sheer magnitudes of the Stalin holocaust are now beyond doubt." He cites Joseph Berger's remark that the atrocities of Stalin's rule "left the Soviet Union in the condition of 'a country devastated by nuclear warfare.'" (All figures and quotes from Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, pp. 485-88.)" from Genocide Watch --Dwarf Kirlston 18:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

  • is there a Wikiproject Genocide?--Dwarf Kirlston 18:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Great Purge and Barbarossa

I have removed the following line from the end of the paragraph Purge of the Army: "However, this is untrue since Hitler had already stated a fight against communism in "My Struggle", and many times in his speeches during the 1930s." This line attempts to discount any link between Germany's assault on Russia due to the idiological position of the Nazis. That Hitler and the Nazis were completely opposed to Communism is clear from Mein Kampf and numerous other sources - however, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact also shows that the Nazis were very pragmatic about this opposition. The issue is not whether the Nazis were idiologically opposed to the Communists, but rather whether the purges helped contribute to the actual timing of Operation Barbarossa. --The Thieving Gypsy 17:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russian to English Transliteration in intro

Большая чистка transliterates into (if I'm not incorrect) Bolshaya Chistka; I'm going to put this into the parenthesis in the intro sentence next to the Russian. I hope this is ok? T. S. Rice 10:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historiographical debates

Should there not be some mention of the intentionalist and revisionist arguments concerning the reasons for the Purges. NMO

[edit] Mikkalai revert?

Hey Mikkalai, I can't see for the life of me why you reverted my changes to this article. Please let me know why you did it in the talk, or I'm going to re-post them. They seemed fairly uncontroversial. SparhawkWiki 22:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC) (signed after the fact because I forgot to sign it earlier)

[edit] Version 0.7 review

I've passed this for the Version 0.7 DVD release, as it seems (generally) pretty well done and complete, as far as I can tell. However, it does contain some shocking information, and as such it could benefit from some inline citations - an important topic like this deserves a good quality article. Thanks, Walkerma 02:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography

There are thousands of books about stalinism, all from repoutable scholars. It is not like some obscure topic you cannot find information. We have a specific topic here. Please explain which sections of the books in question deal specifically with the Great Purge. I have nothing against long list of references, but they must be reasonable. For example the article Joseph Stalin has like a hundred of them. But the topic "Stalin" is broad.

In our case, for example, "In Defense of the Russian Revolution: A Reply to the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification [David North." or "Was there an alternative to Stalinism? [David North." It is unclear from the titles how the are related to 1937.

The best idea would be to write articles about important books or at least to add brief summaries in the current article, so that people will know why these books are listed here. `'Miikka 17:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

  • [Two Lectures] Stalin's Great Terror: Origins and Consequences Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Marxism in the USSR [Vadim Z. Rogovin. Mehring books,ISBN 0-929087-83-6] 1996
    • Added back. `'Miikka 17:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
  • 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror [Vadim Z. Rogovin. Mehring books, ISBN 0-929087-77-1] 1996.
    • Added back `'Miikka 17:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The Red Book [Leon Sedov. Mehring books: New Park Publications, 1980 ISBN 0-86151-015-1] 1936
   +
  • Documents of the 1923 Opposition [Mehring books: New Park Publications, ISBN 0-929087-9608] 1975.
   +
  • The Revolution Betrayed [[Leon Trotsky. Mehring books, ISBN 0-929087-48-8 1936][The Leon Trotsky Internet archive, marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/trotsky/index.htm]]
   +
  • The Stalin School of Falsification [Leon Trotsky. Mehring books: Labor Publications, ISBN 0-929087-92-5] 1974
   +
  • In Defense of the Russian Revolution: A Reply to the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification [David North. Mehring books,ISBN 0-929087-72-0] 1995.
   +
  • Trotskyism was the revolutionary alternative to Stalinism: A reply to the historical falsifiers [David North. Mehring books, ISBN 1-873045-07-7] 1995.
   +
  • Was there an alternative to Stalinism? [David North. www.wsws.org/history/1995/oct1995/glasgow.shtml] 1995

[edit] No single word about Kirov?

What started the first wave of the great purge was the assasination of Sergei Kirov in Leningrad in 1934. Was it set by the party or not, but it was exploited widely by the party to begin a mass war of terror against their own people. Someone has to add this to the article.

Not exactly so, but I added the name. `'Míkka 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Also in Russian there is no term 'Great Purge', so the Russian translation seems pointless. In Russian they use two terms, 'Stalinist Repressions' or more narrowly 'Yezhovschnina' (i.e. covering only 1937-39, the peak of terror).--Klaus Bertow 08:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, mistaken. Please don't forget there are plenty of native russian speakers in wikipedia, who know which terms "they" use. If you don't believe them, try google. `'Míkka 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
True. Steveshelokhonov 20:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purges elsewhere?

Although the Purge in the Soviet Union was the biggest, shouldnt there be at least some informaion about the Purge in Mongolia, which happened at the same time as it did in the former? There isnt even one mentioning of the Purge in Mongolia here. --ChinneebMy talk 07:45, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Be bold and write an aricle about purges in Mongolia, rather than complain about lazy rest of us. Only pease use the correct title (how they were called there) and cite reputable sources. `'Míkka 15:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
OK. The name in Mongolia is the same as the one in the Soviet Union, so maybe the title should be Great Purge (Mongolia) or something like that?? --ChinneebMy talk 04:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
See Twentieth Century Mongolia `'Míkka 05:57, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Could we make this a disambig page, as I would like to add Stalinist Purges in Mongolia. --ChinneebMy talk 09:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Gulijan's addition

Editor C.J.Griffin, can you explain your deletions of Gulijan's referenced material? Binksternet (talk) 13:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that this might be another sockpuppet of permabanned vandal Jacob Peters. This Gulijan is citing some of the same sources Peter's has cited in the past. I'll leave them for now but will keep an eye on further edits made by Gulijan. C.J. Griffin (talk) 01:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
We'll all keep an eye out. ;) Binksternet (talk) 08:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
It seems like I was right. Looking over Gulijan's recent edits there is no doubt in my mind that this is indeed another sockpuppet of vandal Jacob Peters. I've reported him and if it's confirmed, I'm removing his edits from this article and all the others as banned users cannot edit wikipedia. C.J. Griffin (talk) 03:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)