Talk:Great Soviet Encyclopedia

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[edit] Copyright

Hello. What is the copyright status of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia? Who wrote it, exactly -- was it an official publication of the Soviet government? Any information about the status of Soviet-era copyrights in general, and the GSE in particular, would be very helpful. Thanks for your help, Wile E. Heresiarch 17:39, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It is public domain as are all Soviet government documents published before I think 1973. Fred Bauder 21:54, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
According to the GSE page, the third edition was translated into English in 1973. Any idea what the copyright status is of Soviet Government works made after that date? (It says on the GSE page that the 3rd edition is available online from some Russian site, if it really is verifiably public domain, it could be a really good, or at least interesting, resource.) Kadin2048 21:38, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Within Russia, the first edition and the second edition up to the entry on Forester (vol. 24) are in the public domain. Later editions and the second edition from vol 24/25 on are copyrighted. That's the rules employed at the time of this writing on the Russian Wikipedia, see ru:Википедия:Авторские права. The reasons for this are manyfold. See ru:Обсуждение:Большая_советская_энциклопедия, and also see Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc. about copyrights in Russia on collections (such as newspapers or encyclopedias) of individual articles. Incidentally, these rules are consistent with my own analysis of Russian copyrights at Template talk:PD-USSR and at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet.
Outside of Russia, the waters become muddy. If we only consider Russia and ignore the other CIS nations, we could conclude that those editions and entries published anonymously before 1945 would also be PD in other signatory countries of the Berne Convention (1945 = 1995 - 50; 1995 is the year Russia joined the Berne Convention, and it had a copyright term of 50 years at that time, and that copyright term applied retroactively, even to works that had gone out of copyright under the previous Soviet legislation.) 1945 only leaves the first edition PD.
Which means that the image of the first page of the third edition is not in the public domain as claimed. Lupo 10:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

What about the translation copyrights? If the orginal was not coprighted, can its translation be copyrighted? And if so, can the Russian text be retranslated and released into PD in the second translation? How much difference must be between first and second translations, so that the second is not accussed of being a rip-off the first? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:49, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Even if the original text does not have a copyright, any translation of it into another language (such as English) would have its own copyright, owned by the translator; the translator would then be completely free to put the translation into the public domain.
As for similarity between two different translations, there is no simple rule that can be applied. However, the same basic principles will apply to a translated work as for a wholly original creation, so the longer the translated work is, the less probable it is that another translator's work would be the same or similar.
Silverhelm 09:50, 12 November 2006 (UTC).

Not that I see many people copying more than "what is needed for personal research" or "quotes for reference" - it is more interesting as a concept which might be applicable elsewhere.

To what extent would the above rules apply to other "official publications of no longer extant states"? The present governments of former Communist states which remain extant probably retain the copyrights of Communist-era publication (or would advise) - but what about eg Czechoslovakia? Jackiespeel 17:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Paste in revisions

All articles which related to Bolshevik leaders who were purged were changed, Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev. Fred Bauder 21:54, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not disputing that, in subsequent versions of the encyclopedia entries were removed from new books. For example, in the online GSE, one can find "Trotskyism", and "Trotsky-Zinovev anti-Leninist block", but no biography of Trotsky, as the original one was removed in versions of the first edition after he fell out of favor. So new books, new versions would not have that article. Beria is the only cut-and-paste one I have heard about though. And of course, Beria was post-Stalin. Ruy Lopez 09:19, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How many volumes, how many years?

I've just translated the article to Japanese wikipedia, but the publication date and the volume number of each edition of the Encyclopedia are different from the Russian Wiki, and some other sources (Here I picked up from Encarta and some American uni's library catalog(?)).

This article (English wiki)

1st edi. 1926-1947, 65 vols.
2nd edi. 1950-1958, 51 vols.
3rd edi. 1969-1978, 30 vols.

[1]Russian

1st edi. 1926-1933, 65 vols.
2nd edi. 1950-1960, 50 vols.
3rd edi. 1969-1978, 30 vols.
Though I don't understand Russian.
There are mistakes here. See years of release of all volumes here[2] and I think, you'll easily discover a source of mistakes. If you won't, please, ask me to explain this. Cmapm 19:16, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

MSN Encarta

1st edi. 1926-1947, 64 vols.
2nd edi. 1950-1958, 51 vols.
3rd edi. 1970-1978, 30 vols.

and, http://web.library.emory.edu/subjects/humanities/history/CCCP/Guide.html

2nd edi. 1949-1958
3rd edi. 1971-1978

Does anybody have any info on this? Can anybody confirm which publication data and which volume number are true?Hans castorp81 16:08, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, concerning the 3rd edition. I've looked into it and found, that 1st vol. was signed "ready for printing" on November 6, 1969 and released in 1969, the 30th was signed on October 6, 1978 and released in 1978. Besides that, a volume of indexes was released in 1981.
Concerning the 1st and 2nd edi., in the 3rd edition in the article about the encyclopedia itself is written, that 1st edition was released "in 1926 - 1947 years in 66 volumes" (66th volume, released in 1947, was about the USSR). 2nd edition was released in "1950 - 1958 years in 51 volume (51st volume is complementary)". Besides that, two volumes of indexes to the 2nd edi. were released in 1960. You can see this article online here [3] (in Russian).
You can also look here [4] to find years of release of all volumes of each edition (in Russian, but pretty intuitive, I think). The only doubtful issue for myself is why there is written, that the 2nd edition was released in 1949 - 1958, although in another article [5] on the same website is written, that it was released in 1950 - 1958. My guess for this is that the 1st vol. was signed "ready for print" in 1949 and released in 1950.
To sum it up, I believe that the following is true:
1st edi. 1926-1947, 66 vols.
2nd edi. 1950-1958, 51 vols.
3rd edi. 1969-1978, 30 vols.
Or to be careful, you can write "65 vols.+ a complementary volume about the USSR". Cmapm 19:18, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
I see..Thanks for a fast reponse. So the last volume (66th) of the first edition was a complementary one. I'm gonna change the number for Japanese Wiki (But since the both vol number seems OK (i.e. not wrong) and I'm not partiipating in Enlgish wiki, I'll leave it as it is for English wiki).. Cheers :). Hans castorp81 15:03, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
This was already fixed here by Mikkalai, when I wanted to fix this. I also looked through the Japanese version, it's nice work. Best wishes :-) Cmapm 00:40, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

I've got the 3rd edition of БСЭ. It has 31 volumes, numbered from 1 to 30. There are two volumes with number 24: '24-I' (roman 1) and '24-II' (roman 2). The first one is the 'regular' alphabetic volume with articles from Собаки (Dogs) to Струна (String). The second one is titled CCCР (USSR), and it is all about the country, its geography, history, science, social life, government bodies, ideology, politics, every one of the 15 Soviet republics, and so on. Volumes 24-I and 24-II are both of full size: 607 and 575 pages respectively. 217.114.151.228 14:07, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I have 3rd edition too, many thanks to my grandfather and grandmother, who subscribed to it 30 years ago. Somehow I managed to forget to include inf. about 24th vol. into the article :-( Thanks to Mikkalai, who fixed this after your notice. Cmapm 23:42, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Azerbaijani Soviet Encyclopedia

I fill the the original name for the ASE and correct the english translation Azeri to Azerbaijani since it is more suitable. Azeri has a little different meaning which is disputed in fact.--Araks 11:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious (Damnatio Memoriae)

If caught possesing an unrevised copy, one could have faced several years of imprisonment.

There could have been no official law saying that, so there is no way to know that "one could have faced" such a thing. From what I know about Soviet reality, it seems unlikely - revisions in party ideology and evaluations of specific political figures changed many times during Soviet history, but nobody was prosecuted for the mere possession of official state-published materials reflecting earlier dogma. I have inherited a copy of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia from my own grandfather, and his copy has the "original" Beria article. He was never imprisoned, as far as I know. :-) --91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Removed as dubious and having been marked so since April. If anyone can find any reliable source for this claim, it can be added back, of course.Giovanni33 (talk) 06:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)