Talk:Stalin's speech on August 19, 1939

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[edit] Old talk

The very existence of this speech has not been proven and still being debated by historians.

And no pages link to here Wetman 19:11, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I hope you'll agree that the above doesn't preclude the existence of the article: describing either a fact or a hoax of historical importance. Mikkalai 19:19, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A POV removed:

The apparent mistake in Stalin's reasoning was the fact that WW2 followed the pattern of blitzkrieg rather the positional war of WW1. The result of this error and Soviet decision to support Germany was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Besides, it is not directly revevant to the article. The goal is to describe the fact, not to judge it. Not to say that Stalin (allegedly) spoke not about the length of the war per se, but about the time to properly "consume" the seized territories by Germany.Mikkalai 19:19, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It could be helpful if people know that it was Russian historian T.S.Bushuyeva who found the text among secret files of USSR Special Archive and published it in Russian journal Novy Mir (No. 12, 1994). -Whiskey 23:04, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately she didn't. Mikkalai 05:30, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. Whiskey 08:27, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The archive files location: Centre for the Preservation of Collections of Historical Documents, former Soviet Special Archives; fund 7, list 1, file 12239. (In Russian: Центр хранения историко-документальных коллекций, бывший Особый архив СССР, ф. 7, оп. 1, д. 1223) From the link added in the article. Constanz 15:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Not authentic document, see curentg article. `'юзырь:mikka 04:42, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved sentence from article

About Stalin's interview in Pravda. "Some Kremlinologists would interpret this as Stalin's implicit acceptance of the essential content of the speech.[1]"

I can't find any such quotation there; I only find Nordling's own interpretation (which is, IMHO, rather far-fetched, to say the least, and pretty vague, too). Nordling is not a Kremlinologist (whatever that "science" is worth, anyway).--91.148.159.4 14:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page refactor

Following discussion, I've redrafted the page. Hopefully this has done the following:

  1. Dealt with the problem of the "allegedly", by explaining up front the actual debate over the papers
  2. Adding useful sections for the article
  3. Fixing mild non-neutral wording that here and there suggested a for/against viewpoint.
  4. Renaming to make clear its an "alleged speech" not an "alleged Stalin" :)

I haven't removed any text or changed any actual substantive material. I have rewritten the intro, but the main body is pretty much unchanged except for moving around and mild wording and style stuff. FT2 (Talk | email) 11:49, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Typo

" (The archive files location: Centre for the Preservation of Collections of Historical Documents, former Soviet Special Archives; fund 7, list 1, file 12239, in Russian: Центр хранения историко-документальных коллекций, бывший Особый архив СССР, ф. 7, оп. 1, д. 1223)."


Needs fixing -- was it 12239 or 1223? FT2 (Talk | email) 11:51, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] recent renaming

The document is called "Stalin speech". "Alleged" is an opinion, not part of the name of the document, even it is forgery. `'Míkka 21:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Which document do you mean? There is a number of documents containing various versions of this speech, none of them has such a title. "Alleged" is not an opinion. There are only two opposite opinions: 1. the speech was real; 2. it is a forgery. "Alleged" means some of historians hold the first opinion, and others hold the second. This distribution is a real fact, not an opinion. And this is the only neutral name, which don't prefer neither 1 st nor 2nd opinion. --Stopar 09:22, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd have to agree with Mikka on that one. Whether true or not, the topic of this article is Stalin's speech. I believe the title is not the place to discuss whether something was true or not. Otherwise we'd have to move, say, the article on Saint Nicholas to Alleged Saint Nicholas or the article on Polish invasion of Russia to Alleged Polish invasion of Russia. //Halibutt 09:38, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Authenticity

This article states: "In 1994, Russian publicist T. S. Bushuyeva published an archival reference of the speech in an article printed in the Novy Mir magazine (#12, 1994), based on what she claimed was recent findings in Soviet Special Archives of a text that according to her was supposedly recorded by a Comintern member present at the meeting. (The archive files location: Centre for the Preservation of Collections of Historical Documents, former Soviet Special Archives; fund 7, list 1, file 1223, in Russian: Центр хранения историко-документальных коллекций, бывший Особый архив СССР, ф. 7, оп. 1, д. 1223)."

It also states: "Whether this speech was ever given by Stalin is still the subject of dispute by historians and no proof is as yet unanimously accepted. According to Viktor Suvorov's book M-Day, Soviet historians laid special emphasis on proving that no Politburo meeting took place on August 19, 1939. Nevertheless, Suvorov states in his book that Russian military historian Dmitri Volkogonov has found evidence that a meeting really took place on that day.

Historical documents demonstrating the non-existence of the speech are also met with scepticism, in view of a similar vigorous denial of the Secret Protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Carl Nordling (an amateur historian known for his Holocaust denial) has pointed out some counter-theses to Sluch' disapproval of the existence of such speech."


I believe we should not focus on what Surovov or Nordling have to say about the subject, they are just lifting on the bandwagon. I believe we should focus on Bushuyeva and Volkonogov. If they state they found evidence then we should take them serious and ask for that evidence. Until now we don't have that evidence on Wikipedia (as we also don't have it on Wikipedia on many other subjects considered to be common knowledge) and that is what should be mentioned in this article as primary information for the viewer to be considered.

I agree. I have checked this Russian source, and surprisingly, it tells nothing about Bushueva and nothing about this secret speech of Stalin, although it does discusses the MR pact and related questions. If I am mistaken here, please correct.Biophys (talk) 03:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC) O'K, I found it. Source seems to be rather unreliable.Biophys (talk) 04:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
It seems that Politburo meeting and Stalin's speech during this day indeed took place (per several sources including Volkogonov and archive findings by Bushueva). However, it remains unproven what exactly Stalin said in his speech, since there is no original, and the existing text was based on "Comintern sources" first published in France. Sergei Slutch argues that text was probably a forgery (although his arguments do not look convincing to me), whereas many others (who he cites in his article) believe the text was real. A typical controversy. The article by Slutch is probably O'K and can be used. Biophys (talk) 04:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)