Talk:Edvard Radzinsky

Untitled

I have made some corrections to follow NPOV policy. The previous version was offensive for the person described in this article.Biophys 07:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I see nothing "offensive" and urge you to restore the page to neutrality. --Ghirla^-трёп- 15:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding or translating it.

• Mysteries of History
  • Беседы с Сократом (Conversations with Socrates)
  • Гибель галантного века
  • Игры писателей. Неизданный Бомарше
  • Иоанн мучитель
  • Коба (монолог старого человека)
  • Лунин, или смерть Жака
  • Любовные сумасбродства Джакомо Казановы
  • На Руси от ума одно горе
  • Наполеон: Жизнь после смерти (Napoleon: life after death)
  • Нерон и Сенека (Nero and Seneca)
  • Несколько встреч с покойным господином Моцартом (Several meetings with the late Mr. Mozart)
  • Николай II: жизнь и смерть
    • The Last Tsar : The Life and Death of Nicholas II
      • (1992, Doubleday) ISBN 1-385-42373-0 (hardcover)
      • (1993, Anchor, reprint) ISBN 0-385-46962-4 (paperback)
      • (2005) ISBN 0-7432-7332-X (hardcover)
  • О любви к математике (On the love of mathematics)
  • Последняя из дома Романовых
  • Последняя ночь последнего царя (The last night of the last tsar)
  • Прогулки с палачом
  • Распутин: жизнь и смерть
    • The Rasputin File (2001, Anchor, USA) ISBN 0-385-48910-2 (paperback)
    • Rasputin: The Last Word (2001, Allen & Unwin , Australia) ISBN 1-86508-529-4 (paperback)
  • Тайна Иоаннова сына
  • Театр времени Нерона и Сенеки (Nero and Seneca's theater of time)
  • Александр II. Последний великий царь
    • Alexander II : The Last Great Tsar (2005) ISBN 0-7432-7332-X (hardcover)
  • (with Peter Kurth & Peter Christopher (photographer)) Tsar : The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra ISBN 0-316-55788-9 (paperback)
  • Сталин
    • Stalin : The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives (1997) ISBN 0-385-47954-9 (paperback)

Reviews

There are more than 200 books by notable authors who cite publications by Radzinsky [1]. Cherry picking a single quote by non-notable teacher hardly serves wikipedia purpose.Biophys (talk) 00:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no intention to reiterate my arguments from the Operation Barbarossa talk page [2]. That "non-notable" teacher is a much more notable scholar than Radzinsky himself, according to ISI and google.scholar.com.
With regards to "cherry picking", such an accusation is baseless. Jstor.org retrieves 31 items for "Radzinsky Edvard" or "Radzinsky E"[3]. Majority of them just briefly mention his name. One review is on Radzinsky's "Conversations with Socrates" (a theatre play, irrelevant. There are some other theatre related articles that mention Radzinsky, I omit all of them as irrelevant).
Second one is a David Brandenberger's review (already discussed).
Third one, the David McDonald's review on "Nicholas II: The Life and Reign of Russia's Last Monarch by Robert D. Warth" (Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 1419-1420), mentions Radzinsky only briefly, and does it as follows: "At least ten English-language biographies have appeared in the last decade alone, led by a reissue of Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), a perennial favorite with undergraduates, and Eduard Radzinsky's potboiler."
In his review article, ("1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 384-425) Stephen Kotkin characterized Radzinsky as a playwright, not a historian ("Using many of these documents, the playwright Edvard Radzinsky has vividly evoked the intrigue surrounding the murder of the royal family as well as the milieu in which the killers operated.").
Elena V. Baraban ("A Country Resembling Russia: The Use of History in Boris Akunin's Detective Novels." Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 48, No. 3, Special Forum Issue: Innovation) is also highly critical of Radzinsky: "In 2000, Mikhalkov opened the Twenty-Second International Film Festival in Moscow with Gleb Panfilov's film Romanovy - ventsenosnaia sem'ia [The Romanovs-the Sovereign Family]. Like The Barber of Siberia, Panfilov's film also glorifies Russian monarchism. Other memorable examples of similar glorification of the Russian monarchy are Edvard Radzinsky's book on Nicholas II (1992, 1993), Radzinsky's television show Zagadki istorii [Historical Puzzles], and the media campaign surrounding the canonization of Nicholas II and his family in 2000.
Radzinsky's portrayal of Nicholas II is highly flattering, for the author glosses over the tsar's mistakes in domestic and international politics and his personal flaws. However, the awkward facts regarding the last Romanov are well documented. See, e.g., Healy, Florinsky, Sulzberger, Alexandrov, Almedingen, Bergamini, Crankshaw, Lockhart, and Ferro"
And the last non brief reference to Radzinsky I found in John Gooding' "Lenin in Soviet Politics, 1985-91" (Source: Soviet Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (1992), pp. 403-422). He wrote :"Thus E. Radzinsky rejected the 'myth' that the decision to kill the imperial family had been taken by the Ekaterinburg authorities alone and cited from a telegram signed by Lenin which had sanctioned the executions. Argumenty i fakty, 46, 17-23 November, 1990, pp. 6-7." AFAIK "Argumenty i fakty" is a yellowish newspaper.
That is all what jstor.org tells about Radzinsky. Although I had a feeling that Radzinsky is not a serious historian, I never expected to find no positeve reviews on his works in reputable peer reviewed journals. I restore my edits and in future I plan to introduce other information I collected into the article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
PS A can agree that Radzinsky is a good playwright. However, this tells nothing about him as a historian. You cannot seriously refer to Alexandre Dumas's novels as a reliable sources.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:47, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

• • None of sources you quoted tells: "Radzinsky is not historian". That's because he published at least 30 books on history subjects worldwide, he appeared on Russian TV as a professional historian, and so on. In that context, his formal education (he graduated from Russian State University for the Humanities) is probably less important. Yes, he is also a playwright and a dramatist (as the quotes tell). Yes, he started his career as playwright.Biophys (talk) 16:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
    • P.S. Novels by Duma are fiction, but history books by Radzinsky (e.g. his biography of Stalin) is non-fiction research.Biophys (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
      • Radzinsky is writer, dramatist and TV presenter and his books were classified as folk history (ru:Фолк-хистори) by serious historians. See the link in the ru:Радзинский, Эдвард Станиславович for the beginning, and the folk history article. GreyHood ^Talk 19:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Russian wikipedia is not a reliable source.19:11, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Multiple links there are RS. GreyHood ^Talk 19:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry, but even ru:Радзинский, Эдвард Станиславович does not really tell that he is "pseudohistorian", not even mentioning RS.Biophys (talk) 19:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

See Radzinsky entry in the ru:Фолк-хистори. GreyHood ^Talk 19:52, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I do not care about ruwiki. If you want to define him as "pseudohistorian" in his BLP article here, you are welcome to try. But you will not be able per our RS, NPOV and BLP policies. Biophys (talk) 22:54, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I speak about references there which designate Radzinsky as folk-historian which is just a specific Russian term for being a kind of pseudohistory. RS and NPOV are no problem here, and BLP just requires good referencing. The real problem is presenting Radzinsky as reliable source when in fact he has rather bad reputation among professional historians, and his TV history presenting style is a subject of jokes and parodies. GreyHood ^Talk 23:03, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

If you have concern about any specific source, such as his biography of Stalin, you can ask at RS noticeboard (and it will be identified as RS). If you do not like this article, you are welcome to improve it. Biophys (talk) 23:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

His biography (Russian). Biophys (talk) 05:16, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

BLP problem

There is a problem with this edit. Those are Russian language sources, some of which do not qualify as RS. Most important, none of them provides any specific criticism of works by Radzinsky. If any of the publications would be written by another historian who tells: "Radzinsky was wrong by describing such and such historical events because ...", such criticism could be included. Please post here anything of this nature from the provided sources. I do not see anything. If there is nothing like that, the entire passage should be removed from the BLP. Thanks, My very best wishes (talk) 23:57, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, I found something. This is review of Stalin's biography by David Brandenberger (not among the Russian sources quoted in the beginning). He tells generally something like this:

"Radzinsky also seems unaware of the problematic nature of sources like A. Orlov (pp. 31-32, 341) and B.Nikolaevsky's 'Letter of an Old Bolshevik' (p. 359)... Radzinsky is mistaken in the claim that Lenin received German subsidies throughout the First World War ... makes unfounded assertions about the coldness and brevity of Stalin's letters to his colleagues ... Vast stretches of the narrative are devoted to the resurrection of tired old debates including whether or not Stalin was a tsarist agent-provocateur ... Stalin's decision-making rationale is repeatedly linked to phrases out of the terrorist S. Nechaev's Revolutionary catechism ... Equally unfounded are claims that Stalin intercepted and destroyed portions of Lenin's so-called last testament (pp. 207-210) and single-handedly launched the Lenin cult (p. 213)." , and so on.

Hmm... But I saw recent books by historians who tell that Lenin actually did took money from Germans, and Radzinsky never considered Orlov as a reliable source in his book; Radzinsky never tells in his book that Stalin made decisions based on writings by Nechayev, and so on. This looks to me as an ordinary dispute among historians; nothing to justify calling one of them a pseudoscientist as it was in the article. My very best wishes (talk) 00:47, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Could you please have a look at the section above? Especially at the review by David McDonald's...---Paul Siebert (talk) 01:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Do you imply that he is a pseudoscientist only because someone called one of his books a "potboiler"? Almost every popular book has a lot of supporters and opponents.My very best wishes (talk) 04:00, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• Just to summarize... According to English language RS (as quoted by Paul), the books by Radzinsky have been described as popular history books addressed to general public and based on a variety of other published sources, rather than as an original historical research. That's fine. None of these publications calls him a "pseudoscientist"). As about Russian sources in the beginning, some of them do not qualify as RS (especially in BLP); others are mostly about Fomenko, not about Radzinsky. This should be fixed. My very best wishes (talk) 02:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

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