Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 30

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RfC process could work if given a chance

There is an RfC above, initiated on 21 November, 8 days ago. I recently received notification from the RfC bot. I'm an uninvolved editor, but well read in history and politics. I'd like to help resolve the RfC issue, but I must point out that the RfC has been poorly managed. RfCs are supposed to last 30 days. The primary goal of an RfC is to gather input from uninvolved editors. Two days after the RfC started, an involved editor started a new section titled "It's clear this RfC is going nowhere, let's try something different". As far as I can tell, this conclusion was reached before any uninvolved editors responded to the RfC. However, in the 48 hours after the RfC was initiated, there were voluminous "responses" to the RfC from involved editors. I have some thoughts on the RfC topic, but based on the state of the RfC, I'm reluctant to respond to the RfC.

If involved editors are serious about gathering input from uninvolved editors, I suggest you do the following:

1. Cancel the previous RfC
2. Start a new RfC
3. Involved editors, in the new RfC, limit themselves to position statements from the 2 or 3 primary positions/viewpoints. Be brief.
4. Wait patiently for 30 days for uninvolved editors to reply. If not enough editors are responding, consider neutral canvassing from the list of volunteers at Wikipedia:Feedback request service, or solicit input from relevant projects.
5. During those 30 days: feel free to engage uninvolved editors in discussion, but conduct large tangents outside the RfC
6. At the end of 30 days, ask for an admin to read the RfC and make a determination.

If you try this approach, there is a good chance it will resolve the issues. --Noleander (talk) 22:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Before we move further

I have a following question. This question is addressed mostly to current participants of the dispute, so I apologize in advance for being non-neutral. However, since I have no hope on massive external input that seems ok. Below is a statement. Please, answer if you support it or not. If not, I would be grateful if you explained a reason for disagreement.

"As we have seen, a huge amount of well sourced scholarly articles and university books are available where the figures for excess deaths and population losses under Communists have been provided. In that situation, we are able to afford a luxury to restrict ourselves with only the best quality sources. In other words, the books or articles whose authors do not disclose their sources should not be used as the sources for deaths figures. In addition, if the source X just takes some figures from the source Y, and does no additional statistical analysis, it should not be used, and the source Y should be used instead."

Thank you in advance for your responces.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:31, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Do not restrict sources - we will not get an NPOV article if we limit sources to only those approved by Paul. Rather any reliable source can be included (see WP:RS). Reliable sources do not just include scholarly articles, but can also include books, journalism, historical eye-witness accounts (which are sadly lacking in the article now) and many other sources. The repeated attempts to limit sources are the heart of the POV problem with this article. If Paul doesn't like what a source says, he defines it as "unreliable." Smallbones (talk) 19:31, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Try to avoid personal attack if possible. By setting an objective criterion (only the articles/books that reveal the sources the estimates were based on) I by no means pretend to "approve" anything. This your post deeply distorts my initial proposal and is insulting. In addition, by proposing to limit ourselves with the best quality sources only I just follow our two major content policies.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support Restricting the article to high quality reliable sources is the main way to get rid of POV, because it means that we exclude fringe ideas. This approach has been used successfully with WP:MEDRS, which limits the coverage of fringe medical theories. TFD (talk) 20:21, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support the usage of the best quality sources, naturally. The best ones, which provide the most elaborate and well-founded research, are of course the most reliable sources. GreyHood ^Talk 20:01, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Do not restrict sources. Werth now agrees that the Ukrainian famine was indeed genocide, does that mean he is suddenly transformed from a "mainstream" author to a "fringe" author and thus his work deemed "unreliable" and to be excluded? Of course not. --Nug (talk) 20:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. It would be impossible to prove that Black Book of Communism is not one of the best published academic books by a team of European historians specifically on the subject of communist repressions. Having an extremely biased wikipedia article about the book does not prove anything. Having negative and positive reviews does not prove anything except that the book is famous. Same with Rummel. It would difficult to make a point that he is not an academic researcher. The selective elimination of RS goes against our core NPOV policy. Biophys (talk) 20:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I would say, taking into account the amount of criticism, it would be impossible to prove that it is. The Courtois' intorduction cites not even a single source! Where did he take his statistics from? From Rummel? From Rosefielde? Did the studies by himself? As one review says, only Werth did his own archival studies. That means that the introduction is just a compilation of some, unnamed sources! What does it make "one of the best published academic books"? In actuality, it is one of the most popular books (among lay reader). However, scholars do not regard is as a scientific work.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that because some estimate on the number of deaths have been disputed, it thus calls into question these authors general conclusion that Communist regimes did engage in mass killing, as if lowing the estimate from 100 million deaths to say, 50 million, somehow invalidates everything else they write. --Nug (talk) 22:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Not my first rodeo. Spurious objections to the reliability of sources should be rejected. User:Fred Bauder Talk 20:40, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

That does not make any sense. Why would you want to use sources that had no acceptance among experts in the field? TFD (talk) 05:57, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

We are sometimes dealing with biased experts. User:Fred Bauder Talk 14:05, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Why do you believe the objections are spurious? Our policy says "In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments; as a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source ". If one source says "Communists killed 30 millions", and another source provides a long list of the references to various primary and secondary sources, describes the details of the analysis these data had been subjected to, and comes to the same (or different) conclusion, then, obviously, the second source is preferable. However, we have plenly of second type sources. Why do we need to use the sources of the first type, if we do not know what data had the author used, and was the procedure for the data treatment?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

In this area objections are often not well founded. And seemingly reliable sources sometimes are not. Experience is required. A book by an American, or god forbid, a Soviet, historian may be bogus while a collection of anecdotes by Ukrainian refugees may be very useful. User:Fred Bauder Talk 22:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Fred, please, read my post below and above: where did I propose to reject these sources totally?--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• This is a scholarly topic; we use sources to the extent that they're part of the scholarly literature to avoid mis-weighting and fringe. We also use scholarly sources as this is demanded in quality articles. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:53, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't understand. Do you support it or oppose?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't see your proposal as a meaningful advance over existing reliability policy. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It is also a politicised topic. Evidently some editors here label some scholars as "anti-Communist" and insist that as such they are "unreliable". Some editors here seem to think Transaction Publishers are not very "reliable" either, but on what basis? In an evaluation of twenty-one international social-science book publishers according to nineteen quality criteria, Transaction Publishers ranked 6th, ahead of Oxford University Press ranked at 8th. (Tausch, A. (2011). "On the Global Impact of Selected Social-Policy Publishers in More Than 100 Countries". Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42 (4): 476–513.) --Nug (talk) 22:12, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

"Impact" isn't a proxy for quality look at Tausch's criteria. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Guys, please, read my initial proposal again! Where did I propose to restrict sources globally? I am talking just about the usage of the sources for figures. Let me try again:

"If some source contains no information about the source of demographic or other archival data used by the author, it should not be used as a source for figures of the victims. However, it may be used for all other purposes."

"If some source takes figures from, e.g., Rummel, or Maksudov, or Yao, and does no additional analysis of these figures, then this source should not be used, and Rummel, or Maksudov, or Yao, should be used instead."

(The explanation is obvious: we have a lot of sources that perform detailed analysis of mass mortality with explanation of the types of the data used for that, and of the procedure of their treatment. The source that contains no such information is much less valuable. Recent example: a fresh Goldhagen's book uses Rummel's data for the scale of mass killings. However, Rummel did his work more than 20 years ago, and new studies do not confirm many of his estimates. However, by using Golhagen (2010) as a reference, we create a totally false impression that these figures are the result of Goldhagen's own studies which he has done recently. Do you think we have a right to deliberately mislead a reader?!--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

One more example: Ellman in his article "Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments" (Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54, No. 7 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1151-1172) he writes:

"It is important to note that criticism of Conquest's numerical estimates is not a criticism of the qualitative picture painted by Conquest. (...)Conquest is not a specialist in demography or penology whose main aim was to generate accurate statistics. He is a writer on Soviet affairs for the general public. His main aim was to give a qualitative picture of enormous horrors to the general public, and in this he succeeded admirably."

In other words, he questions Conquest's numerical estimates, but he accepts his qualitative picture. If some source is not reliable for figures, it may be quite reliable for everything else.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:20, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, that is the opinion of one source regarding another source, not input for us to check off which parts of Conquest are approved or not. Conquest's seminal work (and update) still garner high marks among scholars. Ellman also goes on (in your cited document) to indicate Conquest did a far more accurate job of estimating than many, including scholars. However, he also goes on to cite NKVD archives as a trump card upon their availability.

This contention presents the same issue as Wheatcroft, whose view is (my paraphrase): there is no reason for archives to lie: lies would require coordination on the part of multiple reporting individuals/groups, and lies would only make the circumstances of those individuals/groups in charge at the time more difficult, e.g., insufficient supplies, work quotas not in line with camp population, etc. While Wheatcroft freely admits that information for public consumption is unreliable, is there really any reason to accept that "secret" means "reliable" with regard to archival information? (Recall, Stalin had the chief statistician of the Soviet census shot when Stalin didn't like the numbers.)

These are metrics generated by individuals whose avoidance of death depended on those metrics. These metrics are in no way consistent although many would paint them as inviolable. Wheatcroft (and others) contend there is a systemic bias toward accurate reporting; I contend there is systemic bias only toward reporting what is most likely to insure survival—it is a prejudice to believe more than that. (I'm sure I can find citations for my opinion as well.)

Regarding the matter of archival reliability, I regret that Professor Wheatcroft has not responded to my correspondence, which included the following example:

"As a microcosm, consider the inmate population figures reported by the Office of Railway Construction for 1939: 94,773 prisoners at the beginning of the year, 69,569 at year-end. However, prisoners were reported as having worked an impossible 135,148,918 man-days—consistent with an average prisoner population four-and-a-half times larger working every day of the year. Given the precise accounting of population, we would presume an error in reporting productivity. However, given man-days were the 'engine' that drove productivity—that is, directly correlated to that which cannot be falsified, such as kilometers of track laid, that rather points to man-days being the more reliable, the population figures much less so."

I find there is a reality gap between what Western scholars can imagine and the actual circumstances of sufferings under Stalin which many cannot bridge, that is, a bias in Western scholarship which, when presented with two conflicting numbers, chooses the one yielding the lower number of victims as the more comprehensible. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 00:08, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

To the RFC, bottom line, it is the restricting of sources which will guarantee the introduction of POV (quite the opposite of contending that including sources introduces bias). Any such move to restrict sources will move discussion from how to represent sources fairly and accurately to what sources we should be censoring. I cannot even begin to describe how antithetical that is to proper, let alone best, practices in writing about history. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 00:20, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Let's leave the question of the validity of the archival statistics for a separate thread. Let me only remind you that most historical documents are intrinsically unreliable (biased), and one of important skills of professional historians is the ability to work with unreliable primary data (similar to the ability of professional physicists to work with noisy signals). The major problem with this statistics is, as usually, not with the figures per se, but with their interpretation.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Necessity of change

We need to change the name; adequately list actual killings with some analysis of why they were undertaken, and also list the disasters which resulted in many deaths, adequately treating the reasoning behind the actions taken and not taken and external criticisms. As it is the article is propaganda, not an objective treatment. This material is out there, as is the underlying notion that revolutionaries were not bound by conventional morality. User:Fred Bauder Talk 22:37, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

We already have articles covering individual acts of grossly indifferent mismanagement causing mass death, deliberate destruction of ethnic identities, and mass murders. Your suggestion focuses on individual incidents. These incidents are already covered in other articles. This article purports to describe a common analysis or cause, and primarily ought to discuss this common analysis or cause. It should follow, and significantly does follow, the standard behaviour seen in summary or analytical articles of referring readers to particular articles on examples while providing brief summaries of the pertinent content here—though my personal belief is we aren't summary enough in relation to the examples section and that our summaries could better relate the examples to this article's topic. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:43, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

However, we have a problem here. A fresh example: single society studies tell us about 15-20 million direct deaths as a result of the Great Leap Forward famine, a major component of mass mortality in Communist China. (Non-related to Communism) geno/politicide studies tell us about ca 1 million victims of geno/politicide in China under Mao. However, the scholars who analyse mass killings in a context of Communism speak about 65 million deaths in Mao's China. If we restrict ourselves with the later type authors, what the consequences for the neutrality of the article this may have, in your opinion?--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The title "MKuCR" is a calque from the chapter 4 of the Valentino's book "Final solutions". The term is not frequently applied to geno/politicides under Communist regimes. Valentino's own views of "mass killings" is rather original, because he consider mass mortality as a result of deprivation "mass killings", and based on that assumption combine all population losses during famines, depotrtations, etc. into one category "deprivation mass killings". However, the article does not make it clear, so the title, the lede and many parts of the article are profoundly misleading.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:48, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I'm not sure what the advantage of changing the name would be - but please suggest a name and give a rationale if you'd like. The article has already been through at least 2 RfCs on changing the name, 2 on mergers that would effectively eliminate it, and 5 AfDs. The only successful change was changing the original "genocide" to "mass killings" in the title. I doubt that tinkering with the title is going to help much.

We do need to adequately list the major incidents of mass executions and all other forms of actual mass killings, including the use of artificial famines to kill. Note that the major forms of mass killing are listed in detail in the 3rd sentence, so we are not misleading anybody as to what is meant by "mass killing." I'd give the list in the 2nd sentence, but I think that everybody undertands that intentionally starving a person to death is just as much a "killing" as shooting them in the back of the skull.

Long lists of scholars and others can be given, who have written that (for all the Communist regimes together, or for single Communist regimes) mass killings of various types occurred. I haven't seen any source that says they didn't occur - that it is all propaganda - or that it wasn't related to the regime being Communist.

Yes, changes to the article need to be made. But eliminating sources or saying that it is all propaganda is not the type of change that needs to be made. I really would like to see the type of article that Paul's group would write. I've already suggested twice that we see it and run an RfC on it, with a similar chance being given to the other side. I do believe that that approach would result in a significant change in the article. Smallbones (talk) 23:33, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Re "We do need to adequately list the major incidents of mass executions". Yes, however, only some authors do that in a context of Communism; others group them according to other criteria (see, e.g. Harff).

Re "including the use of artificial famines to kill" Whereas the number of the famine victims is an objective value, the degree of their intentionality is a matter of judgement. Similarly, in most cases (except Cambodia) there is no agreement at which extent famines were used as a tool.

Re "Long lists of scholars and others can be given" I am the only user so far who tried to work with sources systematically, and shared the obtained results with others (Fifelfoo, sorry; you probably a second one. Hope to see you more frequently on this page). Please provide us this list. However, that should be a list of the authors who really did some studies, not just mentioned tangentially some "mass killings"

I think, we still may avoid name change (not because this one is too good, but because I see no satisfactory alternatives). However, this article should be not about the events, but about the opinions of some authors who see a commonality between different mass killings.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Re "I really would like to see the type of article that Paul's group would write. I've already suggested twice that we see it and run an RfC..." We have already had RfCs about the lede, and what were the results? Your idea is not workable. We need to work together for the RfC to give something positive. I already proposed Martin to work together - and I still am not sure if his responce was positive or not. Now I make the same proposal to you. Do you agree?--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:10, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have no idea what you think should be in the article - all I've seen is you saying that A, B, C, etc. is unacceptable. You (alone or with your own group) putting something down that you consider acceptable would at least be a start, that we could build on. It's time to just do it, rather than write tens of thousands of words on why you can't do it! Smallbones (talk) 03:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, I though I've already explained my point. The concept of the article should be as follows.

1. History of Communist states was violent, and many lives had been lost during civil wars, social transformations, repressions, natural disasters, and even direct genocides.
2. The major part of mass deaths occurred in the following Communist countries:
   The USSR (describe the events, and the opinion spectrum of single society scholars on the course and the origin of those events);
   PRC (the same);
   Cambodia/Democratic Kampuchea (the same);
3. Some authors (list) see commonality between all those events and characterise some of them or all of them as mass killings, politicide, classicide, democide, etc.
4. They attribute them to the peculiarities of Communist ideology or other common features of those regimes (list the theories)
5. Since the famines constitute more than 50% of total death toll during Communist rule in China and the USSR (not in Cambodia, I saw no major disagreement about this country), describe the opinion spectra regarding the geno/politicidal nature of famines in the USSR/PRC.

That is a summary of my views on the structure of the article. I do not know what is the opinion of "my team", simply because I have no idea who is the member of this team (and if it exists at all).--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Re "...than write tens of thousands of words on why you can't do it!" Before starting any collaboration, it is absolutely necessary to come to an agreement about main points and about the sources that will be used. However, since any move in this direction appears to be effectively blocked, I see no possibility to do anything. Please, give me two simple answers:

1. Do you agree to start a work on the concept (the first version has been presented above)?
2. Do you agree to try to come to an agreement about the basic sources we will use for our work?

--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Paul: convince me. I have asked Nug above, and I will ask you here, (1) which authors "attribute [commonality between mass violence resulting in death or loss of ethno-cultural identities] to the peculiarities of Communist ideology or other common features of those regimes" where their assertion of commonality is not in fact a superset of which communist states merely happen to be members. Are these theories homologous or analogous. (2) Have these theories received reasonable acceptance by their scholarly community (have they been echo'd by the equivalent of two monographs by other authors; or echo'd by one monograph and appreciated by a monograph)? [The criteria I just suggested for acceptance is the most generous criteria I could imagine to indicate that a theory isn't a sole work. Consider three articles / chapters as a monograph (again, deliberately generous). I'm not suggesting that this is a criteria for general scholarly acceptance, but a criteria reasonable to indicate that the theory exists in the field.] (3) I am puzzled by your belief that the object of this article exists at all. Convince me its not synth? (4) Rummel's category is a superset. (5) Young Valentino's category is a superset. (6) Lemkin fell off the deep end. (7) Watson, in relation to this matter outside of his established field of expertise, is FRINGE, as is Courtois' suggestion of non-catholocism being indicative. Who provides the scholarly grounds for this article to exist? Fifelfoo (talk) 04:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

(I believe you don't mind me to add numbers to your questions for convenience.)

Re 1. Are the words in [ ] essential? If "yes", I have no answer.

Re 2. Unfortunately, I came to a conclusion that the theories popular among lay readers and the theories recognised by scholars are not always the same. However, I am not sure all members of WP community will agree to ignore the first type theories. Moreover, even reputable scholars appear to cite such garbage as Courtois' introduction. For me (in my real life I am working in the area of natural sciences) that seems weird: how can we cite an essay without any reference? Probably, that is a reflection of the overall poor level of this branch of knowledge... If that is the case, unfortunately, Wikipedia should follow it.

Re 3. Some authors do believe in that, and that is an objective fact. The article should discuss their beliefs.

Re 4. Rummel's scholarly articles. In his later works he is much less strict, and he directly blames Communism.

Re 5. I don't think so. According to Valentino, "mass killing occurs when powerful groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish certain radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult military problems". Since the aim of Communists is to implement the most radical social transformations, which are opposed by large part of population, they resort to mass killings to achieve their goal, and the scale of mass killings is proportional to the degree of social transformations. One can agree or disagree, but I see some logic there.

Re 6 Agreed, that's bs.

Re 7 Agreed, that's bs.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Point 1 has been the criteria I have used for the notability of this article since the first AFD: do scholars consider that this was "a thing," a thing being a theoretically explained, linked group of which a reasonable bound of members are the only members. So no "Theories of mass killing due to modernity," which also obviously covers parliamentary capitalist states, and fascist capitalist states, and non-fascist capitalist dictatorships.

Regarding point 2; even if the claims from point 1 are fundamentally unscholarly, if they're critiqued within the scholarly discourse, then we could produce a FRINGE article. Obviously if the claims are scholarly, we have an article.

3: my understanding is that we write articles based on the beliefs in sources of appropriate reliability and acceptance; not on what editors believe

4: If Rummel's non scholarly work explicitly frames the set as just communist states, and theorises a cause, then we've got a FRINGE data point, ala Watson; if Rummel's non scholarly work is of course reliably discussed. We don't do "in universe" discussions. (similarly with Lemkin's FRINGE works).

5: I reread Valentino 2005 last night, your exposition of Valentino above is an argumentative interpretation, what we call OR. Valentino 2005 provides a fairly detailed exposition of his theory and taxonomy at 70ff. His theoretical category is "dispossessive mass killings" of which his grouping of a number of communist mass killings is descriptive rather than theoretical.

At least as far as point 1, which has always been my criteria for notability, I haven't found this discussion persuasive; but thank you for making your argument. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Re Valentino, imo, the good summary of his views had been provided by Straus (Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wp/summary/v059/59.3straus.html):

"Valentino identifies two major types, each with three subtypes. The first major type is “dispossessive mass killing,” which includes (1) “communist mass killings” in which leaders seek to transform societies according to communist principles; (2) “ethnic mass killings,” in which leaders forcibly remove an ethnic population; and (3) mass killing as leaders acquire and repopulate land. The second major type of mass killing is “coercive mass killing,” which includes (1) killing in wars when leaders cannot defeat opponents using conventional means; (2) “terrorist” mass killing when leaders use violence to force an opposing side to surrender; and (3) killing during the creation of empires when conquering leaders try to defeat resistance and intimidate future resistance."

MKuCR is a subtype of one of the types om mass killings, according to Valentino. This subtype is not fully descriptive, because the common driving force (as Valentino sees them) is distinct from that of other mass killings: a need in deep social transformations (non-ethnic). I cannot tell how valid is all of that, and how mainstream this view is, but it is not fringe either. I think, Semelin's "calssicide" is also relevant (division of peoples by classes follows from the core Marxist concept). I think, these two scholars form a core. Obviously, they should not be presented as mainstream views.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Upon re-reading Straus' review article (Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide, World Politics, Volume 59, Number 3, April 2007, pp. 476-501, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wp/summary/v059/59.3straus.html) I have to concede that Fifelfoo was right. This author summarises the works of so called "second generation genocide scholars" (Mark Levene, Michael Mann, Manus I. Midlarsky, Jacques Sémelin. Benjamin A. Valentino. Eric D. Weitz.) and one of his conclusion is that "none makes regime type central to the argument." None of these works separate MKuKR into a separate concept (Valentino is the only author who considers them as sub-subcategory). From the same review I concluded that first type genocide scholars (Helen Fein, Leo Kuper, Irving Louis Horowitz, Ervin Staub, Isidor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski, etc.) also do not analyse this phenomenon in a context of regime types.
In this review, Straus used the term "genocide" as an umbrella term for "mass killings", "democide", "politicide" etc, so his conclusion is not dictated by the terminology choice. I recommend everyone to read this source and to think again if we need this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

China excess deaths

I started to read about the Mao's era only recently, and my knowledge of this subject is still superficial. Before that, I saw no major controversy in the Courtois' figures for China. However, the more I read, the less I understand. In connection to that, let me explain the following. Some users frequently blame me in various malicious intents, in advocacy of some POV, or sources. That is sad, but tolerable, because I know that in actuality my position is based on reliable sources. By saying that I imply that I am able to explain the origin of each major fact in each particular source: I know where Conquest or Ellman tokk their data from (of course, I mean just general facts, not minuscule details), and how did they treat the data to come to one or another conclusion. Therefore, I expect the advocates of another POV to be able to do the same. My question is as follow:

"Where the number of 65 million mass killings in China came from? Where did Courtois take it?"

I am asking this question, because I genuinely don't understand: most authors cited in political-economic peer-reviewer journals estimate the excess deaths in between 15 and 24 million. (I believe, decrease of birth rate cannot be considered as mass killing, so the authors who provide the figures reflecting combined mortality and fertility impact cannot be used). In addition to that, there were two events when mass murders occurred land reform and Cultural revolution. According to Lee Feigon, up to 5 million had been killed, although, according to Harff (Op. Cit.), only 65,000 were killed during geno/politicide. (BTW, I am somewhat surprised to read that, because, taking into account how desperate the economic situation of lay Chinese peasant was before the land reform, it is hard to expect for so minimal outburst of violence during land reform. However, Harff's data for other countries seem quite reasonable, so we cannot simply dismiss it.) As a result, we have in between 65,000 and 5,000,000 mass killings during the land reform.
The second event was Cultural revolution. Harff defines it as "politicide" and estimates a death toll (during 5/66–3/75) to be 400,000–850,000.
If we add all three events together, we get

Lower bound: 15,000,000 + 65,000 + 400,000 ≈ 15,000,000

Upper bound: 24,000,000 + 5,000,000 + 850,000 ≈ 30 million.

Some questions remain open regarding these figures, mostly regarding the GLF figures. Concretely, these figures refer to direct deaths as a result of famine. However, there is no agreement among scholars in which extent the authorities were responsible for that (by writing that I do not claim that they were not responsible, the question is about the degree of responsibility). By contrast to Ukraine, famines were a usual event in China, so some amount of people would probably die even if the Communist policy were different. Therefore, the figure of famine death toll equals to the scale of starvation mass killings only if there is a proof that authorities were 100% responsible for deliberate organization of the famine. Is there any evidences that consensus exists among scholars on that account?
One way or the another, we have in between 15 and 30 million deaths, part of those (or all of them) can be attributed to CPC. I found that figures by comparing various sources, and most of them more or less agree with each other within these limits. In connection to that, my question is:

"Since 65-30=35, where those additional 35 million had been obtained by Courtois? Can anybody explain that?"

--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Courtois would have sourced his intro from the contributors to the BB. In the chapter on China Jean-Louis Margolin states 6-10 million as a direct result of Communist actions, 20 million dying in the prison system and 20 - 43 million due to the GLF famine, so it seems Courtois was actually stating a lower number than Margolin. --Nug (talk) 11:06, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

In other words, he took them from Margolin. Well, do you know that Margolin and Werth publicly disassociated themselves with Courtois after the release of the BB, and the issue with figures was among the key points?--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:28, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I strongly suggest consulting the work of Frank Dikotter on the famine question. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 00:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

He uses the killing language, "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history," User:Fred Bauder Talk 03:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

...and is being criticized for ahistorism. As Ó Gráda correctly noted, mass famines were usual in China, so the GLF famine was not even the most severe in relative numbers (Chinese population experienced rapid growth, so 10 million famine victims in late XIX was more than 18 million in 1959-61 in relative numbers).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:34, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Paul, odd that Margolin would dispute Courtois, given that Margolin's upper range 10 million direct action deaths + 20 million prison deaths + 43 million famine deaths = 73 million is higher than Courtois' 65 million. And while Werth disputed Courtois' conclusion in 1999, in 2008 he came around to accept the view that the Ukrainian famine was driven or exacerbated by genocidal intent. --Nug (talk) 05:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

And why, in your opinion, did Margolin and Werth objected?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Look at previous sections. This issue has already been analyzed there. The procedure used by Dikötter to obtain the figures was as follows (according to Cormac Ó Gráda (2011) "Great Leap into Famine: A Review Essay" Population and Development Review 37:1 191–202):

"Dikötter selects Cao Shuji’s estimate of 32.5 million and then adds 50 percent to it on the basis of discrepancies between archival reports and gazetteer data, thereby generating a minimum total of 45 million excess deaths."

Therefore, the Dikötter's study has been made based on selectively chosen single source and liberal assumptions: instead of analysing multiple available sources (Ó Gráda lists Yao 1999; Peng 1987; Ashton et al. 1984; Cao 2005), Dikötter takes just one work (Cao, Shuji. 2005. Dajihuang—1959–1961 nian de Zhongguo renkou [The Great Famine—The Population of China from 1959 to 1961]. Hong Kong: Dangdai guoji chubanshe gongsi), and then multiplies the figures by 1.5. It is not a surprise that his statistical approac has been severely criticized. Per Ó Grada, this book "reads more like a catalogue of anecdotes about atrocities than a sustained analytic argument," (Ó Grada. Op. Cit.) and should be treated as such.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:28, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

How widely accepted is Ó Gráda's viewpoint, is it mainstream or a minority viewpoint? Is there a source that may give some indication? --Nug (talk) 05:42, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your question. The answer deserves a separate subsection.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

How widely accepted...?

Martin asked a following question:

"How widely accepted is Ó Gráda's viewpoint, is it mainstream or a minority viewpoint? Is there a source that may give some indication?"

that, in my opinion, is a central part of our dispute.
In responce, let me firstly clarify that there is no (and theoretically could not be) any sources that objectively indicate someone's "mainstreamness". To demonstrate this point, consider a following example:

1. I cite an opinion of the author A.
2. Martin asks me if there are any sources that prove that he is mainstream;
3. I provide an opinion of an author x++ who writes that he is mainstream (let's suppose I was able to find such a source);
4. Martin asks me if there are any sources that prove that x is mainstream;

The step #4 is what we call goto 2; in other works, it creates an infinite loop. Therefore, such an approach does not work.
What does work, however, is an analysis of the publications of one or another author. In connection to that, let's separate scholarly peer-reviewed publications from other books. Why? Simply because the latter are popular among lay public, but not among scholars. I saw almost no examples when Rummel's "Death by Government" or Courtois' introduction to the BB have been cited by single society scholars writing about China or the USSR (I mean, cited as a source of facts, not for criticism). Moreover, most books written by scholars are based on the peer-reviewed articles they published earlier. Thus, Rosefielde's "Red Holocaust" is a compilation of his own articles about Stalin's repressions (which were written in much more modest tone, btw).
In other words, if we want to create the best quality content, we should rely on peer-reviewed publications, when they are available, not on popular books. Fortunately, the amount of good publications on the subject we discuss is huge.
The second question is the selection between those publications. When I search for "great leap famine", in Jstor, Ó Grada's article appears 4th in the list (that is why I used this source, btw). When search for "Great leap" AND famine in gscholar, I got the articles authored by Yang, Lin, Peng, Ashton and other authors cited by Ó Grada. I conclude from that, that this author uses mainstream publications. When I look at Ó Grada's own list of publications I see that this scholar authored numerous articles about famines, so he is an expert in this area.

However, when I search for "Great leap" "mass killings", I get quite a different list. (Incidentally, the first author in this list does not consider famines as mass killings). In other words:

"The people who want to find just a confirmation of their own ideas, always (or almost always) find what they want; the people who do neutral search, find objective information"

Guys, try to do neutral search, look in peer-reviewed publications, and most issues will be resolved.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Paul, with regard to your example you should state that this is a hypothetical example. I don't think the order of search results in Jstor or google is any indicator, however the number of times a paper or book has been cited in other works may be an indicator of acceptance. I believe that Wikipedia policy indicates a method of determining whether a view point is accepted as mainstream, and that is finding it in reference works like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and compendia. --Nug (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, I mentioned the order to demonstrate that I did not select the sources, but took the sources from the top of the list. In other words, my search had minimal bias.

Secondly, although I cannot tell for jstor, google.scholar uses a PageRank algorithm that often correlates with other measures of scholarly and scientific performance. This article in one of the top ranked scientific journals is one of many sources that supports this my statement.

Wikipedia policy currently does not indicate that, although this essay may be helpful.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:20, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy most certainly does, see the bullet points in WP:DUE. The paper you link correlates the number of cites with impact, if impact is the measure, then it must be noted that Transaction Publishers are ranked 6th, ahead of Oxford University Press ranked at 8th. (Tausch, A. (2011). "On the Global Impact of Selected Social-Policy Publishers in More Than 100 Countries". Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42 (4): 476–513) --Nug (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

You probably misunderstood me. I meant policy says nothing specific about google scholar and similar specialized search engines. Regarding Transaction publishers, we are talking about individual authors and individual articles (you should have to remember that I never participated in discussions about Transaction publishers on this talk page, although, frankly speaking impact ).

And, finally, you overlooked my major idea. When I need to know what the sources tell about the Great Soviet Famine, I never type "Great Soviet Famine" + "mass killing". I type "Great Soviet Famine" and analyse what the sources tell about that. As a result, I get a set of the sources that cover whole opinion spectrum. However, if you want just to find the source in support of your idea that Great Soviet Famine was a mass killing, and type "Great Soviet Famine" + "mass killing", you obviously will get a highly biased list of sources (especially, if you use google, not gscholar).

Your problem, guys, is that you use specifically selected sources (which implies not your bad faith, but your inability to properly use proper search engines).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:18, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

You correctly pointed my attention at WP:DUE, although I do not think it is in your interests to make an emphasis on it. It says:

"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts"

However, if we take Courtois as an example, I have persuasively demonstrated that the text is not commonly accepted. Therefore, the viewpoint cannot be presented as a majority viewpoint. I suggest you to draw a conclusion from that fact, and to support a campaign for removal of Courotis from the first sentence of the lede.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:17, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

This outline and a name change

I think we could work with Paul's points:

1. History of Communist states was violent, and many lives had been lost during civil wars, social transformations, repressions, natural disasters, and even direct genocides.
2. The major part of mass deaths occurred in the following Communist countries:
   The USSR (describe the events, and the opinion spectrum of single society scholars on the course and the origin of those events);
   PRC (the same);
   Cambodia/Democratic Kampuchea (the same);
3. Some authors (list) see commonality between all those events and characterise some of them or all of them as mass killings, politicide, classicide, democide, etc.
4. They attribute them to the peculiarities of Communist ideology or other common features of those regimes (list the theories)
5. Since the famines constitute more than 50% of total death toll during Communist rule in China and the USSR (not in Cambodia, I saw no major disagreement about this country), describe the opinion spectra regarding the geno/politicidal nature of famines in the USSR/PRC.

As to the title, needs some brainstorming, perhaps Casualties of communism, or Deaths in communist regimes. Actually Mass deaths under Communist regimes might do. And in the lede, mass executions need to be differentiated from famine and similar deaths.

By the way, I did come here from the RFC notice. However, old timers know I have a history of edit warring in this area and have strong opinions, mainly that it is better to candidly address these issues, glasnost, if you will. User:Fred Bauder Talk 14:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

If I understood correctly some authors/scholars believe that some natural disasters and other catastrophes where either man made or help was withhold with the purpose to punish troublemakers/troublemaker areas/ethnic cleansing/social cleansing. Similar accusation were made for example against the Mugabe administration too (withholding food-aid, diverting water, forced displacement/ethnic cleansing). This perspective seems to me missing from your list. You do mention "direct genocides" and "opinion spectra regarding the geno/politicidal nature of famines". To me it seems a very important issue that should not mentioned en passant at the end of the list. For the rest, an a no expert on the subject, it seems to me a quite sensible list. --Dia^ (talk) 15:57, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

In the case of the Soviet Union there is well-documented evidence of export of grain during the famine. That was the purpose of collectivization. User:Fred Bauder Talk 00:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Collectivization had many purposes, not only to extract grain. Ellman and Wheatcroft provide detailed analysis of that issue (although they come to somewhat different conclusions).--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That is what can make this a very interesting article. Especially application of Marxist theory. User:Fred Bauder Talk 02:58, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Sure. The only thing we need for that is to break the stupid paradigm of indiscriminative "60-100 million mass killings".--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:52, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

There are some possibilities here, but ... First I'd hope that a former arbitrator is just joking in even mentioning the possibility of edit warring here. EW was so common here that even a joke might offend some particularly sensitive folks. I'm not offended, but these changes would have to be carried on in a manner that excludes disreputable practices, such as excluding reliable sources, or posturing with arguments that even the arguer couldn't possibly believe. I don't think that anything that is in the article now should a priori be excluded (well perhaps the definitions section). There's a lot of miscellaneous material that could be winnowed, but also many items not in the above list that could reasonably be kept.

Just the facts. I was once a newbie. User:Fred Bauder Talk 00:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Specific items (mostly of tone or approach rather than pure substance):

re: Your 1 is basically background material. No problem having background material, but it should not overshadow the main topic of the article - mass killings by Communist Regimes. In particular, I wouldn't want the background material presented in anyway that implies that it is an excuse for mass killings. After all just about every county has had civil wars, social transformations, and natural disasters, perhaps even repressions, but very few have had mass killings on the scale we're addressing here.

The article you envision would be be titled Accusations of mass killing by Communist regimes. Whether they serve as a valid excuse, little killing or deaths resulting from economic changes was done without what seemed a good reason at the time. That is the area where the article can get quite interesting and informative if it is done well; unintended consequences, tragic flaws, and all that. User:Fred Bauder Talk 00:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

re: 2. Sure - let's concentrate on USSR, PRC, and Cambodia, but not exclude others. In particular North Korea and probably Ethiopia should be covered. Somebody seemed very anxious to have Hungary covered - and he should have his chance. The rest could likely be covered in a paragraph or 2.

Yes the rebellion in 1956. And famines in Korea, even right now. We need source information. User:Fred Bauder Talk 00:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

There is also the matter of general inefficiency and low morale. Determining when those problems lead to actual deaths, as opposed to general dreariness and lack of initiative is difficult, however. User:Fred Bauder Talk 01:22, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

re:3 & 4. "Some authors (list) see commonality" - in the spirit of glasnost I have to say that just about everybody sees some commonality in whatever Communist regimes did. After all there was a cold war between the "Second World" and the "First World" that lasted about 50 years. I do not want to extend the Cold War, but recognizing that there were 2 distinct camps that had extensive commonalities within each camp, is the most obvious thing in the world. More specifically, there were obvious military, financial, political, trade, and educational ties, as well as ideological ties between the Communist countries (as well as more than a few breaks in these ties).

Back to the main point - "some authors" is likely to understate the truth. When we "describe the opinion spectra" on this, we should NOT assume that people don't make the connection unless they very specifically state so. Rather we can show "some authors" who don't make the connection (and surely there are a few where sources can be provided) and contrast this with "some authors" who make a direct connection, and possibly "some authors" who consider only some of the connections to be important. In short - please don't assume at the start that those who see commonality are in the minority.

re: 5. Again, when we "describe the opinion spectra regarding the geno/politicidal nature of famines in the USSR/PRC" we can't assume at the start that the general opinion is that they were not mass killings. Rather, there are likely some people who say they are not and we should include them if it is in a reliable source. There are also some folks who say the famines were mass killings or genocide, and that can be documented. Folks who do not address the issue, cannot be assumed to have an opinion one way or the other.

6. I also think we should include some history - not more about the mass killings themselves - but about how the story came out over time. This would likely involve eye-witness accounts, etc. It could also include something about accusations of propaganda and/or denial during and after the Cold War - though this part could be very difficult to do objectively (and might overload our patience) - in theory at least it could be done.

Oh, fascinating. The story about the Ukrainian famine was broken by Goebbels in Nazi propaganda but hushed up by The New York Times.

I'm quite serious in saying that we can do this, but if any of the old game playing is included, it can't possibly be done.

We will have to do it despite the game playing. We are not writing from either a fascist or apologetic point of view. User:Fred Bauder Talk 00:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Smallbones (talk) 19:06, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Fred, may I ask you not to wedge your answers into the posts of other users? It is not fully clear who wrote what (especially for those who haven't read the initial post before your intervention).

Each insert is signed. User:Fred Bauder Talk 02:58, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Smallbones, regarding your "I have to say that just about everybody sees some commonality in whatever Communist regimes did," let me remind you that outstanding claims require outstanding evidences. You provided no evidences so far. By making such a claim you made your burden of proof almost overwhelming: we expect you to show that all mainstream authors writing about history of one or another Communist country, or about all of them taken together, do see a significant commonality (more significant than commonalities with other auto/totalitarian societies, or non-Communist states from the same region). By contrast, for me, to refute your claim is sufficient to provide the opinion of few non-fringe scholars who see more roots of violence in Communist states in their own history, and not in ideology.

By the way, I already provided such evidences and, by making your above claim you simply insult me. Please, in future show minimal respect to your opponents, and approach their arguments seriously.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Keep those noodles away from my ears! I'm just saying that both those who assert that there is commonality and those who assert that there is no commonality have equal burdens of proof, i.e. it has to be in reliable sources. Smallbones (talk) 02:09, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

No. Your initial claim ("about everybody sees some commonality in whatever Communist regimes did") was totally different. In addition, your binary thinking does not work here: some commonality exists between everything in this world, so it would probably be more correct to speak about "relatively significant commonality" (sufficient to speak about it as a separate phenomenon). In addition, you do not understand that the sources are not divided onto those that see commonality and those that disagree with that. In actuality, they are divided on those who see commonality (minority) and those who group those events according to some other traits, or do not group them at all (single society studies). Therefore, the correct way to present all sources is that described by me: to tell about the factual side of the event, and then to add that some authors see commonality between them (although others explicitly criticize such an approach).--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised that Fred and I can agree on so much so quickly, about 90% of the most important stuff. The following lede was suggested by User:Hipocrite as a compromise version of the two competing ledes in the last RfC. If anybody had the energy left after the RfC, they could have gotten it through. I'll change one word (some => several)

"Mass killings occurred under several Communist regimes during the twentieth century. Estimates for those killed range from 60 million to 100 million. Higher estimates include not only mass murders or executions but also avoidable lives lost due to famine and disease due to confiscation or destruction of property, in addition to deaths in forced labor camps or during forced relocation."

"The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million. Although most Communist regimes have not engaged in mass killings, there have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries."

I suggest that Fred rewrite this - following the above outline, comments from others, etc. It doesn't have to be perfect to be a lot better than the current lede. If everybody plays nice, I think we can have a new lede by Monday (but give it that long to make sure everybody can put his/her 2 cents/kopecks in). Smallbones (talk) 02:09, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you noticed that the section is devoted not to the lede, but to the structure of the article as whole?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I will never edit the lede to include the generalization "mass killings" however great the failure to use common sense was. Although there is such a thing as gross negligence, reckless and depraved mind, which in law is sometimes held to establish intent. User:Fred Bauder Talk 02:58, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure you know that "mass killings" is not a legal term. It is however a well defined academic term (see Valentino p 10-15). We can't expect to get these numbers from an international legal system that has just been unable to handle the situation. We can get estimates from scholars and others of how many were intentionally killed en masse. What else should we call these numbers? Paul suggested a site called www.massviolence.org who use the term mass violence, but on closer look they are clearly defining "mass violence" as killings or "lethal violence" en masse. If you're not comfortable with the term mass killings, feel free to suggest a different one - but you're going to have to sell it to a large majority of the editors here. Surely you don't think there was no intentional killings en masse by Communist regimes? Well, if you accept that there were at least some, I'd think that you'd agree that estimates of the numbers from reliable sources is the only way that Wikipedia can address this.

If you feel that you can't work on the lede under the current title, please feel free to suggest changes to other sections. Any progress here would be appreciated. Smallbones (talk) 05:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This term is not widely used. And, more importantly, overwhelming majority of authors do not apply it uniformly to all mass mortality events. Leaving most of them beyond the scope for a while, let's speak again about the Chinese famine (which alone constitute more then a half of all excess deaths under Communists). In his introduction to the special issue of China Economic Review devoted to this famine (Autumn 1998) Gale Johnson summarised the area of disagreement as follows:

"The major area of disagreement relates to the differences concerning the effects of the various policies of the Chinese government. Two points may be noted. The first is the attribution of esponsibility for the famine starting in 1958 and early 1959, following a bumper harvest. Wen and Chang argue that this was due to the excessive consumption and waste of food engendered by the communal dining system while Lin and Yang argue that the famine in 1958 was concentrated in three provinces and was primarily due to excessive exports to the rest of China, engendered by over enthusiastic provincial party officials seeking favor from Beijing. Yang and Lu also date the famine from 1958 but do not dwell on the factors responsible for the early start. The second is that of the factors responsible for the severity of the famine. Lin and Yang argue that a combination of output decline caused by various policy factors combined with the favoritism of urban residents over rural residents and the continued export of grain were the primary causes of the severity of the famine. Wen and Chang argue for the excessive consumption and waste of food associated with the communal kitchens, combined with the output reduction, as the major cause of the severity. Yang and Lu emphasize the political factors associated with the spread of the communal kitchens, combined with the radicalism of provincial leaders, for the differential impacts of the famine. Yang and Lu make the point that the free supply system and the communal kitchens created a problem of the commons; there was no incentive for any individual family to conserve on food consumption since to do so would not increase the supply available to them in the future."

I see no sign here of the viewpoint of the famine as mass killing.

More recent article Wei Li, Dennis Tao Yang The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a Central Planning Disasterin (Journal of Political Economy, 2005, vol. 113, no. 4) concludes that the major cause of the famine was a failure of central planning system - however, the authors do not discuss this famine in terms of mass killings.

I can provide many sources of that type which demonstrate that the idea that GLF famine was mass killing, and all its victims were killed by regime is not supported by majority scholars. In connection to that, I am waiting for more constructive responces on my proposal.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:36, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how relevant Gale Johson's 1998 summarisation is, given Dikötter's 2010 book. Despite you issue with accuracy of his estimates, I don't think that undermines his central thesis, particularly given his access to official party arhives which give a better picture of intent. When you say these author "do not discuss this famine in terms of mass killings", are they actually addressing the question of "was the famine a mass killing", or are they just discussing the famine itself without reference to this wider question? --Nug (talk) 05:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, O Grada's most recent article (2011) generally supports Johnson's views and criticizes Dikötter (an issue we have already discussed). And, as you can see, O Grada's view is in accordance with previous publications of other authors.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Dikötter is an historian of modern China, O Grada is an expert in the economy of famine. --Nug (talk) 22:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure a proposed title like "Accusations of Mass killings under Communist regimes" appropriately reflects the mainstream view as it seems to contain a presumption that those authors making the claim of "mass killing" are in the minority, or atleast there is sizable opposition to that view, such that we have to qualify the title of the topic with "Accusations of ...". These authors that Paul has cited disputing sources such as the The Black Book of Communism, aren't actually disputing the fact that mass killings occured, they are only disputing the scale, i.e. the estimate of the number of deaths. It is the claim there were no mass killings that is fringe, only to be found in blogs like this.--Nug (talk) 05:27, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I think the article can be converted into something reasonable even without modification of the title.

I myself do not dispute that mass killings occurred; the subject of the dispute is what is considered as mass killings according to mainstream, significant minority and fringe views.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:36, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Nug, where does your blog say there were no mass killings under Communist regimes? TFD (talk) 06:17, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

The reference to this blog is a typical straw man argument: nobody on this talk page claims that there were no mass killings under Communists (and, importantly, noone here uses maoist blogs as sources). Since straw man is one of usual tools of civil POV pushers, I strongly advise Martintg/Nug to avoid such arguments, because it makes his own position weaker. A good idea would be to retract this statement.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Re "These authors that Paul has cited disputing sources such as the The Black Book of Communism, aren't actually disputing the fact that mass killings occured, they are only disputing the scale, i.e. the estimate of the number of deaths." You correctly summarised my point: whereas the very fact of mass killings is indisputable, their scale, and even the scope is a subject of major disagreement. And, you appeared to be unable to refute this statement. Therefore, the next reasonable step good faith editors should do in this situation is to accept my proposal: to remove a questionable statement from the lede. Try to persuade Smallbones, Collect, and Peters to agree on that, and ask Mkativerata to remove the BB (along with the figures) from the lede. That would be a big step forward (although not a Great Leap Forward :))).--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Well "major" could be considered a peacock term. Anything involving an estimate of numbers using incomplete data and differing assumptions will always be subject to re-evaluation and debate, but that is not controversial. There will never be a definitive number, only God knows this, so I don't understand why you object to a range of numbers in the lede which would reflect the spectrum of published numbers. Obviously the breadth of the estimate span is an indicator of uncertainty and disagreement. --Nug (talk) 19:46, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

If only God knows, why do you insist on presenting exact figures?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I am surprised that you would make such a misrepresentation, I have never insisted on presenting an exact figure, but have always said that a range of numbers need to be shown reflecting the differing estimates. --Nug (talk) 22:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Even by presenting a range we demonstrate a bias towards only one concept (that the major part of population losses were the result of mass killings). The problem is even more wider than you try to represent: not only the exact figures are not known, but even the exact reason of those deaths in con always clear. In other words, "only God knows how many people died, and how each of them died". If we know that population decreased by 20 millions during famine and/or terror campaign, to claim that 20 million were killed is not completely correct. And it is quite understandable that most serious authors prefer not to do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

On the article's right to exist.

My discussion with Fifelfoo had one unexpected result. I decided to re-read the review article authored by Straus (Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide, World Politics, Volume 59, Number 3, April 2007, pp. 476-501, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wp/summary/v059/59.3straus.html), where he summarised the major works of so called "second generation genocide scholars" (Mark Levene, Michael Mann, Manus I. Midlarsky, Jacques Sémelin. Benjamin A. Valentino. Eric D. Weitz.). It is necessary to explain that Straus uses the term "genocide" as an umbrella term for "mass killings", "democide", "politicide" etc, so his conclusions are fully applicable to the subject of the MKuCR article.
To my big surprise, according to Straus, noonne of those authors separates MKuCR into a separate category (Valentino is the only author who considers them as sub-sub-category), and, according to Straus, "none makes regime type central to the argument." The same is true for the "first generation" genocide scholars (Helen Fein, Leo Kuper, Irving Louis Horowitz, Ervin Staub, Isidor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski, Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, Robert Melson, and Rudolph Rummel), who analysed this phenomenon in a context of regime types (although two of them, Horowitz and Rummel, drew a connection between geno/democide as totalitarianism).
In other words, we have an opinion of a mainstream author who reviewed the works of major scholars working in this area (the authors the core of this article is based on). His interpretation of the works of all those authors is that no "Mass killings under Communist regimes" as a specific type of mass killings existed in actuality.
In connection to that, I expect someone to provide the sources that challenge this interpretation of provide a different interpretation of the views of the same authors, namely that the authors listed in the Straus' review do define a separate type of mass killngs, "Communist mass killings".
Below I tried to prepare a list of the authors, who have not been reviewed by Straus (some of them, probably, because of the lack of notability, others have been published after 2007). As you can see, it is short. We need much longer list if we want to preserve the article. Please, expand it if you can. However, the sources that just mention the fact of mass killings under Communist regimes are not acceptable as a support of the claim that MKuCR is a separate category.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:20, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

1. Courtois et al "The Black Book of Communism";
2. Rosefielde, "Red Holocaust";

Note: This has been discussed, rediscussed and re-rediscussed a few times now at AfD, and this is getting tendentious. The article exists, and multiple discussions have upheld its "right to exist." Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, in this case it will be easy for you to briefly summarise counter-arguments against Straus. Note, we have an opinion of an established scholar vs the opinia of few Wikipedians. What does our policy says about this type situations?

In addition, by refusing to provide more or less detailed responce you thereby remove yourself from the normal consensus building process, so I don't see why do we need to take your opinion into account.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:25, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Articles don't have 'rights'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:49, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

This is misleading Paul, I have just read Straus' paper, and when he says "none makes regime type central to the argument" he is referring to authoritarian vs. non-authoritarian regime types. But on the question of ideology, here are some quotes from Straus: "A key question for Valentino is why leaders would choose the strategy of genocide and mass killing. Valentino argues that ideology, racism, and paranoia can shape why leaders believe that genocide and mass killing is the right course of action.", "For Weitz, that ideal is a revolutionary quest for utopia based on race and nation; for Sémelin, it is purity based on identity. Ideology matters also for Mann and Levene.", "Even Valentino, who claims that ideology is insufficient as an explanation, argues that ideology shapes the choice of some leaders to engage in mass killing (pp. 76, 99).", "overlapping explanatory paradigms are evident in the books: idealism, political development, and state interest. The idealism framework roots genocide in specific extreme ideologies", "But idealism is especially pronounced in Weitz and Sémelin, and their paradigmatic claim is that extreme ideologies drive extreme violence.". So there is no case for deletion. In fact, given the centrality of ideology to the root cause of mass killing Straus attributes to these second generation authors such as Weitz, Valentino, Mann and Levene who "incorporate communist cases, which generally involve targeting class groups", there is a strong case to rename this article Mass killings under Communism. --Nug (talk) 20:02, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

That is good that you have read this paper. In connection to that, can you tell me please which of the authors reviewed by Straus defines mass killings under Communist regimes as a separate category. We already know that Valentino divide mass killings onto two major categories, and Communist mass killing is one of subcategories of one of those two categories. Valentino devotes one chapter in his book to these mass killings (and, interestingly, he does not include Afghan mass killing into MKuKR category, preferring to analyse it in a separate section, along with killing of pro-Communist Maya people in Guatemala). What other author speak not about authoritatianism or totalitarianism but Communism as a specific driving force of mass killings? I do not see how all quotes provided by you link mass killing and Communism so tightly that the works of the scholars I listed (except, probably Valentino) can be used in this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Paul, if we are discussing whether the article has a right to exist, then the issue is not how many scholars have "defined" Communist killing as an official subtype in their theoretical categorizations. The only issue is whether reliable sources have non-trivially discussed mass killing under Communist regimes as a distinct topic. You can read excerpts from Valentino, Mann, Semelin, and Daniel Chirot/Clark McCauley where they do exactly that at my user subpage here. Three of these four devote entire chapters specifically to the killing under "Communist regimes". As you note above, entire books have been written on the topic. The last two AfDs agreed that this article meets Wikipedia's standard for inclusion. This is a closed issue. Please, let's move on to more interesting problems. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:05, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Frankly speaking, I do not see any appreciable difference between defining a topic and non-trivial discussing some events as a distinct topic. The only difference between your and my theses is in the words "official subtype", the meaning of which is obscure for me. In other words, "to define a topic" and "to non-trivially discuss something as a distinct topic" is essentially the same.

Regarding the quotes, they are good. I think that Valentino is arguably the only author out of those four who probably discussed MKuCR as more or less distinct topic. However, he combined the three regimes together not because of their ideology. The three society he analysed were the Communist societies whose leaders decided to start major social transformations, and resorted to mass killings as a tool (as Straus writes, "the pivot of his cogent and parsimonious analysis is that genocide and mass killing emerge from the strategic calculations of leaders—that genocide and mass killing are calculated, instrumental, and deliberate policies that leaders choose to accomplish certain goals", and the key word here is "leaders", not "goals"). Therefore, I see no indication that communism as ideology is a subject of non-trivial discussion in the Valentino's book. I would say, it serves just as a label.

Re Mann, his book is mostly focused on what he calls "murderous ethnic cleansing", which he sees as a perversion of democratic ideals. He combines the USSR, China and Cambodia into a single chapter (one out of 10, which demonstrates that this topic is not a field of its major interest). He sees some commonalities, but his classification is more descriptive, and is hardly non-trivial (using your own term). Otherwise, Straus would never write that none of the authors made regime type central to the argument. Btw, Mann made one mistake in his analysis: he writes that "all [regimes] addressed the same basic problem - how to apply a revolutionary vision of a future industrial society to a present agrarian one". That is not true: Khmer Rouge were aggressively anti-urbanistic and anti-industrial, and this striking difference between them and the USSR has been noted by many authors.

Re Semelin, it is unclear from the extended quote that the term "classicide" or "fratricide" has been proposed by him to describe MKuCR as a separate topic. Moreover, it is unclear if his intent was to separate MKuCK into a separate topic. What he is saying is that many Communists committed mass killings, however, he does not say that mass killings committed by Communists form a separate topic. In addition as Straus summarises Semelin's views, the origin of genocides is in the desire of the leaders to maintain purity based on identity (racial purity, classial purity, ethnic purity, no matter; that is a second-order term). For Semelin, Communist ideology is just one manifestation of ideology in general, so I do not think it is more than a trivial, descriptive usage of this term.

Re Daniel Chirot, he focuses mostly on the mass killings in pursuit of some utopia, not necessarily Communist utopia ("the modern search for a perfect, utopian society, whether racially or ideologically pure") He sees more similarity between Comminist mass killings and other cases, so, he can hardly be added to Courtois and Rosefilde in the above list.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:23, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The difference between our phrasing is significant because yours implies a much higher level of formality regarding what discussion in a source qualifies something as a topic for Wikipedia articles, as your individual objections demonstrate. I took my much looser phrasing, "non-trivial", from the Wikipedia policy page here, where it says the following: "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material." Devoting entire chapters to the killing by Communist regimes is obviously significant coverage (but significant coverage could also be less than that). Dedicated chapters like these are essentially by definition distinct topics. In none of these sources are Communist regimes mentioned in an off-hand way or in passing. That is, in none of them is the topic of Communist regimes' killing covered trivially. They focus pages and pages directly and exclusively on the Communist regimes as a group. That is, all of them discuss mass killings by Communist regimes "significantly". Your above objections to the quoted material is based upon a standard that is far, far too restrictive. And I don't know where you got it from.

Regarding Valentino and the others, it is important to remember that the topic of the article and in the sources has always been, of course, the behavior of Communist regimes, rather than the principles of communist ideology. This is not a philosophy article, although sources may discuss that when trying to explain the behavior. Depending on who you read, the two may or may not be related. If, for example, a source were discussing at length (let's say, in a dedicated chapter) why Communist regimes as a group were no better or worse than non-communist regimes as a group with regards to killing civilians, that source would still have engaged in "non-trivial" discussion of our topic and could be used as a source for this article. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:30, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, let's accept your phrasing as a base of our discussion, and let's assume (as a working hypothesis) that the article has a right to exist. Is its present structure satisfactory? Absolutely not, and I'll explain why it isn't. If we, following Courtois, will compare MKuCR with, for instance, Rwanda or Armenian genocide or the Holocaust we will see how different these subjects are being treated by scholarly sources: almost every source that discuss the fate of Jews during the WWII describes mass killings of Jews a manifestation of "the Holocaust" (i.e. some distinct and concrete phenomenon). The same can be said about almost every established case of genocide, including the Cambodian genocide. Overwhelming majority of the authors speak about Armenian or Cambodian genocides as manifestations of some generic "genocide". However, the situation with MKuCR is totally different: overwhelming majority of single society authors and genocide scholars describe each event separately, and not in context of some generic "Communist mass killings". Event Cambodian genocide is considered (by many scholars) just as genocide (not a manifestation of MKuCR as a separate phenomenon). For example, Fein made comparative studies of Cambodian and Indonesian genocide, in both of which "governments (or parts thereof) actually labelled as enemies a large part of their citizens who were not otherwise differentiatedf rom the perpetrators by any ethnic, racial, religious, or national identity," and analysed them without references to Communist ideology as a driving force. In other words, MKuCR is not an established concept among overwhelming majority of authors writing about the history of Communist regimes, about famines, genocides, mass killings, etc." Only few authors tried to do some generalisation making (quite a modest) stress on the Communist ideology as driving force. Therefore, we have two alternative scenarios:

1. If we will be able to add at least 2-3 authors to the list started by me (see above), the article may be preserved, but totally re-written according to the scheme proposed by me and Fred (see above);
2. If additional examples of non-trivial discussion of the topic by serious authors will not be provided, the article should be deleted. --Paul Siebert (talk) 04:39, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I have not been commenting here recently because I am not willing at the moment to put in the extensive amount of time it takes me to do all the background reading typically necessary to actually say something accurate and useful. And so I would very much like to not change the issue we are discussing before we have resolved it. However, if we are using my phrasing as a base of our discussion then we would add the four sources I provided to your list.

I am only partly satisfied with the present structure of the article (I am less satisfied with the content within the structure). I think the "Terminology" section is important and needs to be fleshed out significantly (some of which I have already done and am waiting to add). I think the "Comparison to other mass killings" section is ok. I think the "States where mass killings have occurred" section and its subsections are appropriate. I think the "Proposed causes" section and its subsections are very poorly titled and probably poorly structured because each of our sources give multiple inter-related contributing causes. I think the "Controversies" section needs to be reorganized. I think the "Notable executioners" section is unjustified and/or poorly titled. I think the "Legal prosecution for genocide and genocide denial" could be titled better but is ok. I am sure some sections are missing, such as discussion of estimate totals, but I would rather leave all that to others.

That there are sources dealing with one country or one event explains why we have articles about those individual countries/events. That there are sources about general "genocide" is why we have that article. There are also sources which deal with Communist regimes as a group and that is why we have this one. It is as simple as that. That fewer sources exist for one article versus another is irrelevant as long as each exceeds the minimum required by Wikipedia. This article does.

Why is it surprising that most sources focus on a single event or a single country when discussing these deaths? The scope of this topic is absolutely enormous for a single scholar to grapple with, far larger than any of the other examples you just gave. And wouldn't one naturally expect that in any field the largest volume has been published on the narrowest topics, for example individual events or aspects of an event, less on whole countries or regimes, and less still on groupings of countries or on the world as a whole? Furthermore, very significant restrictions exist on scholars in terms of language barriers, document access, etc. which reduces the information available at the moment and also encourages focus on single countries. Time is also a factor in how settled the topic is. Generally, the longer scholars have had to investigate a subject, the more agreement there is about it. The Soviet Union only dissolved a couple decades ago and Communist governments still exist in places. No doubt political considerations also discourage some and encourage others to focus on this specific topic. And the politicized nature of the definition of "genocide" has muddied things, as well, leading to a lack of consensus on terms. So perhaps in this sense the topic of "Mass killings under Communist regimes" isn't all that much like the topics of Rwanda or the Holocaust. So be it.

About your statement "...analysed them without references to Communist ideology as a driving force." Why is this significant? Who said Communist ideology had to be a driving force here? Again, the article is not about communist ideology, it is about Communist regimes. Different sources may have very different ideas about the "why".

About your statement that this "is not an established concept among overwhelming majority of authors writing about the history of Communist regimes, about famines, genocides, mass killings, etc." I do not know this, and I don't think we can determine this by looking at what is written on narrower subjects. If it is verifiable from some reliable source, then that information should be added to the article. Until then it shouldn't be. If it is true it still provides no basis for article deletion. I have not seen any indication from the four sources I have provided that grouping the killing of Communist regimes is even controversial. I certainly know that the estimated total numbers killed are controversial, which relates to the famines and to a lesser extent to the terms, and I know some on the left find the entire topic irritating, but no source has been provided to justify any sense of illegitimacy for the topic itself. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

"Terminology" section is terrible. It creates an impression that numerous authors paid special attention to develop terminology for MKuCR as a separate phenomenon, which is obviously untrue. They tried to apply one or another terminology to one or another case. It must be either removed or re-written.

The section "Comparison to other mass killings" is poorly sourced (Goldhagen, draw his conclusions based on few old books, mostly Rummel, and entry-level anthologies is not a reliable source for figures, see a separate section about his criticism). Rummel is outdated. In addition, the section contains no mainstream authors who directly criticize such an approach. My conclusion: poor sourcing and POV.

There is no surprise that most sources focus on a single event or a single country. My point was totally different: most sources discussing single events or single countries do not consider those cases as manifestation of some general phenomenon called "Mass killing under Communism". They discuss Stalin's repressions, or Mao's GLF famine, or Pot Pot's mass killings, and they do not support the idea that those cases had something significant in common. Only few authors try to do generalisations, and even those authors do not draw too strong parallelisms. Therefore, the concept of the article must be totally different: (i) description of separate instances of violence and mass mortality under several Communist regimes followed by the explanation that some authors see some commonalities between them.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:09, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

When you asked for my opinion on the "structure" of the article, I assumed you meant the sections and subsections we have chosen to represent the sources, not the quality of the writing or the completeness of the content. I see the two as somewhat separate issues (and I see that the subject of our discussion is drifting even further from "The article's right to exist", which is the only issue that prompted me to post here). I feel like we are getting ahead of ourselves here. If the article has a right to exist, then that is not changed by the quality of the article at any particular moment. Wikipedia articles are always in a state of incompleteness and most of them are stubs. Let's not assume the answer to a key question for the sake of argument and then move on to more minor issues. Lets agree on an answer before moving on. Likewise with the issue of "sources" or "structure", rather than moving on to particular paragraphs or sentences that should be added or changed.

Having a terminology section is critical. I agree that it needs improvement to the content such as relating the use of the terms specifically to this topic and I linked to some of that on my subpage. If you see something misleading or omitted, please propose an edit to address the problem (the simpler a change the better under these sanctions). Good luck with getting anything through, although this sounds like a problem that is easy to correct. Regarding "Comparisons with other mass killings", I always assumed this section would develop into an explanation of the issue of moral equivalency or comparison with the Holocaust, which some of the critics mention. Regarding Rummel, his work will have to be included, but you are right that the criticism of it is significant and must also be included in any discussion of the numbers involved here. Regarding your contention that most sources which discuss single countries/events do not reference them to Communist regimes as a group, I cannot agree or disagree because I have not read them. Maybe what you say is true and maybe it is not. If it is, then two thoughts occur to me: that a source does not mention a topic is not necessarily an indication of that source rejects the topic not mentioned, because it may simply be outside the relevant scope of the publication; if a source does reject that an event had anything to do with the Communist regime being a Communist regime, then it probably endorses other things as contributing causes which should be included in this article. However, we can't very well agree on how to shape the article to incorporate such things until after we identify the specific sources and the specific statements they make. AmateurEditor (talk) 16:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The issue of article's structure is directly linked to the article's right to exist, because if the discussion will lead us to a conclusion that no neutrally organosed article can be created, the article should be deleted. Incomplete article and intrinsically biased article are two quite different things.

Terminology section is dramatically misleading and non-neutral: overwhelming majority of authors cited there did not propose a specific terminology for MKuCR (except, probably, Rosefielde, whose peer-reviewed works contain no such terms a "Red Holocaust"). Therefore, the section must be totally re-written, and the stress should be done on the fact that mass killing/genocide scholars "deal with inherent conceptual problems and limitations on comparative research identified here make the study of genocide hard to sustain as a distinct topic" (Straus, 2007). The authors who do comparative research of genocide (or mass killing), as a rule, do not make regime type central to the argument (Straus, 2007). Several concepts have been proposed to describe various cases of genocide/mass killing, and some of them have been applied to mass killing events in Communist countries. Only after that can we write about Lemkin's attempts to apply "genocide" to killings by Stalin's regime, about Semelin's concept of "calssicide", etc. However, it must be clearly written that none of those terms (except non-scholarly "Red Holocaust") have been developed specifically for MKuCR.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Repeated AfDs have confirmed the article's "right to exist." Tendentious arguments contesting this are ... tendentious. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:52, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Editorial consensus has no precedence over our policy. In addition, consensus can change. You should either participate in a consensus building process (by addressing legitimate concern of others) or abstain from a discussion, to which you have nothing to add.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:12, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Your criticisms of the article seem a bit dubious Paul, checking the contributors to this [1], I see that you are the second highest contributor. The article is in its current state due to in large part to your own edits! --Nug (talk) 20:28, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense. My most significant contribution have been reverted.--Paul Siebert (talk)

[edit conflict] There is a big difference between "can be" and "is" regarding the neutrality of the article. If it isn't (which I absolutely do not concede) that does not demonstrate that it cannot be. I believe I just proved that the article "can be" neutral by showing you four neutral sources for this topic where it has been done already (although even biased-POV sources can still be described neutrally as long as their views are identified as their own, which is what has been done for just about everything in the article), and I believe this issue was also addressed already in the AfDs. Your quotes from Straus about genocide being a problematic topic (which was already known by editors here and has not prevented Wikipedia articles from being written about genocide in a non-biased way) and authoritarian/totalitarian regime type not being "central" to certain analyses (which does not mean that the sources he describes are irrelevant to the topic here) are not proof of the non-neutrality of the current article. I do believe, however, that you believe there are issues of non-neutrality. Because of this, I believe it is worth making changes to satisfy your concerns.

The Terminology section already contains the following prominently located sentence: "Scholars use several different terms to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants.[3][4] The following have been used to describe killing by Communist governments:". It does not say that "the following have only been used to describe killing by Communist governments". Nor does it imply that, in my opinion. However, if you feel so strongly that this is insufficient, it is simple to improve it. I would rather that you proposed a fix since you are the one who sees the problem, but I will try. What do you think of the following:

"Scholars use severala variety of different terms to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants because the study of genocide is a relatively new and unsettled field. The following terms, most of which are not specific to the events under Communist regimes, have been used to describeapplied to either the killing by Communist governments as a whole or to individual events under a particular Communist regime as part of the wider study of genocide:"

I use "most of which are not specific" because "Classicide" and "Communist/Red Holocaust" are specific. This distinction should be made clear after each term. (Note: I may not be able to respond for the rest of the day.) AmateurEditor (talk) 20:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

That is an improvement, although your "Nor does it imply that" is definitely wrong. Consider this phrase: "Poets use several different terms to describe the carnivores. The following have been used to describe tigers." Obviously, such a phrase implies that the second sentence means the terms that have been proposed primarily for tigers. Some comments:

1. It is necessary to explain that no uniform terminology currently exists of such events (as whole), and that that problem is immanent to this field.
2. This wording encompasses "the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants". However, the cases that caused the larges part of excess deaths (famines and similar events) are not considered as intentional (or fully intentional) by majority authors.
3. "a relatively new and unsettled field" is a very soft summary of Straus' words ("make the study of genocide hard to sustain as a distinct topic"). The quote implies that that is not a field at all (at least, so far).

In addition, each particular section should be corrected. For example, the section about genocide and about the Wheatcroft's opinion dramatically misinterpret what the sources say.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Re "classicide", it has been applied to some cases. It cannot be applied to, e.g., Great Purge and majority of other cases. More concretely, according to Mann, who coined this term, it covers just a limited set of events ("Dark side of democracy", p. 17). According to Mann, it is more specific to leftists (however, he never mentioned Communists explicitly), and Khmer Rouge were the worst perpetrators of classicide, and Maoist and Stalinist perpetrators committed "short bursts" of classicide (Mann, op. cit. p. 17). Obviously, classicide covers just a small part of the events discussed in this article (here is an example), and the "Terminology" section totally misinterprets Mann's position.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you think it is an improvement, although I was hoping that you would respond with a copy of the paragraph with your own changes in bold and strike-throughs. I'll try again:

"Scholars use a variety of different terms to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants because the study of genocide is a relatively new and unsettled field. There is also no consensus term for the killings under Communist regimes specifically. Therefore, the following terms, most of which are not specific to the events under Communist regimes except where otherwise indicated., have been applied to either the killing by Communist governments as a whole or to individual events under a particular Communist regime as part of the wider study of genocide:"

1. Ok.

2. But this is why we have the controversies section. If no one believed people were killed intentionally by the famines then they wouldn't be included in the article at all.

3. I can provide counter-quotes from the same source which show that Straus clearly identifies genocide studies as a distinct field. "Sustain" is the key word in your quote because the context for it is further developments in the field down the road.

I agree that the text for each term also needs improvement, but let's accomplish something before moving on yet again. We can explain which terms have been proposed to cover the whole group in the terms text. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:40, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Deletion discussions don't have a place on this page. They will not improve the article - certainly not if they just re-hash the 5 old AfDs. If anybody wants to delete the article, just take it to an AfD. There's no other way to do a deletion consistent with policy, and there is certainly no mechanism to do it here otherwise. Smallbones (talk) 21:40, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

That is ridiculous: my main point is that the article should be either improved or, if that will be impossible, deleted. However, if you have no idea on how to improve it, maybe, you should not distract others from discussion of improvements?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

@Paul: I agree with Smallbones. Mass killings under Communist regimes are significant in and of their own accord as Communism purports to raise the proletariat to the primary position of power. You appear to make the argument that "mass killings" "under Communist regimes" must be concatenated in reputable sources as a single phrase to apply in any way to the topic here. If that is your impetus to "improve" or "delete", I suggest a formal AfD. The arguments over what applies or not or what is WP:SYNTHESIS or not have not changed. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 01:23, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

No soapboxing, please. If you have any new source to present, please do that, and explain, how do they support your claim.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:17, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I am merely stating we are either working on the article or discussing its deletion. Not both. Pick which one you are interested in pursuing and stick to it. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 01:23, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

We are working on the article in attempts to prevent its deletion. I provided two sources that may serve as a ground for the article's existence. Other sources can hardly serve for that purpose. Do you have more sources of that type?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:29, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

To develop an RFC for a noticeboard, is social science comparative study notability: common discussion or common analysis?

I'd like to draw editor's attention to this issue, and suggest that after collective drafting, and finding a forum outside of this article (WP:N/N? WP:NOR/N? both seem to have coverage via Notability or Synthesis) that we resolve the central policy issue by community consensus building and close the matter for five years of uncontested article improvement, or an absence of article re-creation? I consulted the last three AFDs before thinking about this. The earliest of the three, November 2009 saw arguments over notability or synthesis fall into descriptive commonality versus analytical commonality distinctions, and the AFD failed to achieve consensus. The April 2010 discussion did not see a similar debate, focusing instead primarily on POV and OR issues from the deletion arguments, with AmateurEditor putting a very strong pro "descriptive commonality" argument. The July 2010 AFD again saw a strong discussion of the synthesis issue, with the closer explicitly noting that the AFD had not resolved the issue of synthesis. Let us resolve this now, by crafting a common RFC to place on the notability or no original research noticeboard, with the best excellent arguments from both sides, and accept the community's decision on it. This ought to reduce talk page discussions to a reasonable level, and hopefully allow for unlocking.

The principle issue is: is a common description in scholarly literature sufficient for the notability of a social-science or history analysis; OR is the standard required a common analysis?

• If the standard is a common description, then we really need to rewrite this from the sources AmateurEditor has observed, which are recent coherent multi-society descriptions in the most advanced scholarly literature; noting, where essential to the historiography, superceded works, single society debates that impinge on common description, and the few FRINGE claims .
• If the standard is a common analysis, then we need to eliminate this article and together work on Mass killing where we all could have made a Featured Article by now.

This is a matter of principle and policy—so we should take it to the general community and accept their opinion. What is the standard indicating that an encyclopaedic object exists in comparative social science or history: common analysis of case studies, or common description of case studies?

Arguments in favour of a common description I've heard is: this is the current community standard. I've not seen this standard myself, but I don't doubt the honesty of the editor who suggested this. If this is the case then a) I think the community has gotten it wrong and b) it is probably worth revisiting in a highly nuanced, well argued from both sides, way in order to get a period of stability on the issue. I've put the common analysis argument previously on the basis that juxtaposition is not the core of identity of a social science subject, but rather argued theorisation is. Of course, I'm seeking a definitive result on this matter—if the community decides for descriptive commonality in comparisons, then I'm happy to edit within that consensus. I incidentally think we could boost this to GA/A status within a year. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:07, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

To make clear my distinction: A collective description is like such: "A, B and C are dogs and lick their bottoms: A licks his bottom on Monday; B licks her bottom on the rug; C likes to lick his bottom after a run." A collective analysis is like such: "A, B and C are dogs and lick their bottoms as they all want to clean shit away, as all dogs have a drive to biological cleanliness and have a nervous stimulus of pleasure from licking their bottoms." One is juxtaposition, even if each case study has an analysis, they are only described as a common set. The other is a common analysis of the set, even if individual instances are described. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Fifelfoo. Firstly, I agree that the issue deserves a separate discussion, and this discussion should be outside of this talk page.

I see several issues with collective description because, by contrast to common analysis, which is based on some objective concept, collective description is intrinsically subjective. Thus, we can group animals in quite another ways, for example: "A, D and E are black animals that lick their bottom, A is a black dog, D is a black cat, and E is a black rat". By doing such description, we imply that a habit to lick their bottom is characteristic for black animals (which is obviously not true), and only black dogs lick their bottom.

If you look at the sources provided by AmateurEditor, you will see that none of them is devoted specifically to Communism. Mann's book is devoted to “murderous ethnic cleansing” that, according to him, are a perversion of democratic ideals and that such violence is especially likely to occur when weakly institutionalized countries undergo democratic transitions. He devotes just one chapter to Communist states, and in this chapter he simply tries to apply his major concept to those states mutatis mutandis. By no means he develops any specific concept to describe MKuCK. Moreover, his point is that Communists expected just a short burst of violence after which all opposing classes would be assimilated, and Communists planned no mass and prolonged violence (p. 311), and most mass deaths under Communists were not intentional. Therefore, he simply is not a good source for discussion of "intentional killings of large number of non-combatants (up to 100 million) committed by Communists".
The same analysis of other sources can be done, and it will lead to similar conclusions. Again, the only two sources devoted primarily to Communism are Rosefielde and the introduction to the Black Book, and I do not think that by taking selected pieces from several book and compiling them into a quite different coherent story of mass killings under Communists we act in accordance with our policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:48, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

In addition, we implicitly assumed that only two types of sources exist that deal with Communist societies: the single society studies and the studies where Communist states are grouped together. In actuality, that is not true. Thus, numerous studies exist that discuss, for example Great Leap famine, Bengal famine and Irish famine together, separately from other famines in Communist states; or the sources that discuss Cambodian genocide in comparison with Indonesian genocide or Warsaw ghetto. There are many ways for collective description, and, if we decide to follow the collective description way, we need to explain why this particular collective description is more notable than others.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Background to Great Leap Forward

This information copied from History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976) sheds light on Mao's motivation:

According to Hua-yu Li, writing in Mao and the Economic Stalinization of China, 1948-1953 in 1953, Mao, mislead by glowing reports in History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course, authorized by Stalin of social and economic progress in the Soviet Union, abandoned the liberal economic programs of "New Democracy" and instituted the "general line for socialist transition", a program to build socialism based on Soviet models. He was reportedly moved in part by personal and national rivalry with Stalin and the Soviet Union.

User:Fred Bauder Talk 14:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

That is an interesting article. Is it your view that Mao's copying of Stalinist policy led to the same results, mass killings and famine? If so I think we need a source that makes this connection. Also, would that meet that had Mao followed Stalin's later recommendations, that mass killings and famine would have been avoided? TFD (talk) 18:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Hindsight's 20/20 so, obviously, lots of trouble could be avoided if do-overs were possible. I'm pretty sure the Korean War could have been easily avoided, for example. User:Fred Bauder Talk 23:41, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That is too simple. In addition, Wikipedia is not a source for itself. Shujie Yao (A Note on the Causal Factors of China's Famine in 1959–1961. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, No. 6 (December 1999), pp. 1365-1369) concludes that:

"The famine was an evolutionary process activated and escalated by six interrelated causal factors. The first three factors—namely, poor weather, wrong policies, and low production incentives—caused a sudden reduction in domestic food production. The last three factors-namely, the near absence of a statistical and monitoring system, the inability to import grains, and international isolation—led to the failure to respond to a food shortage. The interaction of these factors, reinforced by three major political events, caused a prolonged and massive famine unprecedented in world history."

For example, under "the near absence of a statistical and monitoring system", the authors mean that Mao was mislead about unbelievably high harvest by glowing reports of his own local party leaders. That convinced him that a large amount of grain could be obtained from peasantry, much larger than it was possible to extract in actuality.

Another cause was a system of so-called "communal dining rooms" where large amount of food was wasted. According to Gene Hsin Chang and Guanzhong James Wen (Communal Dining and the Chinese Famine of 1958–1961. Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 46, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 1-34) "it is the communal dining system that first started, and then greatly aggravated, the famine."

Among the causes are listed also the sudden elimination of farmers’ withdrawal rights from the collectives.(Justin Yifu Lin, Collectivization and China’s Agricultural Crisis in 1959–1961, Journal of Political Economy, 98 (1990): 1228–52.)

Interestingly, the "genocide scholars" seem to be being almost totally ignored by serious authors who study China.

To summarise, these sources, as well as many others focus on a number of factors that were specific to China, so the Soviet influence was just one, and not the decisive factor. In addition, I don't see why all of that is relevant to this particular article, because overwhelming majority of sources available for me (I found at least 20 articles devoted specifically to this famine) do not characterise GL famine as mass killing. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:45, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Let's see, six causes cited by Yao, one is related to weather, five are related to Communist policy implemented as "The Great Leap Forward". Yet oddly enough the GLF seems to be mentioned in general works on Genocide, and in Wikipedia, a view is determined to be mainstream if it finds its way into reference works. How about Genocide: A Reference Handbook[2]. Or how about Dictionary of Genocide: A-L[3] or Martin Shaw's What is genocide?:

"Likewise, if leaders know that their polices may lead (or are leading) to social and physical destruction of a group, and fail to take steps to avoid (or halt) it - as Mao Zedong, for example, knew of the effects of the Great Leap Forward but continued his policies - then they come to 'intend' the suffering they cause and may similarly be guilty"[4]

or in Encyclopedia of genocide and crimes against humanity, Volume 2, Macmillan Reference, 2005

"However, once it became clear that the Great Leap Forward had not only failed to produce the promised economic miracles but also led to serious economic disruptions, Chairman Mao refused to change course because he feared a loss of face, if not his preeminent position"(p661)

--Nug (talk) 19:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Nug, if you know the definition of genocide, it has a relation of (i) an attempt to destroy some national/ethnic group as whole, and (ii) intent. Both criteria are not met here. However, some authors use a loose definition of genocide (which, among others, include even non-lethal forms as deportations etc). This definition does cover the GLfamine, however, the same definition covers so many other cases, including the crimes committed by democratic regimes that "genocide" defined in such a way becomes routine event. We need to approach to all events universally, and the standard of this approach has been set by Harff's work (already cited by me before). She created a comprehensive list of genocides/politicides from 1955 to 2001, and the GLfamine is not there.

Characterisation of GLfamine as genocide would require us to re-write a lot of other articles, because the same authors who believe that GLfamine was a mass killing, believe that, e.g., atomic bombing of Hiroshima was mass killing too. If they are reliable sources for this article, they are equally reliable for, e.g., the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki article. You may try to go there and to edit it according to, e.g., Goldhagen's views (of course, this proposal is purely hypothetical, because I realise that you are a reasonable person, who perfectly understands that your edits will be immediately reverted, and you will never obtain support for such change).--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:28, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

In addition, your argument that "five are related to Communist policy implemented as "The Great Leap Forward"" is flawed. Bengal famine or Irish potato famine related to British policy (destruction of Mogul's era economic regulation mechanisms in India, and expulsion and enormous taxation of local population in Ireland). Is it sufficient to call those two events "genocide"? There is no agreement among scholars about that. Moreover, "low production incentives, the near absence of a statistical and monitoring system" tell about mistakes of Chinese leadership, not deliberate policy. The inability to import grains, and international isolation were not a direct result of CPC policy against peasantry. They were (like poor weather) external factors. Therefore, your "five are related to Communist policy" is at least exaggeration.

Please, understand me correctly: I do not claim that Mao was an innocent lamb. He was a brutal leader, who, in full accordance with centuries-old Chinese traditions did not value human's life. He is definitely responsible for death of some part of Chinese peasants during the GLfamine. However, to claim that, since GLfamine's mortality was 15-25 million, Mao killed all of them is incorrect. It is incorrect for several reasons

1. Famines were usual thing in pre GLF China. That is a difference between China and, e.g., Ukraine. To claim that this famine happened exclusively because of Communists is a pure example of double standards. Does it mean that Chang Kai-shek should be blamed for the genocidal famine in the Yellow River region in 1935? Serious authors try to avoid such claims.
2. Taking into account long autocratic Chinese tradition, we need to separate the effect of Communist ideology from the traditional brutality of Chinese society. Why did you decided such atrocities would never occurred without Communists?
3. We do not know the exact contribution of each factors listed by Yao. Therefore, we simply cannot tell which death resulted from Mao's policy, and which were caused by other factors (including international isolation).
4. We do not know the degree of intentionality. Since a feedback appeared not working, the leadership was simply misinformed about the real state of things, and we need to separate their real refusal to accept obvious facts (which, without any doubts took place) from their actions based on wrong information that genuinely believed to be true. --Paul Siebert (talk) 21:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

BTW, one more important detail. Most sources emphasize that starvation, not disease was a major cause of GLfamine death, in contrast to major famines in past. O Grada hypothecised that the Maoist campaigns of the early and mid-1950s to improve water quality and personal hygiene and impose mass inoculation against infectious disease had probably had this effect, thereby diminishing the famine's death toll (which, otherwise, would be much higher). Do you really believe that the regime that planned to exterminate tens of millions people will bother to inoculate them before that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:11, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

The point of this thread, regardless of any particular theory, is that Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#The_Great_Leap_Forward is not an appropriate treatment of the problem. It draws very heavily on one source, and on one author that seems to have little insight into Mao's motivation. User:Fred Bauder Talk 23:41, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, with the references provided by Nug and the ones in the article it's seven (7) academic sources, not to mention the others that refer to China in general above in the article. Is there a reasonable argument that these should be excluded from the article? I'd love to include a source that says "the GLF was not a genocide or an example of mass killing" but I don't see one. You've got a source that explores the GLF in detail and doesn't mention genocide or mass killing, that is a bit more problematic to include, but it could probably be mentioned briefly. The only thing that would be unacceptable would be using it in some way to exclude sources that directly address the issue. BTW, the source you provided does emphatically provide a connection of the GLF (and its associated deaths) with general Communist thought and practice, which has previously been denied here. Smallbones (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

More error than thought, but whatever. User:Fred Bauder Talk 02:06, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Given that most of the section on the GLF is sourced to Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong since 2006 and before that, Professor of Modern History of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, I don't see how he would have little insight into Mao's motivation. --Nug (talk) 04:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Martin, thank you for pointing at one more neutrality issue. As we (you and I) know, this book has been seriously criticised by such a reputable scholar as O Grada (the criticism can be found in previous sections, if you forgot). Therefore, the section, which is mainly based on the disputable source is non-neutral, and should be modified per our policy. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Paul, yes we did discuss this before. O Grada appears to be criticising Dikötter's estimate of the number of famine deaths. But since this thread is about the background to the GLF, I think a Hong Kong based professor of Chinese modern history with access to Communist party archives would have a better idea on that point than an economist living in Ireland who had no such access. --Nug (talk) 09:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Smallbones, let me re-iterate it again: noone proposed to exclude any academic sources from the article. However, taking into account that not all sources are academic, and part of them are highly disputable, the article's focus should be shifted to serious works. I believe I made myself clear enough?--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Fred, the fact is that some authors believe the GL famine was a mass killing, and this opinion, which is not shared by single society scholars, is popular among lay public. Therefore, to it would be correct to write that "Scholars outline several major factors that caused GL famine (list). Such authors as A, B, and C believe that GF famine was mass killing committed by Communist authorities" would be correct, in my opinion. However, I agree that the description of this event should be consistent with the main article (Great Leap Forward). Otherwise, we will have multiple POV-forking, which is unacceptable.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Dikötter is a single society scholar on Chinese modern history, so I don't think you can claim "which is not shared by single society scholars". I think the issue is how to attribute due weight and I believe policy gives us some guidance on how to determine mainstream and how to determine minority viewpoints. --Nug (talk) 09:59, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Of course, I meant "majority of single society scholars" (I to not pretend to be able to read all of them).

Re Ó Gráda's criticism of Dikötter, have you read it (I know you have an access to this article)? Ó Gráda says:

"MGF may become the best-known account of the GLF famine for a while. But should it? It is not a comprehensive account of the famine; it is dismissive of academic work on the topic; it is weak on context and unreliable with data; and it fails to note that many of the horrors it describes were recurrent features of Chinese history during the previous century or so. More attention to economic history and geography and to the comparative history of famines would have made for a much more useful book. In what follows I focus on the economic context of the famine, review features of the famine treated by Dikötter but worth further study, and conclude by discussing the role in these events of Mao and the party elite."

By no means can it be just criticism of Dikötter's estimate of the number of famine deaths. This criticism is demonstrates profound flaws of the book (despite the fact that Ó Gráda agrees that Dikötter's adds much to our knowledge about the famine). The last section of the Ó Gráda's review is devoted specifically to Dikötter's analysis of the CPC's role in famine, and the conclusion is that "reckless miscalculation and culpable ignorance are not quite the same as deliberately or knowingly starving millions". Interestingly, Ó Gráda sees direct parallelism between Dikötter and Applebaum, abd concludes that "the success of MGF should not deter other historians from writing calmer and more nuanced books that worry more about getting the numbers right and pay due attention to geography and history." Therefore, it would be quite correct to use calmer and more nuanced works that are already available and to "pay due attention to geography and history" in this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 11:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh I see, an economist would have a better idea on Chinese modern history than a Hong Kong based Chair Professor in Chinese Modern History, right? Ó Gráda's review was a non-peer reviewed essay, it is just his viewpoint about "getting the numbers right" as any economist would. What determines mainstream viewpoints is general acceptance, despite the lone dissenting voices, and Ó Gráda acknowledges the success of Dikötter's book as the best known account of the GLF. --Nug (talk) 18:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The Population and Development Review is a ranked 6/24 (Demography); 20/129 (Sociology) (accorting to ISI, 2010). Its impact factor (ca 1.5) is quite reasonable in this area of knowledge. In any event, if you have any doubt in reliability of this source, feel free to ask for opinion of broader community on relevant noticeboard. In any event, I sustained my burden of evidence: I provided a viewpoint of reputable author (btw, why did you decide it is a pure economist? Who is, in your opinion, for example Fernand Braudel?), who criticized Dikötter's book. Please, provide a source that criticises Ó Gráda.

In addition, the fact that Dikötter lives and works in Hong Cong does not add much credibility to his works (at least, I do not see why it matters).--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC on death estimates in the article's opening sentences

The article currently opens with: "Mass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million.[1]"

I do not believe there is any editorial dispute over the fact that the 85 million+ number includes deaths that were not the result of directly homicidal actions. The number for "killings" includes far more than executions and murderous political purges. There are numerous scholars who dispute adding to the count of executions and such with other death tolls.

An alternate example that uses more explanatory text might be:

This article describes some known examples of mass killings, including both those that were intentionally carried out by communist governments and those where mass death occurred as a result of government policy, but whose intentionality is disputed.

Are the death estimates given too nuanced and academically disputed to serve as the opening sentence?

Does the presentation of this number require too much nuance to be written in the rather matter-of-factly way it has been?

Does this numerical estimate require large amounts of explanatory text in order as to not WP:ASTONISH a casual reader? Are these numbers currently written with text that would provide context to the readers? BigK HeX (talk) 00:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Some explanatory text For example (random figures) "...12-14 million killed directly and a total of 85-100 million taking into account deaths directly or indirectly resulting from policy, such as avoidable famines." Rich Farmbrough, 13:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC).

Absolutely agree, using 2 or 3 ranges of numbers would clarify things greatly, but some folks are 2 or 3 times more against this than a single range. Smallbones (talk) 16:35, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment What is high estimate? What is the low estimate? Why not just list both: "Mass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between x and y million." where x is the low estimate and y is the high estimate? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:09, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I've asked several times for the deletionists to provide a number that they consider to be acceptable, and they have refused. They apparently think that any number is inherently misleading. Since no sourced number is acceptable to them, I think we just have to go ahead with what the mainstream says. Smallbones (talk) 16:35, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

You correctly understood the issue: any single number or range will be totally misleading. Let me use the mass of the observable Universe as an example. The estimates vary considerably (from 10⁵⁰ to 10⁶⁰ kilograms). However, we cannot write "According to various authors, mass of the Universe varies from 10⁵⁰ to 10⁶⁰ kilograms" simply because many of them mean quite different things (total stellar mass, visible mass, total barionic mass, barionic mass + WIMPs, total mass-energy, i.e., barionic+non-barionic matter+dark energy). In addition, different procedure have been used to obtain the mass, so even if we take into account different forms of matter, the results will still be not mutually consistent. Therefore, the article Observable Universe does tell about the size of the Universe (which has been established more or less accurately), however the discussion of the mass has been moved to the article's body.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:01, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Based on the sources presented in the section below. It would seem sensible to also have the lowest estimates of people killed as A Quest For Knowledge mentions above. Darkness Shines (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

What would be included in the lowest estimates, as you envision it? BigK HeX (talk) 01:39, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I know little of these matters, an RFC bot sent me here, but one would imagine the included lower estimates to be whatever the lowest estimates for these killings would be. Darkness Shines (talk) 01:45, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough answer. Thanks! BigK HeX (talk) 04:47, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• Replace with a general sentence. The more or less exact numbers are unknown, thus any number will be doubtful. In the article's body it would be better solved by giving more POVs, but in the lead it's just inappropriate. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 07:50, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Keep. I've arrived here totally by accident. But after looking over the discussion and reading the article, I'd say keeping the figures is best. Afterall, the article is about mass killings and a figure is expected by the reader and that figure should be in the lede. Also, wanted to say I appreciate how BigK HeX has arranged to keep comments by non-involved editors separate. Good idea, very helpful. Also, to answer the questions posed, 1) the death figures are not too nuanced; 2) figures seem to be written in the only sensible way you can present such information - straight out; 3) does not seem to require large amounts of info set-up, nor does it WP:Astonish. Malke 2010 (talk) 01:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
• Keep As it is a lede, the purpose of the lede is to summarize the contents of the article, and this sentence accurately summarizes the body of the article. Having a lede specifically not be a summary of the body is contrary to Wikipedia policies and guidelines, specifically including the MoS. Collect (talk) 13:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Note to a closing admin For some reason, the section containing comments from involved editors (which, in actuality, contained comments from totally uninvolved users, such as User:Orangemike) went to archive. Please, keep that in mind.--Paul Siebert (talk) 12:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Note to closing admin Examine the strength of arguments, including those arguments based on policies and guidelines, - withut regard to "involved", "semi-involved" and "uninvolved" comments. Collect (talk) 13:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Do you mean that the section with the comments from involved users should be moved back from the archive? --Paul Siebert (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I see that Collect decided to comment in the section for uninvolved users, so initial BigK HeX's concept (to separate comments from involved and uninvoled users appeared to be broken). In that situation, I have to do the same. Below is a summary of my arguments:

• Remove. The idea that "Communist mass killings" is a separate concept is shared by small number of writers. Other authors, mostly single society scholars do not consider famine deaths, camps and deportation mortality and similar cases (which constituted >90% of total excess mortality) as mass killings. Moreover, those authors prefer to avoid generalisations, so no so called "low estimates" are available. The following example is a demonstration of my thesis. Whereas "genocide scholars" believe that up to 42 millions were killed during the Great Leap famine in China, single society scholars come to conclusions that (i) 31 million of those deaths were in fact unborn infants, (ii) this impact on fertility was compensated by the outburst of births during subsequent years, so lost births were de facto postponed births, and (iii) 15-25 million famine deaths were a result of multiple causes, including weather, and, although CPC policy was among the most decisive factors, to describe those deaths as killings by the regime is not more correct than to describe Irish or Bengal famine as mass killing. The works of such authors contain huge amount of factual materials and contains detailed and persuasive analysis. However, those authors simply do not bother to discuss with "genocide scholars" (they simply ignore their works). In other words, any total figures of deaths inflicted by Communism reflect the opinion of just one school of though. To present these figures means to give undue weight to this school (as opposed to numerous single society studies) and to mislead a reader.

Therefore, the answer on the first question is:

• If deaths estimates may vary by factor of 3 (42 vs 15 million) simply because some authors include fertility impact into a total death toll, these nuances are crucial; other examples can be provided that demonstrate that the figures are by 90% is a matter of judgement.

The answer on the second question is:

• Since the article discusses not population losses (which, being an objective facts, are more or less precisely known), but killings, which requires us to analyse causes of those deaths, I do not see how can this information be conveyed in a matter-of-factly way.

The answer on the third question is:

• A number of reliable sources (Stanley Hoffmann, Nicolas Werth, Hiroaki Kuromiya, which have already been cited and quoted on this talk page) explicitly criticise the idea to present some total figures of Communist mass killings to shock a reader. Therefore, not only we astonish a reader, we do that despite several reliable source criticise such an approach. Therefore, we simply cannot do that per our neutrality policy.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:02, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

And you had also previously commented in that section. Seems that you wish to simply attack me for doing what you had already done here. Did you so quickly forget your post just above wherein you state any single number or range will be totally misleading? BTW, show me the heading saying "uninvolved editors" for this section and I will eat my hat. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:09, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I commented in a responce on the comment by involved Smallbones. I posted no "Keep" or "Remove". One way or the another, I do not blame you in anything. You were probably right by making your post: since our opinia went to the archive, it was quite correct to re-iterate them here again.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Keep Even Werth's widely touted "disagreement" with and "criticism" of Courtois' introduction to the Black Book of Communism is the "100 million", Werth's math comes up the same as Courtois', with the exception of 93 million, not (rounding up to) 100 million. As far as I can tell, since Werth has been used to pillory Courtois, editors citing Werth in that manner should then have no issue with adoptiong Werth's representation of the range of the number of victims. I should also mention that Werth has come to view the Holodomor as genocide. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 15:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Please, provide a reliable source that supports you following asserion:

"Werth's math comes up the same as Courtois', with the exception of 93 million, not (rounding up to) 100 million."

I expect to get a reference, and the quote there Werth confirms that the scale of the victims of Communist mass killings (sic!) amounted to 93 million.

In addition, you seem to ignore opinions of other scholars listed by me. Since my arguments are based not solely on Werth's opinion, I expect you to refute all sources I cited. In addition, you have not addressed my other arguments. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:56, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

@Paul, let us not get lost in nuances. BB is regarded as a reputable source; where Werth disagrees is in Courtois' more monolithic political view of Communism. On Werth's math summarizing the essays in BB, "de leurs études, on peut tirer une «fourchette» globale allant de 65 à 93 millions". And there is no reason I have to "refute all" your sources. That implies I'm censoring them. I am not. I am merely disagreeing with your editorial treatment. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 21:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

1. Interestingly, in a response to my request to provide a source for one your statement you made another unsupported statement. Please, provide a source that confirms that the BB as whole is reliable, and that criticism of the Courtois' introduction (provided by me) is fringe. Your failure to do so will demonstrate that you continue to push your POV even is you have no needed sources for that.
   Please, pay special attention at my words "BB as whole", because this collective volume is quite inhomogeneous in quality and reliability. I personally speak not about the BB as whole, but about the introduction, which has been severely criticized.
2. You mix neutrality and reliability issues. The fact that some source (hypothetically) meets minimal RS criteria does not make it mainstream. Therefore, by repeated attempts to resist to removal of the BB from the first sentence of the lede (not from the article), you violate both policies, which clearly say that none of them cannot be considered separately from each other. That mistake is forgivable for newbies, but not for such experienced editors as you.
3. If I am not wrong, you took this Werth's phrase from my own post. In any event, please, show, where in this quote does Werth speak about "mass killings"?
4. Re your "there is no reason I have to "refute all" your sources", the reason is simple: since we are not talking about removal of the Courtois' figures from the article (I plan to write a separate section devoted to various estimates), but from the first sentence of the lede, where these figures look like an established fact. Therefore, not only you have all reasons to refute all my sources, but the refutation must be so convincing that any reasonable would agree that all my sources are fringe, and do not belong to Wikipedia. Unless you have done that, you are openly violating our neutrality policy. Please, initiate a process of removal of the figures you and your colleagues added to the lede, and let's start to work together on the "Estimates of death toll" section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Note to closing admin - please note the editing restrictions at the top of the page - a clear consensus is required to make any changes to the article. On this page, I think there is a clear consensus. My count is 5 to 2 for including some range of numbers for the killings. The "involved editors" section (now in the last archive) also has a majority for including a range of numbers. I think you should also be aware of the previous RfC - which was much more clearly formatted with 2 specific alternatives presented. Paul's version with the numbers removed in the first sentence was clearly rejected, with 2 for and 6 against. The second version with numbers included had 5 for and 6 against.

Finally, I have to say that this RfC does not have any proposed actions associated with it. There are only 4 fairly ambiguous questions, so whatever the result of the RfC it cannot be said that there was a consensus to remove the numbers in the lede. Smallbones (talk) 15:58, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Smallbones, you repeatedly misinterpret our policy. Voice counting is not a substitute for discussion, and poll does not form consensus. In that respect, you should familiarise yourself with the above Collect's post, where he quite correctly noted that the the strength of arguments, including those arguments based on policies and guidelines is the most decisive factor.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:56, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• Remove. I am persuaded by the strength of Paul Siebert's arguments. Writegeist (talk) 23:54, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

• Keep. Having a range of numbers is the most neutral way to encapsulate the debate. The main body of the article explains in detail the differening scholarly viewpoints that gave rise to this range of numbers in the first place. --Nug (talk) 00:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

• Remove When I google "mass killings under Communist regimes" the only source that mentions numbers is this one.[5] TFD (talk) 06:36, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. Probably, we need to start a discussion about modification of our NOR policy, because this article created such a huge amount of mirrors that it may give a start to some self-inflating OR process.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a bit silly. @TFD, try a search that's reasonable, such as this, not something which (IMHO) appears designed to fail, at which point Paul Siebert jumps in immediately with allegations that Google searches for mass killings attributed to communist regimes returns self-referential mirrors. This does not represent serious editorial discourse, gentlemen. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 22:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Your search refutes your point: compare it with this or even this. The number of hits are simply not possible to compare. 156 hits is almost ZERO.

In addition, since you haven't responded on my last post, I assume you have no arguments. Does it mean that you have no objection any more against moving of the BB from the lede to the article's body?--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

@ TFD and Peters. Please, remember that google search is not good for our purposes, because it returns everything, including garbage sources. This, and this is more adequate. And you may compare it with the results for a really notable topic.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Your "really notable topic" seems the get less hits that this. --Nug (talk) 11:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I see you accepted the idea that gscholar is a good tool to estimate notability. The second step is to learn how to use it properly. You made one mistake by comparison ""mass killings" OR "mass killing" Nazi" and ""mass killings" OR "mass killing" Communist": in most sources belonging to the first category "Nazi" were the perpetrators, not victims or bystanders. By contrast, in many sources from the second category Communists described not only as the perpetrators, but frequently the victims (Indonesia, Nazi Germany, Vietnam), or form historical context for described events. Thus, the Kim's article ("Forgotten war, forgotten massacres—the Korean War (1950–1953) as licensed mass killings") is in actuality about mass killing committed by the US troops. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Add source or 2

Can we add this - just to sources for now ? I think Fiflelfoo had proposed using it earlier and I don't think it should get lost.

• http://www.levandehistoria.se/files/forskningsinventering_EN.pdf Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals, "Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, Research review" ISBN: 978-91-977487-2-8

Also http://books.google.com/books?id=rWxVCz6KUkIC "The Oxford handbook of genocide studies" Oxford Handbooks in History Series, Donald Bloxham, A. Dirk Moses, Editors, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 0199232113, 9780199232116, 675 pages has a good chapter by Werth, especially in his outline of why the term genocide may or may not apply.

I'd think including these as sources should be uncontroversial. Smallbones (talk) 21:40, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Detailed discussion of Karlsson and Schoenhals Crimes against humanity

• Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals (2008) Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, Research review Stockholm: Forum for Living History ISBN: 978-91-977487-2-8

This looks non-controversial for me. I would suggest:

Karlsson and Schoenhals identify three modes of research into crimes against humanity in communist societies. The earliest approach conducted with restricted access to sources was "cumulative" within the totalitarian historiography. With more modern research techniques and access to new sources, the "evolutionary" or revisionist and post-revisionist approaches attempted to revise the previously poor theoretical and factual findings. "Revolutionary" contributions have been major, field changing pieces of research that have polarised the academic community.[footnote at page 8–9; 47] Identifying Conquest's (1968) Great Terror as a field changing work in Soviet studies[fn at 23–24] they note that analysis over the causes and beneficiaries of crimes against humanity is divided in the scholarly community, but that the facts are largely undisputed. Over time studies of Soviet society have moved from a leadership oriented totalitarian thesis, to a broad understanding of generalised culpability.[fn at 26–48, esp 47.] Karlsson and Schoenhals call for an explicitly theoretical comparative research programme that will make up for the current absence of work doing this.[fn at 110–111]

In particular I'd draw editor's attention to their call for a research programme on the basis of an absence of such research at pages 110–111 drawing on their previous lack of discussion of theoretically comparative studies of these societies. This is a data-point in favour of the FRINGE/deletionist approach to this article if editors follow the "collective analysis" approach to article notability and synthesis. For editors who follow the "collective description" approach to article notability and synthesis, this provides another datapoint in favour of editing this article from high quality scholarly research. Other editors should feel free to edit the above towards inclusion into the article based on their own reading of Karlsson and Schoenhals. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:30, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Fifelfoo, can you please briefly summarise what are the two approaches you dubbed "collective analysis" and "collective description"? I would like to be sure we all use the same terminology.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:40, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

A collective description is like such: "A, B and C are dogs and lick their bottoms: A licks his bottom on Monday; B licks her bottom on the rug; C likes to lick his bottom after a run." A collective analysis is like such: "A, B and C are dogs and lick their bottoms as they all want to clean shit away, as all dogs have a drive to biological cleanliness and have a nervous stimulus of pleasure from licking their bottoms." Does this make the distinction clear? One is juxtaposition, even if each case study has an analysis, they are only described as a common set. The other is a common analysis of the set, even if individual instances are described. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Detailed discussion of Werth in Oxford handbook

Werth's chapter is a single society study, and it discusses the Soviet case in a context of continuity/contrast with Tzarist Russia. Can be used in the article written according to the scheme proposed by me and Fred, but not in the article in its present form.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

So it is a single society study, what is the issue here? By way of analogy you are saying we cannot use single tree species studies when adding detail to an article about pine forests? --Nug (talk) 23:12, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

The issue is simple: overwhelming majority of sources dealing with mass deaths in Communist states are single society studies, so they cannot be used as a support of any general claims. Werth's writing are devoted to the USSR, and primarily to just one period of its history. Therefore, it is a good source for the article built according to the scheme proposed by me (and Fred).

Your analogy with trees is flawed because trees have very well and objectively built systematic. By contrast, not only genocidal studies have nothing of that kind, some authors even doubt if such a field has a right to exist, and no commonly accepted terminology exists in this field--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Including both under sources should be noncontroversial

I agree with Fifelfoo that folks should be able to propose their own readings/wording (for both) but I don't see any need to go that far yet. All I want to do as a first step is put them under sources, we can haggle about the wording later, or even whether a paragraph on each can make it in. This should be noncontroversial since they are both obviously reliable sources and discuss issues discussed in the article and on the talk page. The Swedish review because it gives a broad view and says something so commonsense that it absolutely needs to be on the page, (I don't have it in front of me, but something like) "Ideologies don't kill people, people do." The Werth chapter should be included as a source since there has been lots of discussion on this page about the word "genocide" and about Werth's work in general (general support that he's a mainstream scholar). Since he goes through the issues involving the use of the word in the USSR context step by step, it could be very helpful.

I don't see any persuasive argument that we can "include it if the article says xxx, but not include it if the article says yyy." We're simply not there yet as far as what we agree to say in the article, but can we all agree that these are reliable sources and just put them under "sources"? Smallbones (talk) 01:35, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Please, do not misinterpret my words (if you can). If you don't understand why we can "include it if the article says xxx, but not include it if the article says yyy," consider a following example: if the article discusses genocides (in its strict definition), the work about politicide cannot be included, and that is not negotiable (violation of WP:SYNTH). However, if the article discusses broadly understood mass killings, both the sources about genocide and politicide can and should be used. Is it clear now?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:05, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I see a problem with adding a text to the bibliography that we don't use. Adding the first to further reading I'm fine with (I don't have the time to form an editorial opinion on the second, and suspect I can't as my access to Oxford tertiaries is poor). I'd be happy to add K&S2008 to the bibliography, and the article, perhaps under the taxonomy section, "Review articles note that mass killing is perceived in the literature as committed by individuals, and groups of individuals, not ideologies." and ref it to K&S? I'm just wary of adding sources without them actually supporting an assertion, and then the point of the source being lost? Fifelfoo (talk) 02:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The Karlsson source should have been added to the bibliography long ago because it is already used in the article for exactly the purpose that Smallbones has proposed. I think we could all benefit from a careful read-through of the article before further discussing it on this talk page. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:43, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

My apologies - I've been looking for that source for a long time! It's just in the footnotes, but please put it in the bibliography. As for Paul - of course the article is about Mass Killings under Communist Regimes and I can see no reason to exclude material on genocides (a subset of mass killing) and politicides (another subset). Smallbones (talk) 04:02, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

You argue for sake of arguments: as I already explained, the question of appropriateness of some particular source depend on the article's scope. No such topic as Mass Killings under Communist Regimes exists in scholarly literature (except in Wikipedia mirrors), so before starting to talk about belonging or not belonging of genocides and politicides to this topic you should demonstrate it exists at all. And, if you were familiar with the subject you would know that genocide is not a subset of any killing (because some of its forms are non-lethal). Read the genocide convention.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:44, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

@Paul, if I understand it then, your last post appears to advocate that genocide does not belong in an article on mass killing. Well, then let's just rename as I've suggested below, and reorganize content appropriately. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:18, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Please, read my posts carefully. If you come to some odd conclusion, please, read them again. Genocide includes not only physical destruction of some ethnic group, therefore genocide cannot be a subset of "mass killing" (by contrast to Smallbones' wrong assertion). That is what my second and a minor point was about. And, since my first, a major point caused no your objections, I assume you agree with it?--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Was that your contention that "no such topic as Mass Killings under Communist Regimes exists in scholarly literature"? If so, I've responded to TFD's and your editorial ballet elsewhere. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 22:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Either my English is desperate or you are unable to understand even very simple things: I wrote what I wrote, namely, that if some source writes about "Communist genocide", that does not automatically mean that it belongs to this article. My rationale is two-prong: firstly, not all forms of genocide (per UNGC) have a connection to direct killing, or even deaths. Thus, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group is considered as manifestations of genocide in its strict legal definition. However, neither of these two acts are considered as mass killings; secondly, the term "genocide", in addition to its strict legal definition, is being used widely as a metaphor for various forms of lethal and non-lethal violence, as well as for race-mixing (US), drug distribution, burth control, closing of synagogues in the USSR, etc. (Source: Helen Fein. Genocide. A sociologocal perspective. in Genocide: an anthropological reader, Volume 3 of Blackwell readers in anthropology. Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Sociology. Alexander Laban Hinton, ed. Wiley-Blackwell, (2002) ISBN 063122355X, 9780631223559. p. 74) Nothing of that belongs to this article.

I believe I made myself clear enough, however, I do not expect you to apologise for your insulting wording, because you seem to be simply unable to do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

PS By the way, what you really demonstrated by your google search is the virtual absence of this term in scholarly literature.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Clearly, communist genocide which involves killing individuals belongs in this article. That there are arguably aspects of genocide, say, erasing an ethnic group through physical dispersal and forced assimilation, which are not killing is not in dispute. But you cannot simply state genocide is something other than mass killing and go off attempting to nuance genocide away from mass killing and contend there's no scholarly treatment of mass killings under communist regimes.

As for your contending my Google book search testifies to "virtual absence", give me a break. What, after I find 150+ after TFD found only one, you contend, well, if it's not just one, it's still virtually none? How about +"mass killing" +communists returning nearly 8,000 sources?

Regardless, let's take a more credible example of your nearly none, e.g., 3: a Google book search for "trauma induced aphasia" returns only 3 entries, that does not mean that the topic is not medically significant in and of its own right; nor does it mean that there are only 3 sources on the planet which discuss aphasia with respect to traumatic injury to the brain.

We can start having a serious discussion of the topic when editors including yourself stop editorially flailing about in a vain attempt to make the article go away. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 20:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Re "Clearly, communist genocide which involves killing individuals belongs in this article." You understood me correctly. The problem is, however, that, if we use UNGC definition (the only universally accepted one) the amount of such events is almost zero: even the most obvious case as Cambodian genocide is not considered as genocide by authors who are believed to be the expert in this field (Kiernan, if I remember correctly). And importantly, not everything that is colloquially called "communist genocide" is "killing", so not everything that has been labelled "CG" belongs to this article. I

Re google. Both you and TFD use google. That is incorrect. Please, never use raw google results to demonstrate notability (per this). Not all books in your list are reliable sources; as I already explained, gscholar is much more adequate. Not all books found by you tell about mass killings by Communists. Some of them tell about mass killings of Communists (for example 480 out of 8000 tell about killing of Communists in Indonesia); part of books found by you tell about mass killings by the US in Communist led Vietnam, and so on.

Your "trauma induced aphasia" example is not good, because you seem to choose wrong search phrase: this and , especially this is an indication that this concrete phrase, by contrast to your initial guess, is not found in scientific literature (Thompson ISI gives zero results for the exact phrase and 9 results for trauma induced aphasia without quotation marks).--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The words "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes" should not be in bold

No such topic as Mass Killings under Communist Regimes exists in scholarly literature. As you can see, three from five results are the links to Wikipedia mirrors. There is no books that contain such a phrase verbatim (except Wikipedia mirrors). Therefore, the page title is merely descriptive, so it does not need to appear verbatim in the main text, and even if it does it should not be in boldface, per our guidelines. This should be fixed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Indicating the subject matter in bold where it first appears in the lead is consistent with WP article style. I don't see any editorial impetus for this change.

We could move to rename back to communist genocide, a term which does appear in scholarly literature—curiously also as genocide victimizing communists, which is, of course, politicide and not "technically" genocide (pointing to advocacy for "strict" as being the WP:OR/WP:SYNTHESIS here). Article renaming would necessitate dividing the article into genocide, politicide which would be genocide except that getting the convention on genocide signed necessitated eliminating politicide, and mass killings widely alleged to be genocide. As opposed to a narrow definition which would require eliminating all but the first.

Let's please focus on substantive issues. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:13, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Please, read the guidelines. I already explained that it should be in bold only when a subject of the article is not merely descriptive. However, the subject of this article is purely descriptive, so the title does not need to be in the first sentence (and, if it is, it should not be in bold see the quote from the guidelines). Do you have any concrete objection in addition to IDONTLIKEIT?

Re "Communist genocide", we can discuss that option, however, that would require us to dramatically shrink the article's scope. I can provide many reliable sources that clearly and unequivocally say that almost no genocides occurred under Communist rule. BTW, many sources already cited in the article say that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The situation is serious: Wikipedia seems to create a new term that is not found in scholarly literature: as you can see, both gscholar and gbooks demonstrate that several Wikipedia mirror appear that reproduce this non-existing term. In connection to that, due measures should be taken to clarify that the article's title does not refer to any existing concept, but is purely descriptive. The first step is to convert "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes" in the first sentence from bold to plain. Please, provide some sourced arguments that explain why the guidelines should not be applied to this particular case. No vote, please.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:26, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The applicable words in the MoS are: The most common use of boldface is to highlight the article title, and often synonyms, in the lead section (first paragraph). [6]. The article title is the article title, and it is proper to place the article title in boldface per the Wikipedia Manual of Style. If the title is not in the opening sentence, then it obviously is not bolded in the opening sentence. That does not appear to be the case here. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:54, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If you work with the sources equally selectively... The MoS you quoted just explains what is the reason for using boldface, and, importantly, it clearly sais that there are exceptions. These exceptions have been quoted by me: purely descriptive titles should not appear in boldface. Please, explain, why the words "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes" is not a purely descriptive title, otherwise, the boldface will be replaced with plain text.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Paul is right about this. The relevant passage can be read at MOS:BOLDTITLE#Format of the first sentence: "If the page title is descriptive it does not need to appear verbatim in the main text, and even if it does it should not be in boldface.". AmateurEditor (talk) 23:29, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I believe the Peters' and Collect's concern have been addressed, and they have no new objections. I think, it is a time to bring the first sentence in accordance with MOS:BOLDTITLE#Format of the first sentence.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I see no fresh objections against the proposed change; since old objections seem to be addressed, be can go to the next phase.

No such topic as Mass Killings under Communist Regimes exists in scholarly literature. As you can see, three from five results are the links to Wikipedia mirrors. There is no books that contain such a phrase verbatim (except Wikipedia mirrors). Therefore, the page title is merely descriptive, so it does not need to appear verbatim in the main text, and even if it does it should not be in boldface, per our guidelines; per our MOS:BOLDTITLE#Format of the first sentence, I request the words Mass killings under Communist regimes in the first sentence of the lede to be converted to the plain text (Mass killings under Communist regimes). This my proposal has been supported by one editor (AmateurEditor), and initially objected by two users, PЄTЄRS J V, and Collect, who seem to misread the MOS, and, after their mistake has been explained to them, provided no fresh arguments against the proposed edit. Therefore, all legitimate concerns have been addressed, and I believe we have consensus here.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• There is no consensus for this change - please note that the only way a change can be made on this page is by consensus. Paul has a very strange way of determining what a consensus is, which is not supported by a consensus of the editors here. I frankly find Paul's reasoning on this to be simply bizarre. Is there any precedent anywhere in Wikipedia for such a change? How would it improve the article? Any admin who is considering making such a change should very seriously read the procedures at the top of this page imposed on this article. Smallbones (talk) 04:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

My understanding of consensus is quite adequate: it is a decision that takes into account all the legitimate concerns raised. You cannot simply write "I find it bizarre", you are expected to provide some rationale (especially when the opinion you oppose to is supported by direct reference to our MOS). What concrete reason is behind your objection? Absence of precedent? The examples of correct usage of bold text are provided there. I expect to see something concrete from you, because your "bizarre" is counter-productive and offensive.

The reference to consensus gives you no right to arbitrarily approve/reject any change you like/dislike: if you have some arguments/sources, please, share with us, and we will discuss them together. However, if you have nothing to present, I doubt you have a right to speak about your participation in the consensus building process.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:34, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the bold as requested. User:Vecrumba and User:Collect did not return to the discussion after 10 days so I must assume there concerns have been resolved. User:Smallbones has not actually stated what his objections are so I am unable to take them on board. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:09, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

POV

The article has multiple POV issues. Below is a description of two of them.

1. The opening sentence contains a reference to the source that is not universally supported by scholarly community. The criticism have been presented there(do not reproduce to save a talk page's space). No counter-arguments have been provided so far against this serious criticism, so the source and the statement it supports are not neutral ("Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts.")
2. The section "Comparison with other mass killings" relies upon such controversial writer as Goldhagen, who has been extensively criticized by peers for "worse than inadequate research base" and one sided opinions. By contrast, the views of Wheatcroft, Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann, eds, ‘Roter Holocaust’? Kritik des Schwarzbuchs des Kommunismus [A ‘Red Holocaust’? A Critique of the Black Book of Communism], Hamburg, Konkret Verlag Literatur, 1998; ISBN 3–89458–169–7;], Le siècle des communismes (Michel Dreyfus, ed. Editions de l'Atelier, 2000 ISBN 2708235168, 9782708235168) and many other authors, who express a directly opposite viewpoint, are not represented in the section.
   There is a serious disagreement about these issues, as well as about many others, and its solution may take long time. Meanwhile, it is necessary to inform a reader that the article is not deemed neutral by several contributors. Therefore, a POV tag must be added to this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

 Administrator note Do other editors agree that the {{POV}} tag is warranted? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:32, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with keeping the tag. The death toll range used is not accepted in most serious writing and the lead does not explain what connection exists between the different countries. TFD (talk) 16:54, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Clearly the tag is warranted. Writegeist (talk) 17:12, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The tag is not warrnated - it is present as a "mark of shame" and is kept there by some who have repeatedly argued for deletion of the article at AfD, or argued for deletion of the article on the article talk page. Clearly anyone who iterates a desire to delete an article ought not seek them to maintain a POV tag which is not warranted otherwise. Such is not a proper use of the POV tag, as clearly stated in that template discussion. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:59, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Collect, please, provide at least one source that explicitly questions the (well sourced) criticism presented by me. Otherwise, your posts contain nothing but civil POV pushing.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:04, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Cavils about who did what, and personal opinions as to what they ought or ought not to do, are irrelevant to the fact that the article - as e.g. Paul Siebert ably and repeatedly demonstrates in his tireless efforts to help us understand and redress its shortcomings - has numerous POV issues. Non-neutrality is misleading. Readers (who may be ignorant of the unreliability of WP's politically- and/or ideologically-tinged articles) should be warned not be misled. To achieve NPOV, this article needs additional insight. Therefore it needs to attract the attention of editors with different viewpoints. Writegeist (talk) 21:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The template usage notes explicitly states: "Do not use this template to "warn" readers about the article." --Nug (talk) 23:14, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

That your objection is reasonable. However, your reverence to the RfC is hardly relevant, because the question is not in presenting (or not presenting) the figures, but in undue weight given to the Black Book in the lede and the article. Importantly, that is just one of several issues (another one is Goldhagen and Rummel), I can list more.
And, taking into account that the RfC you refer to has died (noone has commented during last week, and the total amount of comments was unsatisfactory low), the idea that no new users are needed seems rather odd.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:33, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

@Nug: I have amended accordingly. Writegeist (talk) 00:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• Not warranted. This request for an article wide tag appears to be somewhat WP:POINTy, when an {{POVinline}} would do. In anycase a POV tag is meant to attract new editors to an article with fresh insight, but every one and their dog who is interested knows about it, it has been discussed on this talk page for ages and it is subject to an ongoing RFCs Talk:Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#RfC_on_death_estimates_in_the_article.27s_opening_sentences. So I don't see how adding a tag helps build concensus. --Nug (talk) 19:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
• I have to agree with Nug. Given the edit restrictions "SOFIXIT" is a more productive use of time than slapping a tag on an article that's edit locked, and receives a high degree of editorial attention from a number of expert editors. Fifelfoo (talk) 19:41, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Martin and Fifelfoo. The POV tag is aimed not only to attract fresh input, but also to inform a reader that the article is not neutral. The reference to SOFIXIT is obscure for me taking into account that no changes have been supported by consensus since the moment the article has been locked. We must inform a reader about the article's problems, which are not likely to be resolved in close future, hence the tag.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:46, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

@Fifelfoo: I'd have to agree disagree that the article gets much outside opinion. The talk page seems to have only a handful of editors. A tag could help change that. BigK HeX(talk) 06:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• Not warranted. The POV objected to is actually quite a standard academic point of view and is well referenced. An opposing POV is also included, even though it is not very well referenced, and appears to be border-line WP:Fringe. Per our WP:NPOV policy all reasonable POVs should be included, especially the mainstream one. Per Collect - I think the POV tag is intended to be used here as a "badge of shame", some folks just don't want to see some relevant, mainstream, reliably sourced material in the article. Smallbones (talk) 20:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Had the POV objected to been actually quite a standard academic point of view, you would be able to provide at least one source refuting the criticism presented by me. However, you totally failed to do that. Therefore, your post is totally unsubstantiated. No vote, please.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:30, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

When you very pointedly try to refute the responses of 4 of the 6 editors who respond to the admin's question, you are clearly showing what kind of consensus there is here. Smallbones (talk) 22:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, do not count votes, that is a bad practice, per our policy. Secondly, in by pre3vious post I simply refuted your blatantly false statement (you failed to demonstrate that "The POV objected to is actually quite a standard academic point of view and is well referenced", and repeated false arguments do not make your position stronger). In addition, two of four users simply do not see a need in additional input (they left the POV issue beyond the scope).--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

• In terms of attracting the attention of editors with different insights, a POV tag isn't necessary since the RFC is still attracting comments[7]. --Nug (talk) 03:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Then please direct me to the policy statement that RFC is a substitute for a POV tag. Writegeist (talk) 03:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• Warranted. Anything reasonable that could help bring in fresh eyes is A-OK by me. BigK HeX(talk) 06:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

 Added. Despite the significant opposition to adding the tag, several editors have opined that the tag is appropriate. This is sufficient evidence for me that there is indeed a dispute about the neutrality of the article. I'm not sure whether this will bring many new eyes to the debate, but the tag should probably not remain indefinitely. I propose to remove it in a month, unless the dispute is miraculously resolved before then. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a mistake as it violates the edit restrictions imposed at the top of the page. A real consensus must be established to make changes to the page. But as long as the POV tag is automatically removed in 30 days, I think most folks can live with it.

The major problem is that Paul wants to get around the edit restrictions and impose his own POV here, by claiming that everything he objects to has to be removed according to policy. Including a POV tag which is being used as a "Badge of Shame" on the claim of "It has to on account of Policy!" is a very bad precedent. POV tag placement is a matter of policy? - I don't think so. Another bad precedent is rewarding Paul's practice of badgering admins until he gets what he wants. This practice of his has been noted elsewhere [8]. Smallbones (talk) 13:44, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect it seems no more helpful to ascribe base motives to the good Mr. Dr. Siebert than it is to ascribe them to you. Writegeist (talk) 18:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Writegeist. One minor point: I am a PhD, so Dr Siebert would be more correct :).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

My apologies, and thank you for the correction! Writegeist (talk) 20:28, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Do not apologise. In actuality, I do not pay any attention to such nuances. You may use whatever sautation you want when you address to me, and that will be ok if you will treat my arguments seriously. Non-serious treatment of other's argumentation is the only thing that really offends me.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Smallbones' "Paul's practice of badgering admins", just compare the amount of posts another party made on the Ed's talk page with my humble contribution, and you will see who is badgering in actuality. You definitely are not able to treat information in neutral way. Please, remove this sentence. I have tolerated such personal attacks long enough, so I cannot rule out a possibility that my patience may be exhausted in close future. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

@Paul, just to clarify for others (and to avoid anyone thinking there's a potential for WP:COI), you are not history or political science, correct? PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 22:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

For some reason (both you and I know it, and both you and I prefer not to name it), you KNOW that, although I am PhD, I am NOT a doctor of history or political science. Therefore, the your question is just a provocation.

If I were a historian or a political scientist, I would probably be more tolerant to the liberal way you treat sources. However, in my area of experience, people do not write so inaccurately and irresponsively, because everything should obey some elementary rules of logic.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I was actually going to phrase my post as a statement without the question, but any contentions about one editor by another should be phrased in a manner so that the editor discussed can choose to respond as they see fit. There are new editors on this page who do not know you. That you feel provoked does not mean I provoked you or intended to. And, of course, I have my reciprorcal, after a fashion, opinion of your treatment of sources as well.

Regarding intellectual rigor, if you'd like to debate a topic of contention in your area of expertise, whatever it is, I'd be a willing and honored participant in such a debate. As long as it's not Schrödinger's wave equation or similar, I've retired quantum chemistry and advanced physics from my brain. (Perhaps there's an article somewhere else on WP where we could mutually practice such rigor?) PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 20:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you don't understand veiled hints, let me remind you that, if I understand some third-party explanations correctly, Biophys and some other members of you-know-what team were discussing my humble person privately, and one of conclusions was that my expertise is likely to be close to that of Biophys. Therefore, I cannot be a PhD in history, and you know about that.

I do not edit Wikipedia articles which fall into my area of expertise for two reasons. Firstly, those articles are in relatively good shape, and, in my opinion, need in just minor occasional correction, which I can do even anonymously. Secondly, the state of some history related articles is so terrible that prolonged discussions similar to this one take all my free time. However, you are quite able to help me to save my time if you accept my arguments, which would be quite sufficient to convince any of my real life colleagues, had the dispute been about some questions falling into my area of expertise.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, then we shall simply continue to engage in our mutual field of avocation. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 22:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Where Paul is erring, it seems to me on reading the above, is he is attempting apply the rigour found in hard science upon the soft science of history and political science. --Nug (talk) 01:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I think the origin of my "error" can be found in our NPOV policy. The problem with fuzzy logic, typical for many history and political writings, inevitably leads to possibility of description of the same events in several, sometimes mutually exclusive ways. However, since we cannot create several articles on the same subject, we need to combine all sources within the same article. The only non-self-contradictory way for doing that is to separate universally accepted facts and opinions from various mutually contradicting assertions. That is the idea I am trying to explain to you, and I cannot believe that your refusal to understand that is a result of my insufficient English writing abilities.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:31, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I am glad you've come around, then, to an inclusive use of sources as opposed to advocating for which don't belong, are improperly nuanced, etc. So we can include both Courtois' math on the essays in BB as well as Werth's criticism thereof with his own calculation of low to high. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 02:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Please, do not misinterpret my position. I never argued against inclusive use of reliable sources. I never requested disputable sources to be removed from the article completely. The only thing I advocate is placement of disputable sources to the appropriate sections, not to the lede.

I explained that many, many times, and I presented many arguments that you failed to address. In connection to that, tell me please, what concrete objections do you have against moving the BB from the lede to a more appropriate section? And, if you have no objections, why are you still opposing to that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

By the way, you still provided no proof that Werth did his own calculations of the scale of mass killings under Communist regimes worldwide. And, in addition, how do you propose to treat numerous sources that do not characterise the largest part of Communism related mass mortality (famine and deportation deaths) as mass killings? These sources are numerous, and we cannot ignore them per NPOV and per your self-imposed inclusive principle of usage of sources. --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 24 December 2011

Wikify Promethean 7&6=thirteen (☎) 02:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

7&6=thirteen (☎) 02:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

No can do - we don't wikify words within quotations: see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking. AndyTheGrump (talk)

East Turkestan

In the Chinese section, East Turkestan should be mentioned.--98.196.232.128 (talk) 01:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Notable executioners

Possibly add Che Guevara as some source put his personal execution count at thousands. http://www.reds-on.postalstamps.biz/Cuba/che.htm http://politicalvelcraft.org/2010/01/25/che-guevara-the-barbarian-motivated-by-power-executioner-of-14000-boys-men-and-the-useful-idiots-who-worship-him-in-romanticism/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.214.36 (talk) 09:58, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Che Guevara was basically a Nazi. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 00:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

That is ridiculous. I see no indication of Guevara's adherence to the ideas of National socialism. In addition, the article does not discuss Cuban mass killings (probably, because they never occurred).--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Wrong. According to Objectivist Professor of Philosophy Stephen Hicks of Rockford College–quoting the part of this article in which he is quoted–
"in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives", in socialism "practice has time and again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships prior to the twentieth century. Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale."[39]
That means this article will not be complete until we discuss mass killings under each socialist regime. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 05:51, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Disagree. Cuba is not listed among the countries where mass killings occurred.−

Regarding Hicks, it is just an opinion of one liberal author. Other authors, including Valentino, who argued that most Communist regimes had not been engaged in mass killings, directly disagrees with that your thesis.

In addition, Hicks' statement contains pure logical fallacy: whereas every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, almost every liberal capitalist country has an equally solid record for being barbaric, be it the US mass killing of native Americans, starvation of Indian or Irish population as a result of destruction of traditional economy by British administration, mass killings of African population by various European colonial regimes, etc. Similarly, many socialist states have a record of being human: thus, the dramatic and sharp increase of life expectancy in the USSR during XX century can be compared only with similar jump in Japan, and it had no other precedents in human history.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

To compare 20th Century communist practice with 18th/19th Century Western practice is to admit that modern Communism was no more advanced than Western society of over 100 years earlier, is a line of argument you really do not want to follow. The majority of American native Indians died through their lack of immunity to diseases imported from Europe rather than any active policy on the part of European settlers. Do you have a page reference to Valentino's argument that most Communist regimes had not been engaged in mass killings, I do not recall reading it. --Nug (talk) 09:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

What does that have to do with the topic of this discussion thread? TFD (talk) 13:14, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

TFD, you are right, all of that has no relation to this thread. However, the point raised by Nug has a direct relation to the article's subject, and this point is quite valid. As many authors noted, most Communist regimes came to power in less developed societies. Whereas most Western societies were less barbaric in XX century (although such incidents as man made famine in India or Africa under Western rule occurred in XX century too), most pre-Communist societies in China, Russia, Cambodia etc were pretty barbaric. That is a line of arguments that can be found in reliable sources, and this is a line we need to follow. Communist societies were not more advanced simply by virtue of poorer starting conditions than Western societies, so it is not correct to compare them directly.

Re "Do you have a page reference..." Not only I do, but I have already presented this quote on this talk page repeatedly. Look through archives, or open his chapter 4 and try to read.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:13, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

You say this Communist societies were not more advanced simply by virtue of poorer starting conditions than Western societies, so it is not correct to compare them directly but what about north korea and south korea or china and taiwan or compare west and east germany. All the countries in these comparisons were at the same stage before one became communist but the non communist one developed and improved far more rapidlly than there communist counterpart.