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Discuss Controversy Solzhenitsyn, etc. versus Getty on Vast Gulag Death Toll Differences

Referenced in the A. Solzhenitsyn Wikipedia article is Getty's claims that the Gulag death tolls were about 1.5 million. This is a major controversy (as Solzhenitsyn, others estimate the Soviet death toll as many many millions higher). It calls into question Solzhenitsyn's Gulag and other works about the Gulag camp system.

As Getty's works are apparently used in various university sources, (noted in references in this article) we have a major paradigm shift from the 1970's when I was in college and the Gulag books burst onto the scene and were basically accepted as true.

On the other hand, the Wikipedia GULAG article provides various sourced details about the Soviet camp (gulag) system. These references would seem to generally go along with Solzhenitsyn's larger death estimates and many descriptions of abuses and murders.

Persons (like me) who are new to this controversy (Getty's LOW gulag death toll vs. Solzhenitsyn's HIGHER estimated death toll- would want to see this controversy discussed by scholars. It would be nice to see this incredible difference of mass murder numbers solved. Is Getty's very modest death number correct? Or is Solzhenitsyn's much higher numbers correct?

Or is the controversy still to be solved, but can neutral Wikipedia scholars summarize the main issues to be addressed?Victorianezine (talk) 16:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

There is no "controversy" here. Solzhenitsyn based his estimates on guesses and baseless fantasies, whereas Getty uses extensive archival data and statistics. The archives released in 1991, used by Getty in his research, disprove Solzhenitsyn's absurd estimates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.215.36.178 (talk) 07:57, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Then the broader question remains why the Wikipedia Gulag article is still using references and sources from along the same lines of research as Solzhenitsyn if these are contradictory to the priorly confidential historical data.50.135.124.85 (talk) 07:25, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

04:54, 28 August 2016 (UTC)04:54, 28 August 2016 (UTC)~~

Revisionist label in the lead

The question of whether Getty is to be described as "revisionist" in the lead. Firstly, several sources cited above (this) and this) refer to Getty's "revisionist" work, not Getty as a "revisionist historian" (several do say the latter). Secondly, do most of the scholarly sources describe him as "revisionist"? That has not been argued, let alone shown. Thirdly, a description can be accurate without being the primary or even useful descriptor. Niall Ferguson is conservative, Robert Conquest was anti-Communist, E. H. Carr was leftist somewhat sympathetic to communism: none of them are described with a descriptor. Eric Hobsbawm is indeed described as Marxist, so there's that on the other side. The question is: what does the insertion of the label "revisionist" add except giving a faint aura of "not mainstream"? I am removing it for now since I do not think WP:ONUS is satisfied. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:31, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing it from the lead entirely since "revisionism" is already mentioned in body. Anything but "is an American revisionist historian" in the opening sentence is OK by me. Having said that, the POV issues identified by Brustopher seem more serious, so I hope we won't get bogged down arguing over label placement. Guccisamsclubs (talk) 01:57, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
This isnt just a vague descriptor, revisionism was clearly defined school of thought in Soviet historiography that was opposed to the approach of the totalitarian school. Authors such as Sheila Fitzpatrick self-identified as revisionists (don't know if Getty did), and its a commonly used label when discussing the works of historians of the Soviet Union such as Getty. To leave it out of the lede would be like writing an article on Marc Bloch and failing to mention the Annales School in the lede. Revisionism isnt a dirty word in historiography and doesnt mean "not mainstream." Indeed some revisionist schools such as that of the English Reformation are very much more mainstream than those they were initially "revising" (for lack of a better word). It's only bc we live in bizarro-world of Wikipedia, where bands of "rational skeptics" roam the land making every single article all about them and how great they are at debunking things, that the title of revisionism (appropriated by the Nazis and holocaust deniers for credibility) is associated with pseudohistory. Brustopher (talk) 10:13, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree. To put it simple, his work was described as "revisionist" in almost every 3rd party source, especially by people who do not belong to his "school". Perhaps this should be clarified/balanced by quoting/using more sources. Now, speaking about our rules, word "revisionist" was on the page for a long time, i.e. in stable version. If anyone wants to remove it, he needs consensus to remove. My very best wishes (talk) 12:32, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

The term "revisionist" is an opinion, properly cited and used as such in the body of the BLP, but it is not an obvious "fact" to be used in Wikipedia's voice about the person. One does not need special consensus to remove an united claim from the lead of a BLP, moreover. As it is a contentious label, it requires a positive consensus for insertion here. Collect (talk) 13:07, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Collect, why did you write that "Getty established himself as a forerunner among historians of the Soviet Union"? None of sources tells such a thing. He is just an author of a few revisionist books on the subject. Nothing more. My very best wishes (talk) 13:33, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
I think the word "forerunner" was already in the article - I certainly do not recall adding it. My aim was to remove the use of "revisionist" as a fact in Wikipedia's voice here. Collect (talk) 15:18, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
OK, I fixed it. No objections to adding more sources and expanding - per Brustopher and others. My very best wishes (talk) 15:42, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
@Brustopher: I am aware that there are "revisionist" works and one can talk about a Soviet revisionist school. Nobody is questioning the mentioning of revisionism in the article. The issue is whether it needs to be specified in the lead as a primary descriptor: "revisionist historian". Even in the Marc Bloch article, he is simply described as a historian who founded the Annales school. Also, unlike the latter case, where the Annales school is well-known and wikilinked, here the term is vague: the wikilinked Historical revisionism says virtually nothing about Soviet historiography. Or take another example: Raul Hilberg. There were these major debates over functionalist and intentionalist positions on the Holocaust. One does not however use a descriptor for Raul Hilberg in the lead to define which school they belonged to. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 16:45, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia in my experience has very little information on historiography in general. The lack of info on Wikipedia about these topics does not mean there are not distinguished schools of thought for approaching Soviet Studies (totalitarian, revisionist, post-revisionist etc.) Getty being a revisionist is not a contentious descriptor. "Revisionist" is not a dirty word just because charlatan pseudohistorians have appropriated it, just as "skeptic" is not a dirty word just because people go around calling themselves "climate change skeptics." It is commonly accepted and in no way controversial that Getty is a revisionist historian his detractors (Malia, Conquest) refer to him as such, his defenders (Fox who I've added to the article, Fitzpatrick) refer to him as such. If your issue is with it being in the lede sentence, how about it being mentioned later in the lede? Brustopher (talk) 18:44, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
"Later in the lede?" The lead is one sentence long, and is a summary of who the person is. The "revisionist" claim, which is an opinion, is properly presented in the body of this very short BLP. Collect (talk) 18:54, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Arch Getty is a historian, period, end of statement. That he was part of the movement towards social history and non-polemical political history begun by Carr and Deutscher and Co. in the 1950s and carried forward by Cohen and Fitzpatrick in the 1970s and exploding to take over the profession in the 1980s is part of his story — but it is a story that needs to be told intelligently by people who know what happened and why, not to be butchered and turned into polemical attack by disgruntled nationalists and anti-communist POV warriors... Carrite (talk) 19:42, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Removal of sourced text

This edit. Two points here.

  1. The references to books have been provided by other users with pages. So unless you check these sources yourself (they are not easily accessible) and tell they are not telling what was claimed, this is going to stay per WP:AGF.
  2. According to the source I checked (here), "One of Getty’s more significant contributions to revisionism was the shifting of blame for the bloody purges from Stalin to Nikolai Yezhov". He sees "Great Terror as the consequence of the USSR’s newfound social mobility and concludes that in such chaotic political flux inadvertent atrocities were bound to be committed.". If you want this be included as direct quotation, that's fine. My very best wishes (talk) 20:46, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
A quick Google search shows a number of scholarly books where Getty was described as an obviously "revisionist" historian, for example: [1] , [2] [3],[4], not mentioning other publications, such as "Stalin's New American Apologists" by The Weekly Standard which may be biased, but still a valid RS. Look at this book published by Oxford University Press, for example, [5], pages 116-117. My very best wishes (talk) 23:25, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
I reverted that edit. When the revisionist school has been discussed in journals like World Affairs and Intelligence and National Security Taylor&Francis, it is definitely due to present in the article. --Pudeo' 04:55, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree. As long as multiple scholarly books (e.g. by Oxford University Press here) describe Getty as a revisionist historian he should be mentioned as such. And this very source explains what "historical revisionism" means in this particular case. It tells (on page 116): "This approach [by Getty and others] is similar in many ways to the line taken by the revisionist school in Germany, with its opposition to moral condemnation of Nazism, its call to "historicize" Nazism, and its objection to such crude terms as "heroes" and "villains". My very best wishes (talk) 16:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes there are sources that call him revisionist, but ALL of them refer a book written 1985. So its highly misleading to imply that these attacks on Getty's "revisionism" take into account his voluminous later work. And Getty's main "revisionist" sin appears to be his thesis that Stalin was far from the only one to blame, and that other apparatchiks also had a stake in the purges. His argument is that the culprit was the system. The thesis is seems pretty sensible and is in fact more damning of the Soviet system that "traditional" Stalin-centric accounts.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 00:22, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Getty is definitely within the revisionist school and people who agree with him such as Fitzpatrick described themselves as within a self-identified revisionist school (can't recall if he does). However, this article clearly seems to be biased against Getty by ommission, leaving out the nature of his later work in the archives which is far less dubious. I would remedy this but I've recently graduated and lost access to all my resources. Furthmore, while I may remembering completely wrong I dont believe Getty ever denied responsibility to Stalin completely for the purges (and the one source mvbw quoted doesnt seem to necessarily indicate this. Also there's an article in Kritika 5:1 in response to Martin Malia (which I no longer have access too), which is a really good rebuttal to comparisons between Getty and Irving that have been included in this article, and probably needs to be included for the sake of balance. If anyone has access to this can they please add it. For the time being I'm adding a NPOV tag.Brustopher (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
If you want to include more sourced materials that describe his work in a more "positive" light, you are very welcome. There is no any disagreement about it, and therefore no reason for NPOV tag. My very best wishes (talk) 13:18, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
@Brustopher:. I am not saying that Getty's work is not "revisionist". The problem is how the term is used in the article. First, "American revisionist historian" is used to define Getty in the lede sentence. "Revisionist" is not definitive in the same way that "American historian" is. But even worse than this, is how the term "revisionism" is itself defined further down. The article cites only attacks on Getty, which paint Getty's revisionism as: part of a "gaggle"; analogous to holocaust denier David Irving; a "rehabilitation of Stalin". And as we both agree, the article takes his outdate Origins of the Great Purges as the point of departure to attack his revisionism, ignoring all later work. All in all, "revisionist" is used in the article as a slur that sets the tone for an attack piece, not as a neutral description of his work. This is why I recommended moving the term out of the lede sentence.
Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree with your points about neutrality. You don't need your institution to get the sources—you can get them all from sci(dash)hub(dot)cc.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 14:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
He is usually mentioned in sources as a "revisionist sovietologist", i.e. here. Others describe him as "Stalin's apologist" [6], and this is not based on any his individual book, but based on everything he published. No wonder, because he claims that Great Purge was not planned by Stalin, among other things. My very best wishes (talk) 15:50, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Have you read Getty? Can you cite where he says Stalin was not to blame? If so add it to the article.
American Neocon publications (weekly standard and to a lesser extent world affairs) are not sufficient to label a living person as "Stalin apologist". Clearly, Soviet studies are a politicized field due to the Cold War, so it's not surprising to see some axe-grinding and insults in print. It is therefore easy to cherry pick the most extreme attacks on Getty and make an article out of them, ignoring what Getty actually wrote and ignoring the hundreds of academic sources that take his work seriously. This article basically likens him to David Irving and that's absolutely insane.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 16:20, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Having read through my old history notes again, Getty doesn't say that Stalin isnt to blame and has no responsibility. He instead says that he is rejected a "Great men" style of history and instead focusing on the structural causes of the Great Terror within society and the state (letter to the editors of Kritika 5:1), and that the style of Marxist ideology of the Soviet Union required the creation of paranoid conspiracies in response to failuire (Road to Terror, written with Naumov). The style this article is written however does seem to imply that he's a dodgy Stalin lover. In particular the way the Kirov question was put right after the thing about Irving to equate the question of who was responsible for Kirov's assassination (by no means a solved question) to Holocaust denial. The praise Getty's later work has received from people who are undeniably 100% anti-Stalinist such as Roy Medvedev, make the weighting of this article very biased. Also on a more negative note, Getty pre-archival numbers for victims of the purges were notoriously low, so if there's anywhere it's right for the article to be more negative it's there. With regards to the revisionism label, would it help if I include a link to historical revisionism in the lede? Getty is basically one of the most well known historians of the Soviet Revisionist school, so to leave out the fact that he is a Revisionist from the lede would be a grave omission. Brustopher (talk) 22:31, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

The lede is fine for now, although I still think its a good idea to remove "revisionist" from the lede definition, if not necessarily the lead section. I would not be surprised at all if Getty's numbers from the 1980's were notoriously low, but I've searched his landmark Origins and found no estimates of any kind there. The only citable secondary source I found on this is Haynes & Kler's In Denial, a book devoted to smoking out academics perceived as soft on Communism. If Getty ever put out a low estimate, I am sure they'd be all over it:

In Denial is a one of the more worthwhile citations in the article (unlike World Affairs and Conquest's letters to the editor), though it needs to be cited a little more accurately and not in Wikipedia's voice. Quotes from Getty on this issue would be helpful too. On the other hand, Getty repeatedly cites Khrushchev's claim about Stalin signing several hundreds lists of victims, so I am not sure how far H&K's allegation that Getty saw stalin as a "moderate" who was not responsible for much repression can be taken.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 23:49, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I am Arch Getty, the author in question. I don't know if it's proper for me to be here, nor do I understand how to use it. Anyway, I have indeed added clarifications, data, and recommended readings to the page. Each time, within days (or as in the last case) hours, someone comes in and deletes my additions and changes and re-introduces baseless attacks, including even insisting on a false job title for me after I had corrected it! By the way, does anybody know if I have any recourse to stop this? Archgetty (talk) 04:54, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Please see WP:COI. You tell: "each time within days or ... hours", but you edited this page only twice [7]. Did you also edit this page using other accounts? My very best wishes (talk) 12:36, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Not at home right now so can't give a detailed response to your questions. Just one tip, make sure not to use the word "defamatory" in anything you post here or else people will try and get you blocked on a bureaucratic technicality. Will give a more detailed explanation of how to navigate this hellhole of a website soon although it probably worth reading the COI thing mvbw linked.. Brustopher (talk) 12:56, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Right now I can see one IP address who was obviously him, and at lest two named accounts who might be him. No, WP:SOCK is not a technicality. My very best wishes (talk) 13:21, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Are you trying to get him blocked or something? I have to say that's pretty low.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 16:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
No, I only gave him links to relevant WP policies/guidelines and asked him a simple question at this point. This is a reasonable question. My very best wishes (talk) 16:29, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia is enough of a bureaucratic nightmare than one does not need to add to it. If the account/IP is indeed J. Arch Getty, it would be better to cut them some slack. It's their biography after all. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 16:37, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
MVBW the technicality I was referring to is that oft weaponised delightful policy known as WP:NLT, which gets sprung on people complaining about their biography the second they mention words like "defamatory" that have legal usage. That said, I agree with what Kingsindian has written above. @Archgetty: Your best bets at correcting false or misleading information about yourself is by posting about it on WP:BLPN, and asking for help there. Alternatively there is something akin to a customer support service called WP:OTRS, but keep in mind its heavily backlogged. Editing your article is usually a bad idea and at the very best frowned upon. Best not to do it unless something evidently and obviously false is added, or if it is vandalised. What issues do you currently have with this article?Brustopher (talk) 18:48, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
I have already posted on WP:BLPN and Wikiproject Russia, by the way. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:48, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Brustopher is 100% on the mark with everything he says above, this speaking as someone who did a year of grad school in Russian area studies in the late 1980s and was an outspoken revisionist at a school (University of Washington) dominated by traditionalists. Since then, the archives have opened, and what do you know, the scholarly estimates of executions in the Terror of 1937-38 by historians like Jerry Hough and Arch Getty (< 1 million) turned out to be on the mark, vs. the gross exaggerations for political effect by traditionalist/totalitarian school historians like Conquest and Solzhenitsyn, who argued tens of millions. The so-called revisionists were more or less right, the conservatives way off — imagine that. Today the big majority of historians of the Soviet Union in the United States are more or less new historians/cultural historians/social historians/bottom-up historians (whatever you want to call the so-called Revisionists) and the number of Cold War totalitarian sword clangers is very small — basically because their fundamental premise of an unchanging totalitarianism, unchangeable through internal forces, was belied by Gorbachev and the events after.
This doesn't keep a certain number of anti-communists, predominantly from Eastern Europe, from churning the old mill. That esteemed UCLA full professor Arch Getty's BLP is nothing more than a football for POV warriors is pretty disgusting, but nothing new. Carrite (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Job title

Can someone confirm Getty's job title? The IP added "Distinguished Professor of History" in this edit, but I can't confirm it. If it is confirmed, I suggest we phrase it a la the phrasing in the Niall Ferguson article. Niall Campbell Ferguson is a British historian from Scotland. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:12, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, according to University website [8] he is a "Professor", not a "Distinguished Professor of History". Keep in mind that red-linked account and IP can be an impostor or whoever. But it does not really matter. The edit was unsourced. That matters. My very best wishes (talk) 00:54, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
According to this source, he is indeed a "Distinguished Professor of History", but I don't find the source to be totally firm. If some better source is found, it would be good. Yes, I am aware that the IP could be an impostor, but one need not be needlessly bureaucratic about the matter. People underestimate how confusing Wikipedia editing can be to people who aren't experienced. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:07, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Getty in the Russian review discussing his views on the responsibility of Stalin and revisionism (pertinent to the debates above)

I feel obligated to reply directly to Cohen's and Kenez's criticism of revisionists on the terror question since some of their points relate to my work and because I respect and admire their earlier scholarly contributions. [...] Similarly, it is ridiculous and demonstrably false to argue that these works "absolve the leadership from responsibility for mass murder." As early as page 9 of my book, I gave Stalin "primary responsibility" for these events." [9] Here are other articles in which Getty presents himself as a revisionist historian.[10][11] Brustopher (talk) 19:35, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Here's how I'd summarize the so-called revisionist perspective, speaking as one. "Old historiography was the saga of great men doing great things, in which broad movements, sweeping social events, and protracted demographic and societal trends and tendencies were reduced to the heroic activity of a handful of political leaders — Good George Washington and Bad King George, Abraham LIncoln freed the slaves, what have you. Reality is actually complex, with the activity of individuals and congregations of individuals in social classes as well as local and regional political actors impacting policy. Traditionalist historiography of the Soviet Union reduced the great bulk of all history to the conscious decision-making of a small handful of leaders — the will of The Great Stalin, arch-demon, founder of an unchanging totalitarian system that must be fought at all costs by any means necessary (note the domestic current policy implications here, which were of the greatest import). The "new historians," if you will, felt that this was a great oversimplification verging on absurdity. The USSR was actually dynamic, always evolving, and had, in actual fact, a civil society as well as local and regional political actors which concretely impacted policy; the telling of what happened and why devoid of serious analysis of society and regional actors was superficial at best and an incomprehensible distortion at worst. Stalin was ultimately responsible for the stupidities, crimes, and violence of the USSR owing to his place in the political firmament, but attempting to understand that regime and its actions without a comprehension of his social base of support, countervailing forces of society, and practical motivation behind policy decision-making (no matter how wrongheaded or violent) resulted in the writing of bad history.
It should also be added that the "new social historians" were generally political liberals and socialists opposed to the arms race and the mutual militarism of the conservative elites in both the USSR and the USA and that there were definite contemporary domestic policy implications associated with this world view. This is what powered and embittered what should have been a simple historical debate: it was a food fight between the right and the left. Carrite (talk) 16:11, 29 August 2016 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 16:19, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Note also that the first revisionist/traditionalist debate took place in the field of diplomatic history and the history of the cold war (William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperowitz, David Horowitz (!!!), et. al, and that there was a parallel debate in the small but vibrant circle of historians of labor and radical politics in the UK and USA. And finally note that the outlook of the "new social historians" which I outline above is virtually universal in the historical profession today. Yesterday's assistant professors in a hurry are today's tenured full professors. Such is life in academia. Carrite (talk) 16:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 17:01, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
And, since I'm just chirping here, it is worth noting that even in the foundation years of Soviet Studies (1946-1950s), there were dissidents to the "traditionalist" cold war consensus, in the figures of E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Rudolf Schlesinger, and Alec Nove, among others. The "revisionist" movement of the 1970s and 1980s was more or less Round Two. Carrite (talk) 16:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Pre-archival Great Purge estimates

@Archgetty, Brustopher, and Carrite: This question might seem irrelevant at first, but I believe it useful for figuring out if anyone deserves opprobrium for writing inferior history. I don't have the energy to sift through mountains of outdated literature to find the answer, but I do wonder:

  • Who was closer to the truth about the scale of the purge: Getty and the revisionists or Conquest and the totalitarianists? Each side claims it was vindicated, though Conquest and his fans in the press were apparently more vocal than most in this regard. The question of numbers been largely settled by the archives: in two years, there were 900-1200K excess deaths from the penal system, of which about 650K deaths are from execution. If we take the Stalin period as a whole, we'd probably get about 2 million total (maybe a little more), with 800K executions. Needless to say these figures do not take into account famines, deaths of German POW's and so on. So what was Conquest's estimate for executions before the archives were opened? What was his estimate for Gulag excess deaths? What was the general ballpark of the revisionist estimates? For example, Getty writes that—in his book Origins he estimated "hundreds of thousands" of repression victims and noted that all estimates were "worthless". However a google book search of Origins for keywords "hundreds of thousands" and "worthless" comes up short. Only a search for "thousands were executed yields a result.

For anyone else wishing to chime in, please do not argue here about the actual scale of repression. This is about historiography, not history .Guccisamsclubs (talk) 01:01, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it is exactly the difference between something Getty claims in his books (thousands were killed) and something that mainstream researchers tell (millions were killed). Speaking about "mainstream", I mean not only people like Conquest and Antonov-Ovseenko, but also such as "post-archival" Viktor Zemskov who is not a "totalitarianist" by any account. The exact numbers remain unknown, in part because KGB archives in fact were not opened, but that is indeed about history, rather than about historiography. My very best wishes (talk) 01:20, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
@Guccisamsclubs: Here is what I found in Origins about "worthless" (p. 219): Many of the linchpins of the Western interpretation are based solely on an uncritical acceptance of rumors from persons not in a position to know. That is not to say that these works are worthless lies bearing no relation to the truth. They are quite valuable descriptions of personal experiences and should be taken as such. But they are not primary sources that cast light on central decision making, or even on events on a national scale. He does not exactly say that they are "worthless", but urges caution in using the sources. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:40, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Dr. Conquest is dead, so he's not arguing about this matter, for the record. Execution death figures for 1937-38 that I've seen are in the 900K range, which is "thousands." I'm not gonna belly bounce with anyone quoting chapter and verse of the varying scholarly estimates, but suffice it to say that Solzhenitsyn counting violence during the revolutionary period, collectivization and the war on the so-called kulaks of 1929-30, the 1932-33 famine, the 1937-38 terror, excess WWII deaths, and quasi-genocidal actions against various nationalities comes up with a pulled-from-a-hat high figure of 50 million deaths, which is one extreme estimate. Dr. Getty has never written about the demographics of any of these sub-topics and posited execution deaths in 1937-38 in the thousands, not multi-millions, which was correct. He has subsequently revised his numbers somewhat upwards as new evidence has become available, I believe. Carrite (talk) 05:02, 29 August 2016 (UTC) Last edited: Carrite (talk) 05:22, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
As an outside observer, Carrite, I would like to emphasize that a factor of 100 does matter.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 07:13, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
  • @Carrite: Nobody implied that Conquest is alive. The out-to-lunch figures promoted by Soviet dissidents—not that I really blame them for it—are well known and are not the issue, sorry if that was unclear. In a previous post you've referred to the astronomical estimates of Solzhenitsyn and Conquest. I knew that Solzhenitsyn's numbers are out of the park, but I was less sure about Conquest's. That's why I pinged you for comment about Conquest's pre-archival numbers. The main source here would be the first edition of his Great Terror, which is hard to come by. Since you say you've looked at this stuff in the 80's, I thought you'd have some info on that.Guccisamsclubs (talk)
@Guccisamsclubs: See this letter by Getty in the LRB, dated October 1987. In it, Getty mentions that the pre-archival estimates by Conquest was roughly 1 million executions. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
  • That's our answer, perfect. In the same letter, Getty estimates around 31 thousand and total convictions at under a million. Looks like Conquest was essentially right and Getty was completely off the charts on this issue.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 14:50, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
No, you are misrepresenting this count as some sort of research by Getty. " A young scholar named Dmitrii Iurasov announced the results of his research in the Special and Military Collegium Archives of the USSR Supreme Court. According to his lengthy remarks from the floor (which were apparently pre-arranged and continued without interruption), the Chairman of the Supreme Court had written to Nikita Khrushchev that 612,500 persons had been rehabilitated (exonerated) from 1953-1957: about 200,000 by military tribunals, another 200,000 by local courts and the balance by other bodies. Among them, the Military Collegium had rehabilitated 31,000 who had been sentenced to death, all apparently between 1935 and 1940. These are horrifying but interesting figures. If, as Roy Medvedev and others have written, the Khrushchev-era rehabilitations included the vast majority of those arrested in the Thirties, then we now have something resembling solid numbers on Stalinist repression...." Getty does not use this figure in any book he has written, he is merely pointing out the inconsistencies with Conquest's estimate with the research of others. For what it's worth, one million executions is reasonably close to the mark, and a camp figure of 6 to 7 million probably a touch high. Carrite (talk) 15:46, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
That's extremely tenuous. I don't want to feed any oppo-research on the talk page, but none of this is to be dismissed lightly. If a historian puts two sources (Medvedev and Iurasov) together to draw a conclusion (31K executions), then that is indeed research, however preliminary the conclusion may be. Some pieces you might have neglected:
  • "[Conquest] writes that historical revelations in the USSR are ‘at this very moment massively and continuously refuting all the “revisionist” estimates and assertions’. This is not true" This means that the data he went on to cite was in agreement with his pre-existing views on the scale of the repressions. These same views can be gleaned from his remark in Originis about "thousands" being executed.
  • "In either event, if these figures are accurate, we might presume that the total number of arrests in the Great Purges was well under a million and the total number of executions was near 31,000. Readers might be interested to know that Mr Conquest in his classic The Great Terror estimated, in a series of curious extrapolations from literary sources, some seven to eight million arrests and roughly one million executions. Conquest’s arrest estimates would appear to be high by about elevenfold; his execution guess by a factor of nearly 32. Even if some of the 612,000 arrested were subsequently shot – and we know this sometimes happened – it is clear that Conquest’s estimates are, as we Americans say, not even in the ball park, while those of the revisionists are closer to the mark. Once again, archival evidence has contradicted rumours and stories." Clearly Getty endorsed these figures as a reasonable estimate of the total number of victims, otherwise he would not have brought them up in his argument with Conquest. The perfunctory "if" in no way detracts from this.
So, as Brustopher said right from the start, Getty's numbers were indeed "notoriously low". Conquest's numbers on the camps were substantially overstated, as were his numbers for excess deaths, but it was Getty's execution numbers that were "not even in the ball park". He was off by more than a factor of 20.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 16:48, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Sources in the "ideas/reception" section

None of the sources used in this section are typical or at all cited. On Google scholar, In Denial has 4 citations (only two seem to be actual citations), the world affairs journal reference has no citations at all and neither does the Haslam article. I can't find the fourth source at all, but it does not seem to be a review source. Two of the sources are written in the 1980s. These are pretty much worthless sources - they aren't up to date and do not give a good overview of the literature.

From citations on Google scholar, I see Origins (1985) has been cited the most (280 citations), followed by this 1993 journal article (156 citations) and The Road to Terror(2002) (130 citations). There needs to be some sort of serious review which at least covers these three main works. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:55, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

In Denial actually has 69 citations. It's a biased but quality source. I've already deleted the stupid World Affairs citation.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 17:07, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, messed up the URL somehow: misread Google scholar: this page shows only 4 citations. I agree that it is the best citation. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 05:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

This article does not exist yet

Kirov murder

See this source Did Stalin Kill Kirov and does it matter?. It discusses Getty and other work in detail. Conquest's comparison that the denying of Stalin's culpability is akin to David Irving is criticized. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 08:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

RfC involving Getty

People here might want to weigh in on this related RfC. The RfC bot isn't working for some reason. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 03:13, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

From the lead of Yuri Zhukov: Being described as a follower of American revisionist historian, Arch Getty,[4] Zhukov published several books that glorify Stalin, such as "Renaissance of Stalin" and "Handbook of Stalinist".[5] Being debated over at: Talk:Yuri Zhukov (historian)#Quotation.

Once again Getty is being painted as a Stalinophine. As the trademark affection for the word "follower" indicates, this coatracting material was introduced by My very best wishes. While the source [4] is an established academic, the way it's used in the article highly undue and not even entirely textually accurate, as I explained on Talk:Yuri Zhukov (historian)#Quotation. Since the debate is currently just between two editors (and I am losing patience), people here might want to comment on the issue. Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:03, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

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