Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 56

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A new RfC about the article's topic.

As it was noted earlier, there is no agreement among users about the article's scope and topic. This is a core problem, which leads to numerous conflicts, edit warring, and that is a main reason why the article has huge neutrality problems. I propose to resolve this problem by starting an RfC. As I, as well as many other users, noted that this article can either describe all mass killings and mass mortality events in Communist states (so it must be a Summary style article for such articles as Cambodian genocide, Great Chinese famine, Great Purge, etc (an option A), or it can be a discussion of a narrative about a possible linkage between all premature and coercive deaths under Communist rule and Communism (as some single phenomenon) (an option B). This two options are intrinsically incompatible, so we must select only one. In this discussion, I am neutral (I equally like both approaches), but I believe it is absolutely necessary to pick one, and to rewrite the article accordingly. I propose to jointly start writing a correct text of the RfC, which must give as an answer that will rule out a possibility of double interpretation. Who wants to participate? Paul Siebert (talk) 17:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

There's still a DRN occurring on this article & an RM is being proposed. Anyways, it's your choice. GoodDay (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

A draft of the RfC:

What is the topic of this article?

• A The topic is all mass killings and all mass mortality events in Communist states. The article should be a summary style article of such articles as Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Great Chinese famine, Cambodian genocide, Katyn massacre and similar articles, and it should provide a neutral description of those events according to the views expressed by majority of RS.
• B The topic is a discussion of a linkage between Communism and various lethal events that took place in Communist states. This includes the views expressed in the sources that see such a linkage and the sources either openly disagree with that, or that say otherwise.

This is a preliminary version of the RfC that I am going to initiate in a couple of weeks or earlier, depending on your comments. I especially invite @Nug:, @North8000:, @The Four Deuces:, @Davide King:, and @Robert McClenon: to comment on that, but comments from other users are warmly welcome too.

Since the article's topic is a core issue, I am going to focus on it exclusively, and I am suspending my participation on all other disputes. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:35, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I am gonna vote ahead of time: B. Additionally, I would like to add that the main subject of contention is not the topic, but rather the title which is completely different from the given premise of the article. Title claims A, whereas, main topic of focus is B. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:47, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@MarioSuperstar77: Please, don't. This is not an RfC, that is just a discussion of its possible text. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd add:

• C The topic about the phenomena of mass killings by Communist states with a discussion of the possible causes, of which ideology is one of many proposed. I don't see why it has to be binary choice between A or B. --Nug (talk) 20:00, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

No. This is inconsistent with NPOV. That makes this article a POV-fork, for it discusses the events from a perspective of just one (minority) school of thought. If you disagree with that, and if you are not going to withdraw your "C", I will start a DRN, where I am going to name you as a party. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:16, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul, with due respect, excluding options that multiple editors have expressed a preference for renders the RfC to be non-neutral. Threatening(?) to take a single user to DRN is not actually a way to solve this content dispute; the point of the RfC would be to make arguments for and against the ideal article topic. There is not a community consensus that Nug’s suggestion is incompatible with NPOV—the AfD certainly did not establish it and I am unable to find any affirmative consensus elsewhere that supports your claim. And, even if there were, consensus can change. I think Nug’s wording can be tweaked, but I don’t think that rejecting something similar to Nug’s proposal offhand is going to make this Draft RFC better. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:42, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

For the record, Paul has also in the past few minutes threatened to report me if I do not go along with his demands. Vanteloop (talk) 20:46, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: It seems you misunderstand something. We don't need a consensus that someone's suggestion is incompatible with NPOV. The policy works in an opposite way: there should be a consensus that it IS compatible. I raised a concern that that suggestion is incompatible with NPOV, and this my legitimate concern must be properly addressed. Unless that has been done, we cannot claim this suggestion is compatible with NPOV.

I believe you understand this point. If we use your approach, any edit that violates some policy may be removed only if there is an explicit consensus about that. That approach directly contradicts to the fact that NPOV is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by (...) editor consensus.

If you believe C is in agreement with NPOV, prove it. And if your arguments will be supported by consensus, I will accept your arguments.

With regards to "threatening(?) to take a single user to DRN ", I cannot believe you are serious. DRN is not ANI or AE, it is not a place where people can be taken. That was just a proposal to continue this discussion at DRN, and I named Nug because he was the only person who presented some arguments. If you want, I may invite you, or anybody else. I am open to any suggestions, unless they are not violating our content policy. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:17, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

POV fork of what exactly? Nobody disputes that mass killings did occur under communist regimes. Grouping them together is topological, they all share the fact that the killings occurred during agricultural collectivization and political terror, a combination unique to communist regimes. That topology isn't disputed by any source. What is subject to differing academic POVs are the various proposed causes of the mass killings, the article presents them, whether it was ideology or personalities of the leadership, etc, in a NPOV way. --Nug (talk) 21:26, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Regarding, If you believe C is in agreement with NPOV, prove it. And if your arguments will be supported by consensus, I will accept your arguments, why is the RfC an inappropriate place to discuss that option? It’s certainly gotten a good bit of discussion in the AfD, and I see no reason why we should exclude it as a mere option in a request for comment.

Regarding the straw man raised in the second paragraph, I am not arguing that we could, by local consensus, choose to deliberately ignore the principle of neutral point of view. What I am arguing here is that discussion on the extent to which a particular option is consistent with those principles is both necessary and proper in any RfC on the article topic. If the argument is that a particular editor (or even a small group of editors) can somehow veto mere discussion a particular option due their own interpretation of NPOV that is not clearly shared by the rest of the community, that would simply enable ownership of articles and would render RfCs largely toothless.

And regarding my characterization of your threatening(?) Nug, that is how I read your statement that if you are not going to withdraw your "C", I will start a DRN, where I am going to name you as a party. I do not quite know a better word to otherwise characterize a statement indicating your intent to unilaterally drag someone to a dispute board unless they take a specific action. The reason for the question mark is that I find the concept of threatening to drag someone to such a board as rather odd, since that board is something that ordinarily is agreed to by mutual consent, but I cannot think of any better word to use there. — Mhawk10 (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I explained that many times. Just read talk page archives. Briefly, WP:SS requites a direct correspondence between a "summary style" and "daughter articles", and they must be even synchronised. That is not what we are having in this case.

"why is the RfC an inappropriate place to discuss that option?" Because we already have serious reasons to believe that it violates our policy. We cannot start an RfC if some of us expressed a legitimate concern about possible policy violations, and that concern was not addressed properly. How can we propose a community to vote if we are not sure our proposal is in agreement with policy?

I am only superficially familiar with DRN, but I know that nobody can force you to join a DRN discussion if you disagree. If someone names you as a party, that is just an invitation, which you may accept or reject. Neither I nor ArbCom members nor even Jimbo Wales can force Nug to participate in DRN. You are free to interpret me as you want, but my words are just an information about my desire to move the dispute to another platform. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul, there is an excluded middle here—supporting option A requires supporting all “mass killings and all mass mortality events” in an article titled “mass killings under communist regimes”. A good RfC would also include an option that says that the topic is a summary style article of “mass killings committed by communist regimes”. It seems like this would be worthwhile to include as an option—I also think that it is what people who have been arguing for summary style are generally arguing for. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Benefits/downsides of mobile comments is that you don’t always get to see edit conflicts. I think Nug’s proposal above partly gets this, but I also do think that a summary style article focused on mass killings would inherently have to discuss causes as well and, like Holodomor, it would have to describe how different academics classify different actions as killings or not. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:07, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The article cannot be a description of, e.g. Great Chinese famine embedded into the Black Book narrative. The reason is simple: an overwhelming majority of sources do not describe it as a mass killing of politicide. Even "genocide scholars" do not do that. Thus, it is not included even into Harff's database. Majority of sources describe it in the same neutral terms as, e.g. Bengal famine. Just read all "daughter articles" and compare them with what this article says. A "summary style" article must say the same story as daughter articles. Anything else is a POV-fork. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:27, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: just to make sure that we are speaking about the same things: have you read WP:SS? Do you understand all criteria a summary style article should meet. There is no sarcasm in my question: I have a feeling you genuinely don't understand what WP:SS is. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:18, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Paul, I understand what a summary style article is about. If the reason that you do not think I understand the text of WP:SS is that we do not agree on how to apply the guideline to this article, then I would kindly ask you to understand that I am analyzing and applying the guideline in good faith. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:47, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:, since February this article has been a child of the Communism article with, in my opinion, some very poor content percolating up from here. I think that adds weight to your arguments but cuts both ways. If the anti and anti-anti narratives are put in their proper place, what content goes in Communism? Back to the pre-February sterile version? fiveby(zero) 21:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Fiveby, that is the problem. This article should not be the child of Communism but rather of Communist state and Mass killing. Davide King (talk) 06:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

One of the first transclusions to this article is Template:communism sidebar, which states it is part of a series of articles on Communism. What is a 'child' of what is tends to OR in my view. ~ cygnis insignis 06:58, 7 December 2021 (UTC) P.S. What I linked there transcludes content at Template:Communism, found that out when I removed some other related topics. ~ cygnis insignis 07:24, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, Communism does claim a history section doesn't it? When you raise questions about summary style i look at Communism#History, History of communism, etc. Concerns about this article which should be addressed look much less concerning in comparison. Oh and i think you were looking for the three "misunderstandings" (but "roots of Stalinism" is really too much of a burden to put on Werth) to show that i'm not just drive by commenting and put at least a minimal effort in here.fiveby(zero) 11:35, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

• Strongly agree with Nug. This RfC is very poorly formed, and is presenting an overly restrictive binary interpretation of problem. Even if an editor disagrees with Nug's suggestion it shouldn't be banned from the RfC. It's worth noting that this user has been rebuked by a neutral moderator for what could be considered 'to be a form of civil POV pushing, which is disruptive.' when they outright refused to entertain the possibility of any RfCs on this topic not long ago. Although now they are writing one - and deciding what options are allowed in it their opinion may have changed (I hope)? Vanteloop (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The wording of any third option can be worked out, it was to illustrate that Paul's two options are a classic false choice. --Nug (talk) 21:12, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Based on the title, I would expect to see A. An article about "Earthquakes under communist regimes" would list major earthquakes, tell us how many earthquakes there were etc. Of course we have no such articles because most people believe that earthquakes are a function of natural rather than political geography, although some people see natural disasters as collective punishment for turning away from God.

The reason why many editors object to this article is that it makes an implicit connection between communism and mass killings. That's why we don't have articles such as "Black sex offenders" or "Jewish Communists." We can however have articles about how and why some people connect blacks and sex crimes or Jews and Communism and they are discussed in Race and crime and Jewish Bolshevism. So we could have neutral articles called "Ideology and mass killings" or "Victims of Communism."

TFD (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The idea that mass killings are somehow inherent to communism is clearly very contentious - but the title is referring to that contentious claim, not asserting it is true. For example, Creation science doesn't need to be changed to 'Pseudoscience of Creationism' because the article is about the concept of 'Creation science' and the validity of the concept is discussed in the article. I think once we can improve the article to include a more clear description of the criticisms and academic consensus on the subject of MKUCR the name issue will become moot. As Nug says The current article title is no less neutral than say, Domestic violence in the United States. That article isn't making an implicit claim that the USA is a nation of wife beaters. Vanteloop (talk) 22:04, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

It is not clear from the wording that it is about a contentious claim. An article called "Mass killings in the Soviet Union" for example would not be about a contentious claim, because it is not contentious that the Soviet Union carried out mass killings. And while some people question the term creation science on the basis that it is unscientific, we use that term because it is the recognizable term used by its proponents. But mass killings under communists regimes is not a term used by people who connect the two. TFD (talk) 22:13, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Option

• C The topic about the phenomena of mass killings by Communist states with a discussion of the possible causes, of which ideology is one of many proposed needs be added. Choice is always better. Attempts to reduce choice in an attempt to force Wiki editors down one pre-determined path might appear unseemly to some.XavierItzm (talk) 14:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Alternative Proposals

The RfC has now been developed so I am collapsing this. If you would like to offer your opinion at the RfC please do so on this talk page

As the talk page can get quite noisy it is worthwhile having a section for alternative proposals, so as to keep it seperate from the debate about Paul's draft proposal I have created a sub-heading. These proposals could be alternate wordings of a RfC on this topic, or ideas about how best to approach this problem. Hopefully we can work towards a RfC that is acceptable to all so that any consensus the wider community comes to is less disputed. Vanteloop (talk) 21:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC) Alternative proposal 1:Split the article I list a rough first draft of a RfC below, are there any objections to something along these lines? Again just to be clear, this is a working draft on what may eventually be put to editors. Do not vote on this. I believe splitting the article could be useful because then a seperate AfD discussion could be had on the first article without confusing with the legitimate discussion and critique of linking communism and mass killings in such a way. Should this article be split? Yes The article should be split into 2. The first should be a summary style article and it should provide a neutral description of those events according to the views expressed by majority of RS. The second is a discussion of the linkage between Communism and various lethal events, including critiques of this view. No The article should not be split. Vanteloop (talk) 22:49, 6 December 2021 (UTC) Update: It seems my alternative proposal 2 below will be chosen as the basis of the RfC instead of this one so I have strucken it. See more at the dispute resolution page Vanteloop (talk) 16:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC) It is not alternative proposal, it is complementary one. That would be a good option "C". Paul Siebert (talk) 22:54, 6 December 2021 (UTC) That is a possibility yes, although judging by discussion above we would also need "D" "The topic about the phenomena of mass killings by Communist states with a discussion of the possible causes, of which ideology is one of many proposed". to cover the opinions expressed so far Vanteloop (talk) 22:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC) No. That does not work. A neutral article written in that way would be a combination of two totally different parts. It will be literally the option C, where two totally different articles were forcibly and artificially connected together. My rationale is as follows: if you look at the sources that discuss, for example, Great Chinese famine or Cambodian genocide specifically, you will see that they form a compact domain where each source is connected by a network of cross-references. These domains are totally separated from the sources that discuss "generic Communism" and its linkage to mass killings (GCF sources even do not use the term "mass killings"). In other words, they form different and totally unconnected realms, each of which tells different stories, and, especially, provide different interpretations. That means, if we start to write a truly neutral article, 95% of space must be devoted to the country-specific sources (and their narrative), and the rest will be a totally different story told by "generic Communism" sources and its critics. And, these two stories will be totally unconnected to each other, so the split will be the only possibility. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2021 (UTC) That argument seems more like an argument against the option, rather than an argument against its inclusion in the RfC. Am i correct in that you have no objection to Alternative Proposal 1 as written? Vanteloop (talk) 23:24, 6 December 2021 (UTC) I object to the very idea of alternative proposal. I presented a draft, which means it can be amended, expanded etc. Why cannot you just add your "Yes" as option "C" into the original draft? I believe Nug does not insist on his "C" anymore. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC) Are you saying you object to any RfC not written by you? Several commentators have rejected your draft outright as a false choice, if we are going to make progress I believe we should float several ideas and see what sinks if you will. Do you have any objection to the alternative proposal 1 as written? Vanteloop (talk) 23:33, 6 December 2021 (UTC) Hmmm. I would say the same in somewhat different way: I proposed a draft and invited everybody to jointly write some text. You proposed your own text in a separate section. And who is refusing to collaborate, you or I? Your "No" is de facto an endorsement of the current version, which is a POV-fork. It is unacceptable. Your "Yes" implements Nug's proposal. Therefore, I am asking again" why you refuse to collaborate and reject all what was proposed in the above section? Paul Siebert (talk) 23:46, 6 December 2021 (UTC) Your "No" is de facto an endorsement of the current version, which is a POV-fork. It is unacceptable. That may very well be the case, and that argument should be made at a RfC, but as North says below that option has to be included in some form - otherwise we are relitigating the AfD. You propose a "draft" and invited "everybody" to jointly write some text. As well as expressing my opinion on that draft, I noted that several of the objections were to the fundamental framing of your draft and I accepted your invitation to write some text. I did this by re-framing the proposal and presenting it as an alternative. Are you refusing to even accept the possibility people work on a RfC other than the one you proposed? Please work with me here. I am not saying your RfC draft is wrong, I am merely floating an alternative I think may have wider acceptance. If that is not the case we have lost nothing. Vanteloop (talk) 23:56, 6 December 2021 (UTC) For reference of other users, the quote I mention by North is I still disagree that #1 & #2 can't coexist. And add to that, that coexistence is what the current article is.....arguments that policy says that the current article shouldn't exist are arguments of the AFD's. I'm not arguing for "both", but am observing that it's not possible to exclude that choice. Vanteloop (talk) 00:04, 7 December 2021 (UTC) To start an RfC with a question "Is this article a POV-fork?" means to restart the AfD, for if the RfC comes to a conclusion that it is a POV-fork, that means the article must be deleted. Do you really want to pave a way to a an AfD#5? I don't, because my plan is to spend at least one year in attempt to save this article. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:07, 7 December 2021 (UTC) The options in AltProp1 are 'split' and 'don't split'. POV fork isn't mentioned. That is you projecting your view that the article cannot be kept in its current form (for the record I actually agree with you here) but note that the outcome of the last AfD was 'no consensus' so if it is decided to not split the article we are in no different position than we are now. Vanteloop (talk) 00:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Well, I proposed a draft that discuss the article's topic. You propose "alternative" draft about the article's split. Don't you find that these are two different RfCs? The RfC proposed by me is if the article can be converted in either SS or the article about "generic Communism" (let's use this term for brevity). I agree that some third option is desirable, and your (actually, Nug's) proposal (which I personally like) is a good alternative. However, that is not a reason to exclude first two options. We don't want to keep this article in its present form (if nothing will change in one year or so, I'll start a new AfD, which will be properly written, and which will take into account all previous AfD; I want to avoid this scenario, so if your RfC will result in "No", that means we inevitably start "my" RfC (I call it "my" conditionally). Then why cannot we just combine them? Paul Siebert (talk) 00:27, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Because the foundation of the original proposal is This two options are intrinsically incompatible, so we must select only one. In this discussion, I am neutral (I equally like both approaches), but I believe it is absolutely necessary to pick one, and to rewrite the article accordingly. which has been rejected as a sound foundation by multiple users. None more eloquently than North :I still disagree that #1 & #2 can't coexist. And add to that, that coexistence is what the current article is.....arguments that policy says that the current article shouldn't exist are arguments of the AFD's. I'm not arguing for "both", but am observing that it's not possible to exclude that choice.. if your RfC will result in "No" and if it results in yes the issue is solved. I'll start a new AfD The results of an AfD a year from now are not my concern, I want to improve this article as soon as possible. Vanteloop (talk) 00:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC) When I wrote that #1 and #2 are incompatible, that didn't imply no other options can exist. Whan I say that #1 cannot be combined with #2, I never said it precludes existence of some #3 or #4. Actually, Nug's idea to split the article is better than #1 and #2. I didn't plan to vote for #1 or #2, but I will definitely vote for #3 (if Nug will approve its inclusion). Paul Siebert (talk) 00:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC) So it seems we are approaching common ground. #1, #2 being 'pick one or the other', #3 being 'split' and #4 being The topic about the phenomena of mass killings by Communist states with a discussion of the possible causes, of which ideology is one of many proposed is a proposal i can see gaining some consensus Vanteloop (talk) 01:04, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Note, the last AfD's outcome was not "keep", it was "no consensus", which means the panel acknowledged the article has some severe problems, which are not sufficient for immediate article's deletion, but may be a reason for its serious rewrite. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:10, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Not exactly. Per NPOV, we cannot discuss mass killings (as events) only in a context of one theory (or one school of thought), we must add a summary, fairly, proportionally and without a bias of ALL majority and significant minority views. In the next section, I described what will happen: the theories that links Communism and mass killing will sink in an ocean of good country-specific studies. That means, your #4 does not work. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:10, 7 December 2021 (UTC) I see so you still don't accept North's view? "I still disagree that #1 & #2 can't coexist. And add to that, that coexistence is what the current article is.....arguments that policy says that the current article shouldn't exist are arguments of the AFD's. I'm not arguing for "both", but am observing that it's not possible to exclude that choice.". I think this is the main sticking point in finding consensus , and I have yet to hear you refute that view as positied by North, Nug, and others Vanteloop (talk) 01:13, 7 December 2021 (UTC) North8000 is knowledgeable in our policy (more knowledgeable than I), but I am more familiar with sources. North8000 is right that theoretically we can combine everything in a single article, but that will require us to re-write it from perspective of majority point of view. In contrast to most of you, I know what it means: if we write it "fairly and proportionally", there will be literally no space for theories that link Communism and mass killings (even Valentino, whose "mass killings" concept gave the article its name, didn't see a significant linkage). And that is why I repeat my question: is it the outcome that you really want to achieve? Paul Siebert (talk) 01:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC) theoretically we can combine everything in a single article Thank you for this, I genuinely believe we can reach consensus now we accept all these outcomes are possible - however unlikely or however much we disagree with them. Vanteloop (talk) 01:27, 7 December 2021 (UTC) If I'll start to describe, even very briefly, all significant causes of Red Terror, Great Purge, Afghan War, Chinese famine, Cambodian genocide, etc, there will be virtually no room for Courtois or Rummel's "theorising". By the way, I've just realised, what is a different between your #4 and my #1? I don't see any significant difference. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Thank you for your input on the proposal. I agree that the options should be presented more distinctly. Since no comments had been left on the proposal I have updated the options Vanteloop (talk) 01:37, 7 December 2021 (UTC) No, you incorrectly summarised #4: our policy does not allow us to discuss mass killings in Communist states in a context of just one school of thought. Your #4 would be correct only in one case: if some theories existed that discuss MKuCR in a context of Communism, and other authors either supported or criticised them. In that case, your #4 could be quite legitimate. However, the situation is quite different: we have, e.g. 10 sources that discuss MKuCR in a context of Communism, 11 (or 9) sources that criticise these views, and 990 sources that tell a totally different story. (Of course, I do not pretend these numbers to be exact). Your #4 leaves the third category (the most numerous one) beyond the scope, which is absolutely unacceptable per NPOV. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:48, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Alternative proposal 2: One, both, or split Please find below a second proposal. My reasoning for including option 3 is it has been suggested by several editors as a possible middle ground. I include option 4 so as to represent users such as Nug and North8000 who says "I still disagree that #1 & #2 can't coexist. And add to that, that coexistence is what the current article is.....arguments that policy says that the current article shouldn't exist are arguments of the AFD's. I'm not arguing for "both", but am observing that it's not possible to exclude that choice." I agree with this assessment. I welcome input on this potential RfC. 1 The article should be a summary style article , providing an overview of mass killing events under communist governments 2 The article should be a discussion of the linkage between Communism and various lethal events, including critiques of this view 2 The article should discuss the concept of a correlation between mass killings and communist governments, including proposed causes and critiques of the concept 3 The article should be split, one for each of the above 4 The article should be both 1 and 2 together Vanteloop (talk) 01:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Note: I have updated the options following input from Paul Siebert. No comments had been left at time of update. Vanteloop (talk) 01:35, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Note 2: I have updated option 2 following input from Nug. The original option is left strucken through. Further input and critique is always welcome. Vanteloop (talk) 10:24, 7 December 2021 (UTC) I'm not too sure about the wording of the second option, because it seems focused on a single viewpoint as it rules out other causes beyond ideology, like leadership for example. Perhaps: "The article should be a discussion of the potential causes that have led to the apparent correlation between mass killings and communist governments, including critiques of the various views" --Nug (talk) 09:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC) I understand your point. The wording is probably overly-simplistic, however I also think the wording you propose could be clearer. What are your thoughts on: The article should discuss the concept of a correlation between mass killings and communist governments, including proposed causes and critiques of the concept. Of course the usual guidelines regarding due weight and NPOV would apply to this article. Vanteloop (talk) 10:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Yes, I think that is better. I've read one source that suggests over zealous lower level bureaucrats may have been a possible cause, so we don't want to rule anything out. --Nug (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2021 (UTC) @Nug and Vanteloop:, by commenting here, are you declining the invitation to participate in the formulation of these proposals at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Mass killings under communist regimes ~ cygnis insignis 10:26, 7 December 2021 (UTC) No Vanteloop (talk) 10:29, 7 December 2021 (UTC) You said you hadn't read preceding discussion there, but note the comment above your own section for proposals and comments, "The purpose of resuming this dispute resolution is to formulate any Requests for Comments that will resolve any of the issues about this article." ~ cygnis insignis 10:37, 7 December 2021 (UTC) I'm struggling to intepret this comment. Is the point that I should not try to seek input here if I am also willing to work at the DRN? That process hasn't even started yet. As Robert Mclenon says Multiple RFCs can be developed both at the DRN subpage and on this article talk page, but the editors developing the RFCs should take reasonable care to avoid having conflicting RFCs. That is what I am trying to do here by 'reading the room' on what RfC structure seems the most accepted. If I have misintepreted your comment I apologise. (and while I have you, do you have any input or crtique on this or any other RfC proposal?) Vanteloop (talk) 10:59, 7 December 2021 (UTC) I'm suggesting to Vanteloop (talk · contribs) that is better done at the DRN subpage, and noting the supposedly contrary advice states "reasonable care to avoid having conflicting RFCs" in a new section titled "Alternative proposal 2: One, both, or split". ~ cygnis insignis 12:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC) better done at the DRN subpage that's a fair opinion, I have already explained why I disagree - I will do so again, but I don't think its productive to continue going round in circles. "reasonable care to avoid having conflicting RFCs" Gathering input about what potential RfCs have the greatest consensus before moving forward is doing exactly that. This is not a RfC, it is a proposal up for input. Do you have any input on the proposal as currently stated? Vanteloop (talk) 12:22, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Yes. ~ cygnis insignis 12:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC) User:XavierItzm Pinging you because you expressed a desire for a proposal with all options considered. This proposal has received input from multiple editors already but I am still seeking more before deciding whether to move forward. Do you have any opinions on this proposal? Vanteloop (talk) 15:12, 7 December 2021 (UTC) Thanks, Option 2 as suggested by Nug seems reasonable. XavierItzm (talk) 04:21, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Structural analysis and recommendation

Thanks for the ping. I agree that the future of this article will be an eternal mess unless editors START by deciding what it's scope and subject will be. And I agree that the two big potential "content blocks" possibilities are:

1. A discussion of a possible linkage between Communist rule and mass killings (or possibly include mass excess deaths)
2. An overview of mass killings and mass mortality events in Communist states. This could be simply a higher level summary of of those, or it could be a distillation with emphasis on the aspects that related to communist rule.

I don't agree that they can't exist in the same article. In fact inclusion of both may be inevitable, but it's important that the editors decide and then record that decision for posterity (since the title does not define it and probably can't be modified to define it) #1 contains the material that is unique to this article. IMO it's the main thing that this article has to offer readers that is not elsewhere. But the summary or "distillation with emphasis" aspect of #2 also has some value to readers. Also, #2 might help cover #1.

At the beginning of the above process, maybe the main editors could come to a "meeting of the minds". There is probably a real world contest blended into this whole process. This could be between people who tend to want to make communist look as good or bad as possible, or concern that the "other" group of editors is trying to do that. Possibly the main editors could agree to set this aside for at least this first decision. Whether that be for a higher purpose (to make a good, informative article, which is also more fun) or a pragmatic one of avoiding the Mutually Assured Destruction of eternal pain here for the editors.

So there are three choices: #1, #2 or both. To avoid math problems, rather than a three way choice, I would recommend 2 separate decisions: Whether or not to include #1, and whether or not to include #2. And maybe these decisions could be made in a friendly discussion between the active editors. Maybe these questions could be raised or decided at DRN. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:45, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

A would not discuss whether there is a connection between communism and mass killings but why there is one. TFD (talk) 21:54, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

That is true but I thought that wording that pre-supposes that there is one would turn some people off or sound POV.North8000 (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

An alternative question may be: should the current article be split into two articles #1 and #2. --Nug (talk) 22:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe, but that would chart a pretty complex and difficult course in several respects.North8000 (talk) 22:35, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it is also an option. That could be an option C. It is totally consistent with our policy. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:41, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, North8000.

I agree with almost everything except one thing: #1 and #2 are mutually exclusive, so your "both" is not an option. WP:SS and WP:SPINOFF apply severe restrictions on that. How can you imagine a "summary style" article that discusses both #1 and #2, especially if #2 is not just briefly discussed at the very bottom?

The reason is simple. Most "daughter articles" explain each specific mass killings/mass mortality case by a number of factors, and Communism is usually not the only, and even not the major one. If we combine a neutral summary of those events with a discussion of a role of Communism, this discussion should inevitably split onto many country-specific sections, because in each case the role of Communism as a factor was totally different. However, if we try to discuss a role of some "generic Communism", we will give an undue weight to that highly questionable theory. In my opinion, Nug's proposal is much better: "Both #1 & #2" means that we need two different articles.Paul Siebert (talk) 22:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I was just giving my assessment, and my only opinion is to do my best at that. I hate to go into the weeds here but it might be useful. It's likely that some things that go along with actual communist regimes are enablers of mass killings: totalitarian government, a course that calls for major (=forceful) re-indoctrination of the residents, or the latter providing cover for some bad person who wants to do really bad stuff. All these are not inherently a part of a communist philosophy. And per TFD (who I highly respect) possibly a correlation existing is widely accepted as a given. I still disagree that #1 & #2 can't coexist. And add to that, that coexistence is what the current article is.....arguments that policy says that the current article shouldn't exist are arguments of the AFD's. I'm not arguing for "both", but am observing that it's not possible to exclude that choice. Regarding splitting, that possibility should also be offered, possibly as step #2 after a decision that both should be covered. IMO the execution of that approach would be near-impossible, but it should be offered. North8000 (talk) 23:22, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I tried to collect a representative sample of sources, and I found that the idea of a strong causal linkage between Communism and mass killings may have more critics than supporters among scholars.

With regard to "correlation", it is tricky. Thus, the black people are overrepresented among the US prisoner population, so there is a strong reason to speak about some correlation here. However, I have a strong doubt a linkage between the race and criminal intents has been convincingly demonstrated in something like randomised double blind studies. Correlation does not implies causation, and majority of authors, unlike Rummel, prefer to discuss causes, not to look for correlations. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:41, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, we already have an article about correlations. This article is Democide. We don't need another one (per policy). If this article will be devoted to some generalisations, it should discuss causation, not correlation. And this discussion must include three aspects: who sees Communism as a promary cause and why, who disagrees and why, and what majority of authors think about causes of those events (a spoiler: they explain that mostly by country-specific factors, and some of them, like Valentino, attribute them to other non-country-specific factors than Communism). Paul Siebert (talk) 23:53, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Democide is about an academic concept. MKuCR is more similar to Aboriginal deaths in custody, that article title doesn't suggest a causal link between jail and aboriginal deaths, neither does MKuCR suggest a causal link between mass killings and communist regimes, but the correlation exists and is undisputed. Any causal link that may or may not exist is explored within the appropriate sections of the respective articles. --Nug (talk) 00:04, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I am sorry, but your argument does not look really convincing. If the article implies no significant causal link, then the "Causes" section must be removed. "Terminology" section must be removed too. And "Estimates" must be significantly modified. Who is resisting to that: I (who agrees that the article should not stress causal linkage), or you (who proclaims that it doesn't, but whose edits contradict to those proclamations)? Paul Siebert (talk) 00:15, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

But investigating causal links is a legitimate field of study as acknowledged by you by your statement that #1 is a legitimate topic. You also say that #2 is also a legitimate topic. Since #1 is a discussion of #2, surely they both better together in the one article as it give the reader greater context, as we currently have it. Aboriginal deaths in custody also has a section on definitions and death totals. --Nug (talk) 00:26, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I already explained, the sources that discuss a casual link (or a lack thereof) between Communism and mass killing is a separate domain of sources that exist in isolation from the sources that discuss country-specific causes, or discuss other casual linkages. These are different domains, which even do not cite each other. They tell totally different stories, and they discuss totally different concepts.

Ok, I can give you an example:

There are tons of sources that discuss Great Chinese famine, either taken separately, or in context of other Chinese famines (which were pretty regular in history of China), or in a context of Bengal or Irish famine, etc. And there are few sources that link it to Communism (not to the Communist party of China, which is just a reincarnation of previous Chinese ruling elite, but to some abstract "Communism" as a universal phenomenon). if we decide to tell a full story, fairly and proportionally, without a bias, how this story will look like? It will be a story of a desperately poor China, which was regularly suffering from deadly famine, a China with almost no statistical apparatus, a story of "communal dining rooms" (a purely Chinese innovation), a story about a weird sparrow extermination campaign, etc. How much space will be left to Courtois's speculations? A couple of sentences in a "Controversy" section. And the same will happen with other subtopics. That is what may happen if we combine these different topics in one article: the sources this article currently rest upon will sink in an ocean of high quality country-specific sources, and they will be ghettoised in a "Controversy" section at the very bottom. Is it a result you want to achieve? Paul Siebert (talk) 00:43, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that scholars who don't see Communist ideology as a driving factor are not likely to say that or to explain why it was not. But it's OR to use sources that do not directly address the connection. We can't say for example that since A attributes mass killings in Kampuchea to the psychopatholgy of its leader that A concludes that the killings were unconnected to killings in other Communist states. Why for example would the Khmer Rouge chose to be led by a homocidal psychopath?

In the example of black criminality, your example is about for one state, which would be part of mainstream study. But mainstream scholars don't study criminality among black people in general.

TFD (talk) 00:38, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

As I explained, neutrality requires that the article about the events (mass killings and mass mortality) to be written based on majority views. Majority sources are the scholars who don't see Communist ideology as an important driving factor. That means, Courtois, Malia, Rummel and few others will be barely visible in the ocean of country specific sources. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:48, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure there is a whole ocean of fish species specific sources that make no mention of the impact of volcanos on the excess mortality of fishes. That doesn't mean that studies into that aspect of fish mortality is some how a minority view compared to the rest of the field of marine science, it is just a different topical aspect. Even Harff has grown more critical of country experts who challenge systematic empirical studies, who often think they know better what happened in one particular country but are not focused on global data. --Nug (talk) 02:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Space for Siebert and TFD's response.

In regards to Nug's latest comment above, to which I will let The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert address, I want to focus on their comment that "Harff has grown more critical of country experts who challenge systematic empirical studies, who often think they know better what happened in one particular country but are not focused on global data" — I would like to see a source for this claim, and the presumably academic journal in which it has been published. Ironically, I do not think that this is a good thing for those supporting genocide scholars as core sources of this article, giving that if this were to be true, it would just show how isolated they are, considering that country experts represent majority views, and how we simply cannot write a NPOV article with that structure and core sources. Davide King (talk) 08:03, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I can understand Harff's point, single country experts are focused on single countries, how can they see the trends in the global data. They can't see the forest for the trees. --Nug (talk) 09:36, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I can understand that too, but it does not change the fact that country experts are majority sources and genocide scholars represent a minority. You have completely ignored the fact that genocide scholarship has been criticized and has problems, especially in regards to comparative analysis (which is important considering that we are grouping together many different Communist states), which is why it did not appear in mainstream political science journal and behave in isolation. If this appears to be changed, Paul Siebert must be more aware of it than me. That does not mean they are fringe, that they cannot be relied on at all, or any strawman you may make out of this comment, it just means that they do not represent a majority or mainstream view, are not relied by historians and country experts (they may complain about this but it does not change this fact), and we cannot write articles from the POV of a minority. Davide King (talk) 09:55, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Your argument is classic fallacy of composition, just because individual country experts believe something with respect to that one country, it doesn't follow it continues to hold true when looking at a global grouping of countries. This whole argument of "single country experts are majority view while genocide scholars are minority view" is complete nonsense. --Nug (talk) 10:07, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

It does indeed follow when genocide scholars are not relied when discussing the events, e.g. Werth does not rely on Rummel's works about Communism, how do you explain that? Since this topic is about Communism and Communist regimes, if genocide scholars are not cited by scholars of Communism and/or do not have publications about Communism, and are not experts on Communism, we have a NPOV problem and they represent a minority POV in that regards. What you fail to realize is that not all academic fields are the same or in equal standing; if you think genocide studies, which is a relatively new field and appears to be and work in isolatation, is on equal standing with that of history, I do not know what to tell you. Davide King (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I was trying to provide a structural perspective and and propose a roadmap for editor input and choices to begin navigating out of the morass that this article is currently in. Paul, maybe you are making arguments that conflict with yourself. You offered that possible-correlation-causation field of inquiry as a possible topic of an article, and now IMO you appear to be saying that the field of inquiry is not legit / should not be an option because the causality or correlation has not been proven prior to the inquiry. In any event, I was not attempting to mediate the many debates involved, I was just trying to offer a way to navigate out of the morass.  :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, North8000.

First of all, correlation should not be mixed with causation. Usually, these are different types of studies, and they are performed by different authors. Studies that identify correlations are usually done by means of factor analysis (one of pioneers of application of factor analysis was Rummel), and many independent variable are used (Communism is just one out of many. A full (very long) list of variables can be found, e.g. in R. J. Rummel. Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Mar., 1995, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 3-26. Stable URL), and I see no reason for arbitrarily selecting Communism as one variable. We already have articles (for example, Democide or Democratic peace theory) that are supposed to cover the correlations issue. Importantly, my analysis of that type sources demonstrates that no (or very little) sources study correlations between mass killings and specifically Communism.

Therefore, in our case, a discussion of correlations should not be considered as an option.

Causation is a totally different topic, and the sources that discuss Communism and mass killings approach to that issue in rather philosophical way. Yes, they can, and they should be discussed, but they must be an object of the discussion. I believe you perfectly understand that, so I apologise in advance for repeating that, but let me do that one more time (Consider this also as a response @Nug:):

Imagine we have some phenomenon X and three theories that explain it (theories A, B, and C). Can we write an article that discusses only the theory A and the phenomenon X? Obviously no. That is explicitly prohibited by our policy,which says All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article. The theories B and C are "significant points of view on a subject X", therefore, we either include ALL theories, or discuss only A, but it should be the object of the discussion. That can be achieved only in one way: if a discussion of X is removed from the article (it must be only briefly mentioned to explain the context).

I believe I explained my view, and, as you can see, there is no contradiction here. If possible, I would prefer to accept Robert's proposal and continue the discussion at DRN. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

My opinion and suggestion is at the beginning of this subsection. I plan to un-watch this. @Robert McClenon:, as someone with the skills, interest, objectivity, temperament, and willingness to invest significant time here is the rock star of the chances for resolving this, and DRN is their main venue on this. IMO they will need to start with orchestrating a decision on the scope and content of this article. Ping me if you think I can help. Wish you all the best! North8000 (talk) 21:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry to see you go, I hope you didn't feel WP:BLUDGEONed, your input has been valuable here. --Nug (talk) 04:37, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nug: Thanks. Although the article and situation may be seeing some of that, nothing I received chased me away. It's simply that this situation is so huge and complicated and entangled that I don't think it is possible for any advice to be followed or for me to be helpful here at this time. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:54, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Structural analysis of each main topic and its core sources

Disclaimer — I believe that the only NPOV article that can be written without violating our policies and guidelines is theory-based and focused on the link and the "victims of communism" narrative, which is nothing more than the same topic as this one but written and structured neutrally according to majority and scholarly sources. Any of the other proposed topic fails NPOV because majority of historians and scholars simply ignore the topic and/or do not do such Communist grouping (hence why it was and remains so hard to improve and fix the article in this current structure),1 which is done by some genocide scholars and a few others who adopt the "generic communism" grouping — we simply cannot write a NPOV article from the POV of a minority. For Creationism, we do not use sources from the proponents but rely on secondary and tertiary scholarly sources that do it for us.

It is also why I think that Paul Siebert's compromise proposal fails (excess mortality and mass killings) for the same reasons — most scholars (e.g. Soviet specialists, Chinese specialists, in other words country experts) either discuss each event separately or limit themselves to the country or particular era (Stalinism, Maoisim), so even if we rely on country experts, and each section is a summary of Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and do the same for each Communist state, we are bordering in OR/SYNTH by grouping them together2 for the simply fact that majority of country specialists do not group them together like this and the controversy regarding "generic communism", which would be undue — I think this was also The Four Deuces's criticism, and is why AmateurEditor thought it was OR/SYNTH, probably the only disagreement I may have with Siebert.

Said this, I may change my mind if I could see a sandbox of each possible topic and core sources, so as to check whether writing a NPOV article is possible for each proposed main topic, or if some main topics fail our basic policies and guidelines. If we can identify core sources for each proposed topic (Nug did this, and I cannot wait for Siebert to analyze them), it could be helpful in moving us forward. Because it is not sufficient that we identify a possible main topic, it must be supported by majority of reliable sources, with a preference for scholarly ones both to avoid controversy and because they are the best possible sources. Davide King (talk) 07:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

The reason country specialists don't group them together is because country experts are focused on one single country, obviously. Grouping them together is not OR/SYNTH because many scholars have already done the grouping per RS. So please stop repeating this nonsense. --Nug (talk) 09:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

See Notes below — if you were right, the AfD would have resulted in 'Keep' but it went from 'Keep' to 'No consensus' (the Wikipedia editing community has been unable to come to a consensus as to whether "mass killings under communist regimes" is a suitable encyclopaedic topic), therefore I would kindly ask you to refrain yourself from such patronizing comment and nonsense wording, when the AfD said otherwise and took it seriously. Davide King (talk) 10:00, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Notes

1. "The problem is that scholars who don't see Communist ideology as a driving factor are not likely to say that or to explain why it was not. But it's OR to use sources that do not directly address the connection. We can't say for example that since A attributes mass killings in Kampuchea to the psychopatholgy of its leader that A concludes that the killings were unconnected to killings in other Communist states. Why for example would the Khmer Rouge chose to be led by a homocidal psychopath?" —The Four Deuces

Davide King (talk) 08:11, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

TFD's argument is a straw man. The article makes no claim that Communist ideology as a driving factor, it discusses many possible factors in the section Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Proposed_causes. --Nug (talk) 09:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I have often wondered if the carpet bombing of countries under communist régimes has been proposed for inclusion, not that I am, the response might be they are collateral damage in the war on communism. ~ cygnis insignis 09:17, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Probably would be included in Anti-communist_mass_killings#Vietnam. --Nug (talk) 09:52, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Please, stop expressing your clear views on this as facts, when other users have expressed disagreement. Even if you disagree, respect those views, as I respect yours. Davide King (talk) 10:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

As you can see here, there are clearly users who either believe the article already does that or that it should, so please avoid saying that it does not do that or that there are no users who think it does or should do it. Davide King (talk) 07:30, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

2. As noted by the AfD:3 "The principal argument for deletion is that the article collects together incidents of mass killing by communist regimes that reliable sources normally treat individually, not together under the umbrella of 'communist mass killings'. Wikipedia editors are not permitted to 'synthesize' disparate bodies of information in this way, because it is considered original research that violates our commitment to verifiability and a neutral point of view."

3. Of course, the AfD also noted the counterpoint: "The principal argument for keeping the article is that the topic meets the 'general notability guideline', our basic criteria for including a topic in Wikipedia as a standalone article. They contend that there are reliable sources which discuss the article topic in a cohesive fashion and that these are prominent enough within the scholarly literature that basing an article on them is not undue weight." Considering that the result was 'No consensus', and not 'Keep', this remains a serious issue and a valid argument unless we are shown that majority and scholarly sources do this grouping.4

4. It is interesting that the closure used 'Communist mass killings', perhaps aware that MKuCR for short results in mirrors and citogenesis, because Google Scholar results on 'Communist mass killings' show no such literature,5 as proposed by in the counterpoint, and mixes it with anti-communist mass killing (Indonesia).

5. I get Rummel and Valentino, and general works about genocide and mass killing, so there is, in fact, no literature — just several sources that either mentions Communist regimes, or devote chapters to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, but which in my view do not present it as a separate or new topic.

Davide King (talk) 09:49, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Nug, making a list of "mass killings under communist regimes" implies there is a connection, otherwise why make a list? It's like saying, "I'm not saying there is a link between vaccination and autism nudge nudge wink wink but here's a list of cases of people who were vaccinated and developed autism." Both cases use anecdotal evidence to prove a theory, whether that is done implicitly or explicitly. TFD (talk) 14:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Whereas in Communism#History we can omit mention of deaths and state plainly Stalinism...was intrinsically non-genocidal, and Marxist communism was a restraining factor that did not allow Stalin to unleash a true genocide. fiveby(zero) 16:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

IOW, two wrongs make a right. That text you cited is sourced to Stephen G. Wheatcroft, an expert on the Soviet Union. It's probably not clearly phrased. Wheatcroft's point was that mass killing in the Soviet Union were not based on ethnicity. Indeed we are allowed to report all kinds of opinions so long as they are sourced and we explain their weight in reliable sources. We cannot use Wikipedia articles to present our own opinions, whether implicitly or explicitly. TFD (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

@Davide King: is that a quote from Wheatcroft you added here or your own summary? I don't find any support for it in the given citation. fiveby(zero) 22:50, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I see that too many people quote these my words, so some explanations are needed. I quoted, from memory, the article by Eric D. Weitz (Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges. Slavic Review, Spring, 2002, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 1-29. Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: [1])

Actually, I forgot the name of the article, but now I found it again. Weitz says:

"Yet it is important still to distinguish between states that commit genocide and genocidal regimes. The latter are, thankfully, relatively rare. They are the systems in which genocide moves to the core of state practices to such an extent that one can see the entire system revolving centrally around human destruction. The Third Reich constitutes the supreme example, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge a second one. The regimes that commit genocidal actions are many and include western colonial states going back to the fifteenth century as well as particular cases in the Soviet Union under Stalin. But it is at this precise juncture that the absence of an explicit racial ideology in the Soviet Union becomes so critical. Racial ideology, when adopted and practiced by a state, necessarily entails the subordination of defined population groups and includes impulses toward ethnic cleansings and genocides. The absence of such an ideology acted as a brake on the Soviet regime's population politics, preventing the unfolding of a full-scale genocidal program along the lines of Nazi Germany"

A comparison of my words with this source shows that I didn't quoted it completely correctly. Instead of "intrinsically non-genocidal", it would be more correct to say "non-intrinsically genocidal" (i.e. in genocidal in the same way as many other regimes). However, the main idea, namely that Soviet official ideology served as a brake that prevented Stalin from unleashing a full scale genocide was correct (thus, he was contemplating a genocide of Jews by the end of his life, but the only thing he could do was their deportation, which never happened). I believe the incident is resolved. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

So who is responsible for that content, you or Davide King? The content in this edit? From a source which states ...particular cases in the Soviet Union under Stalin. the added content is intrinsically non-genocidal? Combined with the suspicious Wheatcroft bit this looks very bad. Whoever added that content and is also adding pages and pages of NPOV, OR, and SYNTH concerns on this article and the AfD has a lot of fucking gall. fiveby(zero) 02:24, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

That page is not even in my whatchlist. I recognise some fragments of text, which almost verbatim reproduce Wheatcroft's article, but some statements are, to some degree, suspicious. This article is not in my immediate to do list, but I can join a discussion on its talk page if you initiate it and ping me. Paul Siebert (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Gotcha and sorry for the tone of my comment. Thought you were referring to the edit with "my words". Thanks for the source and quote. fiveby(zero) 03:14, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Actually, I thought you quoted one my talk page post, because I recall I wrote something of that kind. My point was (I took this idea from Weitz and from some other source, which I cannot find again) that, since the core of Marxism is the idea that biological nature of any person is much less important factor than economic relationships this person is involved in, that makes Marxism intrinsically incompatible with any type of genocide. As a result, Marxist legacy was like handcuffs on Stalin's hands, who, despite his obvious predisposition to genocide, could not unleash a real genocide, because it would be very difficult to justify by Marxist phraseology. That what I meant under "intrinsically non-genocidal". Paul Siebert (talk) 03:26, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

However Marxism proved not to be brake but in fact an accelerator pedal on the extermination of class enemies or counter-revolutionary völkerabfälle. --Nug (talk) 04:10, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:. Yeah, i would point to "particular cases" and ask to what extent Stalin was ever handcuffed by Marxism (but note you said legacy and phraseology while the source gave "absence of such an ideology" and now what a mess we are in.) I think that highlights some of the points you have been trying to make here. On the other hand, if this article is an implied proposition, argument, or conclusion, therefore concerning under WP's policies, then taking the counter-arguments to such a proposition and throwing them naked into the Communism article is even more concerning. Those aren't your edits, but i think you should be aware how the dispute in this article is playing out elsewhere. It might also help inform those writing future RfCs concerning the approach to take here. fiveby(zero) 14:47, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Leave space for Paul Siebert's reply.

Did you guys miss The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945?

• Doumanis, Nicholas, ed. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 (E-book ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 377–378. ISBN 9780191017759. Retrieved 8 December 2021 – via Google Books. At first sight, accusations that Hitler and Stalin mirrored each other as they 'conducted wars of annihilation against internal and external enemeis ... of class, race, and nation,' seem plausible. But such a perspective, in reality a recapitulation of the long-discredited totalitarian perspective equating Stalin's Soviet Union with Hitler's National Socialist Germany, is not tenable. It betrays a profound misunderstanding of the distinct natures of the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, which made them mortal enemies. Stalin's primary objective was to forge an autarkic, industrialized, multinational state, under the rubric of 'socialism in one country'. Nationalism and nation-building were on Stalin's agenda, not genocide; nor was it inherent in the construction of a non-capitalist, non-expansionary state—however draconian.
• Weiss-Wendt, Anton (December 2005). "Hostage of Politics: Raphael Lemkin on 'Soviet Genocide'". Journal of Genocide Research. 7 (4). Routledge: 551–559. doi:10.1080/14623520500350017. ISSN 1462-3528. S2CID 144612446.

Presenting Soviet genocide by giving it equal weight, when that is an example of double genocide theory or is politicised and controversial/debated, is an example of false balance. Davide King (talk) 15:07, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Leave that for Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism article. What is in scope of this article is that the communist ideology in self-declared communist countries justified mass-scale extermination of people in these countries. No comparisons against political systems X, Y, Z are neither necessary nor proposed here, dead people are dead in the same way under any regime. Cloud200 (talk) 16:26, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Let the DRN play out

Recommend ya'll put the RFC preparations on hold, until the related-DRN is resolved. One thing at a time. GoodDay (talk) 21:00, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Copyright violations

I asked this, and the answer was this, this and this. I am going to remove quotes from footnotes. Feel free to put some of them back, but only if that is really necessary, and only if they are brief no longer that 2-3 sentences. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:25, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

If you want to keep some quote, please, reorganize them as explained by Masem (see the above diffs). I will remove quotes during weekend. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:45, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, most quotes are marginally relevant to the topic: thus, we do not need to educate a reader about a general meaning of "genocide". I am going to remove almost all of them. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:51, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Removal

[2]. To put it simple, this is sourced to a number of sources (which appear in the diff), not to a single source. I do not see any problem here. My very best wishes (talk) 16:04, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

A source engaging in COVID-19 misinformation and politicization1 is not a good tertiary source. Besides, if it was really due, it should be easy to provide a reliable source citing that article or scholarly sources relying on them. Unfortunately, as majority of sources discuss each event and country separately, the sources doing this global Communist death toll are not the best or represents a minority views in academia, even if they may be more widespread in the popular press. Davide King (talk) 16:13, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Notes

This is relevant because that article is no longer available, and they have since stated to consider any death from COVID-19 to be part of the global Communist death toll. Davide King (talk) 16:15, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

That diff includes 15 references/sources. Which one are you talking about? My very best wishes (talk) 16:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

My issue is not with the 15 references but the Dissident article as a tertiary source; for one, it uses all estimates irrespective of their weight (Rummel's 60,000,000+ number for the Soviet Union is fringe among Soviet specialists), but the mere fact the article is not available anymore is problematic. I can only assume it is because they now consider any COVID-19 death to be added at the Communist death toll, which made them go fringe. As it stands, it is undue. Note that the earlier, other estimates are there because they are at least cited by Valentino, which gives them some weight. There would be no problem if a reliable or scholarly cited that same Dissident article, which would give them weight and my support for their inclusion with attribution. This does not appear to be the case, and they do not appear to be a good tertiary source. Davide King (talk) 16:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I see. That link is no longer available, and I can not even check what it actually claims. But I can see a number of other cited sources (yes, like Rummel). Are you saying you checked these other sources, and they do NOT provide such estimates? As far as I remember, some of them (like Rummel) do make such claims. My very best wishes (talk) 16:45, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I do not think is an issue of VERIFY (e.g. I do not think they got those numebrs wrong on VERIFY grounds), it is more an issue of WEIGHT (e.g. Rummel did indeed maintain his 60,000,000+ estimates for the Soviet Union but it is a fringe claim in Soviet scholarly literature among mainstream Western scholars that the article does not appear to note). The article is not a good tertiary source because a good tertiary source would provide us the grade of acceptance of each estimate (again, I do not dispute that Rummel really did not estimate those precise numbers, he really did estimate that), but they appear to think every estimate is of equal weight, when no Soviet specialist still cite 60,000,000+ Rummel's estimate as serious). The other issue of WEIGHT is that, unlike other sources cited by Valentino, I could not find no secondary coverage to use instead. Davide King (talk) 17:00, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I do agree the "Dissident" link/site is a weak source. As about other sources, they seem to be valid. From what I read, the numbers by Rummel are not fringe (he is a well known scholar), but this is merely a situation when different researchers count different numbers. Here is what he counted: [3]. There were direct and indirect killings, like the man-made hunger. Should the latter be counted? The opinions by historians differ. My very best wishes (talk) 18:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

That is indeed a problem of such Communist death tolls in general because it depends on definition, terminology, and criteria used. Not all Rummel's numbers are fringe, he got much accurate numbers for Cambodia, but his estimates for the Soviet Union are not relied on by mainstream historians as serious post-1989. We already include estimates by Rummel, we also already include Courtois, another sourced cited by that article. Others may not be included because they are country figures (e.g. Afghanistan), which is what majority of country experts do, while Courtois and Rummel did indeed a body count for Communism as a whole, which is the purpose of the section. Davide King (talk) 18:31, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry to disagree, but I do not see any reason to remove all these numbers altogether (as in this diff). These numbers are sourced to a number of RS and useful for a reader. If there are discrepancies in RS, one should simply include range of numbers. My very best wishes (talk) 00:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

No problem, it is perfectly fine to disagree. I do not think we are removing all these numbers altogether because several of sources mentioned and used are already discussed. If we had a stronger source (we can agree that this is a week source) doing that for us, especially if it was a scholarly one (e.g. country experts themselves), I would not have any problem, but I do not think there is one, and it appears to be consensus is not to use it here unless a better source is found or a reliable sources reporting the VoC findings and summaries of estimate is found, which would certainly make it due. Davide King (talk) 11:12, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess we both agreed that whereas the "dissident" source is disputable, all other numerous cited sources, including Rummel can be used. My very best wishes (talk) 23:58, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@Davide King:: My very best wishes has restored the disputed text, in violation of both the consensus above and at RSN, with the argument that there is an "agreement on talk"; I certainly see no agreement here to use this blog in any capacity. Could you clarify? My reading is that we could potentially use a totally different, completely rewritten paragraph citing other sources, which would involve using their surveys and summaries rather than opinions from a blog - but we absolutely cannot state that a random blog's opinion is that 100 million the most commonly cited figure; we would need an actual WP:RS stating that. --Aquillion (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but we already cite those (Brezinski, Courtois, Rummel), so there is no need to use the blog without secondary coverage or a better source. Here, Siebert gave a good summary of each sources used by the blog. It must be noted that most scholarly and neutral sources do not engage in a global Communist death toll (each country specialists give numbers for each country, and they would dispute the addition of the Great Chinese Famine toll or demographic losses to the total, or even to have a Communist death toll because it is too politicized and controversial), so it is not surprising that even the sources best (Courtois and Rummel) are controversial, outdated, or unreliable in light of all those considerations. Davide King (talk) 00:42, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• I see only a single source. Where are the other sources saying that In 2016, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation made an effort to compile ranges of estimates using sources from 1976 to 2010, and wrote in its Dissident blog that the overall range "spans from 42,870,000 to 161,990,000" killed, with 100 million the most commonly cited figure? That is the text you are attempting to add to the section, so you must find a WP:RS specifically saying that. Obviously, we cannot simply survey those papers and reach that conclusion ourselves; and obviously, a blog is not a suitable source for such a survey. So you need to present a better survey, or substantially rewrite the text to avoid relying on the blog. --Aquillion (talk) 00:29, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• No, absolutely not - the statements you're trying to revert back into the article has only a single unreliable source, since it says that they, specifically, reached a conclusion with 100 million the most commonly cited figure - none of the other sources say that. If you want to cite that conclusion, you need a reliable source saying so, not a blog. Note that this was just discussed above with a consensus to remove, as well as on RSN with a consensus that it is an unreliable source, so your restoration is against consensus; I certainly don't see a consensus to continue to use this source even in this section, certainly not enough to overturn the discussion directly above it. If you think that other sources can be found, use them, but you can't use a blog to summarize them. As I have said repeatedly in discussions over this, if you think that this figure is so important and so widespread, find and use sources other than a blog to summarize it. Waving your hands and saying "but the blog says they surveyed 15 sources" is no use - what meaning is there to random people claiming random things on a blog? We have no reason to trust their accuracy, their methodology, or to give their opinions any weight; and, again, if this figure is so important, better sources (comparable to the rest of the section) ought to exist, and we ought to be able to cover it relying on them directly. The instance on repeatedly re-adding a blog undermines the very contention that the opinion the blog expresses is actually so widespread and significant. But at the very least we can't use a blog for it - there were overwhelming consesuses to exclude it both above and on WP:RSN. If you think the sources that the blog used are sufficient, then rewrite to use them directly without mentioning the blog or relying on anything from the blog itself. (But, and it hardly needs to be said, you cannot combine them yourself to make the argument that 100 million is the most commonly cited figure - you need a secondary WP:RS for that. You can say X said Y for some RS saying Y, but you need another secondary RS to provide a broad survey like you're trying to do here. Currently, AFAIK, none have been presented for that statement.) --Aquillion (talk) 00:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Aquillion: I think, instead of debating minor issues, let's think globally. The situation is as follows:

  • Different authors use different terminology for different events. Thus, Rummel "democide" for all premature deaths, including any man-made famine deaths. Harff uses "politicide" for just few events is several states. Mann uses "classicide" just for Cambodia, and some relatively minor (as compared to Cambodia) outbursts of violence in China and USSR. Valentino uses "mass killings" in his own interpretation. Obviously, each of them mean different sets of events.

  In contrast, this article implies they are speaking about the same events, but describe them differently

  • Using this different terminology, authors provide different estimates. Again the article does not explains clearly that different estimates are because (i) the authors speak about different events, and (ii) the authors use different data. It is a clear and unequivocal attempt to mislead a reader.

  Finally, all authors who provide global estimates (except Valentino) do that to convey some specific idea: usually, the idea is that Communism was the worst mass murderer. It is deeply incorrect and dishonest to separate these estimates from their context, and present them as a neutral research.

  In connection to that, it is necessary:

  • To combine "Terminology" and "Estimates" and put is into a correct context.
  • Move all old figures (Rummel, Brzezinski, etc) together to a footnote, and write that Valentino summarised all old attempts to estimate what he called "mass lillings", and concluded that these estimates represent highest possible figures. That is what Valentino says (see my previous posts). Of course, these sources are early estimates, and they cannot be represented as a current state of knowledge.

  Next, since this section started to use country experts (it cites figures for China, USSR, Cambodia), we, instead of total figures, which are not available from serious publications, should provide modern consensus data for each individual state. Importantly, taking to account that overwhelming majority of authors do not use terms "mass killings", "classicide", "democide", we must provide itemised figures, separately for executions and mass murders (that are described as such in majority of sources), and for excess mortality, especially for famine. In connection to that, it is necessary to know that there is no "debates over famine", as this article claims: a majority view is that most famines under Communists were not "mass killings" or "democide": they were just man-made famine, as well as all other XX century famines per Amartya Sen. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:16, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Adding back controversial statements with controversial citations

@Volunteer Marek: I noticed that you kept adding back text that was deemed unreliable by both the talk page here and WP:RSN, that is in violation of consensus which was previously set and that currently has not changed yet. If you really wish the text to come back, you should opt to talk it out on the talk page, and not start edit-wars with Horace. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:58, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that is becoming a conduct issue. Forget it for a while, I have a feeling the whole section will be purged soon. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:05, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi "MarioSuperstar77" who created their user page in July 2020, who has 175 edits, most of them to this page (or ... some other "noteworthy" articles), I suggest you, and "Horace" reach autoconfirmed status with your account before jumping into controversial articles and lecturing long standing users by leaving notices on their talk pages that, honestly, no account with just 175 edits would be very unlikely to know about. Volunteer Marek 21:02, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek: For 1, you do not understand the rules as you actively break them. By consensus, the information on the page with the controversial text removed was fine as it. However, you on your own, decided to reintroduce them without anyone's agreement. Paul, who is extended confirmed, agrees that what you have shown here is behavioral problems and that can be taken to WP:ANI and WP:A/R for disciplinary actions. For 2, I am autoconfirmed, otherwise, I would not be able to edit the page which is semi-protected. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:01, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

You have 177 edits and are talking like some Wikipedia pro! Lol. Volunteer Marek 00:37, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul has already taken one editor to ANI for which he was rebuked, as well as threatening multiple other editors (including me) with sanctions. Furthermore he has been publicly rebuked for his behaviour multiple times including by a neutral moderator. Regardless of this dispute I'm not sure he is an authority to rely on Vanteloop (talk) 10:36, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I do not think that is an accurate summary (e.g. threatening multiple other editors (including me) with sanctions, which is too much an oversimplification, especially considering that are not an admin, the ones who can inflict sanctions; if they thought a user was being disruptive, or in violations with our policies and guidelines, they would report them to verify if there were indeed violations or disruption, and I believe they have made clear they do not want any user to be because "AE sanctions will bring unneeded drama, which will immediately create a very toxic atmosphere", which I something I agree with, and I hope that I am not the only one. In this specific case, both Mario (who I feel has been unfairly dismissed) and Paul are indeed correct, and below Aquillion gave a good summary. Certainly, if users keep adding that same source and context, without secondary coverage or better sourcing, it becomes disruptive and against consensus, and may need to be notified or sanctioned if they persist without making no improvement to address the problems of this addition. I really hope we do not reach that point. Davide King (talk) 16:15, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree, I am simply pointing out that the argument of a user with a checkered (at best) history of behaviour should be taken with a pinch of salt, and not as validation for an edit war Vanteloop (talk) 16:48, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Are you going to comment on the "Source analysis" page? You are delaying the process. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:10, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this article is under 30-500 restrictions or anything of that sort (though perhaps it ought to be), but either way their summary of previous discussions seems correct to me. The last RSN discussion was extremely lopsided against using that source, and the more recent discussion was as well - it's the blog of an advocacy organization; it simply isn't reasonable to present the opinions posted there as WP:DUE in comparison to the higher-quality sources used elsewhere in the rest of that section. Given that the things that they're saying are arguments that were made repeatedly above, it's likely they got them from there. And as I said in the discussion above - if it is actually true that that is a common assessment of the estimates, it should be easy to find a non-blog source saying it; the constant insistence on trying to cite it to a blog undermines the larger argument that the blog is trustworthy or accurate, since it's an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim (contradicting numerous higher-quality sources describing those figures as controversial at best and outright unsupported at worst) that people only seem to be able to find a single advocacy-blog making so stridently. --Aquillion (talk) 04:30, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

• Also, this is the third section opened for that source. We have a discussion directly above for this. We cannot cite a blog's summary, fullstop. That shouldn't even require serious discussion, and the argument that it counts as fifteen sources because the blog says they based their opinion on fifteen sources is obviously absurd - if you think that those sources support the text, you can use them, but you can't cite the blog itself. --Aquillion (talk) 00:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• Aquillion, the disputed addition has been re-added ... again, see here. Edit summary is misleading in light on Aquillion's comments explaining this. By the way, we already cite several of the same cited sourced (Brezinski, Courtois, Rummel), so there is no need to re-add that specific text if we do not have a secondary source reporting that, or a better and more reliable source doing a similar survey, as pointed out by Aquillion. Davide King (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

  Brezinski, Courtois, Rummel etc should go into a subsection on early estimate of "generic Communism death toll" and their political implications.

  Actually, I have a hypothesis how all this piece of ... brilliant work was written. Some user took Valentino (p. 275) and collected all sources cited by him. He added those sources to the article, but "forgot" to add that Valentino described them as "upper possible margin". Since no serious authors was interested in calculating "lower margin" (this topic is not a part of a neutral scholarly discource), "upper margin" became "Estimates". We must restore the balance and put it into the proper context. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:28, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Source Analysis?

I think that I respectfully disagree in detail with a statement by the AFD closers, when they wrote: "We therefore strongly recommend that the DRN process be resumed and pick up the attempts at source analysis carried out in this discussion, which show promise in breaking the deadlock." I do not understand how source analysis will break any deadlock, and in fact this recommendation by the closers seems to contradict their conclusion: "Unfortunately, we can find no consensus on them [the debate about whether sources were interpreted correctly], and consider it unlikely that further discussion in this forum will produce one." It is clear to me that source analysis isn't going to resolve the dispute, because there are a multitude of good-quality sources supporting different viewpoints.

If someone has an alternate approach for source analysis, please describe it. There are reliable sources to support multiple viewpoints and approaches, and enough of them so that looking for what is the "majority" viewpoint probably will not be helpful.

I agree with the statement that verifiability is not the key policy here. It is an important, non-negotiable policy, but there are sources that support multiple viewpoints. So the question is one of balance and due weight, which are aspects of neutral point of view.

Discussion on how to focus the topic of this article is in progress at DRNMKUCR. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:27, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I totally agree that verifiability problem is not a key problem. The key problem here is neutrality. All verifiability issues of this article are a result of its non-neutrality: the sources "resist" to their usage in a non-neutral way, and significant distortion, cherry-picking or direct falsifications are needed to write this non-neutral content using these sources. It is not possible to fit the whole body of sources into this totally non-neutral format without cherry-picking, falsifications and misinterpretations.

An example that demonstrate my point is "Causes" section (I already wrote about that, so I will not repeat myself). A fresh example is "Estimates" section: it uses four sources closely affiliated with the US government (and which cite essentially the same obsolete data), one desperately outdated source, of source authored by an amateur scientist, one source that cites demographic data (which is intrinsically incapable of identifying causes of deaths), one highly controversial source, which was severely criticized for its figures, and a couple of sources authored by country experts (and leaves beyond the scope tons of good quality modern sources authored by excellent country experts). Some of those sources were already recognised as lousy at RSN. Why better sources cannot be used? The reason is that the sources used in this section are the only sources that tell about "Communist mass killings" in general, and they are the best available sources about the topic defined as "Communist mass killings". However, if we start to talk about each of those events separately from each other, we immediately find tons of good, modern, high quality sources. The only problem is that they do not tell about Communism as a single phenomenon, they discuss each country and each event in their own historical context and separately from each other. Clearly, this section has severe verifiability problems, but the key issue is its non-neutrality. By choosing a totally non-neutral topic and non-neutral structure, the article leaves beyond the scope tons of good sources and distorts those sources that are already being used in it.

Again, the reason is non-neutrality, and Robert absolutely correctly identifies it. I see only two solutions, and I already presented them in my version of AfD. A third solution is Nug's proposal (split). I propose to move this discussion to the less noisy platform. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:59, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

There's like roughly five ongoing separate yet related discussions happening on this article's talkpage, concurrently. Jumpin' Junipers. GoodDay (talk) 16:09, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

• I think Robert is on point here. These discussions shouldn't be aimed at "who is right", but rather how to present the several competing views neutrally. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:13, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

  @CaptainEek: Actually, before discussing HOW to present the information, we need to agree WHAT topic is supposed to be covered. In reality, there is no agreement even about that (see, e.g., my last post at DRNMKUCR). This is a preliminary, but a quite important question, which can be resolved only by means of an RfC. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:42, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Paul Siebert Sounds like you folks have a good idea of where this needs to go then :) I'll await the RfC. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:10, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

  Thank you, Capitan! Paul Siebert (talk) 04:17, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Siebert anticipated me.

• Problem is that the current structure, which is focused of Communism as a single phenomenon, does not allow us to do that; majority of sources discuss each country individually and separately, and at best engage in comparative analysis between three very specific Communist leaders (Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot) rather than Communist regimes, not all of which is the same (e.g. Jones discusses Stalin and Mao together but Pol Pot separately), and is also done with non-Communist regimes (e.g. a Communist regime is compared not with another Communist regime but with a non-Communist one, as in the Holocaust, Cambodia, and Rwanda). We cannot agree on how to present such competing views, if we cannot identify which are majority, minority (significant or not), and fringe views — the structure focuses on Communism as a single phenomenon and Communist mass killings in general, which does not allow us to fix those problems because majority of sources do not write in such context, and the fact those are the best sources about Communism mass killings in general should be telling. So please, CaptainEek, understand and respond to this — it is as if we did not discuss all those already for the past two years ... We still cannot agree how to present them because the structure is problematic, which was denied by the other side — I think the AfD at least gave partially right to those who argue the structure is problematic, but we still have not found a solution, and I do not think that we will find it, if we still maintain the current structure, for which there is no longer any consensus. A neutral way is to find a topic with tertiary sources. Davide King (talk) 20:47, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

  I am replying here because not all talk page discussion participants are represented at DRNMKUCR. Let's stay focused at only one problem at any concrete moment of time.

  IMO, the only logical and non-controversial way is (i) WHAT?, and then (ii) HOW? And, it is vitally important not to mix these two issues.

  We must ask the community about the article's topic, but our question must contain only "WHAT?", and not "HOW?"

  After the answer to the first question has been obtained, we can start thinking about a neutral representation of the newly defined topic.

  If the topic is "the theories that link Communism with mass killings", that leads us to ONE set of sources (and we will try to think how can we represent them neutrally).

  If the topic is "the events that lead to premature deaths in Communist states ("premature deaths" is a neutral umbrella term used by scholars, it is not my euphemism)", then we obtain the SECOND (somewhat different) set of sources.

  The course of our discussion of neutrality will significantly depend on what sources we analyze, so it is premature to speak about sources until we haven't heard the opinion of the community about the topic. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:07, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Well I have very little clue as to what ya'll are arguing about. But, do let me know when ya'll start on RFC on whatever it is ya'll are arguing about. GoodDay (talk) 04:06, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@GoodDay: If you don't understand my 12 Dec post, please, ask a question. It seems we have identified a key point, and we may be ready for an RfC soon. I will gladly answer all your questions is you have any. Paul Siebert (talk) 04:21, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Just ping me, when the RFC is started. GoodDay (talk) 04:23, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@GoodDay: ping. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:26, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to this ship, Admiral. We will try to maintain order on this ship. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:29, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

An interesting source

I was looking for sources about "democide", and I found this. The author warns against biased studies that "may unwittingly and erroneously incorporate aspects of thinking endemic to one region, religion, or political orientation." The author provides four examples of biased approaches:

"... if one studies only cases of African democide, political or cultural features associated with Africa may inadvertently and erroneously become part of a purportedly scientific model of democide. This would lead to erroneous overdiagnosis of African polities or societies as proto-democidal, and underdiagnosis elsewhere. Analogously, an analysis that focused only on democide carried out in communist regimes would lead similarly to a biased model, misconceiving aspects of communist systems as part and parcel of democidal tendencies. A different bias would arise if only fascist or authoritarian cases were examined."

The author concludes that any study of democide with a particular provenance should bereated with cautions, and more general model of the phenomenon are preferrable. Interestingly, that is exactly the argument many of us were making during the AfD and talk page discussions. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:56, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Best I can tell, this is their motivation for the particular approach they take in their paper rather than a general injunction for methodology. They specifically want to compare vary different types of cases because they believe this will highlight stuff that is missed in research which focuses exclusively on one category of cases. But that's different than saying that any other approach is invalid. Volunteer Marek 19:20, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, that is certainly interesting. It certainly proves that it is problematic, and makes it harder to write a NPOV article about it. It would be much better to have a general article, which should indeed be general and not limited to Communism. Both The Cambridge History of Communism and the Oxford History of Communism attempt to do a globalized categorization but it is much more nuanced than The Black Book of Communism and is not discussed as a single phenomenon either (e.g. there was certainly some connection and clear), and take a middle position between Communism as a single phenomenon (The Black Book of Communism) and communisms (Le Siècle des communismes).1 They are both concerned in providing context, e.g. what communists thought, what they expected, general historical and societal context (e.g. World War I, post-revolutionary waves, etc.). They include chapters by Michael David-Fox, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Geoffrey Roberts, and appear to confirm what you wrote here.

There are many "... under Communism" chapters but no "Mass Killings under Communism" or "Communist Death Toll" chapters.2 Of course, one may argue that is the job of genocide scholars but it does prove it is not as notable as it may appear on first glance, and that events are discussed individually and in context, indeed both works provide plenty of context from what I have been able to read so far. It would have also been different if genocide scholars actually wrote plenty of Communist Mass Killings books but they are at best chapters in general books about genocide and mass killing, and are mostly limited to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. I do not think chapters are enough for a standalone article, or else Mass killings under capitalist regimes and other regime types would have been created already, since genocide scholars do not categorize Communism as something separate or special but discuss it like any other times and even compare it with non-Communist regimes. I do not think doing such grouping for any regime type is encyclopedic, if there are no such academic works specifically devoted to it as a separate topic (e.g. there are plenty of sources about "Genocide of indigenous people", there is even a book devoted specifically to a critical bibliography review; if we had such things for Communism, we would not even need to discuss this in the first place. That is why I think the best structure if following scholarly sources, e.g. either actually expanding Mass killing3 or turn this into a general article for mass killing events.4

Notes

1. The Oxford Hanbook of Communism, p. 4.

2. The Oxford Handbook of Communism does cite The Black Book of Communism and Matthew White in a reference but I could not see the context, and either way it appears to be in passing, which is the point. A useful chapter may be "Communism, Violence and Terror" by Hiroaki Kuromiya from the Cambridge History of Communism. I could only read the first page but it already tells that ideology was more used as a justification, rather than a cause, and says that "[v]iolence ebbed and flowed dependent on many factors, and often Bolshevik terror had little to do with the ideology of communism per se." The same work also distinguishes it from fascism, which saw violence as an end in itself, while communists saw it as a means or inevitability. I hope you can get access to the full chapter because it could be very useful.

3. If it grows too big, we may simply split it — indeed, the problem is that this article was created before the latter, when the general article should have been created first and the Communist mass killings article should have been seen as a split due to space. As we have sources reviewing the literature, I think we can certainly briefly discuss the events irrespective of regime type, with the main articles being each event, without having do group mass killings by ideology, or whatever, in separate, too synthy articles.

4. If there would be a problem of space, the solution should be a general article like is done for Genocides in history to discuss all relevant mass killing events, as scholarly sources do (e.g. discusses together, not separated in category, which means we can use a header to regime types by ideology, region, or whatever, which is one thing, it is a whole another thing to have full main article based on category by ideology, region, or whatever if we do not have enough works that are specifically relying on such categorization, rather than chapters in general works of mass killings. Davide King (talk) 01:50, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

If you want my opinion, The Cambridge History of Communism and its Oxford twin are good sources for Communism, but what they tell about "Communist mass killings"?

I am familiar with Roberts's works, he is expert in Stalin, but he discusses Stalin in a context of political situation in Russia and in Europe, and not in a context of Communism. If all chapters in these books are authored by the authors who approach to the topic in the same way, then TCHoC is not a good source for this article: according to this source, all those events should be analysed in their own historical context, and they are loosely linked to each other and to Communism. Paul Siebert (talk) 02:00, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

It is just further proof that we need to move on from this Communism as a single phenomenon, and it is proof both those two academic sources represent mainstream, majority views, and that this article fails NPOV as a result. If we cannot rely on such scholarly sources, we cannot write a NPOV article about it. That is why the only solution to write within the context of Communism is the "victims of communism" topic put forward by TFD, for which we actually have tertiary sources and a literature about it. It will be about Courtois and Malia's thesis, and those in the popular press who see the events caused mainly by communist ideology, that Communism was the worst murderer of the 20th century, and as a result should be criminalized like Nazism, irrespective of the different views among communists and anti-authoritarian and democratic/libertarian communists, because mass deaths is the inevitable result of any form of communism and radical politics anyway.

Again, we simply cannot write a NPOV article for the POV of a minority — if those writing within the context of Communism represent a minority view, we cannot rely on them to write a NPOV article. Instead, we must refocus and restructure the article, and rely on secondary and tertiary coverage like Neumayer for the linkage and narratives, and put it within the context of "anti-communist memory entrepreneurs" and attempts at criminalization. Indeed, Communism as a single phenomenon can only be justified if it represented a majority view; if we cannot use academic sources that do not write in such context, we should not drop such good scholarly sources but restructure the article according to majority, and minority, academic and scholarly sources and views. Davide King (talk) 02:14, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

"Where revolutionary regimes in general, and communist regimes in particular, part company from non-revolutionary regimes is in the degree to which they have been historically willing—indeed compelled—to deploy escalating degrees of extreme political violence...The Soviet Union's formative experiences of civil war, forced collectivization, and ever wider waves of terror against presumptive internal enemies, both within and outside the Communist Party, established a template that that other communist parties in power variously imitated, adjusted, reacted against, and occasionally amplified in the light of their own domestic and regional security circumstances. Full-scale Terror with a capital T was not, a priori, irreversible encoded into the DNA of communist revolution: some states experienced relatively more severe, protracted, or spasmodic versions of terror than others. But common to all communist states were factors, albeit influential to varying degrees, that systematically removed constraints on the prosecution of terror as a means to guarantee the revolution...

from Strauss "Communist Revolution and Political Terror" in Oxford.[4] I do not have access to the entire chapter, but you are way out on a limb in some of your claims. fiveby(zero) 18:42, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: It seems my last responce to Cloud200 (see the section below) addresses your point. In addition, Strauss is not an expert in Soviet history, so some of her interpretations or generalizations may non-justified. Thus, many authors (whom I already cited) note that there much more difference between USSR and Cambodia than commonalities (thus, KR used revolutionary peasants to suppress and destroy urban population and create a rural utopis, whereas in USSR forceful collectivisation of peasantry was used to accelerate urbanisation).

On another hand, many authors see more commonalities between genocides in Asia (communist and non-communist ones) than between mass killings in Asian communist states and in Europe.

That is only a small part of possible counter-arguments. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:15, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I see no mention of 'mass killings', 'mass murder', or any other terms we employ as common terminology in reference to all Communist regimes. Indeed, the chapter can be useful for the topic about the links and theories (though they seem more indicated to be about communism and terrorism/violence rather than a proposed topic of link between communism and mass killings), which is exactly what I support. What I oppose is describing the events as a single phenomenon, when that is not what majority of scholarly sources do, and essentially treating them as death toll events (e.g. the emphasis on listing how many people died according to several sources rather than summarize and contextualize the events as majority of sources do, distinguishing between universal mass killing events, and mass deaths and excess mortality events) within the context of a global Communist death toll. Davide King (talk) 21:00, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Another interesting source

A lesson from a parallel Talk:Denial of the Holodomor debate: please very carefully verify the sources and quotes supplied by people proposing "objective and transparent" review of sources by means of Google Scholar because, as you can clearly see from that debate[5], even our champions of objectivity can, in a completely random and unintended slip of keyboard, miss key paragraphs from the sources they are quoting that testify to the opposite of the thesis they are proposing. Trust, but verify, pun intended.

I skip the whole Holodomor denial-related debate, and just move to one particular source - found by replicating the "objective and transparent" methodology - that in my opinion demonstrates how you can present the topic of mass-killings in multi-dimensional yet objective manner. The publication is from a historical conference in Russia in 2012[6] and discussed the topic of Holodomor in the broader context of mass-scale repressions in the USSR:

The greater context of the Holodomor within the Soviet famines of the 1920’s and 1930’s as well as the apparent political goals of the Soviet leadership at the time indicate that the Holodomor was in fact not genocide but should be classified under the more general concept of democide. Soviet repression, although often affecting certain ethnic groups more than others, was not designed to eliminate certain ethnic groups, but was a result of state policies aimed at modernization as well as general repression of the entire Soviet populace. There can be no doubt that the Soviet collectivization policy played a major role in causing the Holodomor. Stalin’s desire to modernize the Soviet economy at unprecedented speed, coupled with an attempt to destroy the remaining power and influence of the kulaks served as the primary vehicles for the collectivization policies (Naimark, 2010, 71).[7]

He then goes into details what specific particular policies led to the death of 6 million people:

The Ukrainian harvest of 1932 was 10-12% below the 1926-1930 average, a significant decrease but not necessarily enough to cause an emergency situation (Subtelny, 1988, 413). However, the harvests of 1931 and 1932 both fell below expectations, and this coupled with Moscow’s increasing quotas accelerated the situation (Ellman, 2007, 677). As the state began to seize more and more grain from the peasants, Ukraine’s communist leadership warned Moscow that the grain procurement would cause grave food shortages. Despite these warnings, Stalin actually raised Ukraine’s grain quotas for 1932 by 44%..[8]

Now, there's a piece that I personally don't agree with but respect 1) the author's admission that "many commentators" have different view, 2) a pretty balanced and nuanced flow of arguments on why he disagrees with one interpretation (of intentional destruction of Ukrainian nation) in favor of another (destroy a specific social class).

Many commentators have claimed that it had always been Stalin’s intent to destroy Ukrainian nationalism with famine. Although there is evidence supporting the idea that Stalin’s regime sought to weaken the position of the kulaks, there is no substantial evidence proving that the Soviet regime wanted to use the famine to wage a campaign of genocide against the Ukrainian people as a whole. Davies and Wheatcroft note that Soviet authorities vastly underestimated the time it would take to mechanize collective farms. The Soviet government expected an above average crop in 1931, grossly overestimating the initial effectiveness of collectivization policies. These miscalculations created the conditions for the famine. (Davies & Wheatcroft, 2006, 626) Repression of the kulaks, which had been ongoing since the Revolution in 1917, continued during the famine. Soviet policies of closing the border coupled with failures to provide needed aid can be attributed to Soviet authorities seizing the opportunity to destroy the kulaks, but cannot be seen as an attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation.[9]

Finally, on that subject:

The Holodomor serves as a reminder that governments can be responsible for millions of deaths without actively exterminating their populations. Although the Holodomor was not an attempt to exterminate the Ukrainian people, it was a crime against humanity and a result of unrealistic industrialization policy goals.[10]

Now, on everone's favorite subject of generalizing the ideology of communism onto the mass killings:

A full examination of the Holodomor must view the Great Famine as part of the greater scope of Soviet policies throughout the pre-World War II era. Soviet policies covered the entire scope of Goldhagen’s “eliminationism,” ranging from the Red Terror in the 1920’s that was clearly an act of state terrorism, to the forced internment and relocation of ethnic groups in the Caucuses region (Goldhagen, 2009, 14-15). Soviet policies of eliminationism were part of an over-reaching program of nation-state building. The Soviet leadership sought to euthanize potential threats and create a more docile society that would easily acquiesce to efforts from Moscow to create a communist utopia.[11]

Please also note that he, quite logically, considers the whole Soviet period as one continuum of terror, from 1920 on, without jumping into excuses popular among some editors such as "it was all Stalin" and the link between the mass-scale extermination of people (however you call it) is quite obvious to the author. One source that draws attention is Goldhagen, D. (2009) Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault On Humanity. New York. Affain Books which I don't have but looks like it's focused just on the topic of this article. Cloud200 (talk) 14:07, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

That's not how I would interpret it. While it says that the Soviet motivation was communist, it doesn't link it to other communist countries. Someone for example might kill someone because he thinks God told him to, but that doen't necessarily connect him to eveyone who kills in God's name. Also, per weight, Daniel Goldhagen's views are fringe and largely ignored in the literature of mass killings, hence don't belong in this article. TFD (talk) 16:45, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Goldhagen

As the source is easily found on LibGen, I can now summarize how the author describes the communist flavor of eliminationism (the book describes all of them from right to the left, each of them with their own specifics and rationales):

The political Left’s murderous ideologies, communisms of various hues, seek to reorganize society according to a totalizing political and social vision, glorify that vision and the class or segment of society that is declared to be its bearer, and declare as enemies all individuals and groups that consider themselves or that are “objectively” defined to be opposed to that vision. This vision admits little possibility of coexistence with doubters and dissenters, let alone actual enemies. Communist regimes and their followers have a strong proclivity for eliminating the communist vision’s opponents. Because Marxism promises and requires a homogenous, dissent-free paradise, and because it posits sizable groups as being, by definition, “socially dangerous elements,” powerful roadblocks to that world’s creation, communists see the need to remove them as acute, so the restraints on how it may be done crumble. (Goldhagen, 2009)

The above is quite obvious and directly flows from the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Now, about the global scope of these communist-inspired state policies:

Mass-murdering communist regimes have most notably, after initially drawing on poor and resentful proletarians and peasants, reared generations of true believers, by inculcating the young, who then readily lend themselves to eliminationist programs. Especially using their control of schools, the Soviets, communist Chinese, and communist North Koreans instilled in many of their subjects the fanatical belief in their political systems’ rightness, in the existence of systematic enmity among many people inside and outside the country, and the systematic need to do just about anything to eliminate those enemies. The Soviets erected the gulag, produced mass famine death, and deported putatively disloyal peoples. In some Soviet satellite countries, communist regimes killed (especially in Yugoslavia) and imprisoned in labor camps (as in Romania) real and imagined enemies. The communist Chinese slaughtered more people than the Soviets, including mass numbers in their Laogai labor camp gulag. North Korea’s true believers have turned the entire country into a quasi-gulag, with a landscape peppered by the camps of the regime’s formal gulag, the Kwanliso, or Special Control Institutions. Each communist system’s most loyal supporters were continuously replenished by new communist-raised generations. (Goldhagen, 2009)

Cloud200 (talk) 14:28, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: I am sure that it is possible to find even more sources that say essentially the same as the sources provided by you. The problem is not in that. The questions that we need to answer is as follows:

1. "What majority of reliable sources say about the events described in this article, and do they link them to Communism (as some general phenomenon), or to some local factors, which were specific to each concrete society?"

2. "Do majority of reliable sources see a significant linkage between these events, or they prefer to discuss them separately, and to provide separate explanations for each of them?"

These two questions are impossible to answer by presenting just a couple of sources. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: There is an obvious flaw in your approach: If you look for information specifically about a linkage between Marxism and mass murder, you definitely will find it. However, does it prove anything?

• If you do, e.g. this, you get a lot of sources supporting your POV. However, there is absolutely no proof that these sources reflect majority views on mass killings in the USSR in 1937.
• If you do this, you get another list of sources, and this list is more neutral (teh keywords "stalinism repressions" are more likely to be selected by a user who has no preliminary knowledge of the subject, and, therefore, no POV).

I am not going to analyse each sources in these lists right now (I would like to do that later). However, one source that is found in both lists is interesting. This source is Vincent Barnett (2006) Understanding stalinism—the ‘Orwellian discrepancy’ and the ‘rational choice dictator’, Europe-Asia Studies, 58:3, 457-466, DOI:10.1080/09668130600601982

It is a discussion of a linkage between Marxism, Stalin's personality and repressions (a.k.a. mass killings). Author's conclusion is:

"Hence it should be accepted that Stalin was not rational, but neither was he mad: he was just ignorant and corrupt. He was ignorant of conventional economic theory, ignorant of the real long-term consequences of the terror, and blind to the original impetus of Marx’s egalitarian vision of a communist economy. He was also paranoid with regards to maintaining power, as any dictator must be. The implications of all this are that it is ignorance, paranoia and dictators that must be overcome; their actions should not be surreptitiously justified through the attempt to interpret them as ‘rational’ or as ‘more complex than previously thought’ or even as ‘generated by difficult circumstances’, no matter what their nominal political affiliation might have been. This does not mean that studying the detail of Stalin’s rule is not a completely legitimate activity for historians, only that the temptation to use this detail as valediction should be resisted. "

As you can see, the main factors that lead to the most murderous mass killings ("repressions") in the USSR are seen in Stalin's personality, and it is more a deviation from Marxism than its implementation. If you are familiar with history of Soviet Russia, you probably know that late Stalin's period was marked by restoration of many features of pre-revolutionary Russian Empire: separate education for boys and girls, old-style uniform (and batman) for military officers, conversion of peasants to de facto serfs, imperial style in architecture, formation of nomenklatura as a new nobility, etc.

In other words, we have two conflicting views (at least). Which one is more predominant? That question is absolutely necessary to answer before we rewrite this article. And it can be answered only by analysing a representative set of sources, not by cherry-picking a couple of sources that you (or I) like.

However, some preliminary conclusions can be made even using the sources used in this article.

Thus, Valentino's theory (which is one of the core sources for this article) says that ideology is not an important factor, and the key factor is leader's personality. That is closer to Barnett than to the sources cited by you. And, importantly, Valentino's views were twisted and misinterpreted in this article, which must be fixed.

Michael Mann, in his super-influential "The Dark Side..." (which is also cited in this article) concludes that XX century mass killings were the dark side of democracy (not Communism or Marxism), and mass killings in Communist states were, to some degree, democratic ("bottom up") too, and they were a result of perversion of socialist ideas in the same sense as mass killings in other states were a result of perversion of liberal-democratic ideas. That is also more in agreement with Barnett than with your sources.

Of course, this is just a preliminary conclusion, but it is an additional argument in support of a comprehensive source analysis. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:05, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

...and more

I was not my intention to analyse sources from this biased list, but one of them worth mentioning. It is fifth in the list (Eagelton). The first chapter starts with:

"Praising Karl Marx might seem as perverse as putting in a good word for the Boston Strangler. Were not Marx’s ideas responsible for despotism, mass murder, labor camps, economic catastrophe, and the loss of liberty for millions of men and women? Was not one of his devoted disciples a paranoid Georgian peasant by the name of Stalin, and another a brutal Chinese dictator who may well have had the blood of some 30 million of his people on his hands? The truth is that Marx was no more responsible for the monstrous oppression of the communist world than Jesus was responsible for the Inquisition. For one thing, Marx would have scorned the idea that socialism could take root in desperately impoverished, chronically backward societies like Russia and China. If it did, then the result would simply be what he called generalized scarcity, by which he means that everyone would now be deprived, not just the poor. It would mean a recycling of the old filthy business—or, in less tasteful translation, the same old crap. Marxism is a theory of how well-heeled capitalist nations might use their immense resources to achieve justice and prosperity for their people. It is not a program by which nations bereft of material resources, a flourishing civic culture, a democratic heritage, a well-evolved technology, enlightened liberal traditions, and a skilled, educated workforce might catapult themselves into the modern age."

T. Carver, who wrote the introduction, is from University of Bristol, and the list of his publications makes him a good expert. I, again, am surprised how desperately biased the MKuCR article is. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:47, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Jesus was not obsessed about the necessity of "violent revolution", while Marx was. Cloud200 (talk) 15:05, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

In XIX century, almost every progressive thinkers was advocating revolutionary violence. A Greek revolution, Bolivarian revolutions, Hungarian revolution, French revolutions (several), American revolution, Italian Garibaldi wars, German revolution, Russian revolution (February), and many others have nothing in common with Marxism, but most of them were violent, and all of them were supported by progressive thinkers. Violence was seen as one of the most common and normal way for changing a state system, and Marx was not the first and not the last thinker who said that.

Please, stop your ahistorical claims. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

"Marx would have scorned the idea that socialism could take root in desperately impoverished, chronically backward societies like Russia" - yes, Marx made different and often contradictory statements during his life, but this doesn't justify author's ignorance as to the presence of 1881 correspondence between Marx and Vera Zasulich[12] where he happily allowed for such application of Marxism based on agrarian communes instead of proletariat. Cloud200 (talk) 15:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

...and what is a linkage between a support of agrarian communes and advocacy of mass killings? Paul Siebert (talk) 17:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Elementary: the whole purpose of Marxian violent revolution was eradication of bourgeoisie as a class through means of violent revolution, revolutionary terror and dictatorship of the proletariat. As some argued it's not possible in Russia in absence of proletarian masses, Marx hinted it's still possible to use the agrarian communes as the necessary instrument for the eradication. Which is precisely what happened, with necessary ideological linkage creatively provided by Lenin in "State and revolution"[13], with the Soviet state describing itself as "Workers' and Peasants' state". Seriously, I' terrified by the ignorance of fundamental concepts of Marxism-Leninism among Western scholars who you describe as "good experts". And this explains a lot, too. Cloud200 (talk) 09:35, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Your understanding of the Marx concept is superficial. Marxism does not see classes as some biological construct, and social mobility is a part of the Marxist concept. "Eradication of some class" means not physical destruction of its members, but elimination of some concrete social relationships that allow this class to exist. Thus, elimination of a private property of means of production automatically eliminate capitalist economic relationships, which is tantamount to elimination of bourgeois, who are not bourgeois anymore.

I didn't find any statement in Lenin's "State and revolution" where he insisted on physical destruction of all members of the class of bourgeois. And I am not sure this interpretation of Marx or even Lenin's writings is a majority views. If you can provide evidences that majority RS say that, we can continue. So far, all of that is just your speculations.

However, one important reservation is needed. In East Asian society, class division was so significant that different classes were de facto different ethnic groups. One of the most extreme example is Cambodia, where rural (poor) population were Khmers, whereas urban population was composed largely of ethnic Vietnamese or Chinese. Moreover, even urban Khmers were seen by a rural population as some different sub-ethnos. In that situation, the slogan "eradication of bourgeoisie" was interpreted by many revolutionaries as a call for ethnic cleansing. However, that is a feature that was specific to Asian societies, not to Marxism. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:45, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe you didn't find it because you haven't read it.

We have already said above, and shall show more fully later, that the theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) through the process of ”withering away”, but, as a general rule, only through a violent revolution. The panegyric Engels sang in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx’s repeated statements (see the concluding passages of The Poverty of Philosophy[5] and the Communist Manifesto,[6] with their proud and open proclamation of the inevitability of a violent revolution; see what Marx wrote nearly 30 years later, in criticizing the Gotha Programme of 1875,[7] when he mercilessly castigated the opportunist character of that programme) — this panegyric is by no means a mere “impulse”, a mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation.

Details on how these ideas were actually understood and implemented by Bolshevik are documented further in Dictatorship of the proletariat and Red terror. Cloud200 (talk) 19:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

"It was not my intention, but here's another cherry-picked source that I happen to like"

No amount of "preliminary conclusion" or "it was not my intention but" syntactic sugar changes the fact that you are just doing exactly the same thing as you have done above in the discussion under Mann, Marx and "classicide"[14] and countless other times. You call for an "impartial review of sources" and immediately come up with "interesting sources" that by means of careful cherry-picking happen to support your POV. When someone comes up with other sources that happens to not suit your taste, you immediately unroll an elaborate and extremely verbose discussion to discredit these sources.

This is simply disruptive and this is precisely why this debate has been fruitless since September.

Your claim that the article must be based on a single thesis supported by "majority of reliable sources". This is nonsense. From WP:BALANCE (subsection of WP:NPOV):

Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. This involves describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint.

This has been of course proposed plenty of times[15] but you always dismiss them, and come up with your own "preliminary" sources, which of course are not "preliminary" - you propose them to support your POV. The only purpose of you insisting on finding the "more predominant", "main factors" and "majority of sources" in this case it to prevent any progress in improving this article and wasting people's time until they give up, and you are certainly quite successful at this. Cloud200 (talk) 20:31, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Please, refrain from personal attack: you literally accuse me of cherry-picking. If you are still a participant of the DRN process, please, stick with common rules. If you are not participating in this process anymore, please, let me know. In the latter case, next time when you make similar remarks, I'll report you.

I didn't cherry pick anything. I pointed editors's attention on this source, because I myself didn't expect to see this source among the search results that I was seen as an anti-Communist subset of sources.

Frankly, I think my explanations are sufficient to stop the conflict between two good faith users. If you will continue in the same vein, that may cast a doubt on your good faith, or on your ability to understand other's arguments.

Regards, --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:49, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely Cloud200, this sort of analysis would make for an excellent blog post, an impartial source analysis? Not so much. Dare ask for evidence to support their preconceived conclusions? Well then you are being disruptive. Dare call them out on their behaviour? Well then they'll report you. If we cannot discuss and critique the arguments of others without being accused of bad-faith then there is no hope of achieving meaningful progress. Literally posting every single source you can cherry pick to confirm your bias to an already cluttered page doesn't advance the discussion, and then retreating into overly verbose fillibustering while dismissing criticisms out of hand while giving the impression you "own" the page do not help anyone. Vanteloop (talk) 22:34, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

One general problem with source analysis

To avoid possible misunderstanding, let me reiterate the following.

• It is absolutely clear, and noone in clear mind is going to deny this fact, that some sources link Communism (in general) and Marxism (as an ideological doctrine and social theory) with "mass murder" or "mass killings". Let me call these sources as "group 1" sources.
• Definitely some sources exist that directly criticise the views that link Communism (in general) and Marxism (as an ideological doctrine and social theory) with "mass murder" or "mass killings". Let me call these sources as "group 2" sources.
• Finally, some sources exist that see no significant link between Communism (in general) and Marxism (as an ideological doctrine and social theory) with "mass murder" or "mass killings". They are not debating with "group 1" sources, they just tell a totally different story about each of those events taken separately, Let me call these sources as "group 3" sources.

The problem with this article is that it picked "group 1" sources and created a narrative that is based exclusively on them. It embedded "group 3" sources into that narrative, thereby totally misinterpreting them. And it totally ignored "group 2" sources. That may be quite correct if "type 1" sources represent majority view, "type 3" sources are significant minority view, and "type 2" sources are fringe. However, so far I saw no evidence of that. Therefore, the goal of our source analysis is not just to pick another source that confirms one's POV, but to reveal relative weight of these three groups, and then represent all significant facts and opinia, and required by WP:NPOV Paul Siebert (talk) 22:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree that there exists such source types. Could you provide a few examples of good sources for each group type? Both to better comprehend it and to compare them and their weight. Davide King (talk) 22:18, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that the best sources from the group 1 had already been found, and almost all of them are already in this article. The most important one is the Black Book (Courtois).

The "group 2" sources are, for example, the sources that discuss The Black Book of Communism (they can be found in the BB article or at its talk page). Frankly, since the "group 1" sources do not seem to be mainstream, majority of historians ignore them, hence the lack of criticism. For example, the fact that Rummel's approach to data collection and treatment was a subject of criticism by only two authors (one of whom is an expert in Yugoslavia), suggests that most experts simply ignore him (his data are neither cited nor discussed by experts in Russian history).

"Group 3" sources belong to several subcategories. The first category is country-specific sources. One example is ... the Black Book, more specifically, its best part (Werth's chapter, where he traces the origin of terror back to Sergey Nechayev, who was a nihilist, but not a Marxist), another examples is the book by Kiernan about Cambodian genocide.

Another subgroup of "group 3" sources are devoted specifically to some event or a group of events. Examples are this or that.

One more subgroup pf "group 3" sources is the writings of genocide scholars. As a rule, all of them (except Rummel) do not write specifically about Communism. They discuss just "mass killings"/"politicides"/"genocides" in general, and they are not focused on any specific linkage between Communism and mass killings. Thus, Harff identified four Communist states (out of 18) where politicides occurred, which implied no correlation between politicides and Communism. Valentino's core idea is that regime type does not matter, and he does not link Communism with mass killings, although he notes that in those Communist states where mass killings took place they had some specific features. Similarly, Mann openly disagrees with Rummel, and he proves that mass killings are rarely linked with totalitarianism: his point is that mass killings is a result of perversion of democracy and socialism. His opinion is especially important, for he, in contrast to Rummel, is sociologist, who does not focus on mere correlations. Interestingly, the views of Valentino, Mann, Werth, Harff and others is totally misinterpreted, and they are presented as "Group 1" authors, which is, frankly speaking, a blatant lie. IMO, at that level of misinterpretation, WP:CIR becomes applicable. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:57, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a pretty convoluted reading of sources. How can you possible characterize Valentino as regime type does not matter? Please read again his extensive comments and comparison of regime types.

The single most important cause of mass killing in the twentieth century appears to be fading into history.

p. 150. He does not link Communism with mass killings??? You are picking at the edges of some works on genocide. It is hardly surprising given such complex questions that many differing answers and perspective arise concerning modern genocide or mass killings. These nuanced opinions on the overall causes and factors leading to mass violence do not negate the specific opinions authors may take concerning Communism. Valentino can say in his introduction that: "understanding of mass killing must begin with the specific goals and strategies of high political and military leaders, not with broad social or political factors." This does not somehow make Valentino inappropriate for this article, and it is a very poor reading of the source to make that claim. The three proposed categories look like an effort to divide sources based on the anti-communist and anti-anti-communist narratives and to exclude the middle ground. fiveby(zero) 16:12, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Cherry picking from Valentino is not a good approach either; we need to look at what academic reviews say about it, and they show that Valentino does not focus only of Communism (he actually discusses eight case studies), and Tago & Wayman 2010 consider his Communist mass killings subcategory as a complication of original theory his book is based on because Valentino's theory is that regime type are not as important, and it is the leaders that can explain mass killings. I could only find that quote in The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes by Steven Pinker, who is neither a scholar of Communism or a genocide scholar, and the book was published by Penguin Books, which is not an academic publisher. Davide King (talk) 17:24, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

You will find the quote on page 150 of Final Solutions and throughout an extensive discussion of the relation of Communism to mass killing. Pinker was quoting Valentino. You and Paul Siebert have proposed that regime type is not important to Valentino, demonstrating the ridiculousness of that proposition with a quote is hardly cherry picking. That he did not find Communism as an important consideration for preventing future episodes of mass killing while "fading into history" does not in any way negate his observations of Communism in the 20th century. fiveby(zero) 19:01, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

You clearly missed the point, since I was not questioning Valentino saying that; what I questioned is the relevancy and whether that same quote, or point, was reproduced in secondary academic sources or cherry picked. I could only find it reproduced by Pinker, who is an expert in a different field and the book was not published by the academic press. Again, I am sure both Siebert and I can cherry pick from Valentino to show you otherwise, but we are not going to do that because that is the point — we should not look at what Valentino said, we should look at what academic reviews have said about him and how they summarized his book (e.g. independent reliable sources, Valentino is a primary source about himself, we need secondary sources about him). If you actually read them, you will see that Siebert gave a good summary of academic secondary coverage of Valentino's work. Like most genocide scholars, Valentino is perfectly good for B, which is the topic and approach I support and see as the best way to fix the article. Davide King (talk) 19:16, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: You may look at p. 91, where the author says:

Communism has bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killings.

The page 97 says:

Communist regimes have also engaged in mass killings for variety of other reasons, mostly unrelated to communism itself.

In connection to that, I think an accusation of cherry picking should be addressed not to me, but to you. In contrast to you, I am discussing the core idea of Valentino, and it is quite obvious that the claim that Valentino sees Communism as a primary cause of mass killings in Communist states is inconsistent with his major thesis (although I agree that some of his statements contradict to that, but that inconsistency had already pointed by reviewers, and it does not undermine his major thesis). Paul Siebert (talk) 19:40, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: What is the main idea of Valentino's theory? To understand that, we must keep in mind that the main reason for all his work was development of new approached to prevention of mass killings. To this end, he analyses eight cases of mass killings, which took place under different regimes, and analysed them in a context of similar regimes that committed no mass killings.

And his conclusion was that main factor leading to mass killings was a decisions of some concrete persons, a small group of elite, who decided that mass killings in that concrete case are the most optimal way to achieve that goal. And this conclusion leads us to some practical recipe to eliminate mass killings: that can be achieved by removing a small group of people from power, and that does not require changing the regime type.

Actually, his theory fully confirmed even when we compare Khrischev's USSR (Communist) with Stalin's USSR (Communist too). Regimes were the same, but removal of a small group from power totally stopped mass killings.

Finally, as you can see, Valentino does not include Afghanistan into the "Communist mass killings" chapter. And that, again, demonstrates that he does not see Communism as a factor (Afghan case was a "counter-guerilla mass killing", which resembled other mass killings of that type, according to Valentino. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, many authors noted inconsistencies in Valentino's writing, who initially claims that regime type does not matter, and then discusses the role of Communist ideology. That is why it would be totally incorrect to pick just one phrase, and, instead, to focus of the main idea of his work. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:51, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, this could explain disputes about Valentino. You and I are using secondary coverage (e.g. academic reviews), whereas others are using Valentino's work itself, which has some inconsistency per academic sources, yet they make it clear that your summary of them is adeguate and correct. Davide King (talk) 18:06, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

It makes perfect sense that Valentino compares atrocities committed during the Soviet–Afghan War to atrocities committed during other counter-insurgency wars (including those committed by the U.S. during the Vietnam War), while simultaneously discussing the commonalities that led a disproportionate number of communist states to commit mass killings during peacetime. I would hardly say that this constitutes an "inconsistency" or contradiction.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:40, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The point is different, and it is described by Valentino at p. 97: many mass killings in Communist states were not related to Communism, according to Valentino. Therefore, it would be incorrect to describe them as a single phenomenon that had some common causes and that is seen by majority of authors as a single topic. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:45, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

(ec)Why do observations made concerning the best way to predict or prevent future violence negate the observations of violence in the 20th century? Valentino's four factors that distinguish the "less violent" Communist regimes are relative population size, degree of radicalism, capability of the dispossessed to leave the country, and degree of paranoia of the leaders. That is along with

Why did the communist utopias of the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia become history's greatest slaughterhouses? I argue that radical communist regimes have proven such prodigious killers primarily because the social changes they sought to bring about have resulted in the sudden and nearly complete material and political dispossession of millions of people. These regimes practiced social engineering of the highest order. It is the revolutionary desire to bring about the rapid and radical transformation of society that distinguishes radical communist regimes from all other forms of government, including less violent communist regimes and noncommunist, authoritarian governments.

How is that not appropriate for this article? Why is Werth reduced to Nechayev while the "misunderstandings" and conflicts between the Bolsheviks and greater society ignored? The spiraling cycles of violence based on acceptance of prior atrocities? If this article follows to closely or takes the moral argument and exhortation of Courtois—the arithmetic to create a billboard slogan—and presents as fact; well, point taken. But that is no reason to exclude or downplay the sources that directly address the article's topic and are not part of the "anti" narratives. fiveby(zero) 19:43, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

If you want a serious discussion, maybe, we move it to a separate section? Paul Siebert (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Why are so many discussions being opened about the same (sources) topic? GoodDay (talk) 23:44, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Good point.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:03, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that since Group 3 does not discuss the communist genocide theory, that you cannot make any assumptions on what their authors' thought or even comment that they don't mention the connection. Furthermore, most Group 2 authors are not genocide scholars and generally don't rebut Group 1. Instead, they explain what motivates group 1. The final problem is that most of group 1 is poor scholarship compared with Group 3. Even if they were, we are using writings that never received much scholarly attention, such as Rummel's website. The only actual dispute that is reliably sourced is Werth's criticism of Courtois' arithmetic. TFD (talk) 00:13, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: You mix two different things: (i) source analysis that reveals majority/minority/fringe POV and (ii) the way majority/minority POVs must be presented. These are two totally different aspects, and, for the beginning, I propose to focus on the first one. That will be a preliminary but quite necessary step. Since this discussion does not lead to any immediate changes of the article, any possible accusations of OR/SYNTH (if someone decided to accuse us) are not acceptable. Moreover, keeping in mind that NPOV requires us to do source analysis as a path to neutrality, this discussion is quite legitimate. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:21, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

If I understand you, you are trying to establish the weight of opinion in reliable sources by writing a review article. To me, that is original research and beyond the scope of what editors should do. Instead we should rely on reliable sources that explain weight. We do not for example read all the papers on global warming in order to determine the weight of scientific opinion but use sources that have already done and explained that.

The other issue is that if a source does not explicitly attribute mass killings to Communism, that does not mean they are claiming there is no connection.

TFD (talk) 02:12, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

You understand me almost correct, although I prefer different wording. I am trying to carefully and critically analyze a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. And I have a strong doubt that is violates any policy.

As I explained, this is just the first step, which will not lead to some concrete text in the article's space. However, from this analysis, we will be able to define a correct way for re-writing this (desperately POV) article. Paul Siebert (talk) 02:45, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Valentino, Communism etc

@Fiveby: In responce to your 19:43, 19 December 2021 post, let me explain you that my answer to your question:

How is that not appropriate for this article?

is: "That IS appropriate". The problem is, however, that, instead of presenting that as one opinion (actually, as one aspect of one author's book), the article presents it as the only mainstream viewpoint.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Furthermore, you assume that Valentino's " population size, degree of radicalism, capability of the dispossessed to leave the country, and degree of paranoia of the leaders" are independent parameters, although they are obviously dependent (and many authors implicitly assume that). Thus, it must be obvious to any reasonable person that "population size" and "capability of the dispossessed to leave the country" are strongly correlated, and this correlation is inverse: just imagine how and where could 100 million Chinese escape; that would be technically impossible, and no other country would accept them. Similarly, it is obvious that the degree of radicalism is correlated with the degree of social and economic tensions, which usually are higher in desperately poor countries. It is easy to see that the first three factors are strongly dependent from each other, and only the last one is not. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:09, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

However, even if we assume that those factors are independent, I don't see how Communism can be a cause of any of them.

In reality, majority of authors (including Werth) use a very rational approach: they just put a horse before the cart, and they do not discuss how an evil ideology brought havoc to some idyllic society, instead, they explain how the society with huge internal tensions leads to radicalisation of ideology.

That approach is correct because it is not Manichean: instead of creating a false dichotomy ("evil Communists vs good liberals) it gives a nuanced picture.

In reality, if you look at post WWI Central Europe, you may see that only two states were really democtratic: Czechoslovakia and Finland. All other states were to some degree authoritarian and repressive, and Volyn massacre or widespread Jewish pogroms (when local population enthusiastically participated in killing Jews when Nazi allowed them to do that) are example of huge tensions in those societies. In reality, we don't know what could have happened in Europe if Bolsheviks were defeated, but it is highly likely that the new Russian state could be similar to fascist regimes in Croatia or Italy, and it could be even more murderous, keeping in mind pre-history of its formation (Civil war etc). Furthermore, it is quite possible to imagine a scenario when Stailn was defeated in a political struggle against, e.g. Bukharin, and in that case it would be quite unreasonable to expect that collectivisation or Great Purge ever happened.

There is no reason to claim that horrors of Stalinism were pre-determined in October 1917, and there is no reason to expect that a failure of October revolution would bring peace and democracy to Russia: most likely it would be a grim authoritarian state with huge internal social and ethnic tensions.

Most authors who study Soviet Russia do not discuss Stalin in a context of Communism: they explain his steps through the prism of is paranoid desire of personal power, his attempts to militarise and indiustrialise Soviet society, his strategic blunders and incompetence. And that is realistic approach, which is a mainstream POV. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:29, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

You mix up categorisation with conclusions. Valentino groups together communist mass killings into one chapter because the common element of these mass killings phenomena is that they arose from both the agricultural collectivization and political terror, which is unique to communist regimes. Valentino's conclusions are independent of that categorisation. --Nug (talk) 22:32, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, no. "Collectivisation" was Stalin's invention, and Mao picked it from Stalin. Therefore, it would be more correct to speak about commonalities between Stalin's USSR (not USSR in general) and Mao's China (not PRC in general). In other words, some actually, two, regimes that committed collectivization related mass killings had something significant in common. That is true, and I see no reason for not discussing Mao and Stalin as closely related phenomenae.

However, political terror in China and USSR had different roots. In China, the campaign against landlords was de facto a civil war: landlords were a signoifocant military and political power in provinces, which was not the case for Soviet Union in 1930s. In contrast, Stalin's repressions were dictated by his desire to accumulate and keep power on his hands, and, as I explained, there is no reason to expect that some other leader (even Trotsky, and definitely Bukharin) would have unleashed so huge terror campaign: they simply didn't need to do that.

With regard to Pol Pot, it was a totally different case: in Cambodia, urban population was destroyed by peasants, and that movement was democratic (i.e. it had a wide popular support). And, taking into account specifics of agriculture in Cambodia, there were not much opposition to collectivisation (as far as I know, but I am not sure, I need to check it). Paul Siebert (talk) 22:49, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Stop trying to divert the discussion, this thread is about Valentino, and he clearly and explicitly associates mass killings under collectivization and political terror as a scenario common to the communist mass killing type, and conducts a comprehensive discussion of the nature of these collectivization actions with to the USSR, PRC and Cambodia, while indicating collectivization in Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania, North Korea and Vietnam may also be mass killing events. --Nug (talk) 00:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Please, be civil. Although I took an obligation not to report you while DRN is in progress, that does not allow you to commit personal attacks. I am not "diverting" anything.

You perfectly know W&T who said:

"Disagreeing with Rummel's finding that authoritarian and totalitarian government explains mass murder, Valentino (2004) argues that regime type does not matter..."

although the same source admits that

"A complication in his work is that one of Valentino's three main categories of killing is 'communist' mass killing, so he brings in regime type, after

all, and so ends up a bit closer to Rummel than one would have expected at the outset of the book."

In other words, this source is intrinsically controversial. This controversy can be resolved only if we look at the core of his theory. If we remove his major thesis (that regime type does not matter}, it is unclear what is new in Valentino's book: it contains no new facts, no new sources, just a new theory.

Therefore, the stress should be made on his main thesis (that regime type does not matter)

WRT "Communist mass killings", that is a specific Valentino's definition, which includes famine, but excludes, e.g. Afghanistan. Actually, Valentino's book cannot be a core source for this article, for it does not define "Communist mass killings" as all killings committed by Communist, it speaks about some specific events, which Valentino (but not majority of scholars) sees as mass killings. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

You are taking two pieces of text out of context from different parts of W&T and putting them together to claim it is "intrinsically controversial". The first part "Disagreeing with Rummel's finding that authoritarian and totalitarian government explains mass murder, Valentino (2004) argues that regime type does not matter..." is related to Valentino's conclusions, but the second part "A complication in his work is that one of Valentino's three main categories of killing is 'communist' mass killing, so he brings in regime type, after all, and so ends up a bit closer to Rummel than one would have expected at the outset of the book." is related to categories, the other two categories being "ethnic" and "counter guerilla". Do you really not understand the difference between categorization of types and conclusions of the causes, or are you willfully confusing them here? --Nug (talk) 03:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for quoting the same piece again.

"Categorisation" and "causation" is not the same. In reality, it is quite correct to say that some mass killings that happened in some Communist states had something in common. Communism is one of the factors that made them somewhat similar. However, it does not mean that Communism was a cause of those events, and that is exactly what Valentino says.

Do you understand in now?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: "Most authors who study Soviet Russia do not discuss Stalin in a context of Communism" - the fact that you're calling for "source analysis to establish the majority" while at the same time routinely making far-fetching (and unsourced) statements about "most authors" clearly indicate that you already have a well-established POV on what the majority is and the whole discussion is just a diversion. Cloud200 (talk) 14:58, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: You again commented on my alleged POV. Are you still a party of the DRN? Please, answer. If you will not confirm that you are a participant, and will not comment at WP:DRNMKUCR in 2 days, I will conclude that you are not a participant anymore, and I will act accordingly (which may include reporting you at AE).

When I wrote "Most authors ...", I meant my conclusion that I made based on my superficial and preliminary analysis of sources. I never pretended it was exhaustive and final, and already proposed discuss the results of my search, which lead me to that conclusion, and I, for several times, invited other user to finish that work jointly. However, they, including you, seem to ignore my proposal, and prefer to resort to personal attack. I am not going to tolerate it anymore. You either explicitly apologise, or you make some concrete steps that will confirm your active participation in DRNMKUKR. If you fail to do that in next few days, I may report you at AE. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Oh, back to Rummel. Gotcha. Yes a messy contrast to Rummel. Even more problematic might be his "strategic approach", he is not looking for underlying conditions which may lead to violence, but instead looking for the conditions under which leaders might see violence as a valid solution. So for instance where you see population size as not independent, he is looking at: Small population size, especially in the agricultural sector, can open up an entirely different set of options for communist leaders with examples of options that do not include dispossessed leaving the country.

Wayman and Tago are looking at the Harff/Rummel datasets and all democide/politicide. Communism is mostly past tense for Valentino and the "strategic approach" creates a "complication" for W&T. I would say Valentino is only "intrinsically controversial" insomuch as the article is intrinsically stuck on answering Rummel or "Communism was a cause of those events". Source analysis to determine appropriate sources for the article is much different than source analysis to attempt to reach a conclusion on Rummel. fiveby(zero) 13:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Actually, you are not completely right. Rummel's approach looks attractive due to his simplicity, but there are some serious problems with it. First of all, his approach is not sociological, but statistical, and, as we know correlation does not mean causation. And that is one reason why Mann, a very respectable and influential sociologist, strongly disagreed with Rummel.

Second, Rummel operates with very questionable data: he didn't perform source criticism, and he took all data, including obviously unreliable ones, into his data set.

Third, there is a problem with his regime categorisation: he describes some concrete regime as, e.g. totalitarian during the whole period of the regime's existence, and he attributes "democide" to the regime as a whole, not to the regime in its concrete stage.

In that aspect, Valentino's "controversial" approach is actually more nuanced: he correctly notes that majority of Communist regimes didn't commit mass killings, and correctly points out that mere change of leadership usually leaded to cessation of mass killing tactics. Actually, majority of genocide scholars are more in agreement with Valentino's conclusions than with Rummel. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Not completely right is not bad, but I did not mean that Valentino is messier in comparison with Rummel and therefore the latter preferable. His "strategic approach" is problematic for Wayman and Tago (they are looking at the datasets), didn't mean problematic in any other sense. fiveby(zero) 16:38, 21 December 2021 (UTC)