Talk:Soviet and communist studies

[Untitled]

This article notes that the historiography of Soviet and Communist studies is characterized by a split between "traditionalists" and "revisionists"-- a fair if simplistic characterization of the field. But then it sees confate the social science research with Cold War stances, at times unfairly maligning scholars writing after "traditionalists" like Conquest. This article needs a clean-up. 172 21:45, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that "Kremlinology" be merged into Soviet and Communist studies. "Kremlinology" is simply a Cold War kitschy phrase that means Soviet studies e.g. "study of" the Kremlin. The Kremlinology article is full of WP:OR and relies on dictionaries as primary sources (to prove it's an actual phrase I suppose). The correct name is Soviet studies. This was the name of a specific degree - a large proportion of Western universities offered undergraduate and graduate degrees in Soviet Studies. Unless someone can prove that Kremlinology is a specific study of kremlins (eg, the actual fortresses), and not a study of the Soviet Union, its politics, policies, culture and history, then it needs to be merged with Soviet studies or just deleted. Wikimandia (talk) 17:16, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• I don't think there's any doubt that the terms "kremlinology", "sovietology", and "Soviet studies" exist, as even the most cursory of web searches will turn up plenty of reliable sources defining them. The real issue for us is whether these all refer to the same branch of study, or whether they're sufficiently different to merit separate articles. The impression I'm getting is that "Soviet studies" is the most general term, referring to any sort of study, academic or otherwise, of the Soviet Union, whereas "kremlinology" tends to be more narrowly defined as the incredibly detailed and possibly unscientific analysis and inference of personal power relations within the Soviet government. The following descriptions seem typical:

• "Kremlinologists, using arcane and somewhat tedious formulas, attempted to determine which people and organizations exercised the most power in the Soviet Union by studying pictures of the May Day reviewing stand (you know—Beria stood only two places to the left of Stalin in 1951, Khrushchev was way off to the right, and Molotov wasn't even there, and we all know what happened later). They closely analyzed articles from Izvestia and Kommunist (who writes what about whom), and various other sensitive indicators." (M. Stern, "Under the Rotunda." Columbia Spectator 112(116):4–5.)
• "Kremlinology, that is, the intensive analysis of the actions and entourage of the head of government, emphasizes what is currently topical." (R. Rose, W. Mishler, and N. Munro. Russia Transformed: Developing popular Support for a New Regime. Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 10)
• "…numerous studies of elite politics in the Soviet Union—often referred to collectively as kremlinology,—had to infer policy and political changes from the slight variations in physical proximity of country leaders during parades." (A. Baturo and S. Mikhaylov. "Reading The Tea Leaves: Medvedev's Presidency Through Political Rhetoric of Federal and Sub-National Actors." Europe-Asia Studies, 66(6):969–992.)

If this characterization is correct, then the articles should remain separate, and they should be updated to more accurately reflect their topic. —Psychonaut (talk) 19:44, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Psychonaut:, thank you for your research. Your second reference from Rose/Mishler/Munro does provide a credible definition that puts it in a different light and should be used in the article. My main freakout was that the link to "Soviet studies" (contained on many academic and historian articles) was actually a redirect to the poorly written Kremlinology, which as it is now is basically an OR stub. I've sinced redirected Soviet studies to Soviet and Communist Studies. There is a lot of overlap of course but I will try to find time this weekend to rewrite the Kremlinology article. —Мандичка^YO 😜 22:48, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Is there something you find non-credible about the other two references? One of them's an academic journal, and the other a university newspaper, and both of them characterize kremlinology in much the same way as the book. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:53, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• I'll freely admit my entire knowledge of Kremlinology is from the article under discussion. That being said, I would agree that it's not the same thing as Soviet studies. As I understand it, it's the practice of trying to deduce what's going on inside the Soviet regime from the scarce clues available from the West. While it's related Soviet studies, it's not really the same thing. Soviet studies is the study of the politics of the Soviet Union. Kremlinology is looking at how the leaders' portraits were rearranged and trying to infer meaning from it. I don't know if it should have its own article, but they're distinct things. —ajf (talk) 20:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Kremlinology contains a list Notable Kremlinologists and Sovietologists.Xx236 (talk) 13:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

This article is absolute garbage

Poor sourcing, PoV, stub, vague/misleading title. There is so much damn information under the heading "Soviet and Communist studies" ranging from a timeline of primary sources (obviously there was a media blockade and sources came out in waves; who released these sources? Was it official or smuggled out?), history of Western documentation of Soviet (and Communist?) history and sociology, a discussion of major authors... And these are all just off the top of my head. Instead, there is nothing but a little stub of unsourced unprofessional opinion that divides an historiographic controversy into 'traditionalists' and 'revisionists,' and then dares assert without a source that "Revisionists [...] are more numerous and, furthermore, dominate academic institutions and learned journals."

Really, this is garbage. If it's not cleaned up, then it ought not to exist in this state.67.44.164.142 (talk) 13:12, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Note that in recent weeks I have done significant cleanup, and also added some sources. It still needs to be improved further by someone more knowledgeable of the subject, but I think the article should be kept.(talk) user:Al83tito 20:50, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Focus of the article

This article now focuses mostly on Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism. While this should also be mentioned to an extent, we have other articles on that topic, and it isn't the sole focus of Soviet and communist studies. Soviet and Communist studies was primarily the broad, mainstream field of area studies of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as found in Western universities, and sometimes in cooperation with the military and intelligence communities. For example it could include studies of topics such as Soviet agriculture, Soviet media, Kremlinology, studies of the Soviet military etc. Nowadays it has mostly been succeeded by "Russian studies", "Eastern European studies" or similar fields and programmes in universities, and continues as a more narrow historical field under different names. The paragraph on the supposed "double genocide theory" isn't very accurate or very relevant to Soviet and communist studies. One editor has asserted that such a theory really exists in Lithuanian debate, but I have seen no evidence of such a theory being posited by anyone in English language sources or the European sphere, certainly not within the field of Soviet and communist studies, and that article is currently, as admitted by its author, a WP:SUBPOV outlining the views of (what Barry Rubin called a tiny group of) opponents of recent political developments related to communism in Europe, and not a general article on these developments. The fact that the article is about Lithuania is made clear already in the first sentence that includes its Lithuanian name; I believe a WP:SUBPOV article outlining a certain (opposing) perspective on recent developments in Lithuania isn't WP:DUE in that paragraph here in this article on the field of Soviet and Communist studies. The sources discussing this don't mention or even engage with Soviet and communist studies as a research field either, and quite frankly seem ignorant of the history of the totalitarian paradigm. I can't see a strong justification for mentioning Katz, a linguist, in an article on Soviet and communist studies, when he doesn't even seem to be aware of the existence of this academic field/tradition.

The use of "revisionist" here in the context of the various mainstream European initiatives that build on the totalitarian model to condemn communism, e.g. in the European Parliament, is incorrect; revisionism in the context of Soviet and communist studies encompass those who "insisted that the old image of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state bent on world domination was oversimplified or just plain wrong" as the article explains. Applying the totalitarian model in a rather traditional, Cold War-like manner is not "revisionist". In the context of Soviet and communist studies it is the traditionalist view, opposed by the revisionists.

Perhaps it is possible to say something about how mainstream political developments in the European Parliament and other European political bodies to condemn communism build on the totalitarian paradigm, and on how that paradigm has its roots in Cold War-era Soviet and communist studies to a significant degree, and on how Central and Eastern European countries have been influential (as discussed by Neumayer) in strengthening the totalitarian interpretation of communism in the spirit of traditionalist Soviet and communist studies, and on how these developments have promoted an anti-communist remembrance policy of the EU since the 2004 EU enlargement, how the "Europeanization of an antitotalitarian 'collective memory' of communism" has fostered "a field of anticommunism"[1], but it would have to be worded differently than the current paragraph, and use sources that discuss and engage with communism and its legacy more directly than the current sources (with the exception of Neumayer). --Tataral (talk) 02:59, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tataral: I agree, and have trimmed the article per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. --Nug (talk) 06:12, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Article focus - controversies and debates section

Given this article is about the field of historical studies of the Soviet Union and communism generally, and that the article defines the journals that covered that field, then the Soviet_and_Communist_studies#Controversies_and_debates section should really focus only on the historical controversies and debates covered by or related to the scholarship contained in the listed journals in the field. --Nug (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I kind of agree but I think that this article is a good location for much related content, as long as it were confined to debates of those studying Communism. Do not Courtois and The Black Book of Communism count as those studying communism? Surely, the effect it has had on the popular press is also relevant, as noted by Wheatcroft 1999, and is clearly relevant to those studying Communism. The section about the holocaust is because Rosefielde is a subject within the field, so that is relevant too. All of this has been removed. What are your criteria exactly? Use only academic journals in the fields? Historians of Communism? Davide King (talk) 16:50, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I think Criticism of communist party rule would be a better place for that material. This article should only describe the debates contained in the journals that are identified in Soviet_and_Communist_studies#Journals_in_the_field and listed in Soviet_and_Communist_studies#External_links. --Nug (talk) 23:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Good points by Nug and Davide King. I have to largely agree with the text removal by Nug, for reasons of due weight/redundancy of the topics. Most of the topics and major authors mentioned in the removed content are in the text otherwise, still in substantial detail (revisionist estimates, criticisms of the initial totalitarianism thesis, etc.) in the current version. The main scope of the article should be the content in journals in the field of Soviet and Communist studies, and where they overlap with academic books. Black Book of Communism does partially overlap with this and could be mentioned in passing plus some of its criticism, but there were many other aspects of the studies besides that debate. -- Rauisuchian (talk) 02:31, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Certainly, using journals in the field has my full support as academic sources but to play devil's advocate: are they not too close and primary about the topic? First, the purpose of my additions was to use secondary coverage that was still relevant to the field; the section about the Cold War and spyonage by Rauisuchian is not cited to any of the field's journal but to the Wilson Center and other reliable sources, yet it is clearly relevant and fine, so why not the rest, which I tried to do in summary style precisely to avoid redundancy. Second, memory politics (the name of the section where much of the removed content can go like this) are certainly relevant to the field in light of Communist historiography in Eastern Europe, which bring us to comparisons with Nazism and double genocide as relevant. Thirdly, as I believe it to be too reductive and primary to rely only on the field's journals, I see no issue in using secondary coverage of relevant historians and scholars about comparison of Nazism and Stalinism (Rosefielde's Red Holocaust is a comparative analysis of Communism, the Holocaust, and fascist Japan, and he is a scholar in the field, so why was that removed?), and memory politics and double genocide, all of which are relevant to the topic (e.g. "totalitarian" and "orthodox" historiography). Finally, if "Victims of Stalinism" is problematic and controversial, how can we have articles like Mass killings under communist regimes in the first place if what we get from this is that Soviet and Communist studies have totally ignored the topic? I am referring to the topic as a whole, not for each individual country, e.g. discussing countries separately without synthesis.

Davide King (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

We need to adhere to WP:TOPIC. We already have articles Double genocide, Black book of communism, Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, Historiography of the Cold War, Criticism of communist party rule, etc, we don't need to copy material from those articles into this one, we can just link them in Soviet_and_Communist_studies#See_also. This article is about field of study as represented by a set of journals, let's just keep it to that scope. --Nug (talk) 02:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The thing is that I am not sure they are so off-topic that we cannot even use summary style, and that it is too restrictive to literally limit it to journals in the field, especially since the 1990s the field has expanded, rather than studies on Communism. As noted by Rauisuchian, "[t]he main scope of the article should be the content in journals in the field of Soviet and Communist studies, and where they overlap with academic books." I used academic sources, and we cannot discuss the Black Book without summarizing its implications, just like we cannot discuss Rosefielde's Red Holocaust (Rosefielde is a scholar in the field and the book was published by an academic publisher, which I believe fulfills Rauisuchian's criteria) without its Holocaust implications and criticism of the concept.

If we cannot discuss the Black Book or Courtois here, then why are we even relying on them on Communist-related articles? If they are not within the field, which I assume to be the subject matters on the topic, we should avoid relying on them as much as we are. Certainly it would be better to put them under a "Memory politics" section as I suggested above, or do you think Memory politics is the more accurate place? But that would make the focus too much on Communism, and I do not think Criticism of communist party rule is the appropriate topic; they are not a criticism, it is a scholarly debate and discourse within this field and relevant Communist fields or among scholars who have at least some expertise on Communism. Davide King (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Thinking about it, the removal is made more absurd by the fact that Michael David-Fox is the founding editor of Kritika, a journal in the field, and published this article:

• David-Fox, Michael (Winter 2004). "On the Primacy of Ideology. Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia)". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 5 (1). Bloomington, Indiana: Slavic: 81–105. doi:10.1353/kri.2004.0007. S2CID 159716738. Malia thus counters by coining the category of 'generic Communism,' defined everywhere down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals. (Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris thus comes across as historically more important than the gulf between radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism.) For an argument so concerned with justifying The Black Book, however, Malia's latest essay is notable for the significant objections he passes by. Notably, he does not mention the literature addressing the statistical-demographic, methodological, or moral dilemmas of coming to an overall communist victim count, especially in terms of the key issue of how to include victims of disease and hunger.

Malia compared the "revisionist school" to Holocaust deniers, and David-Fox's mentioned the Black Book and the victims of Communism, and that it has an extensive literature, so the reason for removing as irrelevant, or that it needs to be published in a journal of the field, that is debunked and the criteria fulfilled. Again, Rosefielde is a scholar in the field and wrote Red Holocaust as a comparative analysis of Communism with Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan, so the section about the Holocaust also seem to be relevant (as is the Black Book) and fits the criteria of being a scholar in the field and relevant. Of course, not every reference is literally cited to an academic journal in the field, which would be nonsensical and a violation of our policies (WP:INDEPENDENT and WP:NPOV) but they are all cited to scholars, academic publications, or reliable sources. I also tried my best to use summary style, and I believe to have showed that they are clearly relevant. If the issue is going to be that it will be giving too much space to memory politics, that can be easily avoided by expanding the section about the historiography and debates through Karlsson & Schoenhals 2008 and Edele 2020. Davide King (talk) 01:57, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Kritika also mentions controversies involving Donald Trump. There may well be some kind of debate between authors about the merits of BBoC going on within Kritika journal, but we really need a tertiary source to help use identify those debates and controversies. --Nug (talk) 03:53, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

We already have the article The Black Book of Communism so I don't see the point copying material to this article. As for your last sentence, that's probably for a new article Historiography of the Soviet Union. --Nug (talk) 04:08, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

That is nonsense and a strawman because Trump has nothing to do with Soviet and Communist studies, unlike the Black Book, the body count, and historiography. You asked that we rely on academic journals in the field, the bunch of scholarly sourced text you removed already did that. See also WP:PRESERVE. There are already tertiary sources that support this (Neumayer et al.). In fact, this article could serve as a summary of the rewrite of Mass killings under communist regimes. Levivich, what are your thoughts on this? Perhaps some information from here could be already moved there instead. Davide King (talk) 17:30, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

(responding to ping) Nobody would seriously suggest that BBoC or double genocide should not be covered in an article about Soviet and Communist studies. Levivich 17:37, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, someone apparently did and successfully removed all this in spite of WP:PRESERVE. Davide King (talk) 18:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Do you have a tertiary source that states BBoC and double genocide is a prominent topic of discussion in the journals listed in this article? Otherwise it is just giving undue weight. I hardly think WP:PRESERVE applies when “double genocide” is already mentioned in Double genocide theory, Holocaust trivialization, Communism, The Holocaust in Lithuania, Steven Rosefielde, Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Bloodlands, Kristen Ghodsee, etc. Why don’t we add it to the article Kremlinology, because Zbigniew Brzezinski is a listed as a notable Kremlinologist, and he has commented on the communist death toll, and we know from elsewhere that the communist death toll is one component of double genocide, and so the circle of is complete. --Nug (talk) 18:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

David-Fox 2004 (primary) and Neumayer et al. (secondary/tertiary). Perhaps Kremlinology should be merged here, Sovietology should be a redirect to a section about the Soviet Union here, or that article should be limited to the studies of post-Soviet Russia. Can you please cite a policy that says we cannot summarize this if it is still relevant to the article? I fail to see how WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which is about summary-only descriptions of works, lyrics databases, excessive listings of unexplained statistics, and exhaustive logs of software updates, somehow applies to this. Davide King (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

There is no reason that the sources for this article should be limited to the journals listed in this article. Levivich 19:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

The journals listed in the article would be primary sources, so obviously secondary and preferably tertiary sources that discuss the debates and controversies that arose in those journals are needed. --Nug (talk) 19:44, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

What do you think the bunch of text you removed was for and the sources did? It was exactly that, and you removed it, now claiming this. I see no consensus in removing that, and it was long-standing too. The fair criticism it focused too much of memory politics is not resolved by removing it but by expanding the historiography so that the section about memory politics is not undue. If you feel something is missing, the solution is to add it, not to remove well-sourced and relevant text by citing WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which is not relevant at all. Davide King (talk) 19:50, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Just because something is well sourced doesn't mean it is due or even relevant. Look at Environmental studies, Women's studies, Oriental studies, etc, they don't even have a controversies and debates section. This is topic about an academic field, not a WP:COATRACK to hang tangential stuff off. --Nug (talk) 20:37, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nug:@Davide King:@Levivich: I believe an article or draft article called Historiography of communism could satisfy everyone's concerns here. Historiography of communism could include all of the removed cited content from Soviet and Communist studies, and more content could be sourced from all articles mentioned in this talk section by Davide King and Nug, as well as Historiography in the Soviet Union, Anti-communism, Post-communism, and others that are suggested. Possibly organized chronologically, looking at the variety of articles starting with "Historiography of". The topic seems like it should be interesting or historically significant to all the editors on this page. What do you think? -- Rauisuchian (talk) 20:57, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's a great idea. This will fill the gap that exists and solve a lot of issues (hopefully). --Nug (talk) 21:03, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Let me quote Levivich: "Nobody would seriously suggest that BBoC or double genocide should not be covered in an article about Soviet and Communist studies." How they are not "due or even relelant" to you is beyond me — they certainly are to David-Fox, the founding editor of one of the field's main journals. As for other articles, it does not matter — you accused me of doing that at MKuCR yet you are doing it here. Let's focus on this article, not on how other articles are structured. This article should be focused on the study(ies) of Communism and structured through summary style, so of course it is going to use content from other articles and the Black Book and memory politics are clearly relevant and due; you went from WP:INDISCRIMINATE to WP:COATRACK but neither of them apply because David-Fox and others discussed it.

Anyway, I like Rauisuchian's proposal but I fail to see why that content should not be re-added; in fact, it already provides a summary style of such an article, and my summary style could be used to go in much greater detail in such an article. Ironically, such an article would make my summary style even more due because the historiography and memory politics are so notable to be their own article, and you still believe we should not use summary style to discuss them here as I already did? Davide King (talk) 02:31, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Let me quote Tataral: "Soviet and Communist studies was primarily the broad, mainstream field of area studies of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as found in Western universities, and sometimes in cooperation with the military and intelligence communities. For example it could include studies of topics such as Soviet agriculture, Soviet media, Kremlinology, studies of the Soviet military etc. Nowadays it has mostly been succeeded by "Russian studies", "Eastern European studies" or similar fields and programmes in universities, and continues as a more narrow historical field under different names.". Maybe you need to re-read and reflect on WP:TOPIC and WP:COATRACK and explain your understanding of what these mean in context of this article. --Nug (talk) 03:08, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps you missed the last paragraph, which was a fair analysis (I have moved the paragraph that used "revisionist" in a different context, as noted and suggested), and is what I attempted to do, and situated it within the context of the "totalitarian model", and that I prefer copy editing over outright removal. What do you think "totalitarian model" and "revisionist school" are if not historiography? Yet that has not been disputed or removed. I do not doubt the quoted part but it would be good to give me one or more sources for that so we can expand this. What we should be doing is giving more weight to those other topics of studies, as noted by Tatarl, other than historiography, which is still relevant per Haynes & Klehr 2003 and Davies & Harris 2005. Davide King (talk) 22:13, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I note that you never responded to Tataral's concerns at Talk:Soviet_and_Communist_studies#Focus_of_the_article, and you appear to be ignoring these issues. --Nug (talk) 22:26, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

First, I did not ignore them, as I tried to improve the article's structure and followed their suggestions. Second, they did not provide any source. Third, you opened this section, so I replied here instead of there. Finally, you ignored their last paragraph which seemed to support that a section was appropriate, and that they disagree with the precise wording, not that they supported a full removal as you did and have since been reverted by another user. Davide King (talk) 08:35, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Revisiting this, as I've read more of the historiography, this article has too much of a focus on a niche "Black Book of Communism" and backlash section that gets the most peripheral passing mention if at all in most sources, as well as a memory politics section that was only tangentially related to Soviet studies. It stands out as even more of a WP:DUEWEIGHT problem now. In this talk page section there was not a significant consensus to restore that content, interest was just lost in the subject when a different talk page debate died down. The framing is quite limited in how well it reflects the scholarly consensus of Soviet studies journals and Soviet studies books and what the traditionalist and revisionist schools actually argued in their publications. It gives the wrong impression that revisionists focused on down-revising the Stalinist death count, that revisionists didn't also describe totalitarianism in their histories, etc. So the best option is to remove the WP:COATRACK content, it being saved in the page history and recoverable if necessary, and go with more cohesive and concretely related content. -- Rauisuchian (talk) 00:42, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

• I haven't followed any of the above, but would just like to note that the recent removals have done away with one section that was the one place on Wikipedia that dealt with the idea of the "communist holocaust" and that had several incoming redirects that are now broken. I have no opinion on the best place for that content, but it needs to brought back to the encyclopedia somewhere (either restored to this article, or copied to another page), and then the redirects fixed. – Uanfala (talk) 18:54, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Fair point. The content is also present on a section "Red Holocaust" here and on the article Double genocide theory. Additional problematic aspects of it are covered in Holocaust trivialization. There is a disambiguation page Red Holocaust as well. This can add some possible places for the content and redirects issue. -- Rauisuchian (talk) 23:28, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Meaningless sentence that tries to hard...

The concept is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally.

??? Or among bartenders in Oklahoma, probably. What information is this sentence even supposed to convey? This is non-encyclopedic writing. Volunteer Marek 22:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion to revert the article renaming

The capitalization of "Communist" in "Soviet and Communist studies" was the most common form in this historical field, because it focused more on specific Communist Party apparatuses than the generic idea of communism. As such, the Wiki article move/ name change to "Soviet and communist studies" was not an improvement. -- Rauisuchian (talk) 02:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)