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History of Poland (1945-1989)

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After being asked by the original nominator to have another look at this, I've decieded to renew the nomination - the old commentary raised some points, but I think more specific commentary is warranted. →Raul654 July 4, 2005 01:47 (UTC)

  • Support of course. Thank you Raul. As always, comments welcome, but please, be specific. Saying just 'it's POVed' is not helping much. Note that all specific objections from last nominations have been adressed. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 4 July 2005 11:27 (UTC)
  • Support. I support my previous vote on this article. I find it comprehensive, informative and well balanced. It explains well what happened in Poland in the period and why. --Lysy (talk) 4 July 2005 11:38 (UTC)
  • Support. Good work! Ek8 4 July 2005 12:08 (UTC)
  • Object, same reason. Here's just a taste: "Stalin had promised at Yalta conference that free elections would be held in Poland. But the Polish Communists, led by Gomułka and Bierut, knew that they could never win a free election. They imposed themselves on the country through a reign of terror against the main non-Communist party, Mikołajczyk's Polish Peasant Party, and also against other opposition groups including the veterans of the wartime Home Army and army veterans who had fought in the west." Everyking 4 July 2005 13:35 (UTC)
    • Well, what do you find controversial here ? Have you heard of any alternative version ? Specifically what do you object, the contents or the style ? --Lysy (talk) 4 July 2005 13:57 (UTC)
    • Tnx for quoting the sentence. Unfortunately, I see nothing factually wrong with it. Perhaps the 'reign of terror' phrase is a bit on the 'poetic' side, but since they (NKVD) did use kidnappings, assassinations and staged trials, I am not sure how to rephrase it - and it is important to show that the 'playing ground' was not even, and communist who had little support from the population had to use force and propaganda to seize the power. If you do insist it is a bad phrase, I can change it to 'repressions' or sth more to your liking - and nothing is stopping you from editing the article and correcting this yourself, you know. But please, point out the specific issues and suggest how we may improve them. I am still not sure if you feel this article is biased for or against communists or some other POV. Perhaps I am reading you incorrectly and you feel it is too apologetic for the regime instead? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 4 July 2005 14:26 (UTC)
      • I have put this in its' place: Stalin had promised at the Yalta conference that free elections would be held in Poland. However, the Polish Communists, which were led by Gomułka and Bierut, knew that they could not win if they ran in the elections. The Communists imposed themselves on the country through tatics, which resulted in violence against the main non-Communist party, Mikołajczyk's Polish Peasant Party. Other groups targeted were veterans of the wartime Home Army and army veterans who had fought in the west. I hope yall like this one. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 4 July 2005 16:28 (UTC)
        • Tnx, its better. I made some minor change to make it sound better, it now reads: ...through illegal means, among them, the persecution of members of the main non-Communist party... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 4 July 2005 18:27 (UTC)
    • EK - as I said when I renewed the nom, could you please be a bit more specific? It's helpful that you quoted one sentence, but beyond that, "this article is terribly POV" is not very helpful. Can you point to specific sections, phrases, 'etc that need looking at? →Raul654 July 4, 2005 20:12 (UTC)
      • I sent EK a note about his objection being answered. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 4 July 2005 20:16 (UTC)
        • I'm striking out my vote, not because my mind has changed, but because I don't want to be bothered about this. I don't want to argue about this kind of thing. It will just turn political. Everyking 7 July 2005 01:26 (UTC)
  • Support. Balcer 4 July 2005 15:19 (UTC)
  • Support, Phoenix2 4th of July! 16:10 (UTC)
  • Support for the same reasons I stated last time: I got to understand a bit of Polish history in only a few minutes. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 4 July 2005 16:24 (UTC)
  • Object. The pictures are much too dense and the article is very difficult to read on a lower screen resolutions. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I don't much like the name. The convention for history articles the standard is to not simply note what years are covered, but to describe the contents of the page. This is more useful for the reader, makes it easier to link to, and is more aesthetically pleasing. The current name also suggests a hierarchy of articles, which generates a whole host of problems. I suggest renaming it History of Communist Poland. (This would mean the rest of the history of Poland series would also have to be renamed) - SimonP July 5, 2005 02:33 (UTC)
    • Could we rename it to History of Poland (People's Republic), since this is the time where the People's Republic of Poland was established? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 5 July 2005 02:38 (UTC)
    • Feel free to move the pictures around so the fit better on your screen. What screen do you have? From what I read once, now less then 10% of users use lower resoultions. As for the name, you may want to check Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Poland/Periodization and it's talk page, we had extensive discussions regarding the names. I created the current year-based division, as I couldn't chose between several names, none of which are perfect. Consider the current example: 1) article covers period 1945-1989 2) People's Republic of Poland was estabilished by the 52' constitution, so it would be a wrong name for period 1945-1989 3) Communist Poland is better, but from one side, it starts with 1944 (when PKWN was established), from the other, from the elections 1948 that eliminated the opposition. There are similar problems with the short time of Andagawan dynasty (between Piasts and Jagiellons), or with the interregnum period after the death of the last Jagiellon. All things considered, I think the numbers (years) leave little room for confusion, and this is their biggest advantage. A possible comporomise would be name and years (like History of Poland (communist period, 1944-1989) or similar, but this needs a serious discussion at Periodization page first.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 5 July 2005 09:57 (UTC)
    • The main issue was the images, and that has been addressed so I am removing my objection. I still dislike the name, however. - SimonP July 7, 2005 01:08 (UTC)
  • Support SylwiaS 5 July 2005 05:53 (UTC)
  • Support on the grounds that it is not moved. All the other history of Poland articles are named according to the years the article covers, and it seems to make little sense to break with this. Ambi 5 July 2005 14:43 (UTC)
  • Support. The meaning is always clear, the subject is well defined, and it's a fascinating read. I, like Ambi, have no qualms about the name of the article (it's easily found via History of Poland); my only concern is whether it is sufficiently different from People's Republic of Poland, but this is a criticism of the latter article, not this one. I do have minor reservations about the article's writing style and picture layout, none of which are serious, and I find these tend to get ironed out by the article's readership (it's already much improved since peer review). --RobertG ♬ talk 5 July 2005 15:26 (UTC)
    • Tnx for the comments. The reason I split History of.. from People... article is that the History... is a subarticle of People... article. People... is an article about former state, with sections (and eventually, subarticles like that one) on history, economy, culture, geography, etc. For an example how the People... and other articles from the Polish statehood series should look like, see Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a FA. One of my long term projects is to FA every single one of those state and history articles. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 5 July 2005 15:52 (UTC)
      • I understand Wikipedia is a work in progress…! --RobertG ♬ talk 5 July 2005 16:26 (UTC)
  • Support Same reason as everyone else. LordMooCow 09:22, 4 July 2005 (GMT+10)
  • Support -- though I still might propose some more changes on talk. 172 7 July 2005 00:34 (UTC)
  • Object.
    1. The image Image:Nowahuta.jpg has no copyright information.
    2. The image Image:Ac.gomulka.jpg has no copyright information, and may be deleted.
    3. The images Image:Wyszyński.jpg, Image:Pope-poland.jpg, and Image:1981 01 Lech Walesa.jpg are claimed as fair use. Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia, it is a free content encyclopedia, so fair use images should be avoided if at all possible.
  • Carnildo 7 July 2005 19:09 (UTC)
    • Jimbo stated months ago that fair use images are fine, since the liable party is the individual who uploaded the image, not Wikipedia. The above objection is not actionable. 172 7 July 2005 19:59 (UTC)
      • The objection is indeed actionable.
        1. It gives grounds for objecting. In this case, criteria #5 from Wikipedia:What is a featured article: "Have images where appropriate, with good captions and acceptable copyright status." Two of the images had no copyright information, and three are not under a free license.
        2. It is possible to fix the problems identified. In this case, find out copyright information for the images without, and remove or find free replacements for images under unfree licenses -- or explain why we can claim fair use, and why those images must be in the article.
      • --Carnildo 8 July 2005 00:19 (UTC)
      • I went ahead and replaced Image:Ac.gomulka.jpg with Image:Wladyslaw Gomulka.jpg. The later image is tagged with {{Polishpd}}. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 7 July 2005 20:23 (UTC)
      • I tagged Image:Wyszyński.jpg with the same Polishpd tag as the first image. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 7 July 2005 20:30 (UTC)
      • And for everyone's information, the email Jimbo sent out can be seen at http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 7 July 2005 20:54 (UTC)
        • Was I mistaken? I was absent from Wikipedia from much of March to June. The email linked above seems to indicate a change in policy? If so, I apologize for my incorrect statement. 172 7 July 2005 23:06 (UTC)
    • After taking their age into consideration, and finding no copyright notice at source's page, I tagged Image:Pope-poland.jpg, and Image:1981 01 Lech Walesa.jpg with Polish pre-94 PD tag. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 8 July 2005 09:44 (UTC)
  • Object this is a very poor example of historical writing, the sections and progression of narrative is stilted and inherently anti-communist. The article is basically an anti-communist screed with a faint timeline. No thematisation has been conducted, there is no discussion of the historiography of the period of communist rule in Poland. One of the key institutions of the period, the Party, is not even correctly named for period or examined (even at the level of a national history of fourty four years) at appropriate depth. The issue of left-wing dissent against the Party is not even broached. Polish historians, and historians of Poland, can both do far better than this. Fifelfoo 8 July 2005 05:00 (UTC)
    • Where, do you believe, is our article showing an anti-communist pov? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 8 July 2005 06:53 (UTC)
    • Please be more specific and expand on your objections, just as Raul asked in the renomination. What kind of thematisation would you like? We based this article on chronology, dividing into leader's period (Bierut, Gomułkla, Gierek, Jaruzelski). Please expand on what kind of historiographical discussion you would like to see. Party has an article at Polish United Workers' Party, it is linked from the History... article and its Polish name (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza - PZPR) is given, so how can you say it is incorrectly named? I agree the Party article is way to small (stub), but this article is not subject to our voting here. There are mentions of left-wing dissent against the Party (i.e. ruling leader). If you have knowledge of the subject, and references to base them on, feel free to expand and fix the article. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 8 July 2005 09:44 (UTC)
      • Fifelfoo makes a good point about creating a section on historiography of the period of Communist rule in Poland and mentioning left-wing dissent to the party. But I second your comments in asking him to be more specific about NPOV problems. The article does seem to fit in better with some more traditional perspectives on Poland, such as Norman Davies', but the important matter is that the material fit into the realm of reasonable scholarly discourse on Poland, and it does. Unless he elabores, IMO the objection shouldn't be actionable. 172 8 July 2005 10:50 (UTC)
    • In the following ennumerated list, all emphasis is mine. Fifelfoo 03:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      1. From the introduction':'
        1. "The History of Poland from 1945 to 1989 was shaped primarily by the influence of Soviet communism." Primarily, there were no indigenous factors? The Polish Party displayed a great deal of autonomy within the Soviet sphere, for example, Gomulka's facing down of the Soviet Tanks, Rokossovsky's identification with the Polish Party over the Soviet Party, and, quite obviously, Polish Marxist dissent. The article goes on to thematise the role of the Catholic Church as the main oppositional faction within Poland: ie, the Catholic Church can be said to have been a "primary" shaping institution in the history of Poland 1945-1989. Additionally, this clearly marks the article as "History from above". I could just as clearly blank the article, and begin, "The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 was shaped primarily by the development of autonomously organised opposition to the government and society along Marxist, Trade unionist and Catholic church lines." The entire historiographical tendency of the article can be summarised by the lead line.
First sentence of lead has been rewritten to note other factors, feel free to twist and expand it to inlcude more. Currently reads: The History of Poland from 1945 to 1989 was shaped by the influence of Soviet communism and opposition to it from Roman Catholic Church, trade unions and other groups. As for Polish Party autonomy, I have just read Davies, where he mentions that Polish party had a 'great potential for autonomy' and would have likely followed Tito's Yugoslavia, Mao's China and other regimes - but the Red Army's presence in Poland and *all* neighbours was a sufficient deterrent to the deveolpment of such policy among the Party members (at least until late 1980s). As for Polish Marxism, I added the following para: There were also repeated attempts by some Polish academics and philosphers, like Leszek Kołakowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Stanisław Ossowski to develop a specific form of Polish Marxism. While their attempts to create a bridge between Poland's history and Soviet Marxism ideology were midly succesful, especially in comparisson to similar efforts in most other countries of the Eastern Bloc, they have been to much extent stiffled by the regime's unwillingness to step too far and risk the wrath of Soviets for going to far from the Soviet party line.. Feel free to expand on it in the relevant subarticle - I don't think we need to write more about it in the (already large) history article. As for Catholic Church, from what I read it was one of the important opposition groupps. Whether the most important or not, it is a matter of discussion, and you should feel free to NPOV the article if it does indeed treat the Chuch as the undisputably main opposition force - I, however, think it does not. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 09:54, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. The decision to thematise the article through party leadership is also shonky, is this a history of Poland in the period or the Party Leadership in the period. The Party is viewed as a coordinated monolith, subserviant entirely to the Leader, with no opportunism or careerism on the party of members. The Party doesn't seem to transform itself as an instrument of rule. There is no mention of the "Children of the Party" phenomena which changed the social formation of the elite in Poland. Purges are viewed as automatic, and Party history as a natural tendency towards collapse in 1989, eg, "However, after the first wave of reform, Gomułka's regime lost its will to reform." This assumes that the Gomulka cabinet wanted to achieve unspecified reforms which (from the bent of the article) we can only assume to be capitalist market liberal democracy.
The sectioning of the article by leadership periods is not perfect, but I see no better alternative. I considered several others like decades but I see no gain in this. Feel free to suggest a better sectioning. Again, as this article is large, I see no room to add the details you request to this article (and I am not an expert on Polish Communist Party). I hope you add your knowledge to articles on Polish United Worker's Party, Polish communists or others. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. Article expression is rooted in colloquial English entirely unsuited to a Featured Article candidate, "Gomułka chose to ignore them, and his increasingly autocratic style meant that no-one else had the authority to fix anything." Fix anything? Doesn't the author mean, "Gomulka chose to ignore the economic crisis, and his autocratic methods prevented the major changes required." I am sure that local government officials and party members fixed *some* things in the period, or did apartment complexes not open to residents, and roads not get tarred due to Gomulka's autocracy?
I would love for more native speakers to improve the language. I replaced the sentence you mention with the one you propose (remember, you can do it yourself - Wiki, be bold, etc.). Tnx for the comments. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      1. From History_of_Poland_(1945-1989)#Consolidation of Communist power:
        1. "Since the Polish communists exerted primary influence on decisions under the provisional government, there is a strong suspicion that Stalin was pursuing an intentional strategy to eliminate the noncommunist resistance forces, thus bringing the country under his control, even before the liberation of Poland." Which historians have a strong suspicion footnotes, at least two, citations. Stalin personally ran the Soviet Union's foreign policy in relation to Poland? Read Djilas on how Stalin actually decided policy matters. The Soviet Union was not Stalin's personal play thing, he had an entire Central Committee, a Russophillic foreign ministry, and a party backing him up every step. There is a great deal of "personification" of government forces through the article as personal forces of the leader.
Not all of it was written by me, so I may not be able to find detailed references. Feel free to NPOV it by exchanging Stalin with Soviets, for example - from what you say it would be more correct, yes? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. Immediately after the previous sentence, "He (FifelFoo:ie Stalin) had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London in 1943," So first we begin the article in 1944 with the provisional government, then we jump backwards in chronology to 1943. And this under the heading of the Consolidation of power? The entire article jumps through chronology and theme with no linking sentences and with poor organisation.
I will attempt to fix the chronology. While the article follows the chronology most often, I do feel that sometimes it is better to link a sentence with what came after or before if it is more relevant and helps understand the given para/idea more clearly. Feel free to change it if you fill it is indeed confusing. I will go over the article and see if some of chronology/logic flow in this section can be improved. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. The discussion of the division of Poland as if the Government in exile was the natural government (NPOV?) and following, the celebratory exclamation, "Poland preserved its status as an independent state" as if Poland is a unitary entity (personified) and quite happy to maintain its natural historical desire to be an independent state. If Poland is capable of coming around to my living room, sharing a cup of tea, and telling me how she so strongly desired that outcome, then we can accept the personification of a state and the teleology of the end of history being Poland as an independent national state.
I am not sure if I follow you on that one. Feel free to correct the grammar (?) to solve this issue. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. "Many of the reforms were overdue and were in themselves welcomed, although most Poles continued to detest the Communist regime." multiple citations required, show me the public opinion polls. Followed immediately by, "They adopted an attitude which might be called resigned co-operation" again, sources and citations. By the way, how large was the party in 1947? That's at least a hundred thousand Poles who adopted an attitude other than resigned co-operation. I think you might find that a great number of Social Democratic, Communist and Trade Unionist Poles celebrated the opportunity to create, what they saw, as the society of the future. Again the article assumes the Polish National Community is a unity body, seeking a teleology of national statehood and capitalism, with no internal divisions.
I think Davies gives the number of 1 million members. He also writes that due to NKVD/UB terror, ongoing civil war and such the resigned co-operation was indeed a popular sentiment. This is all general, though, no polls were carried out, although if you read the article on 3xTAK referendum, you will see some interesting numbers proving that indeed communists supporters were in minority. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. Paragraph by paragraph this section jumps: 1943 Governments in Exile, 1945-6 Rivals to the Communists, 1944 Mikołajczyk and the borders of Poland, 1946 vote rigging, 1946/7 elections, 1948 PPS factions and PZPR merger, Undated Cyrankiewicz government then in the same paragraph 1950 population movements and 194?-1950 civil war, Undated composition of PZPR government, Undated Communist Factions, 1948 Yugoslav split. This is a thematic and narrative mess, it jumps across years and themes with no steady thread. This is not "featured" encyclopedic historical writing.
Replied above. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. Bierut appears with no discussion on Stalinisation, its origins or formation in Poland. "Despite the fact that Polish historians estimate that between 200,000 and 400,000 people died during the postwar period" cites, which historians. "Many Poles believed that the reason for this was that Poland, unlike other Eastern European countries, did not need an additional phase of terror..." this has to go, it has no substantial disciplinary basis, either that, or find a published historian who discusses it and cite them. " In these circumstances most people were willing to accept even Communist rule in exchange for the restoration of normal life." requires citation.
      2. From "De-Stalinization"
        1. "De-Stalinization" should come out of quotes immediately, the article implies (via quotes) that the Gomulka de-stalinisation wasn't de-stalinisation at all. The article doesn't differentiate between Stalinist brutality and the brutality of Party rule. This is at odds with the majority of historians of Eastern Europe under the Soviet-style systems.
Dequoted. Feel free to write sth about this differentiation, it is not in my sources. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. Gomulka's name needs to be correctly listed throughout the article, it is, for instance, incorrect at "Realizing the need for new leadership, the PZPR chose Gomulka". Having only a paltry US-en keyboard, I have relied on English typography in my comments here, but the article must be typographically correct to be considered as a featured article.
I think it has been done. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. "After some tough bargaining with Khrushchev, who came to Warsaw to oversee the transfer of power, the Soviets only grudgingly accepted Gomulka's rise to power after he was reassured that Gomulka would not alter the basic foundations of Polish communism." This is a fucking trite way to deal with Poznan, the demands for a state organised on the basis of workers councils, workers democracy, and a revolt within the party. Additionally, Gomulka's famous threat to destroy the Soviet divisions encircling Warsaw at the time should be in there. It speaks to the difficult relationship between Poland and the Soviet Union, and is a rare moment when Polish (even if PZPR) resistance to the Soviets was entirely successful. Then at the end of the paragraph, the narrative jumps back to 1955 for no good reason to mention the Warsaw pact.
Feel free to expand it. By all means, I hope you do, I never heard this quote and would love to read up more on this. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      1. From "Reform Communism":
        1. Reform communism needs to come out of quotes for the same reason. And Gomulka's own conception of his communism should be cited instead. "Reformism" was of course an insult amongst communists.
Dequoted. Feel free to expand on reform communism. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. This sentence needs to go "Since the common people had nothing to spend their wages on, productivity declined." as its bullshit economics. same para "Economic relations with Poland's natural market, West Germany," there's that teleology again!
Gone. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      1. From "The Gierek era":
        1. This section is generally written at a much higher level of quality, and would qualify as itself for a featured article in my view. One thing, "they had grown corrupt and cynical during the Gierek years and had no stomach for bloodshed." is brought forward about the party, but there is no decent discussion of how this phenomena came about within the party, something for the PZPR article probably.
      2. From "The fall of Communist rule (1980-1990)":
        1. Also pretty good.
      3. General complaints
        1. More subheadings, there are major sub-topics addressed under each of the main headings. Attention should be drawn to this by the use of sub-headings. Sub-headings are generally useful for tightening up the language and topical focus of paragraphs.
        2. The poster of the beautiful woman on the Tractor should indicate some of the missing thematic issues: "Polish Culture and Socialist Culture, 1945-1989", "The Status of Women in Poland, 1945-1989", and of course, "Working class experience in Poland, 1945-1989." Any history of a major period needs to cover the social history bases, race, culture, gender and class. The article does a reasonable job on minorities in Poland in the period, lets bring the other themes into focus.
Would love to see them, but they should be written as separate articles. They are also more in line of subarticles to People's Republic of Poland then History of Poland (1945-1989) article, IMHO. The lack of them (red links - for now) should not be an objection to this article. Wiki is always a work in progress and if we were to FA only articles who have every imaginable related (See also) article written would mean we would have 0 FA, I am afraid. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:15, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. The article needs and explicit section "Historiography of Poland under Communism" or equivalent which discusses the varying ways in which historians have written about the period and the disputes which historians have had over the period, along with any details of the difficulty of writing about the period (source access, Soviet held sources, etc.)
I added sources I used (except of Wiki ones) to references. Feel free to expand and section it. It should be noted that virtually all Soviet/PRL sources would be very biased. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:15, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        1. The article needs a bibliography (as seperate to a references & citations section), so that readers know which four to ten histories of the period are important histiographically, influential in popular culture, or major works of the historical art.
Do you mean Further reading section, perhaps? I think a bibliography section is only used to denote works by a given author, and as you yourself wrote aboive, PRL could hardly write by itself. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:15, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • And until the majority of the historical issues of bias in the current article, quality of language and source citation, headings, typography, lack of discussion of social history in the period, the absence of a historiographical and bibliographical section are corrected, the article should not be featured.Fifelfoo 03:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
A part of me wants to agree with you - there is still room for much improvement here. Another, however, notes that there is hardly any article on Wiki (among FAs) that would pass criteria as strict as yours. Wiki is, as I wrote, always a work in progress. If we were to feature only perfect articles, we would never feature anything. Consider existing similar FAs from Wikipedia:Featured_articles#History on History of... given country to see our current standard. I feel that our History of PRL article is above the average and up to our current standards. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:15, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I thank Fife for telling us what areas he felt like should be changed. I got most of what Fife wanted in the De-Stalinization section, and fixed the lead sentence a bit to include the bit about the trade unions and the Catholic Church (I used Roman Catholicism). I will try to do all I can, but I will be the first to say that my knowledge on Polish topics is zero. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:28, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I also thank Fife for his input. It would be great if he could do some editing to adress the issue (which he is apparently familiar himself) if he has some time. I will try to incorporate the changes and NPOV the article more along your suggestions, although some could be argued to be POVed themselves. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 09:54, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Impressive. Well-done all around. Mackensen (talk) 9 July 2005 12:17 (UTC)
  • Support. Well-researched, well-written, and such a large amount of information! Nicely done. - Jersyko talk 01:31, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. --BirgitteSB 04:11, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Well done. HKT 06:49, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Prior to the rewriting, I and others were stumbling on massive POV in the first three sentences. The rewriting has solved some things, but definitely not enough to make this a featured candidate. The first three sentences are no longer chock full of POV, but the first three paragraphs were in my look over this article today.
  • "The new regime in Warsaw subdued a guerrilla resistance in the countryside and gained political advantage by gradually whittling away the influence of their noncommunist foes." OK, fine. But where is the mention of (at least part of) the apparatus of this guerilla resistance being created by the Nazis during the Nazi occupation of Poland? Or that after World War II ended, the new head of West German intelligence, "ex"-Nazi Reinhard Gehlen lent material support to the "resistance" and "foes" of the new government? And why is the new government called a "regime"? If one does a Google search for "US regime" or "American regime", the pages that come up tend to be negative, if you search for "US government", the pages are neutral - why use a POV word like regime instead of government? It was used four times in the first three paragraphs.
    • Ruy, I am afraid this comment shows you know not as much about this period as you wish. There were was no Polish guerilla cooperating with the Nazis. From Armia Krajowa, Armia Ludowa, Narodowe Siły Zbrojne to Żegota - they all opposed the Nazis, not cooperated with them. You have your history backwards on this one. And I'd like to note that I have replied to this very objection on the article talk page, but then you copy this false and offending accusation here. You do make a valid point about POVed word regime, I think it has been find&replaced now. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:32, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The rises were a fatal miscalculation, for they turned the urban population against the regime." I feel "were a fatal miscalculation, for they" is POV. Why do those words need to be in the sentence? It is a POV attempt to portray the Polish bureaucrats as cold, calculating automatons.
  • And I should reiterate the objections listed above were not all of my objections to the article, but the ones I found within the first three paragraphs. If we take History of Italy as a basis for a neutral article on a country history, and I think the Cold War histories of Italy and Poland were very similar, although in the former case the country was "shaped by the influence of US capitalism" to paraphrase the article we're discussing here. This article is a litany of everything wrong with the Polish government, the Warsaw Pact, the USSR etc. Not much positive said. How come the History of Italy article is not like this? Not that I haven't tried to[1]. But of course, the information in that link is not in the Italian article - I was reverted, many, many, many times, by a user who was more-or-less chased out by the ArbCom (and quite rightly). thus don't say "well go edit the History of Italy" then, because one obviously can't. These types of accusations are bulletproof in articles like that, yet we are allowed to pour on the litany of how awful the Polish "regime" is. Until this article looks more like the History of Italy (or vice versa), I oppose. Ruy Lopez 06:18, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (though weak since I find that article a tad oversimplified). Halibutt 11:49, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
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