Talk:Albert E. Kahn

Why the emphasis on the architect Kahn, if the journalist Kahn satisfies notability (WP:N) in his own right? SalineBrain (talk) 11:22, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

"Albert Kahn, Inc. completed more than one thousand commissions for Ford Motor Company, and emerged as the world's leading industrial architecture firm prior to World War II. Albert E. Kahn's father, Moritz, was senior engineer in the firm."

Wartime Activities

The dates here are a little vague. What exactly was he doing after the war broke out, but before the Soviet entry into the war? Were there any anti fascist activities in that period? 2.25.28.194 (talk) 00:58, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

See this. --Ismail (talk) 21:30, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

books

Eastern European books of the cold war era is an interesting phenomenon. They often modified the text of even classics! However, now I have to say that I have a book of Albert E. Kahn, Hungarian title "A besúgó" from 1960 and 1962 2nd ed., that says it's the translation of his text "Notes on a national scandal". It might have been a manuscript then, as the English final version only went out in the 80's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.110.102.185 (talk) 16:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

All right, this section is mine! Saj75 (talk) 16:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Confusing Lede

The lede is currently as follows:

Albert Eugene Kahn (May 11, 1912 – September 15, 1979) was an American journalist, photographer, author and nephew of modernist industrial architect Albert Kahn. Albert E. Kahn's father, Moritz Kahn, was senior engineer in the firm who set up the Kahn brothers Soviet Union operation in conjunction with Gosproekstroi. He was the American Labor Party candidate in the 1948 elections for New York's 25th congressional district.

Who is the "he" in the last sentence? As written, the nearest antecedent is Moritz Kahn. If Moritz Kahn was the American Labor Party candidate, this fact doesn't belong in the lede of Albert Kahn's article. If Albert Kahn was the American Labor Party candidate, then the lede should be re-written and the fact included in the main body of the article. Andrew Jameson (talk) 14:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right, and I don't understand why there is so much on this man's relatives in the lead anyway. CheeseStakeholder (talk) 21:59, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

"Personal beliefs" section

Hello,

The "Personal beliefs" section contains some very weird wording. Writing that "many were intimidated by [US] government efforts to suppress dissent" and quoting that "The idea of any government telling me (Kahn) that I owe unequivocal allegiance to it is the most repugnant thing on earth" is both comical and tragic when Kahn's main claim to fame was to be the international loudspeaker of the Soviet government's theses in the Great Purges and the Moscow trials, the gold standard in terms of government suppression.

This section brings very little to the article anyway, and somewhat duplicates the earlier "Political leanings" section. I suggest removing it altogether. Place Clichy (talk) 14:19, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

In the absence of voiced opposition, I will proceed with the removal of the section. Place Clichy (talk) 23:59, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

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Intro text seems like having written without having read relevant book

"which described leading Soviet communists as foreign spies based on their forced confessions during Moscow Trials"

The entire book is in chronological order, starting with 1917 and moving towards 1940s - it uses memoirs of various personas ranging from intelligence officers and diplomats in different decades in USSR and the west, as well as memoirs of notaries like Winston Churchill and Trotsky.

Whereas the excerpt above basically reduces entire book and its conclusions to 'forced confessions' during Moscow Trials as if it happened independent of the time continuum of planet earth and reference-able for things that happened in 1920s, 1930s, leave aside 1917. The conclusions of spying and treason for leading communists of the era do not come from Moscow Trials, but personal correspondences, testimonies and financial transactions of many personas ranging from Trotsky to White Russian circles in USA - some of which - especially the latter - were openly boasting of their achievements of sabotage in their publications in USA (outright crazy, but it was totally legal before USA entered WW2), and their memoirs written before Moscow Trials.

The book seems to be in public domain (earlier editions at least), not appearing under either author's name or its title either in copyright.gov or archive.org. However i still didnt reference any source for the book just in case - sources to read it are found easily by just Googling it's title anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unity100 (talk • contribs) 01:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

"The conclusions of spying and treason for leading communists of the era" did come from the Moscow Trials. All allegations of "personal correspondences, testimonies and financial transactions" effectively had no evidence behind them beyond the defendants' forced confessions. It's true that the book discusses far more than just the Trials, but such things as the Allied intervention in Soviet Russia in the formative years of Bolshevik rule, or the antics of Russian émigré Anastasy Vonsiatsky, have nothing to do with the Trials. The book's treatment of the Trials is pretty much just an uncritical regurgitation of the court transcripts. --Ismail (talk) 15:29, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• Well, if someone can rewrite the part about the book better and in more detail, based on proper RS, that would be great. I did read this book in Russian translation, it is actually famous. This is absolutely not just the "uncritical regurgitation of the court transcripts". The book manufactured a massive conspiracy theory about the "Secret war against Soviet Russia" (exactly as the title tells) that was waged by Trotskiy, "capitalists", "whites" and all other "enemies" (including all recent and current Bolshevik leaders), which are presented as a single massive conspiracy led from a single "center". That was the essence of the Stalinist propaganda version, part of which survived in textbooks on CPSU history written in Brezhnev era. My very best wishes (talk) 00:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I repeat that the book's treatment of the Trials themselves is, in effect, uncritical regurgitation of the forced confessions of the defendants, right down to talk of a single "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Center" in cahoots with international imperialism. In fact a footnote on page 198 of the English edition states, "Quotations and dialogue throughout Book III, unless otherwise stated in the text, referring to the secret activities of the Trotskyites in Russia, are drawn from the testimony at the trials. . ." Sayers and Kahn could scarcely do otherwise given that virtually all of these "secret activities" were inventions of the NKVD in assembling a narrative for use in the Trials. As for Brezhnev-era texts, to my knowledge the Soviets after 1956 pretty much never spoke of the Trials and even officially rehabilitated a few of the defendants (like Krestinsky and Ikramov.) --Ismail (talk) 04:45, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Once again, the book is not just about the Trials, it covers a lot more, exactly as the user who started this thread said. The remnants of the Stalinist conspiracy theory in Brezhev era are about the people like Zinoviev and Bukharin who allegedly led organized oppositions to dismiss Stalin within the CPSU. There were only certain disagreements, no organized oppositions, they were labeled as left and right oppositions by Stalin as a part of the conspiracy theory. I think that was first well described in books by Avtorkhanov ("The origin of Partocracy", etc.) My very best wishes (talk) 18:14, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

And once again, the book is indeed about more than just the Trials, but we're not talking about Sidney Reilly or other subjects mentioned in the book. The point I was making is that the specific claims of "spying and treason [by] leading communists of the era" come from the Moscow Trials. They did not come from "personal correspondences, testimonies and financial transactions" as "the users who started this thread said," for the simple reason that none existed (unless by "testimonies" one means the forced confessions.) I also don't think it's particularly helpful to speak of "remnants of the Stalinist conspiracy theory in [the Brezhnev] era," given that claims of an organized left opposition and right opposition were made in the 1920s, a decade before the Moscow Trials. That Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, etc. were later accused during the Trials of collaborating with Nazi Germany, plotting to kill Gorky and Yezhov, etc. is a separate matter, and one not repeated by Brezhnev-era historians for the simple reason that the Trials were passed over in silence (and, as noted, a few of the defendants legally rehabilitated.) --Ismail (talk) 00:54, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

In RS the book occasionally appears only in footnotes [1] like that: "Mikhail Tukhachevskii ... was sentenced to death in a closed show trial in June 1937 for alleged high treason and espionage in favour of Nazi Germany. He then figured as one of the main culprits in the ‘confessions’ at the third Moscow show trial in 1938. A conspiracy theory was combined with the theme of his alleged plan for a coup d’état. To communists in the Stalinist generation, these myths became ‘truth’ in books like Michael Sayers and Albert Eugene Kahn The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War against Soviet Russia (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company 1946).". This is significance of the book (creation of the Stalinist propaganda myth), it can be included on the page My very best wishes (talk) 15:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)