Talk:Decree on the system of government of Russia (1918)

Claim that this is the shortest-lived state in history

This claim makes no sense given the content of the article describing it existing in 1920, two years after it is supposed to have ended. The even that is supposed to have ended it is the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly - but this was only the dissolution of the Assembly, not the dissolution of the state. Even if you believe that the government only lasted this long (and this lacks a source) then this still does not mean that the state only lasted this long. This claim appears to be based on original research by an editor. FOARP (talk) 16:29, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

The only source for the sentence mentioning it existing de jure in 1920 links to a 404 error. De facto this state did not exist after its dissolution; the Russian Revolution undeniably happened before 1920. If anything, the statement about 1920 should be removed because it is effectively unsourced. The assertion that it existed beyond 1918 would be more than just original research as it would be rather obvious ignorance regarding the history of post-World-War-I Russia. This article certainly needs more sources, but I strongly urge you to check the sources that exist before declaring this article an original research violation. "(in Russian) Гаранжа, Анатолий Петрович Всероссийское Учредительное собрание о государственном устройстве страны" covers the declaration, dissolution, and reintegration of the republic's assembly back into the Soviet regime. BrendonTheWizard (talk) 02:32, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Brendon. You may note that the source you've just cited lacks any actual reference to the RDFR being dissolved (just the constituent assembly). Without any reference saying when this state ended, the claim that it was the shortest-lived appears to be an editor interpretation of something that the source does not explicitly state. I strongly urge you to note that what is being discussed here is the claim that it was the shortest-lived state and not the article per se. FOARP (talk) 11:10, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

PS - regarding the broken links, please check out WP:Link Rot - a now-broken link is no reason to delete something. FOARP (talk) 15:39, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 11 January 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 02:06, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

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Russian Democratic Federative Republic → Dissolution of the Russian Republic – A process of disintegration was set out following the Bolshevik coup-d'état also known as October Revolution which was partially suppressed by means of military force so called the "Russian Civil War". In the process the former Russia lost such territories like Poland, Finland, Bessarabia, Baltic states, Far Eastern Republic, and fiercely contested over Ukraine, Caucasus states and against Basmachi. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 18:23, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• But that's not the topic of this article. —  AjaxSmack  21:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose suggested new title would be misleading. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

A pity I missed this discussion, as I would have voted to move. It is far from clear that a state with this name ever actually existed. FOARP (talk) 10:44, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Much of the information on the page lacks sourcing

Since this state never effectively existed, how do we know what its flag, seal, ISO code, territory and so forth? Even the title of the country appears to be wrong here, since the declaration appears to have been that this was the "Russian Democratic Federal Republic". FOARP (talk) 10:50, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Did this state really exist?

So, as a spin-off from the 2017 discussion that decided in similar circumstances, since there was no unequivocal evidence that a country ever existed, only that a declaration creating it had been made, it should instead be merged with the article related to the declaration, I thought I'd look at the references to this article. What I see here is that the same thing appears to have occurred - none of the references cited here unequivocally states that a country with this name existed on 19 January 1918. Instead we have:

1) A blog about flags, related to the flag used by Russia in 1917.

2) A broken link to an article that may possible simply have been a blog article.

3A link to the decree itself. This is a primary source and not proof that the decree was actually carried out.

4) An academic article that does not discuss this state as ever having existed.

5) A broken link, however I have read this article in the past (in machine translation) and it nowhere discussed a state actually existing.

6) An academic article discussing the 1917 constitution, which nowhere actually discusses a state existing with the name of this article.

7) The same article discussed at 5)

What we appear to have is a conclusion reached by editors based on original research - that the Russian Democratic Federative Republic existed on 19 January 1918. This is not permitted. If no evidence that this state actually existed can be found in reliable, secondary sources, then it should simply be merged into Russian Constituent Assembly#Meeting in Petrograd (5–6/18–19 January 1918), which already covers all the relevant subject matter. Alternatively this article should be renamed to Decree on the system of government of Russia (1918), which was the actual name of the declaration. FOARP (talk) 07:30, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

I've moved it as proposed above as a WP:BOLD move, please feel free to give feedback. One issue I didn't raise above was that this page (as previously constituted) was substantially a duplication of Russian Republic, with no indication at all as to why this was a separate subject. FOARP (talk) 09:40, 22 November 2019 (UTC)