Talk:Gabriel Kolko

Purported disagreement with Kahin

I removed the following sentence, placing it here, for the reasons outlined below:

"Although Kolko and Kahin advance similar viewpoints, they differ as to the situation in South Vietnam. Kahin, in his treatise Intervention, emphasizes that the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was a spontaneous home-grown movement that indicated a pervasive desire among South Vietnamese for unification with North Vietnam. Kolko disagrees, contending that the NLF was dominated by Hanoi from its foundation in 1960, confirming the US Government policy stance expressed in the White Paper of 1965 that opposition to the Saigon government was 'not a spontaneous and local rebellion against the established government.'"

reasons for removal

1. The sourcing for this alleged dispute is inadequate.

2. If this purported difference is elaborated on in print somewhere please provide references. It is perhaps notable that when Kolko reviewed Kahin's book of memoirs in The Journal of Contemporary Asia (Vol.33, 2003) he made no reference to any such differences. Kolko remarked that Kahin "went to South Vietnam and met opposition Buddhists as well as the NLF, gaining credibility as well as insight. But he also realized the importance of land in mobilizing the peasants behind the NLF, and he quickly became knowledgeable on all aspects of the Vietnam conflict. He wrote two books on the Vietnam War, one in 1967 and his 1986 work, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam, remains a classic."

3. From my experience if there is a difference it is that Kahin felt that "the appeal of the NLF was broad and so was its leadership. Carlyle Thayer found its early leaders to be "long-time VWP (Lao Dong) cadres who had been active in the south, members of the sect forces, former non-party members of the Resistance, and non-communist opponents of the Diem regime." (Intervention, 116) For his part, Kolko afforded the key leadership and direction role to the branch of the communist party that existed in the south, The Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), which is not the same as claiming that it was directed or dominated by Hanoi. In fact in the appropriate section of "Anatomy of a War" Kolko emphasizes significant dimensions in which the NLF was autonomous with respect to Hanoi, as well as its organic ties with local populations at the grassroots level. To quote a sample:

"This local autonomy and power allowed the NLF to reconstitute itself again and again, leaving the United States with the frustrating reality that, no mater how successful the RVN was, it could never destroy the grassroots NLF. The paradox for the Party leadership was that the southern movement was by its very flexibility, autonomy, and community basis often quite ready to take care of its own problems in its own ways, the punishment of enemies being just one example. Another, and more important, was the southern Party’s substantially greater emphasis on land reform, as opposed to a united front against the RVN, than Party leaders in Hanoi deemed wise." see [1]BernardL 16:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Views on Katyn massacre

It was suggested by one contributor that Kolko subscribed to the Soviet version of the Katyn massacre. This is straight fabrication. If you check the original 1968 version of The Politics of War he states that "the criminological evidence exhumed in the ghastly affair does suggest Russian guilt." Clear as day. Kolko could only go, like everyone else at the time, on the available evidence at the time. When more evidence came in, you'll find the following in the afterword in the 1990 reprint of The Politics of War the following: "We now have confirmation [my emphasis] that the Russians were indeed responsible for the Katyn Forest liquidations of Polish officers."

Anyway, the point is that Kolko never supported the Soviet version of the massacre, contrary to what was stated.

I have to disagree: Louis Robert Coatney in his University of Illinois, 1993, Thesis quotes these from pages 105/106 of 1968 version of The Politics of War:

Whoever destroyed the Polish officers at Katyn had taken a step toward implementing a social revolution in Poland, and on the basis of class solidarity, the London Poles felt one officer was worth many Jews or peasants.

Yet insofar as Soviet culpability is concerned, of the by now endless lists of complaints the Poles made about the treatment of their nationals in Russia, mass murder was not one of them. Indeed, the U.S.S.R. permitted a much more formidable Polish military force to organize with Soviet weapons, and then finally to leave, and no one ever attributed a similar incident to the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe during the period 1940-1945. German mass liquidation, by contrast, was a common occurrence.

are you saying these passages do not appear in the 1968 book, p. 105 ?

and, there was ample evidence of Soviet guilt for those who looked with open eyes.

121.217.231.228 (talk) 12:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)ve

Your disagreement is based on the selective quoting used by a PhD thesis in the 1990s. "[T]here was ample evidence of Soviet guilt [in 1968] for those who looked with open eyes." Please cite your source from before 1968 which proved conclusively, not just suggested, that the Soviets were responsible. Quoting from a source in the 1990s is meaningless, since by then there WAS conclusive proof, not just suggestive evidence, as Kolko himself pointed out in the 1990 reprint of Politics of War (see above).

There are some words which for some, unknown reason (please note the sarcasm) your PhD thesis chooses not to quote. The entire paragraph from pp.105-6 now follows; the emboldened words are those which were selectively omitted by the PhD author in an attempt to show Kolko as siding unequivocally with the Soviet version, when in fact he cautiously agrees, on the basis of the evidence available at the time, that the Soviets WERE responsible:

Whoever destroyed the Polish officers at Katyn had taken a step toward implementing a social revolution in Poland, and on the basis of class solidarity, the London Poles felt one officer was worth many Jews or peasants. Looked at from this viewpoint, the Russians had the political incentive to destroy the Polish officer class at Katyn, the Germans the military motive - and both were equally persuasive. Yet insofar as Soviet culpability is concerned, of the by now endless lists of complaints the Poles made about the treatment of their nationals in Russia, mass murder was not one of them. Indeed, the U.S.S.R. permitted a much more formidable Polish military force to organize with Soviet weapons, and then finally to leave, and no one ever attributed a similar incident to the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe during the period 1940-1945. German mass liquidation, by contrast, was a common occurrence. If the criminological evidence exhumed in this ghastly affair does suggest Russian guilt, or if the Russian defense is inconsistent on serious points, then it must be suggested that Katyn was the exception rather than the rule, and its relative importance in Polish-Soviet relations must be downgraded very considerably so that its useful propagandistic function in the Cold War does not distract from the fundamental causes of the breakdown in Polish-Soviet diplomacy. Without Katyn, nothing would have been different.

Omitting the emboldened words enables your author to portray Kolko as unequivocally siding with the Soviet version of events, which is simply not the case. AGAIN on page 105, Kolko states, The criminological evidence aside - for it is vast and has been used convincingly to prove the culpability of BOTH sides... AGAIN, there is no unequivocal support of the Soviet version of events, contrary to what your PhD author with an axe to grind desires to suggest with his selective quoting.

Revisionist historians (American)

That Kolko is a revisionist historians (American) is also referenced here: Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist: [2]. --Ludvikus (talk) 18:54, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

"According to internet activist..."

At the beginning of the Career section, the article now reads, "According to internet activist...." Are citations to the opinions of internet "activists" and internet "columnists" (referring to Charles Burris later in the same section) considered to be adequate support for material in this or similar articles? (I am not questioning Gabriel Kolko's notability, which seems clearly established to me based on the all the citations.) If not, perhaps other opinion sources might be used instead. —HowardBGolden (talk) 18:45, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Lack of any critical section in the article

The article basically treats Kolko's, essentially Marxist, idea that business controls government as true. There is no critical section in the article - no real presentation of opposing views. As Wikipedia claims to be a reference source this article is no good.90.194.152.177 (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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