Talk:Holodomor denial/Archive 4

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Fully protected

Hello,

I have fully protected this article as it's clear that there is an edit dispute ongoing. Please let me know when the dispute has been resolved so the full protection can be removed. Thanks, Nakon 06:28, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I believe this is wrong protection. The protection was not required because there was no serious recent edit warring at the moment of protection. The only recent clear-cut revert was made by Kingsindian, i.e. by the user who requested protection (others tried to make compromise versions). The page is locked in worst possible version sub-optimal, i.e. the one which includes the disputable text, but uses only primary sources to support the statement [1]. As soon as you unprotect this page, I can fix it by rewriting this text and providing four additional secondary sources for the section (as already explained above). But if you want it to remain protected, that's fine. I do not care. This is all responsibility of admin who locked this page. My very best wishes (talk) 07:32, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

The protection is temporary. You can give drafts on this page and people can give comments. I agree that the page has been frozen in worst possible version, but it is always the WP:WRONGVERSION. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:12, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, based on the discussions above, it appears that you will never agree on inclusion of this info, no matter how many supporting secondary sources are provided (currently there are three). Right now, based on their edits [2], [3] [4],at least three participants support inclusion of this info in some form. Actually, I would even agree with the latest edit by Dorpater. So, I think there is rough consensus already. However, I leave this at discretion of the protecting administrator. If she/he wants it be protected indefinitely (as they said), I do not mind. My very best wishes (talk) 19:18, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I would indeed not agree on inclusion. The draft would be for others to comment. Indefinite does not mean infinite. If no further proposal is made, the page goes back to the status before the edit war, namely the one just after the RfC. I would indeed be happy with that, but I suspect you would not. As for "rough consensus" I see three people opposed, so I don't see how you get there. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 20:35, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Three people who support inclusion are exemplified by three diffs provided by me above - I am talking only about very recent actual edits in the article space which leave no doubt about intentions of the people. No one has obligation to provide any drafts, and nothing prevents any further improvements on this page if it will be unprotected. For example, this edit by Dorpater represents an improvement in my opinion, and the text is completely different from the text used in the RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 21:45, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

The "recent drafts" (barring the latest one which is the worst possible) are in fact virtually identical to the one I reverted above. Both Brustopher and Flushout objected to the text. One does not need to keep repeating the objection again and again. The WP:ONUS is one the person trying to insert the material. It is very simple. If you believe that the current text is the best draft, I am happy to open an RfC for it. However I do not want another round of crying and yet another attempt to add another text. I am simply saying: Write the best text you want. And we will put it to a RfC. I have no wish to keep arguing over this frankly ridiculous dispute till I die of old age. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 00:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, here is old/stable version of this part that existed for years. Reverting to this version per WP:BRD and using it as a start for making changes would be fine. My very best wishes (talk) 00:17, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

That is not the way it works. There was an RfC, based on a text you wrote yourself. I simply put it to a test. It was found wanting. It was removed. That is the consensus version. Indeed Iryna Harpy told me after I started the RfC that they would accept its outcome. Perhaps they forgot it (it was more than a month ago). Now I am forced to re argue the matter. I am sick of it. Just write another text which you think is good, whatever you want, and we will simply ask people what they think. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I apologise for not getting back to this for so long. I've actually been working on related articles and numerous other articles of an entirely different nature, therefore my alerts drop out to those articles I've most recently worked along with occasional alerts for pages that have no activity for months (or years) on end. I'm not sure how it all works.

It seems to me that the only solution is to work out prospective text and refs for that text here on the talk page. If the potential content meets with RS, it can be added to the article. If not, the consensus appears to be that it is a potential BLPVIO and, as such, should not be included. Until such a time as it's deemed to be covered well enough by secondary sources, it is not to be challenged by reinserting it in the article. While I usually tend to be overly conservative when it comes to BLP issues, I confess that I don't really understand it to be a BLPVIO given that this article discusses prominent published material on the subject, as well as criticism of the material published by others with a public profile also examining the area, blatant statements by third parties spelling out 'this person is a Holodomor denier with this and that agenda' are not likely to be found as neatly bundled packages. If we applied this as stringently across hundreds of articles with contemporary analysis (by living scholars, politicians, journalists, etc.) of historical subject matter we'd have to cut three quarters of the content in those articles.

That said, however, local consensus is local consensus: and, for good or bad, local consensus trumps personal positions every time. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 02:52, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: Thanks for your comment, but you have misunderstood my point a bit. BLP is only one of the reasons. If you see my comment in the section above as to why I oppose the text, there are many other reasons, the main reason being that Coplon's position, which he states explicitly, is actually the position of a very large body of scholarship at the time, and even today. If you read the reasoning of Brustopher and Flushout, they also do not argue only on the basis of BLP. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 10:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree (as promised) that text discussed on the RfC was not good. There are two options: (a) restore this old/stable version of this part that existed before, and (b) improve this part by providing more refs, expanding, rewriting. etc. (there was no consensus on RfC do not improve this part). Your objections have nothing to do with RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 15:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• @Kingsindian. There are quite a few people who recently edited this page. If you agree not edit this page for a while, it can be unprotected right now, and a new consensus between all others will be very quickly established, I am 100% sure. What that be a workable solution? My very best wishes (talk) 15:40, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

No. The way forward is very simple. You write whatever you want, complete freedom. On the talk page. People can comment, change, whatever. The final draft is put to a RfC. Simple. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 16:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry, but given your admission that you disagree in advance [5], that would be waste of time. Thank you for entertainment, but I have better things to do. My very best wishes (talk) 16:11, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

How would it be a waste of time? I am not going to edit the draft. You have complete freedom to write whatever you want. If enough people agree I would be overruled, and I have no problem with that. And please spare me the line about having better things to do. You have said this at least five times and you are still here. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 17:37, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

You know what? I changed my mind. I agree to not edit this article for a week. You write whatever you want. After a week, I put the version present to a RfC. How's that? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 17:58, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Looks great. Then you should probably ask to unprotect this page since it was you who asked to protect. I am not sure though what would be my preferred version. My very best wishes (talk) 19:45, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: Yes, there is a lot of discourse following this line of thinking. That does not the equivalent of being the mainstream, nor is it equivalent to "it's not Holodomor denial" because there is a large body of work that says this and that about the Holodomor being a fallacy. I'm talking about works that deal with it as being a lie: there's a huge gap between presentation of doubt and downright political attacks of the most invidious kind based on political preferences rather than scholarship. There is an enormous body of work stating that Holodomor occurred (Holodomor being the only instance of famine in Ukraine during the Soviet period which is attributable to targeting Ukrainians explicitly, and bearing the hallmarks of something 'other' than bad economic decisions on behalf of Stalin's regime, or the result of drought and post-war turmoil as is seen in other famines in the Soviet Union). --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: You might want to read the section about modern scholarship which I wrote based on a very respected review of the scholarly literature, both Ukrainian and Western. Suffice it to say that Coplon's position is held by a very big part of scholarship. I don't claim it is the consensus, because there is no consensus position on the genocide. However, I will now shut up and let MVBW write. I have asked for removal of protection. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:42, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I could not write just a paragraph of suggested changes because this page needs a lot of changes in various sections. One section is simply not about Holodomor denial by any account. One section includes extremely long quotation of Kravchuk - it must be significantly shorter. Some sections should be retitled because something from 1980s is not "modern". The disputed content related to Coplon should be placed in a different context. And so on. I hope that Iryna will check my changes and correct anything, given that she is familiar with this subject. Thanks, My very best wishes (talk) 01:39, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure I like this. I was under the impression that you wished to hammer out the text for Coplon. So I got out of the way. Now you say that wider changes are needed. Why is one talking about something not about denial in an article about denial? Why can't you just concentrate on Coplon first and leave the rest till later? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:59, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

You suggested above: "I agree to not edit this article for a week. You write whatever you want. After a week, I put the version present to a RfC. How's that?". That's fine. I agree. My very best wishes (talk) 02:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I should have phrased it more carefully. More fool me. I'll wait for a week. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 02:20, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

It ain't easy... The article truly is in need a really good overhaul. It's been dragged in all sorts of COATRACK directions (and I mean from both extremes) which would explain why Stalinist views were added, and why it was stepping firmly on the toes of the Holodomor genocide question. The problem is that it's common fodder for extremist forums, so bits and pieces of all sorts have been added, fought over, then left in place. Getting a cohesive article in place would be a pleasant outcome. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 02:36, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Obviously, I can not fix everything. I did not even read this whole page carefully before. It has a lot of problems. Consider mentioning census data in "Falsification and suppression of evidence" subsection. It does not tell about the 15 million difference in the actual (found during the census and concealed) and official population numbers, which represents 15 million direct and indirect deaths. Speaking about Walter Duranty, it somehow was lost that he actually knew very well about the scope of the famine (as follows from his notes), but intentionally disinformed readers. And so on. My very best wishes (talk) 03:11, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

So, I might be able to fix this all of that, but given that article remained protected during weekend (when I had time) and still remains protected, I am not sure if and when I am going to edit this page in a future. My very best wishes (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

If you have time next weekend I am happy to wait till then. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:55, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Let's see if it will be ever unprotected. My very best wishes (talk) 21:43, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• So, just to summarize what I did with disputed section:

1. There is no any separate section about Coplon (yes, that would be undue)
2. We only use secondary sources, i.e. comments by 3rd party RS about his article to avoid OR
3. the article by Coplon does not appear as a separate subject at all, but only as something in connection to Tottle and Duranty who obviously belong to this page
4. Nowhere in the text of this page Coplon called a "holodomor denialist". Instead, I used direct quotations from several secondary RS which explain how exactly the article by Coplon was related to the subject of this page. My very best wishes (talk) 17:01, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Whenever you are done, let me know, so I can start an RfC on the Coplon stuff. I can wait for the whole week if you want. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 17:25, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

OK. Let's wait for a few days to allow others to look at the new version and possibly change something. I assume your RfC would ask: "Should the article by Coplon be mentioned on this page"? I think there is no question that it should be mentioned because it was prominently noted in multiple secondary sources on the subject (as now should be clear from the text). My very best wishes (talk) 18:04, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Coplon

@My very best wishes, Kingsindian, and Iryna Harpy: The consensus is hard to determine from the back and forth (and I am not sure how the consensus was "keep" after 7:4 vote for dropping Young's POV-comment), so I'll bring the issue of Coplon up again. I'm proposing one of three edits:

• 1. Replacing POV commentary from the Weekly Standard (i.e. Coplon "sneered", Coplon opposed "Imperialist propaganda" etc.) with what Coplon actually wrote.
• 2. Deleting much of the paragraph entirely, since a screed from Weekly Standard is not enough to tar someone a Holodomor denier. Much of the parapraph is a POV attack on the "left" and a rant about how the west was supposedly "blind" about the Holodomor (I guess because during the Cold War, Americans were taught that Communism was OK)
• 3. Keeping the page as is because ... reasons.

I'd support #2, #1 in that order and I don't like option #3 at all. Your votes?Guccisamsclubs (talk) 23:01, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

An archived version of Conquest's evaluation of Coplon's scholarship has now been added. Please read about link rot and cited sources you can't necessarily access: "Do not delete cited information solely because the URL to the source does not work any longer. Verifiability does not require that all information be supported by a working link, nor does it require the source to be published online."

Conquest, as a source, has been well and truly checked for verification multiple times, making your edit summary on the removal here a prime example of WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. It's reliably sourced.

In the second instance, this statement (supporting point 2?!) - "...a POV attack on the "left" and a rant about how the west was supposedly "blind" about the Holodomor (I guess because during the Cold War, Americans were taught that Communism was OK)" - is your own entirely POV interpretation of sourced criticism of Coplon. I could just as easily depict it a la Conquest and say that the 'attacks' were from anti-antiStalinists: an entirely different proposition to being anti-left wing. For a very new and inexperienced user, you seem to have hit the deck running editing articles on Wikipedia. While I admire your proficiency in getting past the learning curve remarkably quickly, I would suggest that you spend a little more time in getting to know policies and guidelines, plus try tackling some less robust articles until you've gained more experience. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I've been editing for a year. I did not remove Conquest in #1. And I fail to see how the fact that Conquest is RS, implies that the Weekly Standard must be quoted here. So none of this makes sense to me unfortunately.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 10:54, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Related RfC on Jeff Coplon

Opened a related RfC at: Talk:Jeff Coplon#Should this material take up a significant portion of this BLP?Guccisamsclubs (talk) 17:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1988/028822.shtml http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/westobservs.htm. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. /wiae /tlk 15:09, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

In particular, the content I removed came from the "Louis Fischer" section, which was entirely copied from a combination of http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1988/028822.shtml and David C. Engerman's "Modernization from the Other Shore: American Observers and the Costs of Soviet Economic Development", April 2000, The American Historical Review 105(2) p. 383–416. You can also find a copy of that paper at http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/westobservs.htm, or I can provide a PDF of the original upon request. I don't know the first thing about this subject, so I don't really feel comfortable trying to rewrite the section, but if someone else wishes to do so using these sources, more power to them! Thanks, /wiae /tlk 15:09, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

I won't request RD1 here because the copyvio was introduced on December 25, 2007 in this diff. RevDel would wipe out thousands of edits, which I think would be a problem from an attribution standpoint. /wiae /tlk 15:19, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, Wiae. Much appreciated. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:04, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

French denial

• Annie Lacroix-Riz http://www.northstarcompass.org/french/nscfr66/holodomor.htm Xx236 (talk) 07:22, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

mentioned here. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:36, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

And discussed here. Just please don't use this material to attack the scholars she cites, using guilt by association. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:43, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I'll add that the quotation in the french wiki (material I linked above) may be incomplete. Here's the full one, per google translate: "If Ukraine experienced a famine - what diplomatic sources and French soldiers of 1932-1933 exclude - it was not specifically a Ukrainian Famine and suddenly unsure "six million dead" this figure, the scandalous methodology, launched in 1994 by demographer Alain Blum". ( from "La « famine génocidaire » en Ukraine en 1933: une campagne allemande, polonaise et vaticane"- by Lacroix-Riz). I suspect that her work can be included, but editors should probably try to understand her exact positions on the issue first (discussion in french secondary sources is close to nil—in english sources it is nil). But you have to read French to do that, so I can't help. Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:03, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Trash is trash, in any language. If Ukraine experienced a famine - no comments.Xx236 (talk) 06:45, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Agree. It's pretty clear.Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:31, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Modern Denial in Russia

@My very best wishes: I know denying or justifying Stalinist atrocities (Holodomor included) is very much a thing in contemporary Russia, especially after the anti-Maidan hysteria got going. You noted fringe writers like Mukhin and Zhukov, but there are surely more. However, I'm having trouble finding EL sources on this issue. You know of any? Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:10, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

• Backgrounder Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:54, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
• A relatively clear statement of denial from Yuri Zhukov: "It is indeed true that grain and money was being extracted from the peasantry, to repay German credit. And a tragedy did occur in the early 1930's — this was the fault of the inept bureaucracy . Moscow calculated precisely how much grain was needed to repay Germany by year, with precise quotas for each bread-producing area. But the local bureaucrats extracted double that just to be safe. That extra grain was left to rot. Therefore the blame lies with the Ukrainian officials [ sic чиновники-украинцы is a formulation that stresses nationality, not just location ]. There are also errors in calculating the number of victims [ goes on to talk about internal and external migration of millions who were are miscounted as dead ]. Don't repent, be proud: the truth about Stalin Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:28, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I do not have time right now, but here is another publication that mentioned Tauger and his supporters in Russia (it also notes Tottle). Note that it is not subject of the RfC and should/could be included on this page. And this: [6]. My very best wishes (talk) 13:51, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Right, I see you have no interest in the topic, just in smearing and or otherwise attacking sources you want removed from another page. Nothing | new. Despite your long history on WP, are you sure you're WP:HERE? Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:53, 20 September 2016 (UTC) Retracted. Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:59, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

A quick query on this issue: do we have an article dealing with modern denial in the RF, or only the section in the modern politics article? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

We'd be lucky to get so much as a paragraph, due to the paucity of sources. I am still looking for secondary sources. There is plenty of coverage of Stalin nostalgia, but very little on Holodomor denial proper. Indeed, you will find that Russian Stalin apologists seldom deny much (except isolated incidents like Katyn): they usually shift the blame, stress the fact that it's "only" X-number of victims, or say that some sacrifices were unavoidable. But be that as it may a modern denial section that only mentions Western leftists from the 1980's is a huge WTF in my opinion. Russia is pretty much the only place where Stalin apologia (modern denial) is still a thing. Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:39, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point. Thinking on it, hard core Stalinism per se seems to be a strange hangover being touted on lot of Anglophone sites, but I just realised that I can't really think of any Russian (or other European) sites off-hand. It's one of those weird things that seems to have bypassed the developed world where the mindset is still trapped in the 60's. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:54, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

A few points to disagree with G. (a) No, there are many deniers/revisionists on the West, such as Arch Getty, except they are trying to diminish crimes by Stalinism in general, rather than to outright deny the Holodomor; (b) a typical modern Stalinist in Russia (~80% of population according to surveys) believe that Stalin was right by exterminating all the "enemies". My very best wishes (talk) 05:27, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Therein lies the rub, MVBW. According to the TITLE, this is an academic exercise dependent on the definition of 'denialism'. Unless there are RS attesting to a broader definition of the forms denial of the Holodomor takes, it can only be construed as outright denial of the concept of Holodomor (which is, by definition, genocide). The concept of its being an extension of the broader famine of the period is not automatically, by extension, denial, even though COMMONSENSE would suggest that it is. What is policy is NOR. I'm still of the opinion that there is a separate article on the form of denial modern Russia has adopted. It's blatant and has been written into laws on what is off the agenda in school curriculums, censorship laws on books, etc. Without RS, it amounts to nothing. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:03, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

• According to the sources and as correctly written on the page, "Holodomor denial is the assertion that the 1932–1933 Holodomor, a man-made[1] famine in Soviet Ukraine,[2] did not occur[3][4][5][6] or diminishing the scale and significance of the famine.[7]". This is the same as in the case of Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide denial, etc. See also this source. My very best wishes (talk) 00:22, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

(RE:^Wishes) That's lede is well and good. Saying that is the "same" as Holocaust denial is your fringe synthesis. The Holodomor killed 2-10 million people and its intentionality is hotly disputed by scholars. The Holocaust killed 6 million Jews, and t there is no scholarly dispute about intentionality. So it's not the same thing. Modern Holocaust denial is covered in thousands of excellent sources, Modern Holodomor denial is covered by the Daily Beast and maybe a couple other sources. So while both are real, they are not the "same" for the purposes of Wikipedia—or for any purposes. Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:34, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

As you know, I'm new to this topic, so forgive me if this is either irrelevant or old. But what about the Ukrainian article? Running it through Google Translate, it seems to have stuff about Medvedev threatening ambassadors if they recognise the Holodomor, and writing to Yushchenko to deny it. It has some English-language refs including Wikileaks. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have anything on individuals – such as the "Mukhin and Zhukov" mentioned at the top of this thread – even on the talk page. Scolaire (talk) 10:29, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

The fact that MVBW insists on labeling people like J. Arch Getty a "denier" and conflates "deniers" with "revisionists" is why their attempts to add silly things like the passage in the RfC above have met with such opposition. "Revisionist" Soviet History is a vast field; it is not synonymous with "Holodomor denial". People are allowed to come to different conclusions based on historical evidence. Especially before the Soviet archives were opened, much of the research was educated guesswork. This is one reason why Conquest's work was appreciated by many people even though they didn't agree with all aspects; there was very little else available at the time. This is the way research works. I quoted the David Marples source above; he says very clearly that the reasons for the flap over Holodomor denial are primarily political. I quote (p. 511):

Here are some more lamentable facts: the only article on the Ukrainian famine published in the past two decades in Slavic Review, the leading journal in the field in the United States, is that of Mark Tauger, which appeared 18 years ago. Europe-Asia Studies, by contrast, has devoted much space to the famine over the past decade, but not one article has focused on the Ukrainian angle specifically (Kuromiya’s comes the closest), and none have supported the notion that the famine was an act of genocide. Thus at the very least one can state that the spectrum is one-sided. The leading Canadian journal, Canadian Slavonic Papers, has not published a single article on the Ukrainian famine in 17 years.

The Marples article was written before the Crimea stuff, but even then, there was a push in Ukraine making "Holodomor denial" a criminal offence (see pages 510 and 516), which Marples doesn't approve of. Our purpose here is not to embark on separating "denial" from "historical research", based on arbitrary criteria. Leave such things to the politicians. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

• This section is about modern denial of Holodomor in Russia, right? So Getty is irrelevant, and he is not even mentioned in current version by Solarie. Neither this page tells about modern denial of Holodomor in Russia. So this whole section is strange. G. simply asked if there are any sources about this currently unwritten subject. OK, here is one of them and it calls denial "denial". There is nothing else to talk about. My very best wishes (talk) 13:14, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

@Scolaire: What is being addressed here is the brevity of any discussion of the official RF stance which is, in turn, promoted constantly and relentlessly by official news outlets by Sputnik, just as an example (see this quick search eliminating the use of 'Holodomor'). Currently, we have articles on issues focussed solely on the 'Holodomor as genocide' question. What has been escalating for a number of years has been the RF internal and international media saturation which is undeniably blatant denial. Stating that it is an issue for the politicians and scholarly community is turning a blind eye to the most influential arena: the mass media. Journalists and journalism is being dismissed as 'other'. I'm sorry, but it isn't treated as 'other' when it comes to any other controversial issues, yet it's being used as a lock-down on salient information. I'm not saying that it's appropriate to elaborate on journalism (and the use of scholars for media-based advocacy) in this article, but this article features a section on "Holodomor denial and Ukrainian law" which, in turn, directs readers to Holodomor in modern politics. The same formula of 'academics only' has been applied to that article, but there is far more in the way of well documented and reliably sourced agitprop and rebuttals than Wikipedia is addressing, and it is most certainly not fringe. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. If the Russian stance is "promoted constantly and relentlessly by official news outlets", shouldn't that mean that evidence for it is everywhere? Then why would there be a talk page thread looking for sources? The search you linked to seems to turn up two articles headed "Holodomor Hoax" published by Sputnik in 2015, and one of those articles being picked up by sites such as Russia Insider, Shoah the Palestinian Holocaust and the Greanville Post. There's also criticism of it in the Daily Beast, and a brief mention of it in a different context in the World Post. I'm not seeing constant or relentless. Why is it not appearing in any major national news outlet anywhere (including Russia)? As far as I can tell, Guccisamsclub is in favour of including modern Russian denial, be he has also failed to find any reliable sources to support it.

But to get back to my question: is there any reason not to create a section on modern Russia, mentioning that Medvedev slams Ukraine’s Great Famine stunt, that Prince Andrew said Medvedev had pressurised Azerbaijan's President Aliyev and others, that FM Lavrov expressed concern to Israeli FM Lieberman about "historical revisionism" blaming Russia for the famine, and that Sputnik published articles on the "Holodomor Hoax" in August and November 2015? Scolaire (talk) 14:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

The Sputnik articles are obviously denial (anything that quotes Grover Furr is pretty likely to be denial). However, the Medvedev statement (from 2008) is only talking about the classification as deliberate genocide and the proposed law in Ukraine which criminalizes Holodomor denial. This was also discussed in the Marples source above. That, I don't think, qualifies: it is simply a political fight between Ukraine and Russia. The two Wikileaks cables are also talking about the classification as genocide, as far as I can see.

In general, it's probably best to use secondary sources which discuss denial in Russia, rather than picking news reports and interpreting them.

Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Obviously correct. Furthermore an article dedicated to Russian stalinism already exists: Neo-Stalinism. Trying to reduce Neo-Stalinism or the Holodomor in modern politics to Russian holodomor denial is plainly wrong-headed and a recipe for a weakly-sourced pet-issue propaganda article. Guccisamsclub (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:31, 29 September 2016 (UTC)‎

Could you possibly lose the battleground mentality? Every post on a talk page is not an assault on right thinking or an attempt at propaganda. I'm interested in learning whether users think a section on modern Russia is warranted, what it might contain and how it might be sourced. Having to read people sniping at each other (and it's not even clear who you were sniping at there) is very trying. Scolaire (talk) 18:56, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Tone it down down you mean? Sure. But I'd still say the same thing: creating an article on Russian Holodomor denial per Iryna is a bad idea. And if that article takes the same line as Wishes in this thread (methodologically equating Holodomor denial/politicking and Holocaust denial), it will be propaganda. If such an article is created, it likely that this will be it's premise, given the title and the need to tack on not strictly relevant material just in order to make it bigger than a stub. I am not sure if there is a nice way to say it.Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, I understood what you were saying that time, so that's good. I would agree that creating an article on it is neither feasible nor desirable. That leaves the question, raised by yourself, myself and My very best wishes, whether creating a section in this article is desirable or feasible. Scolaire (talk) 21:04, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I think creating such section and using these sources would be reasonable, even though they are "primary" sources, however they must be supplemented by at least one additional secondary source, such as this. Speaking about the comment by Iryna, I think one problem here is that people separated same subject into different pages, i.e. this page, Holodomor genocide question and Holodomor in modern politics. Using an analogy with Armenian genocide (for example), all such matters would belong to only two pages: Armenian genocide itself and Armenian genocide denial. My very best wishes (talk) 15:28, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

@Guccisamsclub: Where did I suggest that we need to created an article on "Russian Holodomor denial"?! I've had enough of your twisting other editor's comments and misrepresenting them. You've been engaging in this kind of behaviour on multiple article talk pages, edit summaries, writing walls of text, and being abusive. It's time to stop your aggressive interaction behavioural problems and bulldozing your way through articles and their content.

Now, while I appreciate your effort in developing the subject matter in this article, I don't actually believe it to be appropriate for this article. As per other editors involved, I still understand the RF's stance as something to be discussed, as well as the sourcing and development. Please stop treating Wikipedia as if it were a race. It's better to deliberate over potential content prior any additions. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:46, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Actually, my first reaction was also that you had never said anything about an article, but when I went back and looked you had used the word twice. Here you said, "do we have an article dealing with modern denial in the RF, or only the section in the modern politics article?", and here you said "I'm still of the opinion that there is a separate article on the form of denial modern Russia has adopted." So it wasn't unreasonable of Guccisamsclub to think that that was what you were proposing. Like him, you need to stop and think before you post, and address the content rather than his perceived behaviour. Articles are improved much more easily when people say "I think X should be changed to Y because Z" than when they say "stop this disrupive POV-pushing vandalism". Scolaire (talk) 08:44, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Jeff Coplon and Arch Getty in the "Douglas Tottle and others" section

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should the "Douglas Tottle and Others" section contain the following?

According to Canadian historians, "Eventually Tottle’s book lost credibility in all but the fringe Stalinist circles, but in the late 1980s material from it appeared in the American “Village Voice” and various student newspapers in Canada" [7]. According to Cathy Young, "the West has its own inglorious history with regard to the famine, starting with the deliberate cover-up by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty. In the late 1980s, the famine gained new visibility thanks to Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (1987) and the TV documentary Harvest of Despair, aired in the United States and Canada. A backlash from the left was quick to follow. Revisionist Sovietologist J. Arch Getty accused Conquest of parroting the propaganda of "exiled nationalists." And in January 1988, the Village Voice ran a lengthy essay by Jeff Coplon (now a contributing editor at New York magazine) titled "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right." Coplon sneered at "the prevailing vogue of anti-Stalinism" and dismissed as absurd the idea that the famine had been created by the Communist regime. Such talk, he asserted, was meant to justify U.S. imperialism and whitewash Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis." In a letter to the editors, Robert Conquest dismissed the article by Coplon as "error and absurdity".

Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 03:11, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

References

Survey

• No: Please see the RfC here for an earlier attempt at this silliness. The whole paragraph is a WP:COATRACK, based on one article by Cathy Young, a journalist not a historian, in the conservative general-affairs magazine The Weekly Standard. The characterization by her of the scholarly debates isn't accurate and more to the point, shouldn't be used in a historical article. Secondly, the inclusion of such content in the Denial of the Holodomor article and with the Douglas Tuttle section is smearing Coplon and J. Arch Getty by implication. Arch Getty is a major Sovietologist at UCLA who has produced countless scholarly works. There is virtually zero evidence in the passage or elsewhere that Arch Getty or Coplon is a "Holodomor denier". There were indeed disputes between Getty and Robert Conquest, another major historian, but that does not make Getty a "Holodomor denier" absent strong evidence. Thirdly, in Conquest's comment on Coplon, nowhere does he mention anything about Holodomor denial: someone's work can be "error and absurdity" without it being "Holodomor denial". Fourthly, quoting from Coplon directly: There was indeed a famine in the Ukraine in the early 1930s. It appears likely that hundreds of thousands, possibly one or two million, Ukrainians died -- the minority from starvation, the majority from related diseases. By any scale, this is an enormous toll of human suffering. By geRoman neral consensus, Stalin was partially responsible. By any stretch of an honest imagination, the tragedy still falls short of genocide. This position is not "Holodomor denial" - the classification of the famine as a genocide is and was debated by historians. Finally, both Coplon and Getty are alive, so WP:BLP applies as well. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:04, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• No: Your quote from Coplon alone is WP:CHERRY and WP:SYNTH of the entire article. I would encourage other editors participating in this RfC to read the entire diatribe and tell me that the line you presented is a fair indication of what Coplon postulates in his thesis. [EDIT] Note that I was actually fully prepared to lose this section, however this BLP issue seems to have conveniently been resurrected at precisely the same time that renewed edit warring has begun on the J. Arch Getty article. Your preoccupation there also surrounds 'smear' campaigns that don't exist. What exists are reliably sourced evaluations of these historians works, including that of J. Arch Getty by reputable historians. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 02:00, 30 August 2016 (UTC)--Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:41, 30 August 2016 (UTC) [EDIT] Apologies. I'd forgotten to change my !vote here immediately after registering it following a discussion with Kingsindian. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:03, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Neither of the authors (one is a journalist by the way) says anything about Getty engaging in Holodomor denial. The article has zero citations on Google scholar. In this area, everyone and their uncle has an opinion. One side accuses the other of exaggerating and going beyond their evidence. The other side accuses the first side (Getty and Sheila Fitzpatrick, another major Sovietologist) of "soft-pedaling" (the phrase used in the article) Stalin's crimes. These are scholarly disputes and are frequent in every historical area - especially one as politicized as this. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 03:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• If you do not like quote from this source, could you please provide some alternative quotes from other sources on this subject, i.e. quotes about followers of Tottle, including Coplon and others. If you can, that's fine. Let's use them too. But if you can not, then the existing quote should be kept simply per WP:NPOV. My very best wishes (talk) 04:26, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

You'll note that we kept ALL of the critical sources there except World Affairs. You also write, "Note that I was actually fully prepared to lose this section". Is that supposed to be an argument for keeping it? Guccisamsclubs (talk) 12:17, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• Yes, this should be kept as something relevant to the subject and well sourced. The quotation and publication by Cathy Young was clearly about Holodomor denial. She mentioned Coplon and Getty in connection with Holodomor denial. Hence they appear in quotation on this page. This page does not call them directly "deniers" anywhere, it simply quotes sources. The direct quotation was used only because of the prolonged dispute, i.e. to avoid uncertainty in interpretation of claims by sources. This text was included based on previous discussions on this talk page (see above) and remained in the stable version of the page for a long time. Perhaps this could be modified or replaced by something, but the filer did not suggest any alternative text. My very best wishes (talk) 04:11, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• But I also think this can be shortened, rephrased or supplemented by other sources. Here is a couple of academic sources which tell exactly the same as the piece by Young except different wording [8], [9]. There are others: this, this and this, but simply removing everything would be against WP:NPOV, given that sources used in this paragraph qualify as WP:RS. My very best wishes (talk) 14:23, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

• I did (see #1 in the section I started above) but encountered a classic stone wall.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 11:11, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

This is extremely dishonest. As can be seen in the discussion here, after endless edit warring by you, I invited you to write a draft: we agreed that I'lll open an RfC for it when you're finished. I even extended the timeline for you to edit uninterrupted. In the meantime, my Wikipedia activity dropped and I forgot about the page. That does not mean the version is stable, quite the contrary. I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 04:35, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

The text under discussion was placed in the page almost eight months ago. During this time it was not objected by anyone, including you. I thought you agreed with this version that you saw. I have no idea why exactly you decided to object right now. My very best wishes (talk) 04:45, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• Yes - the Sovietologists have lied and they still do. (I prefer Pipes and his critics of the revisionists.) Stalin was partially responsible. - Stalin had absolute power during a certain period, one may discuss only since when. The war against peasants was started by Lenin and continued by Stalin. There existed a difference between ethnic Russia and Ukraine regarding obshchina [10], which probably made the repressions in Ukraine harder. Xx236 (talk) 05:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

How is this an argument for inclusion of Weekly Stndard's attack on Copeland in an article on "Holodomor Denial"?Guccisamsclubs (talk) 11:37, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• No, I don't know how any can possibly see this as remotely encyclopedic. Apparently we are not even allowed to quote an author that is being accused of being a Holodomor denier (not even by a source, but by association). Instead we must quote what some columnist at Weekly Standard thinks he wrote, and stuff that in an article on "Holodomor Denial". And voila, Coplon is a "Denier". Durantly and Tottle are already covered as "deniers" at length here. If anyone thinks Cathy Young's opinions about Tootle or Duranty are valuable, stick them in the appropriate sections. Coplon is not notable and not really a denier, so the para on him needs to go.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 10:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
• Comment. Please do not modify text under discussion during standing RfC as you did here. Thanks, My very best wishes (talk) 14:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, let the RfC run its course. There's no hurry. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:09, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

My edit was before the apparent re-incarnation of a year-old RfC, which in no way supported the standing text (text which was apparently edited by MVBW after the old RfC had begun)Guccisamsclubs (talk) 15:27, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Ok sorry. I am too lazy to figure out who edited what when, but as long as we all agree that the text isn't to be touched while the RfC is going on, we're fine. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:42, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• No as Cathy Young is a journalist, not a historian. I believe the commentary used in the article should come from historians. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:22, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Publications by journalists qualify as WP:RS. Therefore, excluding them (especially by default) would go against WP:NPOV, which is our core policy. It overrides any possible consensus on this page. My very best wishes (talk) 04:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

• No The section is extremely partisan. Tottle wrote a pro-Stalinist book that denied the Ukrainian famine happened. Subsequent writers did not do that, they merely rejected the unsupported view that the famine was racially motivated. Duranty failed to mention the famine because the UK was buying grain from the Soviet Union. Modern writers have criticized Conquest because he takes a New Right position on Communism. Different writers with different ideologies and different views of the famine are grouped together with no secondary source to link them because they all share in common that they do not agree with the Holodomor narrative that international Communism engaged in an ethnic genocide that exceeded the Holocaust. TFD (talk) 07:59, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

What on earth is 'international Communism' when it's at home? I've never heard of it. I have heard of the "Soviet Union" and the advent of Stalinist policies in what was essentially a failed Communist state (i.e., no global revolution = no change in the global economy = no system of Communism can be implemented). Are you implying that Communist China is actually communist; that Cuba was ever communist (Castro himself made a joke out of adopting the wearing of army fatigues); that these states somehow worked in collaboration with each other to create 'international Communism'? You're creating a pattern of a new right 'position' which has its veracity offset by another position which doesn't actually have a position other than disparate positions which all agree that there were no ethnic overtones, undertones - or even shades of grey - because they've all disregarded each other's research and opinions and are working in a data vacuum to reach conclusions entirely off their own bat. Er... interesting take on the Holodomor being a far-right conspiracy. Even more interesting is your dismissal of Duranty's teeny-tiny omission as being "Duranty failed to mention the famine because the UK was buying grain from the Soviet Union." I've come across oversimplifications, but this is one of the most outrageously naive 'explanations' I've ever encountered. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:04, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Why not cut innuendo and just add TFD and myself to your list of Holodomor deniers? I don't necessary disagree with every part of your "rebuttal", but I simply can't take it seriously in current form. Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:57, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

@Guccisamsclub: Firstly, stop trying to create a Godwin's law style pseudo-currency out of 'Holodomor denial'. Secondly, I was responding to TDF, not to you, so don't try to create the illusion that I have somehow attacked both of you, and that you and TDF are a partnership. If you are, it's the first time I've been made aware of it. Lastly, do not intentionally create narratives in order to misrepresent what I have said. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:53, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I do not know how you get all that from my paragraph. First, when I mention the "narrative that international Communism....", I am referring to what other people believe, not necessarily what I believe. And I am not defending Duranty or Tottle or anyone else, merely saying that no reliable sources say they are making the same claims. TFD (talk) 17:57, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

• No. I'm not averse to including bizarre fringe views if they can be referenced to reliable sources that dispassionately analyse their craziness, but this source lacks the intent or the competence to do so and delivers instead a polemical bit of historical revisionism that would require substantial independent coverage for context. That coverage appears to be lacking. One journalist reporting some nonsense that one Stalin apologist said does not rise to the level of objectively demonstrable significance without substantial commentary that would probably make the actual primary source redundant (which would improve the edit, since the source is marignal at best). Guy (Help!) 10:41, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Actually, this whole page is about bizarre fringe views (a "denialism" page), and a publication by well known mainstream journalist tells something about it. I would not mind to modify this text or use any other (presumably more objective?) sources about recent followers of Duranty and Douglas Tottle, but simply removing everything about it I think would be against WP:NPOV. My very best wishes (talk) 16:46, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Duranty was completely mainstream for his time. The US govt even funded propaganda film lauding the Moscow Trials (Mission to Moscow), going well beyond Duranty. Today, "deniers" mainly inhabit runet forums, and most of them have no idea who Duranty even was. They'd be lucky to remember what happened a day ago. Stop making "Followers of Duranty and Tottle" a thing. Guccisamsclub (talk)

I do not know where did you get such ideas. No, the "deniers" and Neo-Stalinists in general are abundant and have recently published a lot. That "historian" is only one of many. My very best wishes (talk) 18:15, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

• You're exactly right. I had a brain fart, sorry. Holodomor denial and Stalinism in general have gained currency in Russia. Which makes it odd that we are discussing Coplon and who-ever-the-fuck from some Stalinist American sect, all the while completely ignoring the one place where Stalinist revisionism is still a notable thing:Russia. Not only is it notable, it is politically significant! (However, it's still true that Russian Stalinoids couldnt care less about Tottle or Duranty (those two don't even make a natural pair) , so there is still no such thing as "followers of D & T". They are followers of "Stalin") Guccisamsclub (talk) 18:41, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Not so. They do care, including Russian historians and propaganda outlets noted for example here. My very best wishes (talk) 14:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

• Of course not -- Why would an editor with experience and history even suggest that such nonsense be added to the article? Damotclese (talk) 15:00, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
• Comment: there are a number of issues with the paragraph. (1) "According to Canadian historians" is wrong when quoting a single historian, Roman Serbyn; the citation is a bare url; and the linked pdf says right at the top, "not for citation". (2) It's unnecessary anyway, as all it really says is that some of Tottle's stuff was in an article in the Village Voice "in the late 1980s", which has an alternative citation, giving the exact date and the article's author. (2) The quote from Young is overly long: large blockquotes are never a substitute for stating facts. (3) The greater part of it is a re-cap of the whole saga from the 1930s, and not relevant to Tottle at all ("the West has its own inglorious history with regard to the famine, starting with..."). (4) the half-sentence on Getty is not related to Tottle or Coplon, and has the appearance of being smuggled in to suggest something that the article is unable to say out straight. Stripped of its irrelevancies, what the Young quote comes down to is that Coplon wrote an article. The paragraph should be distilled into two sentences: "Some of Tottle's material appeared in a 1988 article by Jeff Coplon in the Village Voice, 'In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right.' [citing, but not quoting, Young, montclair.edu and (if we must) Serbyn's not-for-citation paper] In a letter to the editors, Robert Conquest dismissed the article by Coplon as 'error and absurdity'." [citation as at present] Scolaire (talk) 16:06, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Here is the problem with RfCs like that one. It asks: "Should the "Douglas Tottle and Others" section contain the following? ...". Let's assume that the answer is "no, it should not contain the following ...". OK. But then we should probably say something about recent developments in this area, as described is a number of RS including that one (which does qualify as RS)? Ok, let's do it. No one, including me ever objected to making this part "more NPOV" by including more sources and reducing quotation of the currently used sources. This RfC is meaningless. My very best wishes (talk) 17:42, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to do it, then, because this RfC seems to have ground to a halt. Scolaire (talk) 09:30, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Scolaire: RfCs run for 30 days. Let it finish and some uninvolved editor will close it. I am reverting your edit for now. While I'm at it, I can reply to MVBW's point. As I pointed out above, there was already a previous RfC which rejected an earlier version. MVBW kept endlessly edit-warring, while in my opinion, the whole Coplon thing was useless and should be dumped. We then reached an agreement that they will have complete freedom to write whatever they want, and we'll put it to an RfC. This is what's going on here. Speaking for myself, I don't think this page should have anything about a 30-year-old obscure article by a nobody, which had absolutely nothing to do with Holodomor denial. See my comment, right at the top for reasons. People can differ on this of course. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 09:48, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Some uninvolved editor might close it. More often than not, after 30 days the header is just removed, and the discussion is left hanging. But revert away. My edit is in the article history, so people can restore it later if they want. Scolaire (talk) 09:56, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Scolaire: If you didn't know, you can list RfCs at WP:ANRFC for closure. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 10:13, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I did know. I was just pointing out that people often don't. Especially in a case like this where the discussion has petered out after three weeks. Scolaire (talk) 10:17, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Since the deletion of the whole paragraph during the course of the RfC was not reverted, that argument is no longer valid. I am restoring my edit. Scolaire (talk) 13:16, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

• No per Kingsindian and Scolaire. I would add that per WP:BLP, it's inappropriate to give so much weight to one non-academic source by lifting 11 (!!!) lines of commentary from that source to link two living people to something as nasty as Holodomor denial when their actual positions seem to actually be nuanced (just not in a way that the non-academic source likes). The length is also really stretching what's an acceptable length to quote from one source in one go, so even if it was perfectly valid, it would still have to be cut down and rewritten to avoid copyright problems. If there was more/additional sources on Coplon that show his article received substantial coverage in the context of the Holodomor historiography debate , I would support something similar to Scolaire's suggestion, but given that Coplon isn't very well known and doesn't have his own article, I would prefer the entire passage be removed per WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE. --- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 17:48, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I've removed the section for now from the article per the BLP concerns I raised above. It's reproduced at the top of this RfC and can easily be restored if that is what the consensus of this RfC is. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 17:55, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

• Doing this during standing RfC is against the rules and I think invalidates this RfC. Consider someone removing whole page during standing AfD. This is not a BLP issue because the opinion is sufficiently well sourced, and in fact is not a negative statement about living person, but criticism of his published work. Whether his published work was notable is not a BLP issue. My very best wishes (talk) 14:14, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

• Keep and edit down. The fact that such an article appeared in a widely-read paper in the late 1980s is notable, as evidenced by a reference to it 20 years later by Roman Serbyn, an academic historian and Ukraine expert. The identity of the author is not important in this instance, nor is the content of Young's piece. But there is no question that the article cited Tottle approvingly. Comments above, that arguing about the number that died is not denial, are wide of the mark. Holocaust denial specifically includes arguments about the number that died. Why should this be different? Scolaire (talk) 13:33, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this is not at all about Coplon and Getty, but about modern Holodomor denial. And there are many sources about it. Some of them were mentioned in discussions here. My very best wishes (talk) 14:12, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

@Scolaire: I see that you're referring to this. This seems to be a random opinion piece on a website. In contrast, look at the piece here in East/West Journal of Ukrainian Studies, which is mentioned below and was mentioned by me in the other RfC. It says nothing about Coplon engaging in genocide denial. As for the numbers, I don't see any comment above arguing about numbers, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. Let's look at the comparison with Holocaust denial: the question is whether the number of people (Jews, or Ukrainian in this case) differs significantly, typically by an order of magnitude from the generally accepted figure. For instance, there is debate whether the number in the Holocaust was closer to 5 million or 6 million. Raul Hilberg, one of the leading Holocaust historians said 5.1 million, for instance, which is at the lower end of the estimate. This does not make Hilberg a Holocaust denier. Coplon says the number was "hundreds of thousands, possibly as high as 1 or 2 million" in 1988, while the accepted figures nowadays range from 1.8 to 14 million. Coplon's estimate was well within the scholarly estimates at the time as well as now. As for citing Tottle approvingly, it was only for one particular section (as far as I know, Tottle was largely correct in that particular claim - the provenance of the photographs - though I'm not sure and it's not really important). Applying that logic would make anyone who cited David Irving a Holocaust denier. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:29, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Why would anybody who wasn't a Holocaust denier want to cite David Irving? Why would anybody citing the "good bits" of David Irving not be called a David Irving apologist? The Village Voice article mixed Tottle's "largely correct" statements about photographs being misattributed with lots of talk about "an official Nazi party organ", "Nazi publications", "the profascist Hearst chain", "right-wing émigrés" etc., as Tottle had. Essentially, it said that Tottle had shown that the makers of a documentary on the Holodomor were Nazi liars. As for numbers, hundreds of thousands is an order of magnitude less than millions, and adding in the "possibly" after sowing the seed of doubt only reinforces the notion that the numbers have been wildly exaggerated, which is of course the intention. Again, remember that it was Serbyn, not just me, who said that the article used material from Tottle's book, and he didn't say it was only the "good bit" of Tottle. (I am referring to this, a presentation to a research seminar, which was cited in the paragraph at the top of this RfC, not the piece you linked to.) WP:V favours my edit. It is a policy-based reason for inclusion. Scolaire (talk) 16:18, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

retracted as offtopicGuccisamsclub (talk)

Ditto. Scolaire (talk) 19:19, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

@Scolaire: Regarding David Irving, see this. I quote: ...his book Hitler’s War—despite its attempts to protect Hitler from any responsibility for the Holocaust and its implied argument that the Führer might well have won the war if his generals had only been intelligent enough to appreciate and exploit his military genius—remains the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War and, as such, indispensable for all students of that conflict. The author was Gordon Craig.

As for the rest of your comments, in 1988, all estimates were imprecise. Indeed, as I said above, the estimates even today, range from 1.8 million to 14 million. Would you call the people at the lower end "deniers"? Even Conquest accepted that he lacked the sources necessary to confirm the death tolls. Conquest's use of emigre sources was very controversial at the time because such sources have an incentive to exaggerate. There were elements in the Ukrainian emigre population who were indeed fascist. That does not mean that what they said was automatically wrong: however, this fact was exploited by the Soviet deniers and Tottle.

As for the presentation you link to, it does not call Coplon a genocide denier anywhere. As I said above, the classification of the famine as a genocide was very controversial then, and is still controversial now. Coplon quoted Alexander Dallin, Moshe Lewin, J. Arch Getty, Lynne Viola and Roberta Manning in his article. None of them denied the famine or Stalin's responsibility; they disagreed that it was done deliberately done out of ethnic motives. And this is the same as Coplon's position.

Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 00:22, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

The only difference between Coplon and the historians in your list, is that Coplon was a journalist writing a polemical essay to drive home the "point" (whatever it was). So he was—much like Cathy Young—guilty finger-pointing and gotcha innuendo. He carried his point too far, but not as far as denial. "Hundreds of thousands" may be an order of magnitude off, but "hundreds of thousands, possibly 1 or 2 million" is emphatically not, especially before the opening of the archives. Having said that, the mention of Coplon in the Tottle section is still very much up for grabs (some mention may be warranted per WP:V). But that section should NOT be named "Tottle and Others," since that would bring us right back to the POV-COATRACK we're trying to get rid of. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:55, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

My edit removes Coplon's name, as his name is not the significant fact. Since the paragraph that once followed this one has been deleted, there is no need for "and others" in the section heading. I would support its removal.

@Kingsindian: You're building a straw man there. My edit does not say that Coplon was a genocide denier. It says that the Village Voice article used some of Tottle's material. Which is what Serbyn said. Scolaire (talk) 08:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

• No. Summoned by bot. The book is mentioned, as is the Voice article, in the current version. The amount of text proposed to be added is excessive and undue emphasis. Coretheapple (talk) 13:06, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Please see the RfC here for an earlier version, which was equally bad. Further comments can be added below. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 01:04, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

A note on the various schools of history here. The following text comes from Stalin: A New History by Cambridge University Press, which contains essays by many Sovietologists including Getty. From the introduction:

Tucker’s work stressed the absolute nature of Stalin’s power, an assumption which was increasingly challenged by later revisionist histori-ans. In his Origins of the Great Purges, Arch Getty argued that the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin’s leadership consisted to a considerable extent in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose.

...

During the ‘new Cold War’ of the 1980s, the work of the revisionists became the object of heated controversy, accused of minimising Stalin’s role, of downplaying the terror, and so on. With the the collapse of the Soviet Union, some of the heat has gone out of the debate. After the initial wave of self-justificatory ‘findings’, the opening up of the archives has stimulated serious work with sources. The politicisation of the field has become noticeably less pronounced, particularly amongst a younger generation of scholars in both Russia and the West for whom the legiti- macy of socialism and the USSR are no longer such critical issues.

It is reductionist to call one side in this scholarly dispute "Holodomor deniers". It is silly to put them all together with older (and real) Holodomor deniers like Walter Duranty and the Soviet authorities. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:07, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Summarising - the revisionists were ignorants, not deniers.Xx236 (talk) 06:19, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• http://holodomor.ca/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Thirty_Years_of_Research_on_the_Holodomor_A_Balance_Sheet_anhl.pdf Xx236 (talk) 06:16, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• So what's the argument for the Coplon and Getty being in an article about "denial" then? Guilt by association? Guccisamsclubs (talk) 11:06, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• The quotation and publication by Cathy Young was clearly about Holodomor denial. She mentioned Coplon and Getty in connection with Holodomor denial. Hence they appear in quotation on this page. This page does not call them directly "denialists" anywhere, it simply quotes sources. The direct quotation was used only because of the prolonged dispute, i.e. to avoid uncertainty in interpretation of claims by sources. My very best wishes (talk) 15:58, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• Question: why are we having this RfC again? Are we going to keep RfC'ing this until we get a "Yes"? Previous RfC ruled to remove Young, but her text appears to immovable. Guccisamsclubs (talk) 00:20, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

The result of previous RfC has been actually implemented in current version. Previous RfC asked: "should text "..." be included in section "Modern Denial"? There is no section "Modern Denial" any longer and there is no such exact text (the quotation was expanded and placed in a different context). Whole page was significantly changed and shortened (I think improved) per criticism on this talk page, including previous RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 03:16, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

You plan to interpret to interpret this RfC the same way? Guccisamsclubs (talk) 11:52, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I have moved the point to the discussion section: hopefully nobody objects. The reason there is another RfC is because of this section. After endless back-and-forth, we agreed that MVBW will write a draft and I'll put it up for an RfC. There were a couple of time extensions because the article was still protected and the weekend had passed and so on. In the meantime, I forgot about this article, so here the RfC is, eight months later. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 05:23, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

For some reason contentious text became even more solidly entrenched after the previous RfC, or at least that's been my experience. Guccisamsclubs (talk) 11:52, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

No, here is what I did to satisfy concerns by Kingsindian. No objections from him followed, which I interpreted as agreement. My very best wishes (talk) 15:56, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Just to let everyone know, this RfC is still not listed by the RfC bot due to a temporary issue. Hopefully, it will get fixed soon. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 05:24, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

• I'd like to notice that the article quoted by Kingsindian above [11] tells exactly the same story about Coplon and Getty as the publication by Cathy Young quoted in the text under RfC. The only difference is wording. Author of the publication is very careful and avoids words like "denial", but he makes it very clear that Coplon and Getty were wrong, that they tried to diminish the scale of the famine, and that their views belong to charged political polemics rather than to scientific research. My very best wishes (talk) 17:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Russia, continued

We now have a new section, Holodomor denial in modern politics, that tells us, "The Russian government does not recognize the famine as act [sic] of genocide against Ukrainians, viewing it as a 'tragedy' that affected the Soviet Union as a whole." This, it will no doubt be argued, is not Holodomor denial per se, but a facet of Holodomor in modern politics. That being said, is there any reason not to include the Medvedev 2008 letter and the Wikileaks cables that we talked about in Modern Denial in Russia above? It seems to me that we either exclude the political debate altogether or we include all the relevant details. The current half-and-half arrangement leaves me puzzled. Scolaire (talk) 17:42, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

I've sectioned it off as "background", since neither the Russian position, nor even "Stalinophilia" are equivalent to "Holodomor denial". The reason I put it there is to give some context the material, otherwise people will ask: "So what?" Nonetheless my section is problematic, since there is insufficient sourcing to tie the "background" and the "denial lit" sections together. I added what I had time to add—so feel free to add the stuff you brought up as a brief mention in the background section (since it would be pov to simply call it denial). It would be a good addition, especially with three separate sources. Guccisamsclub (talk) 18:51, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

• Can you go ahead and add this to the "background section"? We can revise it later if needed. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:14, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Done. --Scolaire (talk) 17:58, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Village voice stuff

I see that the stuff about Village Voice was inserted again in the article. As a result, Coretheapple was confused about the question in the RfC. This is precisely why I asked people to not change with the text in the middle of the RfC. Are we agreed that the RfC is a clear consensus for "no"? If so, I will comment on the new text inserted - which should be discussed on the talkpage before insertion. Otherwise, I'll be restoring the original text. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 02:34, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

I'd say that it's an unequivocal "no" to the content. I do, however, think that the removal of Coplon's name from article in which Tottle's arguments were included is acceptable, although the name of the article doesn't need to be included. For the moment, given the scope of the RfC - it should be removed until a consensus can be formed as to whether it is a worthy compromise to consider. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:08, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

The paragraph was removed while the RfC was in progress. Nobody moved to put it back (actually My very best wishes did and then self-reverted). I then added a short, factual, neutral and sourced sentence, and re-added the Conquest sentence. I did not "insert the stuff again", and I discussed my edit on the talk page both before and after I added it. The sentence reads:

Some of Tottle's material appeared in a 1988 article in the Village Voice, "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right". In a letter to the editors, Robert Conquest dismissed the article as "error and absurdity".

The RfC has now lapsed. There was a clear consensus that the paragraph under discussion was too long, that it made excessive use of quotes from a non-expert, that it was a coatrack, and that it was non-neutral. The removal of the paragraph has been retrospectively justified. But none of that criticism applies to my edit. My edit was implicitly supported by Coretheapple, in the only !vote after it was added, when he said, "The book is mentioned, as is the Voice article, in the current version. The amount of text proposed to be added is excessive and undue emphasis." The fact that he was "confused" about the edit history doesn't invalidate his comment. Of course, the sentence can be discussed. It can even be edited without prior discussion. But I won't answer to any self-appointed tribunal discussing whether it is "worthy". Scolaire (talk) 09:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Firstly, I would have no problem if the text had been restored when it was removed wholesale. I would have done it myself, but since there was a claim of WP:BLP made, I didn't, per WP:BLPREQUESTRESTORE. That said, since it was in the page for 8 months, I wouldn't have objected if anyone else had restored it.

But here is the difference between what you did and wholesale removal. Suppose there is initially text X in the article. I open an RfC asking "should X be in the article? Say yes/no". In the middle someone removes X wholesale, saying that X is on the talkpage if anyone wants to restore it. But subsequent people will still be answering the same question "should X be in the article? Say yes/no". However, if the text is changed to Y instead of wholesale removal, the question which people are answering changes to "should we replace Y by X? Say yes/no". This is why people shouldn't be changing text in the middle of an RfC.

I have no idea what you mean by "self-appointed tribunal". I never claimed to be a tribunal, self-appointed or otherwise. The general principle is WP:ONUS: the person inserting the content has to get consensus for it. All I'm asking people for is to follow the rules. There has been edit-warring over this stuff for almost a year. Some version of the Village Voice stuff has been added to the article over 10 times. After endless discussion and time-wasting, I opened RfCs, twice, on two specific versions; both of them gave a clear "no". Each time a version is rejected, people try to add another version. How many times do I need to re-litigate the same thing over and over?

Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 10:29, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

You say you don't claim to be a tribunal, yet you are continuing to put me on trial for adding content during an RfC, telling me what you wouldn't have had a problem with and what you wouldn't have objected to. What I did is not against policy, I was upfront about doing it, and it's in the realm of history now anyway. Please just let it go.

The way you describe the edit-warring, RfCs etc. leave me with the impression that you feel you are on a mission to stamp out this "stuff" utterly, and that nothing short of absolute victory can be contemplated. That's battleground thinking. How many times do you need to re-litigate the same thing? You don't. Ever. You just choose to.

So let's look at the sentence above (we could lose the second sentence, it doesn't add anything). Is it relevant to Tottle? Obviously, since it describes a newspaper item using his book. Is it notable? Roman Serbyn thought so, and he is an authority on the subject. Is it a BLP violation? No, because there are no names in it. Is it undue weight? It's a handful of words, for goodness sake! Is it biased? It makes no normative statements, so how could it be? Is it "another version" of the previously-added paragraphs? No, it is completely different. Does it spoil an otherwise good article? Hardly! The Tottle section in particular is poorly written. In all modesty, my little sentence is probably the best-written thing in it.

Best of all, if we can get a consensus to leave the sentence in its present form, nobody will have an excuse to add in a coat-rack paragraph in the future. I can't see any minuses to it at all. Scolaire (talk) 11:37, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I'll let it go and concentrate on your content. I agree with you that your addition is probably the best thing in the entire section: the whole section is a mess. I am fine with your first sentence but not the second: since you say above that we can drop it because it doesn't add anything, I'll do so. I'll also drop the Weekly Standard source and the link to the Village Voice article (it is a primary source, the link is to Grover Furr's website who is a Stalinoid; it is probably also a copyvio). I'll keep Serbyn. Let me know if there are any issues. I have closed the RfC above since there is a clear consensus there that the version there isn't acceptable. Feel free to revert/edit/discuss. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 12:22, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Cool. Scolaire (talk) 13:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

So reverted. Feel free to post an RfC closing request if needed. My very best wishes (talk) 02:06, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:Requests for closure says, "if the consensus is clear, any editor—even one involved in the discussion—may close the discussion." You're not seriously saying the consensus was unclear, are you? Besides which, Kingsindian did not close it in a biased way; he didn't give any "result", just referred readers to this section. There's no need to find an uninvolved person to close it with "there is a clear consensus to delete". The RfC lasted for 30 days, and everybody had their say. The paragraph is gone, and I can't see any way it's going to come back. There's no possible reason to leave it open. If you really want to keep discussing it, you can do it here. Scolaire (talk) 08:20, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

You guys purposely violated all RfC rules here. First, you modified text under discussion during standing RfC. Then, it was closed by a person who posted it. This invalidates any results of this RfC completely (if anyone wants to refer to them in a future), and I honestly do not know what these results are. That's fine, I do not really mind. My very best wishes (talk) 14:16, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Neither of those are RfC rules. You can make up your own rules if you like, but don't be surprised if nobody pays attention. Scolaire (talk) 14:58, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Come off it Wishes, the text was changed only after repeated motions to close the RfC. The debate was settled by that point. You are the only editor here who's in the habit changing the text mid-discussion, which is unacceptable. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

"You are the only editor here who's in the habit changing the text mid-discussion". Sorry, but I did not do it during this RfC. Others did. Also, closing by a person who started the RfC is not acting by the rules. Therefore nothing was settled. My very best wishes (talk) 16:48, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

It's immaterial whether the RfC is closed formally or not. I am not going to list it at ANRFC because it will be a waste of time for everyone, including the closer. If MVBW wants, they can list it themselves. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 18:00, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

It's all right. It's closed. And everybody has had a go at everybody else now. So let's stop the points-scoring and get back to talking about content. Scolaire (talk) 18:04, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Contradictory

Here we have this article that uncritically repeats the line that the Holodomor is a real thing and not just a reinterpretation of the early 1930s soviet famine for political reasons.

We also have an article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question which does not accept this, and admits that this - at best - not a settled issue, that it is bitterly contested.

Funny how it goes, isn't it? We can have two complete opposite articles. I suppose I could make a wikipedia page on the sky being green if I could include enough citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.69.115.93 (talk) 15:52, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Holodohoax redirect page

Is "Holodohoax" notable enough for a redirect page to this Holodomor denial page? 47.151.22.243 (talk) 18:41, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

The term has obviously been borrowed from "Holohoax" in the hopes of being picked up on, but in googling it, all I found was a handful of vague forum and blog references to "Holodohoax". Unlike Holohoax it is certainly not notable and doesn't merit a redirect as it sits firmly in the realms of WP:WHATABOUTX. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:00, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Jacob W.F. Sundberg - mentioned in the text

sv:Jacob W.F. Sundberg Xx236 (talk) 11:22, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

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Many normal people deny the holodomor

...if it is presented as a Jewish-Bolshevik plot chiefly orchestrated by Lazar Kaganovich and his NKVD henchman Genrikh Yagoda, to genocide the ethnic Ukrainian people. I've seen the Holodomor presented in this form on many right-wing forums, and when presented that way, I proudly declare myself a DENIER of such a fictitious version of this event. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8388:541:E300:54DA:BBB0:7BBF:2D5E (talk) 10:29, 23 November 2018 (UTC) If it is presented that way, sure. But what if it is presented as it actually is? A man-made famine that the soviets had no inclination to stop? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9001:530F:C188:28D7:62D7:DA4:EAA5 (talk) 17:53, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a serious article; should have a higher level of protection

I don't think it should be up to random IPs to reverse other IPs who just grief this page like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2601:CD:C001:26F0:6124:CCE6:9D76:6E76 did a few days ago. Thanks.

I do absolutely agree with this. Even though, a better level of protection doesn't guarantee better information if someone wants to make something misleading, statement, information, one will find always a way. V9k8 (talk) 19:24, 29 November 2020 (UTC)