Talk:Kompromat

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Wrong translation[edit]

"Kompromat" does not mean "compromising" but "comprometting" material. "To compromet" = to tarnish a reputation; to draw into bad light; to destroy someone’s public image. "Comprometting material" is something which can be used on blackmailing, extortion and bullying: "compromising material" would be something which could be used to access the opponent's resources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.159.117 (talk) 08:51, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pointless article[edit]

The meaning of the word "Kompromat" is just blackmail, only with focus shifted onto the blackmail materials rather than the act of blackmailing.

We don't need special second articles for mundane things just because you heard a scary Russian word for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A442:581E:1:309F:1EA7:ED13:6BCE (talk) 22:11, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. This article could--I'd argue should--be merged with the page on blackmail. Such a section could include the particular history of blackmail in Russia if there is a solid argument that this use is meaningfully unique, or at least unique enough to justify its own section. Otherwise an entry under the already existing 'Laws by country' section would be appropriate. Any section outside of the 'Laws by country' section ought to include the criticism noted above and discussion of the word's use in western political discourse. I am sure there's plenty of material to cite on this critique.
I'm fairly new to editing and only do it occasionally, is there a process for adding the tag to suggest such a merger? Or is there any informal community standard as to the polite way to go about this?
Chippy87 (talk) 19:31, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading description[edit]

The English article makes me believe that 'kompromat', as described, is used strictly within politics of Russian Federation. The actual meaning of the word is more general, and can apply to politics of any other state, or organisation (even a small, or non-formal organisation, such as group of friends). The Russian version of the article reflects the actual meaning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.83.86.21 (talk) 12:05, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A dubious, and insufficiently documented example is given in the article: specifically, there is virtually no reliable proof that the incident concerning Ted Kennedy tried to work with the KGB in order to beat Ronald Reagan in 1984. See </ref>https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/jul/18/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-host-cites-ted-kennedy-kgb-meeting-never-/</ref> Inadequately documented because the two sources it offers are 1) Kevin Mooney writing for a less than reputable right wing source of propaganda, "The Daily Signal." He provides virtually no reliable sources for his assertions. 2)Larry Elder in "Real Clear Politics." cites a story in the "London Times" about a memo, but the memo is not corroborated sufficiently As Politifact points out: "The memo gained attention when it was the basis of a news report published in the London Times in 1992, after the Soviet Union dissolved. When the report came out, Tunney told the London Times that it was "bull----." We reached Tunney in 2015, and he emphatically repeated that."

Furthermore, the entry with these citations is irrelevant to the topic of the article. It is not about Kompromat but about what the contributor calls: "reverse kompromat." This is as a example of "Everybody does it" or Tu quoque as a means of deflecting or diminishing suspicions directed at Trump. This is a frequent theme in the right-wing media. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.71.62.243 (talk) 08:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Request for sources; Wiktionary material?[edit]

It will help if there were more verifiable online sources.

Also does anyone feel that this belongs to wiktionary and not wikipedia ? Sasank Sleeper (talk) 23:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • You have not heard of Google Books? All the book pages referenced in the article are publicly accessible if you just paste the ISBN numbers into books.google.com. And if for some reason you don't like Google Books, Amazon offers book previews with full-text search on many of the books that they sell. --Tetromino (talk) 23:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • As for the wiktionary vs. wikipedia question: after reading the Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy, I believe that the article belongs in wikipedia. First of all, because the article is about a particular phenomenon in post-Soviet politics and public relations, and not about the usage of a particular word. Second, it has the potential to grow (e.g. by translating articles about famous examples of kompromat in the Russian wikipedia, such as ru:Чемоданы компромата Руцкого). Third, because as far as I can tell, it is not a synonym or inflection of an existing article title (are there other articles specifically about the negative campaigning technique of paying off police to dig up dirt on your opponent and then paying off a journalist to publish said dirt)? --Tetromino (talk) 23:37, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is no requirement in WP:RS for online sources, indeed offline printed sources are specifically allowed. Persoanlly i often find book sources of greater value than online sources, and as mentioned above, google books often permits online access. ({{Cite book}} does permit specifing a URL where the text can be seen, and this can be helpful. Google books URLs can be used for this purpose. DES (talk) 01:06, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 12 January 2017[edit]

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

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus is that this is used by multiple agencies, not just Russian ones. (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Dane talk 08:12, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]


Kompromat → Compromising material – Why should we use the Russian term for this? This isn't something that's confined to Russia and there's no other article about it. The Russian term for it could be named in a section "In Russia" or alike. Fixuture (talk) 21:02, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@JayCoop: Alright then why wouldn't an accordingly detailed section "In Russia" (or alike) that also says so suffice here? That could even be stated in the lead. --Fixuture (talk) 22:11, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Fixuture: I would welcome the move, if it was more widespread and that there was information of other intelligence services around the world conducting such operations. All that has been reported thus far is kompromat conducted by the former KGB and now FSB. There hasn't been any reporting on the CIA, MI6, or BND conducting such operations. Jay Coop · Talk · Contributions 22:15, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@JayCoop: If it is true that other intelligence services of the world aren't conducting such operations, or that at least there are no WP:RS on them, then I'm also neutral concerning the move for now - it then comes down to these questions:
  • Should this article be only about compromising information/content used by high level actors / intelligence agencies and politicians or all kinds of compromising information?
  • If it's intended to be just about the usage of compromising information to blackmail people by high level actors / intelligence agencies and politicians then are there enough WP:RS to warrant a new article for the usage of gathered information/content by all kinds of actors?
    Pretty sure information/content has been used by all sorts of people (including blackhat hackers) and organizations to blackmail people so it's certainly notable - and even more so with the rise of the information society and surveillance capabilities.
    Note that surveillance agencies probably have "kompromat" of varying levels of hundreds of millions of people and potentially could, by their surveillance capabilities, collect such for billions of people. Actually I'm not sure if this is a factor in their rationale for developing such capabilities on the terms of strategic (geopolitical and alike) advantage(?) Anyways, if it hasn't happened now it certainly can in the future...
I'd also like to note that I would be proud of NSA & CIA not using such kind of information/content to blackmail people so far if I was American. I however doubt that there's really no other country than Russia which has a power class that uses such to blackmail people. Pretty sure it has happened in some African countries for instance. --Fixuture (talk) 10:30, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral for now. Need evidence pro and con the idea that the phrase "compromising material" is used with the same meaning, and is more common in English than the Russian loanword (which is not always the case with espionage and political terms – cf. agitprop, samizdat, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:51, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose for just the reason noted above -- "kompromat" is a term of art similar to "agitprop," and is used not just by Russian intelligence agencies, but western ones as well. Mrfeek (talk) 09:58, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Because that's the common name for it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:34, 16 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose if for no other reason than that kompromat covers material gathered by Russian intelligence. It's not implausible that a new article could be started at Compromising material. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 17:40, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

fictional victims[edit]

This happens to Eldon Chance, some child porn is planted on his laptop (presumably by an evil cop who beats his wife that Chance is investigating) and he nearly plays it during a presentation he is giving for psychiatry.

Does anyone recall any other instances of it in culture? I think someone mentions it as a tactic against an enemy in orphan Black. Keeping track of cultural references (whether or not the Russian term is used) could be useful to mention at the end of this article. ScratchMarshall (talk) 17:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resources[edit]

This Project is often a victim of Kompromat in the form of subtle vandalism. The vandal contributes a phrase or paragraph that is sub-standard or wrong, but not hightly visible. Knowledgeble readers see this text and credibility of the Project is lessened. Disruptive as a free Encyclopedia is to various individuals that purvey information, there is ample motivation to undercut this source. As the site crosses all languages and is accessible anywhere, it is the battleground of information warfare on some controversial topics, and others where information has value. WP:SUBTLE represents a conscious group effort to address the problem. With so many articles, and a Talk on each, an editor can feel isolated, but there is at least this resource. — Rgdboer (talk) 23:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Other defensive projects include WP:Typo Team and WP:Countering systemic bias. All editors are incouraged to remove compromising materials when found in text. — Rgdboer (talk) 23:46, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Origins[edit]

According to the article:

The term kompromat is a borrowing of the Russian KGB slang term компромат from the Stalin era, which is short for "compromising material" (Russian: компрометирующий материал, translit. komprometiruyushchy material). It refers to disparaging information that can be collected, stored, traded, or used strategically across all domains: political, electoral, legal, professional, judicial, media, and business. The origins of the term trace back to 1930s secret police jargon...
In the early days, kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the KGB, and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques. However, more contemporary forms of kompromat appear as a form of cybercrime. One aspect of kompromat that stands the test of time is that the compromising information is often sexual in nature.

This account is problematic. For a start, the KGB didn't exist in the Stalin era. Nor did business to a great extent. And the electoral and legal domains were very different to what they are now. Prostitution in the USSR was very much underground, and I believe the illegal drug trade didn't exist until the 1980s. Nor did "videos" exist in the 1930s. I think they emerged in the 1980s. Moreover, the sources imply that kompromat boomed in the 1990s, after the demise of the USSR and the KGB.

The "History" section starts with the cases of John Vassall and Joseph Alsop, which also occurred after the Stalin era.

There seems to be a conflation of practices from a wide range of periods.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:12, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The "Ted Kennedy tried to sandbag Reagan" story[edit]

I removed this section for a few different reasons, one being that uncritically presenting a hotly-disputed claim that rests on a single memo from a highly-dubious source like the KGB archives as uncontested fact is utterly irresponsible and smacks of POV-pushing. Politifact, incidentally, rated the story as false.[1]

But that’s kind of beside the point, because the story isn’t an example of Kompromat even if it’s true: Kompromat involves the exploitation of compromising material for the purpose of blackmail or negative publicity. There isn’t any of that in this story, so why was this off-topic passage ever allowed into this article? -- Rrburke (talk) 12:54, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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