Talk:Slavery

Lead sentence

This edit deleted part of the lead sentence that said a slave “is someone forbidden to quit their service to another person and is treated like property.” The new language says a slave is someone who is “coerced into performing a work function by another person, a slaver, who also controls their location.” The edit summary by User:RickyBennison said this: “Replaced overly specific chattel slavery definition (which follows shortly afterwards) wor bith one which typically applies to a breadth of slavery definitions.” I disagree that the deleted language was a chattel slavery definition, given that it only said a slave is treated *like* property, instead of saying a slave *is* property. Moreover, I don’t understand the difference between *a work function* and *work* and *service* (it’s usually better to use one word than three). Additionally, the new language is potentially confusing because it’s not immediately clear whether the language “by another person” says who performs the work function or instead says who does the coercing. Finally, it’s unclear to me how a slaver could coerce a person to do work without controlling that person’s location. For these many reasons, I will revert to the previous version. Incidentally, an editor wisely said above that, “Going back to at least 2014, this article's definition has been that slavery = ownership of people. I think that is still correct, and any change should be with clear consensus supported by scholarly sources.” But replacing the equals sign with an approximately equals sign is a good compromise. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I believe that Wikipedia would be richer if this were its biggest page.--EKantarovich (talk) 12:26, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Lead section

I propose moving to the following language. Reactions/suggestions encouraged. I realize that this is a critically important article and therefore have not made the change as yet. Changes:

• Simpler
• removed "enslavement" as that is the state of an individual rather than a practice/institution.
• Focuses on the practice, not the individual, matching the article's title,
• Clarifies that slavery and enslavement are one thing (eliminate the "and")
• Noted hereditary slavery
• Copyedits
• 2/3 private sector

Slavery is the practice of owning people. Slavery has been practiced for millennia in most parts of the world and the definition has evolved with the practice. Individuals were typically coerced or born into slavery. Some chose voluntary slavery to pay a debt or obtain money. Enslavement was a typical outcome of military defeat, where the defeated soldiers and others were enslaved by the victors.

In chattel slavery, the enslaved person was legally the personal property (chattel) of an owner, who thus had the power to buy and sell them. The term de facto slavery describes the condition of unfree labour and forced labour without explicit ownership.

Slavery was once legal in most societies. It is now outlawed in every country, except as punishment for crime. Despite its illegality, in 2019 an estimated 40 million people were enslaved. More than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labour, some two-thirds in the private sector. In industrialised countries, slavery takes the form of human trafficking. In other countries, enslavement by debt bondage is the most common, appearing as captive domestic work, forced marriage, and child militias.

Lfstevens (talk) 21:47, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Lfstevens:, I'm troubled by the phrasing "It is now outlawed in every country, except as punishment for crime." Do any countries actually claim to enslave their criminals? Or is there a consensus among reliable sources that they do? I take it that slavery is commonly understood as the ownership of one person by another as property, sometimes de facto (illegally), as in modern cases of captive domestic work, etc. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 22:22, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Zloyvolsheb: That info was in the original. Lfstevens (talk) 22:42, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

The lead does need work, but there are some problems I think with the above. One problem is that it attempts a single definition for something there is no single definition of; the lead should clarify that the definition has evolved over time and place.  // Timothy :: talk  05:04, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@TimothyBlue: Great to have your thoughts. Wish it had come during the several days I waited for feedback, rather than following a revert. Please suggest language that reflects your views. Am open to improvements of all kinds. Lfstevens (talk)

Definition

From Dictionary.com

• the condition of being enslaved, held, or owned as human chattel or property; bondage.
• practice or institution that treats or recognizes some human beings as the legal property of others.
• state of subjection like that of a slave:He longed to escape the slavery of drug addiction.
• severe toil; drudgery.

From Merriam/Webster

• the practice of slaveholding
• the state of a person who is a chattel of another
• submission to a dominating influence
• drudgery, toil

From Pocket Oxford

• the state of being a slave
• the practice or system of owning slaves.

Seems like they mostly agree that it's a practice/institution and a condition/state. Does the article need to reflect both? I prefer not to use the word "slave" in the definition as that makes it a bit circular. Thus, for our purposes, I came to "practice or institution that treats or recognizes some human beings as the legal property of others", which I reworded for brevity as above. What do others think? Lfstevens (talk) 20:06, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

• Reply: Slavery is a broad term; as a practice it has existed and evolved in form, purpose and motivation over different times and places.

It is often a blend of social institution, legal framework, the consequences of war, the results of debt, and an economic/labor system; sometimes it has religous as well as temporal dimensions; it has existed in legal, extralegal, and illegal forms; it has been used for a variety of purposes, such as extracting labor, as punishment, and for political, religous, and ideological coercion. It has been viewed as both a postive good and base evil at the same time, such as within Christian groups in the antibellum United States.

Slavery has included circumstances as broad as chattel bondage of blacks in the United States; Native American slavery in the Spanish colonies; children bound to work in African diamond mines; punishment in postbellum United States, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; "sweat shop" labor in devloping nations; sex trafficing; domestic slavery; Jim Crow "slavery by another name" slavery; Islamic religious slavery; etc.

Characteristics of slavery have sometimes included (but are not limited to): the absense or loss of legal "personhood"; becoming the "property" of another; loss of the freedom to control your time, activities, way of life; being forced to perform activities against your will for the benefit or satisfaction of another; the loss of the legal rights, protections and priviledges normally accorded to "free" members of society.

I think the concept of "wage slavery" should be discussed in another article.

I think the dictionary definitions above reflect the broad nature of the term; definitions from secondary sources, governments, human rights groups, etc, will also reflect a broad definition of what constitutes slavery.

Pardon any ommissions or confusion above, I've haven't been feeling well recently. I don't intend any of the examples to be necessarily exclusive.  // Timothy :: talk  02:20, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• Rough draft proposal for lead (needs ce, refs removed for editing):

---start---

Slavery is a broad term often used to describe many forms of unfree labor and human trafficking; as a practice it has existed and evolved in form, purpose and motivation over different times and places. It is often a blend of social institution, legal framework, the consequences of war, the results of debt, as well as an economic/labor system; sometimes it has religous as well as temporal dimensions; it has existed in legal, extralegal, and illegal forms; it has been used for a variety of purposes, such as extracting labor, as punishment, and for political, religous, and ideological coercion. It has been viewed as both a postive good and base evil at the same time, such as within Christian groups in the antibellum United States.

Slavery has included circumstances as diverse as chattel bondage of blacks in the United States; Native American slavery; child labour in the diamond industry; punishment in postbellum United States, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; "sweat shop" labor in devloping nations; sex trafficing; domestic slavery; Jim Crow "slavery by another name" slavery; Islamic religious slavery.

Slavery has been practiced throughout human history. Although slavery is illegal today in most of the world, slavery is still endemic in many places and industries.

---end---

I think this incorporates the stylistic improvements suggested above while maintaining the integrity of the article body by not fundamentally altering the summary in the lead. This is obviously my opinion and everyone can compare the two.

I think whatever changes are ultimately accepted here, an experienced copyeditor needs to review it afterwards; if there are changes to substance as opposed to style, an RfC should be considered to ensure it becomes stable.

Its a shame this isn't a FA, I hope this discussion ultimately helps change that, but would be a monumental task.

Lfstevens, sorry it took me a bit to suggest something, I may be slow replying next week.  // Timothy :: talk  04:53, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@TimothyBlue:, I disagree that your variant does not fundamentally alter the summary in the lede; I think it does, as you are erasing the emphasis on property. Compare with the Britannica article "slavery", which states "There is no consensus on what a slave was or on how the institution of slavery should be defined. Nevertheless, there is general agreement among historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and others who study slavery that most of the following characteristics should be present in order to term a person a slave. The slave was a species of property..." Also, I find it interesting that the Britannica article on slavery, while categorized under "sociology," was in fact written by Richard Hellie, Professor of Russian History at the University of Chicago, and the historian of Russia chosen to write Britannica's slavery article does not discuss the Soviet Union except for one brief mention of Gulags as being described as a modern form. (In contrast, much more attention is paid to Muscovite slavery and Russian serfdom.) Zloyvolsheb (talk) 06:33, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

• The lead mentions property and I specifically list chattel slavery first in the list. Since slavery is almost always illegal in modern times, no modern slaves are property (even if treated as such), but they are still slaves (eg: sex trafficing, diamond mines, etc). There is no consensus transform this into an article exclusively about chattel slavery, and no consensus to remove modern forms of slavery. Trying to drag the GULAG discussion into the lead is bludgeoning and disruptive.  // Timothy :: talk  06:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

• Regarding property, I don't see it in the version above that goes "Slavery is a broad term often used to describe many forms of unfree labor and human trafficking; as a practice it has existed and evolved in form, purpose and motivation over different times and places. It is often a blend of social institution, legal framework, the consequences of war, the results of debt, as well as an economic/labor system; sometimes it has religous as well as temporal dimensions; it has existed in legal, extralegal, and illegal forms; it has been used for a variety of purposes, such as extracting labor, as punishment, and for political, religous, and ideological coercion. It has been viewed as both a postive good and base evil at the same time, such as within Christian groups in the antibellum United States." Only then do you mention chattel slavery as one example among many, while Britannica lists property as the first characteristic. As regarding the GULAG, it's your proposed version of the lede that drags it in? (My comment relates directly to your proposed wording.) Zloyvolsheb (talk) 06:58, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

• You are intentionally ignoring what I wrote and you are POV pushing from the previous discussion.  // Timothy :: talk  07:15, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

• Can you elaborate? Perhaps you misread what I wrote, as I did not say the article should be "exclusively" about chattel slavery. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 09:09, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that the new version by Timothy is an improvement. No, slavery is not just "the practice of owning people". This is not so simple. For example, modern human trafficking is a form of slavery as many RS say. My very best wishes (talk) 16:52, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

- Comments:

• The word "property" does not appear in this proposal that I can see. That seems like a miss.
• Stylistically, the proposal uses a complex sentence structure with a long list of clauses. Better to stay short and simple and find language that is encompassing, not exhaustive in the intro.
• Where is the support in references for your proposal?
• Also do not find that it addresses all the points covered by the earlier proposal.
• The "punishment for crime" language is in the unmodified version. I just left it there. Lfstevens (talk) 23:36, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Present lead sentence

The present lead sentence says, “Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave,[1][2] who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person, while treated as property.[3]” I have no problem revising what comes afterward, but this lead sentence seems fine to me. It properly uses the word “slave” because that is the root word of both “slavery” and “enslavement” and yet the present lead sentence is not the least bit circular, in view of everything after the first comma. Moreover, the present lead sentence is fully supported by its three cited sources, and was the subject of considerable and lengthy discussion and compromise. If it ain’t broke, keep fixing it forever? Anythingyouwant (talk) 13:40, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm new to the topic and therefore unaware of the debate history, for which I apologize. The first cite is to a definition of enslavement, not slavery. The second is the dictionary definition that I showed above. It doesn't look much like what is in the article. Lfstevens (talk) 23:36, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

You can easily search the archives of this page to see the debate history; one pertinent issue discussed previously was that saying slavery involves ownership of human beings is too narrow because ownership is a legal status whereas slavery can unfortunately happen even where it is illegal (that is, a defendant cannot convince a judge by saying that slavery is illegal and therefore he didn't own anyone when he forced people to serve against their will). Anyway, according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, “When the page title is used as the subject of the first sentence, [the first sentence] may appear in a slightly different form, and it may include variations, including plural forms (particularly if they are unusual or confusing) or synonyms.” Including the primary synonym (enslavement) is helpful to readers, along with the root word (slave), but I agree there’s no need to include further synonyms in the lead sentence (e.g. bondage). Since “enslavement” is currently in the lead sentence, one of the footnotes confirms it’s a synonym (“Enslavement is...the state of being a slave....”). And since “slave” is currently in the lead sentence (not only is it the root word but is also used to define slavery and enslavement), another footnote confirms our definition (“Slave...the legal property of another and was forced to obey them....Slavery...the state of being a slave....”). We should use or our own words, but also use reliable sources for support. Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:19, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if we could come up with our own, better definition. But that's not how WP works. We have to cite a WP:RS and use that definition. Anything else is WP:OR. What source do you suggest? Lfstevens (talk) 22:30, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

The first part of the current lead sentence is followed by two footnotes: “ Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave,[1][2]....” I quoted both footnotes in my last comment. Do you agree that those two footnotes support what preceded them? Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:01, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I think I answered that earlier. The first one is a def of enslavement, not slavery. The second is one of the defs that I quoted above. I don't think they do. That's why I quoted them. Lfstevens (talk) 02:31, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

This is puzzling to me. If an article about X is defined as being about Y, and Z is also defined as Y, then X and Z are synonyms, which is appropriate to mention in the lead sentence per the manual of style I quoted (the lead sentence “may include variations, including plural forms (particularly if they are unusual or confusing) or synonyms”). Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

My primary concern is that the lead not be changed in a way that changes the scope of the article, topics such as sex slavery, human trafficking, children working in diamond mines in Africa, etc should not be excluded. This is the broad WP:SUMMARY style for the topic and this needs to be reflected in the lead. The existing topic tree in the article (Terminology, Characteristics, History) works very well for a summary style article. Most of the child topics have hats linking them, I'm working on a child article for Chattel slavery and an outline for the topic based on the hats and the cat tree associated with the topic.  // Timothy :: talk  03:18, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

• Question for @Lfstevens and Anythingyouwant:, as a side question it seems from the effort you're putting in here you might be working towards getting the article ready eventually for a GA nomination? I hope this is the case, and the subject definitely merits it.  // Timothy :: talk  03:48, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Not particularly. I just saw some work to be done and wanted to contribute. AFAICT this article is miles from GA. Lfstevens (talk) 06:30, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

What I’m trying to do is preserve some stability at the start of the article where the lead sentence and lead paragraph are good enough so they should not unnecessarily take up people’s time, and they should focus on improving parts of the article that really need improvement. Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Soviet Union

This section is about the inclusion of the GULAG without any citation to it being a slave camp. There's also no mention of «slave» on that article. @Vallee01:, post the sources here. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 05:40, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop Sources and citations are already present. Des Vallee (talk) 05:48, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Vallee01:, that's not providing sources. «Present» where? BunnyyHop (^talk) 05:54, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop Two things, first that ping of an old username doesn't work, Des Vallee does. Secondly the information was widely clear however:

See Gulag: Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet regime created many Lagerey (labour camps) in Siberia. Prisoners in Soviet labor camps were worked to death on extreme production quotas, brutality, hunger and harsh elements. Fatality rate was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps. Hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, died as a direct result of forced labor under the Soviets.

References

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Des Vallee (talk • contribs) 05:57, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Labor camp is not exactly equal to Slavery, that's why there's a different article for it. Encyclopædia Britannica, for example, also doesn't describe them as such. See this. To describe your citations: The first one mentions it as forced labor, the second one is an [[[Austrian School]] academic journal 1, the third also describes them as forced labor, the fourth is from the Center for Independent Sociological Research. The point of this discussion is - should Forced labour be in the article, or not? BunnyyHop (^talk) 05:54, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop The point is all citations refer to it as slavery. It's fits all definitions of Slavery and scholarly there is asoulte consensus of it as slavery. Moreover the link you provide to Britincia is considered a stub. You are bringing up your own position into this, not even going into the citations as they all are reliable. It is described as slavery because yes the definition of slavery. You are not even addressing the citations as you can't find any position to dispute them. You are bringing up your own person definition. Des Vallee (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Des Vallee Not quite, only two of them refer to it as slavery, the other refer to them as labour camps. Furthermore, the one of the Austrian School says «Gulag is an example of slavery in the absence of well-defined and enforced property rights in slaves. Inmates in Soviet forced labor camps are not slaves in the strict sense because they do not represent private property (...)». It's easy to find sources referring to them as labour camps:

1. https://books.google.com.br/books?lr=&id=tt2xCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=%22gulag%22+%22labour%22+&ots=QKJenBf9Zp&sig=ykj6ASyGQ7aAkSAJc7HWuI3e_sQ#v=onepage&q=%22gulag%22%20%22labour%22&f=false
2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668138108411338?journalCode=ceas19
3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/131659?seq=1
4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2501047?seq=1

--BunnyyHop (^talk) 06:30, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

BunnyyHop It seems you specifically cherry picked information to find this, I mean you literally went to Google Books and typed "Forced Labour" and "Gulag" here it can be seen you specifically are trying to cherry pick information. You clearly didn't check the citations as some of the citations you provide even either as most the citations you provide also has sections that describes the Gulag system as slavery that has to be embarrassing. So either you didn't go over the citations or you just ignored them, both which is not allowed. Des Vallee (talk) 06:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, of course I did. We already have articles about forced labour, labour camps, unfree labour, and so on. The scope of this article doesn't include these, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Why is there an exception to this labour camp? BunnyyHop (^talk) 07:42, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

3O Response: The article lead and first H2 section mention forced labour as a form of slavery, so I feel that practices of forced labour camps (where of notable scale and historical importance) are within the scope of the article, regardless of whether sources call them "slavery" (calling them "forced labour" is just being more specific). I feel that GULAGs and Nazi forced labour are worthy of inclusion. It might not be bad to have the U.S. in there as well, as the country with the largest population in prisons, where involuntary servitude (another form of slavery) is constitutionally legal. Keep in mind that this article is a bit sprawling and 40% over the maximum recommended article size, so try to keep the summary brief when the subject has a main article. (There's nothing wrong with mentioning these things here; though they have separate articles, they are part of this broader subject and I feel this article would be incomplete without some mention.) This is a non-binding third opinion, but I hope it helps! –  Reidgreg (talk) 16:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: thanks for answering. I do agree that those two should be included, and replaced the source-less Soviet Union category with properly sourced and accurate information (as shown in the next diff), and also attached a section about forced labour in the US below it. This however prompted an editor to include cases of Human rights violations in China and North Korea, which is not in the scope of this article. Can you give me your opinion on this diff? This edit has been reverted twice for not «mention[ing] the Gulag system, this is whitewashing something you have a long history of» (sic!) and «For a section about Slavery you don't appear to ever discuss it as slavery». Thank you. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I feel that edit was an improvement. The text could possibly be made more concise, perhaps not mentioning all of those figures and/or examples. I might have focused on forced labour (rather than underpaid labour/sweatshop conditions) in US prisons. The main article for North Korea is human rights, bundling related issues together, but the section here mentions widespread forced labour and keeps the summary fairly tight. At some point, when there is consensus on scope and content, you might want to request a copy edit at WP:GOCE to make it a little more concise and bring the article size down. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:54, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

• I think latest version by Des Vallee is shorter and much better. Here is new version suggested by BunnyyHop. It has an obvious problem: it tells about Gulag, but it does not tell anything about Gulag as a variety of slave labor. That aspect needs to be emphasized in the version by Des Valle as well. There are many sources, such as "Notes on the Soviet slave labor reform" [1], this, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 18:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Reidgreg and My very best wishes, thanks for commenting. I completely agree with your points, what made the slave labour in the Gulag distinct from others must be emphasized. I'll try to make a synthesis out of the two materials and we might have just the right amount of everything. I, however, am finding trouble to understand this revert. The first paragraph is not directly related to unfree labour but to the laws of incarceration in China. The second one states what is described in the source as «In March 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published a report Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang, which identified 83 foreign and Chinese companies as allegedly directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang through potentially abusive labour transfer programs. » as a fact. I copied from the original article since it's neutrally written and does proper attribution (hence not violating WP:NPOV), but our colleague seems to think that this feeds into a conspiracy theory. What are do you think about this? --BunnyyHop (^talk) 21:11, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Reidgreg, I agree that "[i]t might not be bad to have the U.S. in there as well, as the country with the largest population in prisons, where involuntary servitude (another form of slavery) is constitutionally legal." However, My very best wishes reverted here, stating "[t]hat one I think can be removed per talk because cited sources do not say 'slavery'. Welcome to revert my edit if such RS exist and can be provided." But it does mention "slavery." "In September 2016, large, coordinated prison strikes took place in 11 states, with inmates saying they are subjected to poor sanitary conditions, jobs that amount to forced labour, and that the system is a form of modern day slavery." What are your thoughts? Are there better sources that explicitly refer to it as "slavery"? Or was that text fine already? Davide King (talk) 23:15, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Forced Labour

There has been the addition of 4 countries in the topic History [of Slavery]. These are countries which have made use of Penal labour in Labour camps. I argue this is out of scope, and this is problematic especially since the article is 244.141KB wide, while the WP:TOOBIG maximum size is 100KB. Definitions of Forced labour:

«Forced labour, also called Slave Labour, labour performed involuntarily and under duress, usually by relatively large groups of people. Forced labour differs from slavery in that it involves not the ownership of one person by another but rather merely the forced exploitation of that person’s labour.»

Encyclopaedia Britannica

«This report uses a broader definition of ‘forced labour’ than the standard international definition discussed in the next chapter. We include work brought about by physical, psychological or economic coercion and recognise that, despite lacking the alternatives needed to defend against such coercion, workers’ frequently retain and exhibit agency when entering into coercive labour relations.»

Confronting root causes: forced labour in global supply chains by Genevieve LeBaron, Neil Howard, Cameron Thibos and Penelope Kyritsis; p. 5

«Forced labour is defined in international law as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. The guardian of this definition, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), has further elaborated that the threat of penalty “can take various forms, whether physical, psychological, financial or other”.»

Idem, Ibidem; p. 9 Furthermore, forced labour is already mentioned in a summary style topic here. I suggest we move the United States, the Soviet Union, China and North Korea to this part of the article as examples of forced labour. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 20:37, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think we just need sources that explicitly say it was "slavery". Simply saying about large prison population (for example) is not enough. For example, Irving Howe did argue that Gulag was a form of slavery [2] (the camp's administration even occasionally barter prisoners with special skills). Solzenitsyn claimed the same. just as a lot of other people who studied Gulag. My very best wishes (talk) 20:59, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• Solzhenitsyn's work on the gulag is literature, it's a memoir, it's a testimony. His works are not exact recollections of events and, in any case, Solzhenitsyn often fell out with collaborators or ex-inmates over his interpretations. But this is part and parcel of primary accounts of anything. Overall, his experience of the brutality of the Gulag is certainly authentic, but Wikipedia is mostly guided by WP:SECONDARY sources. «Slavery» is a category, with its own definition of social relations, and we need academic sources that draw this connection between definition of slavery and the social relations of the Gulag. I couldn't find any. For example, the definition of slavery in Britannica is «condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons». «There is no consensus on what a slave was or on how the institution of slavery should be defined. Nevertheless, there is general agreement among historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and others who study slavery that most of the following characteristics should be present in order to term a person a slave. The slave was a species of property; thus, he belonged to someone else». This is the definition used by the article to present its history. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 00:13, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Look, we are not experts here. Solzhenitsyn is an expert and a Nobel Prize winner. Irving Howe is an expert. They say that was slavery. You need more ref? Fine, I can bring more. Note that EB say "Forced labour, also called Slave Labour..." My very best wishes (talk) 03:25, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

In «New directions in Gulag studies: a roundtable discussion», which gathers 5 scholars, it's only referred to as a «system of forced labour» and «soviet forced labour», and Steven Maddox even states «Studies which explore and analyze cultural events and programs in the camps show that the Gulag was not simply a system of forced labour that aimed to annihilate the prison population through back-breaking work, as Solzhenitsyn and others have argued». In «The Soviet Gulag: Evidence, Interpretation, and Comparison», the GULAG is defined as «an acronym for the Soviet state bureaucracy that administered Stalin’s corrective labor camps, colonies, and special settlements in the years between 1929 and 1953.» There wouldn't be a need of a Forced labour article if those were synonymous terms, but they are not, so there's no need to conflate them. This article is specially about slavery, the best we can do to keep things in scope is to briefly mention it at the forced labour section as examples of penal labour. BunnyyHop (^talk) 12:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• In cases like that one should check reliable tertiary sources because they summarize consensus on the subject in other sources. Here is a printed encyclopedia "Slavery in the Modern World" and it lists Gulag as an example [3], starting from page 292. As about your source, yes, sure, one of these guys seriously believes that the "inmates played competitive and recreational soccer, volleyball, and other outdoor sports when not at work" (this is like saying that Jews enjoyed playing soccer in Auschwitz, total bull...). Such is the legacy of Soviet propaganda. But actual Stalin's legacy is different, e.g. Stalin's legacy lives on in city that slaves built. My very best wishes (talk) 17:21, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think a RfC is better warranted here, because to me it seems like there's a mistake on your part about what's considered a reliable source or not, leading to the disregard of academics based on your personal opinion. See WP:NEWSORG and WP:SCHOLARSHIP. This is the biography of the academic «soviet propagand[ist]» (be aware of the other four scholars). The biography of the writer of that Guardian article is this. The book lists gulag as a «From the early 1920s, the Russians were using political and other prisoners as forced labor in gulags», «This was followed by the negotiation by the ILO of the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention of 1957, which outlawed forced labor for economic advantage, political repression, and labor discipline—a clear attack on the gulags», «Among its other duties, it ran the gulag (Main Administration of Camps) with its expansive network of correc-tive labor camps, corrective labor colonies, and special settlements». So your source refutes your own point. My proposal is to move those paragraphs to Labour camps and mention the Gulag in the Forced labour section. @Reidgreg:, I'm pinging because I'm curious about your opinion on this matter. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 05:48, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Your first source ([4]) simply does not say anything about slavery and therefore can not be used on this page. "The slave was a species of property; thus, he belonged to someone else." Yes, sure, but the "ownership" can be by the law (like in the old USA or serfs in Russia) or de facto. This is the reason human trafficking and forced labor appear on this page. As about Gulag, the camp administration occasionally trade (bartered) prisoners with specific skills, usually theater actors, but not only them. Should the subjects of forced labor and human trafficking be described a lot on this page? No, becaese we have separate pages. They should be only mentioned and briefly summarized here, and that is what this page does. My very best wishes (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, exactly, it does not mention it as slavery, but as forced labour. Forced labour is another form of servitude (as said by the book you sent), but it's not slavery, hence why there's only a small paragraph on forced labour. The "History" section is about slavery, not servitude, hence why Labour Camps are out of scope. The page does not summarise this, it has a paragraph describing it, something you'd see at Labour camps. The way to summarize it would be to mention it at the forced labour paragraph in this page. So far, none of those academic sources describe it as a slave system, but as forced labour camps. BunnyyHop (^talk) 08:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh, no. As our page Unfree labor correctly tells, Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery, penal labour and the corresponding institutions, such as debt slavery, serfdom, corvée and labour camps. I agree that some forms of forced labor are not slavery, but some others have been described in multiple RS as a form of slavery, and this is one of such cases (for example, Forced labour under German rule during World War II was indeed described in many sources as a form of slavery, and there was a good reason for the article "Gulag" in the encyclopedia on modern slavery [5]). A source saying that it was forced labor (yes, it was!) does not disprove other sources saying it was also a form of slavery. My very best wishes (talk) 16:46, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

That book describes the Gulag, along with other forms of penal labour, as another form of "servitude emerged", not slavery. These terms don't mean the same thing, there's no need to conflate the two. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 20:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

On neutrality and possible original research

To sum up: is there any academic citation referring to what is within the «Soviet Union», «China» and «North Korea» sections as slavery? If not, they shouldn't be included. We may do a RfC to sort this out. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 22:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh no, there are sources, such as this or [this (one can easily bring more, cite Solzhenitsyn, etc.). And of course a chapter about Gulag is included to the "Slavery in the Modern World", so I do not see why it can't be mentioned on this page. My very best wishes (talk) 23:01, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes These are not reliable sources. So far, out of all academic works I (and you in "Slavery in the Modern World") brought here about the Gulag define it as a system of penal labour. I'm asking for reliable sources (not opinion pieces) who link it to slavery because then it would have a reason to be in this article. If it's not a very fringe view, it will be possible to find reliable sources that inform us what the academic consensus is. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 00:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• @BunnyyHop. I think your suggestion to remove this whole section is unacceptable. Not only sources are good, but you could easily find a lot more if you wanted. Consider this one, for example, by Marc Buggeln who authored Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps. Want more? Check this, check references on page The Business of Genocide, check sources here. See this. My very best wishes (talk) 04:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• More semantic word games and POV pushing. Plenty of sources, actually those sections need expansion. 02:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

For the inclusion of those countries? If there's no academic works saying these were slave systems, it shouldn't be here. Simple as that. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:23, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, great find. Now the text can be replaced with; «Historian Marc Buggeln argues that forced labour in the Gulag can be considered slavery, "[w]ith the exception of the legal definition, all the definitions thus far put forward would, in my opinion, indicate that concentration camp and gulag prisoners could be called slaves"». This could be contrasted with the last link you sent, which contrasts the definition of the gulag with slavery, «Valery Lazarev argues that "[i]n particular, the Gulag had no notion of capital markets that would have allowed for the cynical but accurate valuation of inmate-capital in the same way as slaves"» --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:37, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

It should be noted that the to include the Gulag here is not to explain the Gulag, we already have an article for that, but to show why some scholars think it's to slavery, or not. This being said, the other ones still have no reason to exist. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Note that the Penal labour article describes the usage of prision labour in various countries. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 23:33, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

BunnyyHop You are currently posting fringe theories on the Gulag system something you have done multiple times, you know you are breaking Wikipedia policies by doing so, so stop. Your complete waffle of sources and POV sections aren't allowed. Des Vallee (talk) 00:40, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm just using My very best wishes' sources. If you think these are fringe sources, then the Gulag section should be removed altogether, which I disagree - I don't think the sources My very best wishes presented are fringe - although I might say the second one got me a little worried due to it being posted in a think tank. Any way, the onus is on you to prove these sources are fringe. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 00:45, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Des Vallee, it's funny you mention this, because out of all penal labour camps you decided to add those from socialist countries, which coincides with what I can only perceive as an anticommunist crusade. So far, you have not addressed anything, all these «whitewashing» justifications are no other than excuses for removing what you don't like, going as far as labeling MVBW's sources to justify the inclusion of the GULAG as fringe just because they put in question what I can only deduce as a dogmatic attitude that your opinion (i.e. that the Gulag were slave camps) is supreme. If the opinion of those academics are indeed fringe, then the GULAG section should be removed altogether. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 01:46, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

BunnyyHop trying to take a random Russian historian that I couldn't even find his PHD, lacks an article and try to jam his position into the article is front and center POV pushing, he is not a widely respected academic and isn't anything to justify having an entire section towards letting his quotes in favor of Wikipedia's voice. What you state is not a widely stated but as a random author giving undue weight. BunnyyHop your actions here justify a block, calling me on some type of "anti-communist crusade" is doing a couple things, it's assuming bad faith, it's a personal attack, it's partisan line taking, and poisons the well for discussion, and makes it clear your not here to build an encyclopedia. Des Vallee (talk) 01:57, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

1 2. A simple Google search tells us he has written for Slavic Review, the leading peer-reviewed scholarly journal in the field, so no, not a «Random Russian Historian». --BunnyyHop (^talk) 02:08, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I do apologize for being accusing you of such, and for being a WP:HOTHEAD. WP:LOVE must reign supreme. I'm opening a thread on dispute resolution to sort this out. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 02:20, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I've added some sources to Gulag and will add more to others. The terms being discussed are often used as synonyms, or authors mix them because one does not preclude the other: eg Penal labor can involve slavery, slavery can be penal labor. There were many slaves in Nazi Germany who are called "foreign workers" in RS, this doesn't preclude them being slaves; it wasn't penal labor, but it was forced labor. Lenin and Dickens labeled western factory workers slaves. These terms are not exclusive.

Plenty of sources explictly call it slavery (and use other labels) and sources do not dispute the use of the word slavery, even if they use a different terms to describe it. All the sources describe what meets the definition of slavery.  // Timothy :: talk  22:46, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

TimothyBlue, can you list those sources that explictly call the Gulag slavery?

As we can see even in Forced_labor_in_Nazi_concentration_camps#Slavery_analogy, «[h]istorians do not agree whether forced labor in [Nazi] concentration camps was a form of slavery, an analogy made by survivors». Therefore, it's explicit these terms are not simple synonyms. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 18:05, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The sources are in the article. I don't care what wikipedia says historians say, reliable sources state otherwise. I've sourced that it is slavery, along with being forced and penal.  // Timothy :: talk  18:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Here, in page 9, Wilson Bell says

Alexopoulos briefly compares Gulag prisoner labour to slavery in her book

Key word: Compares. The current text could be changed to «Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet Union created a system of forced labor camps in Siberia called the Gulag. Historians such as [Anne Applebaum, etc.] have compared the the Gulag's forced labour to slave labour.» --BunnyyHop (^talk) 19:55, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

No, you are attempting to skew the article in favor of your POV again. The sources state this was slavery. Sources may also use other non-exclusive terms such as forced labor or penal labor, but this does not exclude slavery. The sources I've provided do not compare the institution to slavery, they call it slavery. Other sources do the same. // Timothy :: talk  21:18, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The current source for labelling it a slave camp is Anne Applebaum, and two other authors in a book published by Hoover Institution Press Publication. I suggest the replacement of the latter by this one which is mentioned in that academic discussion and the author also makes a comparison between forced labour and slave labour. The terms are clearly not synonymous, and we already have an academic interpretation of these: It's a comparison, and attribution is necessary if we don't have anything to explain or to summarize the academic consensus (we do) --BunnyyHop (^talk) 22:35, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

What is wrong with Applebaum and Hoover? She is a Pulitzer-prize winning historian and a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins. Hoover is affliated with Stanford, Princeton and Yale. Both are gold standard sources.  // Timothy :: talk  23:33, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with using Applebaum, when I mentioned her name it was simply to reiterate what sources were being used. Hoover, however, was a gaffe on my part. I was mistaking the Hoover Institution for something else.

The point is, these cannot be stated without proper attribution. The academic consensus is that they were labour camps, not slave camps (which according to Bell, referring to Alexopoulos' book, is comparing Gulag prisoner labour to slavery). Even Applebaum herself writing to Victims Of Communism stated that «The Gulag was the vast network of labor camps which was once [...] But over time, the word has also come to signify the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps». --BunnyyHop (^talk) 23:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

So the existing sources are fine. Since you consider the above work important and authoritative, I will add the reference to Illness and Inhumanity as you requested and a quote.

I'm not going to keep addressing your opinions, but they will help at ANI.  // Timothy :: talk  00:02, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

BunnyyHop, I have added the source you requested and a quote from the book where the author states their conclusions about slavery and Gulag labor. I will also add the quote and reference you use above from Applebaum. // Timothy :: talk  00:24, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

• Question: The source BunnyyHop found, Illness and Inhumanity, brings up that slavery appears often in Gulag memoir literature. There are a number of English language academic anthologies of GULAG literature, I don't think they should be used as primary, but the commentary from the editors is secondary. Should we consider a short section on Gulag memoir literature?  // Timothy :: talk  01:20, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Sure, the most notable ones can be included. I have changed slave labor camps to forced labor camps per Applebaum; «The Gulag was the vast network of labor camps»; i.e., "Gulag" as a term for the camps themselves. Siberia was also removed per Applebaum; «from the islands of the White Sea to the shores of the Black Sea, from the Arctic circle to the plains of Central Asia, from Murmansk to Vorkuta to Kazakhstan, from central Moscow to the Leningrad suburbs». Applebaum uses Gulag with various meanings: to refer to the camps themselves; to refer to the system of repression; to refer to "the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties; Here we want to use the first one: «The Gulag was the vast network of labor camps which was once scattered across the length and breadth of the Soviet Union» --BunnyyHop (^talk) 01:47, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

The Applebaum quote clearly states: "the word has also come to signify the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps."" Slavery in all its forms = GULAG labor camps are a form of slavery. Stop twisting sources to fit your POV. I've added your sources, this is what they state.  // Timothy :: talk  02:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

The quote also states "The Gulag was the vast network of labor camps which was once scattered across the length and breadth of the Soviet Union". What the term came to represent (according to Applebaum's works) is discussed further below. Moreover, an astounding amount of sources refer to it as forced labour camps (Golfo Alexopoulos), (Applebaum), (Alexander Mikaberidze), and so on. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 02:42, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

You are intentionally ignoring the clear meaning of the sources and twisting them to fit your POV.  // Timothy :: talk  03:01, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

My apologies. I was reading Applebaum's preface in a wrong way. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 03:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, TimothyBlue is right. One should cite what source say specifically on the subject of this page, i.e. "slave labor", etc. My very best wishes (talk) 04:07, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

BH's statement My point still stands. I don't consider Anne Applebaum using it is as enough to label it as such in Wikivoice, especially since most scholars simply refer to it as forced labour camps. She's also a right-leaning journalist, according to this post on New York Times, so this is important to accord to WP:DUE. Most scholars refer to it as forced labour camps, even Alexopoulos does not label it as such. Applebaum's approach is also criticized by other scholars. «Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History (2003) is, aside from the introduction [BH: This is taken from the introduction!!!], a well-done overview of the Gulag, but it did not offer an interpretative framework much beyond Solzhenitsyn’s paradigms» --BunnyyHop (^talk) 20:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• You continue making the same incorrect argument over and over again. Of course they were forced labour camps, no one denies it. But a significant number of RS also describes it as a variety of slave labor. Forced labour camps and slave labor are not mutually exclusive things, quite the opposite. In this example the same author describes them as forced labour camps AND slave labor institutions. There is no contradiction. My very best wishes (talk) 03:38, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not constructing any incorrect argument, this is plain and simple - they all concur that these were forced labor camps, but largely disagree on the status of "slave". The introduction of Applebaum's book as been criticized by scholars as I showed above, Steven Barnes' work has been described by Miriam Dobson as «suggest[ing] an alternative, and provocative, interpretation». In The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag it's also not clear what the authors' position is: «From the perspective of the Kremlin, Magadan existed as the center of a domestic colony based on slave labor». This is distinctly a minority view in my opinion, and it should be further discussed whether this is better warranted here or as a section in the GULAG article itself. Anyways, it's utterly indispensable to change "forced slave labor camps" to "forced labor camps" if we don't want to infringe neutrality and due weight, and state clearly controversial stuff in wikivoice. there isn't any significant number of RS, only two (and a half? one of them doesn't even take a position on whether these were slave labour), and they are both contested by other scholars.--BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:15, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

You did not cite a single source so far which tells explicitly "it was not slavery". But many sources (see above) say "it was a variety of slave labor". Hence this is not a minority view. My very best wishes (talk) 05:37, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I believe you should reread my response. I have placed the references within brackets (as a link), but those same sources can be found as citations in the disputed phrase, minus this one. It's a minority view because only two (Applebaum, Barnes) hold such a personal view, and both were criticized by other scholars (Dobson, Bell). Furthermore, most sources solely refer to it as forced labour camps, like the source you sent a while back to prove they were slave camps. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 07:58, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Everything you are stating, you have stated previously and it has been answered from the sources, you are making this a WP:BATTLEGROUND. You're again trying to insert your own POV about communism here, which is not what sources state and are playing word games to do this. Repeatedly stating that editors don't understand you or insisting they reread what you wrote, when in actuality they disagree with you based on the sources is WP:BATTLEGROUND. Your attempts to always skew language to fit your POV about communism needs to stop.  // Timothy :: talk  12:37, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

BunnyyHop You made your point, you lack consensus and you keep repeating yourself, stop posting walls of text to draw out the discussion. Please drop the stick. Des Vallee (talk) 19:45, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

TimothyBlue, maybe my point wasn't clear enough. I concur that Applebaum, as well as Barnes, labelled the Gulag as a slave camp. The conversation has developed since then. The point is that scholars have criticized it, especially Applebaum, and the criticism should be included in the article. But this also affects another point - if they criticise it, then their opinion can't be stated in WP:WIKIVOICE. Your response does not address this, because you didn't WP:AVOIDYOU. Furthermore, if the majority of the scholars refer to it as forced labour camps, and a minority refers to it as "forced slave labour camps", the majority's must be used, not the minority's. The term used on the wiki, «forced slave labour camps», returns a total of 1 result (citation) in Google Scholar. This is synthesis of material. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 22:00, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

TimothyBlue, thanks for this. I don't really have a big issue with this specific phrase, although I'd prefer if it had proper attribution, so discourse on this will ceaseapparently continues at ani. However, to increase WP:DUE, I'm requesting you to add these: Author: Wilson Bell Source: page 2 Quote: "Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History (2003) is, aside from the introduction, a well-done overview of the Gulag, but it did not offer an interpretative framework much beyond Solzhenitsyn’s paradigms" Source: idem, ibidem, page 9 Quote: "[S]ome of the recent research on Russian penal systems and exile in the pre- and post-Soviet eras is also either explicitly or occasionally comparative and shows certain similarities with the Gulag" --BunnyyHop (^talk) 01:41, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

• This is wrong search. You should do this, i.e. search for "slave" AND "labor camps" in Google scholar. It produces 13,000 hits. My very best wishes (talk) 03:53, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, the correct query is "slave labor camps" and "gulag", otherwise it will search for documents that have the word "slave" and the words "labor camps" on it. It returns 432 results. But if we remove the "slave" and leave it only at "labor camps", it returns 5150. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

This thread (one that you started) is not about Gulag, but about all labor camps, including Nazi camps. My very best wishes (talk) 04:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I apologize if that caused some confusion, but I was not disputing such, even though I said four other countries at the start of the discussion. Scholars such as Jan Burzlaff state that «[i]t is true that as public awareness of the Holocaust grew after the 1960s, equating slavery with the Holocaust found numerous advocates», although «such a scholarly comparison between the Holocaust and slavery warrants exploration», and continues the paper describing how the analogies between slavery and Nazi camps changed over the times, comparability, interpretations, etc. It's a difficult to evaluate relationship. Nonetheless, it would probably be better warranted if we c/p the short paragraph over at Forced_labor_in_Nazi_concentration_camps#Slavery_analogy.

There's three other countries in that section, and what I'm saying is that if there's no WP:REliable sources labeling it as slavery - it should not be included at all, otherwise it's pure original research. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

As someone previously uninvolved here, I agree with the gist of BunnyyHop's points. Neutrality requires adherence to WP:BALASP, a key component of NPOV: "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." Some authors may have compared systems of forced penal labor, such as the Soviet Union's, China's, etc. to slavery, but historical works generally do not, to my knowledge, describe it as slavery. I realize that exceptions to this may possibly be found. Some authors may refer to X system of forced labor as slavery in a figurative sense, when it does not meet the definition. You can find writers who discuss employment in a capitalist system as wage slavery, but I would not include a whole section on wage slavery in this article, as we are dealing with a different concept. Similarly, I'm sure you can find right-wing polemicists and even historians who label the Soviet penal labor system as slavery, much as left-wing polemicists and historians label the penal labor in America's private prison system as a new form of slavery, but neither represents the mainstream vocabulary of historical discourse.

Based on the sources found thus far, perhaps we can include a short statement in the article mentioning that systems of forced labor such as the Soviet Union's, Germany's, China's, and America's have been described as a modern-day form of slavery, but we should not have a separate section for any country unless a large number of scholarly sources present that country's forced labor system as slavery. That might be the case for Nazi Germany. However, I doubt that many scholars generally apply the slavery label to the USSR, China, or the United States.

Actually, the right approach seems to be this: as the topic of this article is slavery and WP:BALASP asks to review the "body of reliable, published material on the subject", we should look at what works about the subject of slavery generally include, and structure this article similarly. Anything outside of that should either be omitted or given a brief summary mention of 1-3 sentences, e.g. "systems of forced labor in Nazi Germany, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States have been described as a form of modern slavery, according to X", etc. (As this is a vast topic, perhaps we could examine works about "modern slavery" or "slavery in the twentieth century" etc.) That would fully comply with policy as given in WP:BALASP. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 08:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I concur with your approach. I, on preliminary research, found the The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, which returns 0 results for "Gulag". Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem returns 0 results related to this. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 14:01, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

• Sure, slavery is a huge subject, and a lot of sources on slavery do not mention Nazi or Soviet labor camps. But a lot of sources do. Here they are: [6]. My very best wishes (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

• MVBW, that doesn't look like a helpful search phrase. Since the subject is slavery, not "slavery and labor camps," you would need to look at the body of reliable sources about slavery to see if labor camps are generally included in those sources (if so, which ones), as opposed to trying to preemptively pick out those sources that may happen to refer to both "slavery" and "labor camp" somewhere in the text (often not even in the same section). Perhaps try "modern slavery", filter down the results to high-quality scholarship from, say, the last 20 years, and see what you get? Zloyvolsheb (talk) 23:27, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: This has been discussed before repeatedly. Sources use slavery/slave labor/slaves to describe this subject. Some sources use forced and slave labor as synonyms. Very few sources compare the two but when they do they show how they are equivlents (including two sources BH requested be included). This was shown in the existing sources, and in the sources I added. Sources do not state GULAG labor was not slavery, none state the two terms are exclusive or preclude the other, but if there were a few which did, due weight prevents a few opinions from being used out of proportion to their weight compared to the widely held view. We are not talking about an article title or search term, COMMONNAME doesn't apply and raw search results are useless in this context.

The consensus of editors supports this, and there is no consensus to remove the content from the article or soften its language. Bludgeoning to try and change consensus is DE and the entire above thread is TE.  // Timothy :: talk  00:05, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Let's admit that those are used interchangeably (which are not), but let's admit that "slave labor" and "forced labor" are the same (which are not), how many actually use it? According to Google Scholar, "slavery" in those documents that have Gulag in the title returns 96 results. Note that some are simply quoting Solzhenitsyn, others using it in a different context, etc., as Alexoupoulos said, «[t]he image of the slave appears often in Gulag memoir literature». "Forced labor" and "forced labour" return, combined 422 results. "slave labor" and "slave labour return, combined, 89 results. "prison labor" and "prison labour", 69 results. A more wide search, "forced" returns 497 results, while "slave" returns 152. Others are welcome to search for other terms, but there's a clear result here - "slave", "slavery" and "slave labour" are used much less frequently than their "synonyms", and this is just a search result analysis. Some of those are not comparing the Gulag to slavery, but rather quoting testimonies, etc. Those who compare the Gulag to Slavery cannot be disregarded, but that's what it is - a comparison, as evidenced here. We should state that some historians have made comparisons between forced labor in the Gulag, [and other labor camps, search needed] to slave labor, as suggested by Zloyvolsheb. If you believe that what we're trying to do here is "soften" the language instead of complying with the rules, maybe you need to think if you're having a WP:TE position on this matter. Local consensus has no weight over the WP:PILLARS, which includes WP:NPOV, a guideline which I believe is being violated here.

--BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:44, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Source gathering

As @Zloyvolsheb: said,

«[...] perhaps we can include a short statement in the article mentioning that systems of forced labor such as the Soviet Union's, Germany's, China's, and America's have been described as a modern-day form of slavery, but we should not have a separate section for any country unless a large number of scholarly sources present that country's forced labor system as slavery. That might be the case for Nazi Germany.»

«[...] as the topic of this article is slavery and WP:BALASP asks to review the "body of reliable, published material on the subject", we should look at what works about the subject of slavery generally include, and structure this article similarly. Anything outside of that should either be omitted or given a brief summary mention of 1-3 sentences, e.g. "systems of forced labor in Nazi Germany, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States have been described as a form of modern slavery, according to X", etc. (As this is a vast topic, perhaps we could examine works about "modern slavery" or "slavery in the twentieth century" etc.) That would fully comply with policy as given in WP:BALASP.»

The objective of this new section is to find sources that make comparisons between different countries' labour camps and slavery to include in a short phrase, as well as the «body of reliable, published material on the subject».

1. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery 0 results on the Gulag.
2. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem 0 results on the Gulag.
3. Slavery in the Modern World: A History of Political, Social, and Economic Oppression p. 0-15: «Forced labor was another form of contemporary slavery reported [...]» to the Anti-Slavery International. Mentions China, Myanmar, the US and Europe (just this preface, the Gulag is mentioned on page 292).

--BunnyyHop (^talk) 12:37, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

@BunnyyHop:, the sources you found do not mention the Gulag, though there are some references to the Soviet Union, its position on slavery, and its use of forced labor. I did not find any of these sources describing forced labor in the Soviet Union as slavery. It would be interesting to examine this in more detail, but I honestly have very little time to do this now due to a busy schedule. Hopefully, I will have a bit more time to do that over the coming weekend, but can't make a promise.

The approach I suggested, along the lines of WP:BALASP, was to try to get a sense of how scholarly sources discuss forced labor or penal labor in relation to slavery, and how many actually claim these as the same. Of course, this would also be time-consuming. One approach that could work would be to try to find sources in GoogleScholar or a similar engine about "modern slavery" or "twentieth century slavery" (neutral keywords covering the period in question), then limit those sources to those published in the last 20 years (to limit the number of sources to a more manageable number and use the most up to date sources -- we wouldn't want to use outdated sources or '50s Cold War propaganda), then look at how many of those sources (or a random representative sample of those, if still too many) also discuss the Soviet Union, China, Germany, America, etc. and in what context. I hope to have some time to do that, and would be glad to share my results here if I get a chance. In the meantime, I hope you, @TimothyBlue:, @My very best wishes:, @Des Vallee:, and any other editors who wish to weigh in tell me whether they would abide by or reject this (IMHO) neutral, objective approach. If any disagree, I would hope to hear why. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

4. Exploitation and Labour in International Law:

This Working Paper [for the International Labour Organisation in 2008] considers the various examples of exploitation laid down by the trafficking conventions while acknowledging that these are, ‘at minimum’, the types of exploitation which exist. This acknowledgment opens the possibility for considering the continuum of coercion which moves from free labour to exploitation; to abuse through servile situations including forced labour; and finally, to the most extreme type of coercion manifest as enslavement

During much of the twentieth century, international law dealing with forced labour, servitude, and slavery sought to address exploitation by States; yet today it is recognised that exploitation takes place primarily at the hands of non-State actors

Editor's comment: This book draws a clear line between forced labor and slavery. I think that we won't get a more authoritative answer than this, considering to whom the working paper was reported to - the ILO of the United Nations

5.The Legal Understanding of Slavery

6.Forced and compulsory labour in international human rights law (ILO)

The ILO’s standard setting process on forced labour is part of a broader institutional effort to address unacceptable forms of work. Forced labour, human trafficking and slavery are among the worst forms of human exploitation found in today’s labour markets

Editor's comment: These books use the ILO definition of slavery and forced labour, which draws a clear distinction between the two. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 06:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is the best book I've read about this topic in the US. Levivich ^harass/_hound 06:48, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Good suggestion. Thanks! Zloyvolsheb (talk) 16:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Zloyvolsheb, what do you think about this? Forced labor is clearly a distinct form of coerced labor from slavery as shown by the definition of the International Labour Organisation and the other sources, despite some groups such as the Anti-Slavery Society describing it as a «another form of contemporary slavery» - which already has its own article. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 23:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

BunnyyHop, that seems to make sense; I was not aware of the Anti-Slavery Society's position. There seem to be multiple uses of the term "slavery" - in the traditional sense that I assume most people are familiar with, slavery is the ownership of another person as property, as currently defined in the first sentence of the lede of this article. This typical definition obviously excludes state-mandated forced labor/penal labor. I am not familiar with the Anti-Slavery Society's position, though I do believe there have been some attempts to expand the definition recently. I'm not sure how widely such expanded definitions are accepted; perhaps the lede should provide information regarding that, but ONLY if it can be demonstrated that some expanded definition is also widespread. In either case, it would be probably be better to stick to the classic definition for most of the article, and use a separate section to discuss and exemplify any expanded definitions applied to modern phenomena such as forced labor, in proportion to such discussion in reliable sources. Unfortunately, I haven't yet had enough time to do the reading necessary to contribute anything meaningful yet, and probably won't in the next couple of weeks. I do plan to return to this page once I feel confident enough in my research to propose something more specific. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 01:31, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Zloyvolsheb, yes, but they use the term «contemporary form of slavery» so even if such were to be included, it would be in that page per WP:DAB. If editors believe that content from that article (non-WP:SS, which is happening here) must be included in this one, then they're also arguing that that article should be merged into this one. I think a RfC might be better warranted to solve this dispute. TimothyBlue, as a more experienced editor on these affairs, can you mediate this? --BunnyyHop (^talk) 15:09, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• Slavery is a broad term; as a practice it has existed and evolved in form, purpose and motivation over different times and places. It is often a blend of social institution, legal framework, the consequences of war, the results of debt, and an economic/labor system; sometimes it has religous as well as temporal dimensions; it has existed in legal, extralegal, and illegal forms; it has been used for a variety of purposes, such as extracting labor, as punishment, and for political, religous, and ideological coercion. It has been viewed as both a postive good and base evil at the same time, such as within Christian groups in the antibellum United States. Slavery has included circumstances as broad as chattel bondage of blacks in the United States; Native American slavery in the Spanish colonies; children bound to work in African diamond mines; punishment in postbellum United States, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; "sweat shop" labor in devloping nations; sex trafficing; domestic slavery; Jim Crow "slavery by another name" slavery; Islamic religious slavery; etc. The sources in the discussion and on the page clearly show this.

Giving a "choice" between two options that fit your POV while ignoring the previous discussion that does not fit your POV is unacceptable. Pretending the comments and objections other editors have recently made do not exist is unacceptable. Cherry picking sources and ignoring others to fit your POV is unacceptable.

This discussion at best is at a stalemate; there is clearly no consensus for a change. This discussion needs to be allowed close, so that editors can focus on improving other articles.  // Timothy :: talk  04:44, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

RfC draft

:: TimothyBlue, I'm asking you to summarize your argument in a single sentence. The issue here seems to be that some advocate for the inclusion of forced labour (and thereby, even if not stated, everything included in Contemporary slavery). :: After researching a bit, this article should be either split up per WP:DAB or WP:SUMMARY, as there's no real primary topic and many uses for the word slavery. Chattel Slavery redirects to this article, so this article must specifically be about Chattel Slavery, yet its name is slavery. As Zloyvolsheb pointed out above, «(...) chosen to write Britannica's slavery article does not discuss the Soviet Union except for one brief mention of Gulags as being described as a modern form. (In contrast, much more attention is paid to Muscovite slavery and Russian serfdom.)». :: The proposal is the following one: # Creating a new article in Chattel slavery, transfering the contents related to that topic in this article # Transforming the current Slavery article either into a WP:DAB or WP:SUMMARY page (the latter with proper WP:DUE as Zloyvolsheb pointed out). :: --BunnyyHop (^talk) 21:16, 20 February 2021 (UTC)}}

Clarification

Sections about forced/penal labor which do NOT get labeled as slavery by WP:SCHOLARSHIP, that is, WP:RELIABLE sources should be removed from the slavery article per WP:OR, and if there's any minority view on the subject (as is the case with Anne Applebaum and the Gulag - which may be considered WP:FRINGE, as it's NOT published by an academic publisher and whose introduction is critized by a Gulag scholar, WP:RSCONTEXT) it should be included with WP:DUE weight in the contemporary slavery section, which is a summary-styled section on the cases of Chattel Slavery over at Contemporary slavery, without the need for a summary-styled topic. As it stands, penal labor camps are included in the history section about Chattel slavery summary-styled, which is completely WP:UNDUE and based on the WP:OR that these two clearly distinct terms - slavery (chattel slavery) and forced labor are equal. The history section of the article is about chattel slavery, and the name of article is slavery because it's simply the WP:COMMONNAME of chattel slavery. One wouldn't think of including the history of concepts such as wage slavery over there. I have moved these contents to contemporary slavery per WP:BRD. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 21:58, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• @Levivich, My very best wishes, SMcCandlish, Beyond My Ken, Des Vallee, and Crossroads:, I think you would support rv for [7], I'm not sure how to stop this POV edit warring by BH; any suggestions would be very welcome.  // Timothy :: talk  22:56, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• WP:FRINGE is defined in terms of mainstream/non-mainstream, and it does not mean that anything not published by a non-academic publisher is automatically FRINGE, Mainstream ideas often appear in non-academic -- but reliable -- sources, so Bunnyyhop's attempt to sweep everything not from an academic publisher into a separate section is not policy. Editors collectively, in WP:CONSENSUS discussion, determine what is and isn't FRINGE, not a single editor setting up their own standards. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:04, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
• I've reverted the edit due to a clear lack of consensus for the change. — csc^-1 23:06, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• I would have done the same. Bunnyyhop, get a consensus for your changes. Without one, you cannot make the changes you want to -- being BOLD only gets you so far. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• TimothyBlue, thanks for pinging these colleagues. Beyond My Ken, whether she may be considered as fringe is to be considered, since her POV written in the introduction of her book has been disregarded by an academic Gulag scholar. I understand being bold has its limitations, but it seems like it was what it took to bring people to discuss this. Is there consensus to remove penal labor camps that do NOT have reliable sources describe them within slavery? --BunnyyHop (^talk) 23:39, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• That a single Gulag scholar "disregarded" her does not automatically maker her viewpoint FRINGE. I assume that Gulag scholars are like any other group of academics: get three of them in a room and they're sure to have five opinions about any particular subject. The question is not whether one person disagreed with her, but whether her views are part of the mainstream consensus or not. Do other scholars agree with her, or have you cherry-picked one particular expert? Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:06, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• Beyond My Ken, yes, that's fair. According to this review, «The Introduction and the Epilogue explain Applebaum's ideological position». According to this review, «Most troubling, however, is Applebaum's surreptitious transformation from neutral historian to political commentator in Gulag's introduction and epilogue». This one says «Readers will notice Applebaum’s penchant for infusing her own moral insight into her narrative, a tactic that will appeal to her non-academic audience but may disquiet a few historians [...]. That Applebaum – a journalist by profession – chose to stray from the facts in her introduction and closing chapters betrays an otherwise impeccable book [...]». According to Winston Bell, the Gulag scholar, «Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History (2003) is, aside from the introduction, a well-done overview of the Gulag, but it did not offer an interpretative framework much beyond Solzhenitsyn’s paradigms» P.S.: The other scholars don't dispute what Bell said. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 00:44, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• And the NYT review called it an "important" book and was very positive about it, [8] The Guardian said it was "a gripping and convincing story", [9] The Independent said it was "grim and unrelenting" and "enlightening" and "magnificent", [10] Publishers Weekly calls it "remarkable" [11] Foreign Affairs said that it was a "a tightly told, complex, heartbreaking, and mind-bending story". [12] Other reviews were similarly complimentary. The book won a Pulitzer Prize [13].
  It's true that these are not academic journals, but the acceptance of the book by the Times, the Guardian, The Independent, etc. is a very strong indication that Applebaum is not in any way FRNGE, and that you should stop trying to portray it as such on the basis on one academic's criticism of it. It's clearly in the mainstream of thinking about the Gulag system. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:46, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• Beyond My Ken, as one of the sources state, the book - minus the introduction and the epilogue - is impeccable. I'm surprised you completely ignored this because absolutely NONE of these reviews (which even includes the anti-communist Service) mention the introduction AT ALL, which is where the content under dispute is. See WP:RSCONTEXT. While the rest of Applebaum's book is a very reliable source as it has received praise from many scholars, the introduction (and the epilogue), on the contrary, has not - it has been heavily criticized, and that seems to be the academic consensus. Applebaum as a scholar is not fringe, but the introduction of her book is. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 02:19, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• You're very quick to throw out judgments about what is and isn't academic consensus. I'm not saying the Applebaum's book is perfect, I'd fully expect any important book on a significant subject to be criticized on one or another aspect, but the fact of the matter is you've been trying to paint the book (or at least some parts of the book) as FRINGE, and you just have not presented the evidence necessery to support that contention. You may believe it, but your opinion counts for nothing. It may also be that those parts of the book are less accepted, but -- again -- you have not shown anything like the kind of evidence needed to prove that. You need to stop presenting your personal judgments as academic consensus, and either offer up the proof -- I'd say a dozen or so citations from reliable sources saying the Applebaum's position is outside the academic mainstream would be sufficient -- or stop making claims that cannot be supported. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:40, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• I completely agree with Beyond My Ken. Well said. And BTW, if the book is an academic RS (I think it is), then the introduction and conclusion are just as reliable. My very best wishes (talk) 02:24, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

  That's an overstatement. When the preponderance of the high-end review sources are telling us that this material is the author's own editorializing and a divergence from the actual historical-account material, then this is WP:RSEDITORIAL / WP:NOROPED material, a form of primary source. It's in a reputably published work, so we can use it, but attributed, and not for WP:AEIS claims.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:40, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: BH's statements about Applebaum are false. She is a well known and highly regarded leading academic scholar of Stalinism and the Soviet Union. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies where she founded and runs the Agora Institute, and Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics Institute of Global Affairs. She has been Adjunct Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She has lectured on Stalinism and the GULAG at dozens of major universities, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Oxford. Her works on reading lists at all of the aforementioned universities, plus many others such as UCLA (which unfortunately has not been able to get her to speak). She is a contributing editor at multiple major publications such as the Washington Post, the Nation, the Atlantic, etc. Her book GULAG won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and History and the Duff Cooper Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also won the Lionel Gelber Prize, the John Kenneth Galbraith Award, and a second Duff Cooper Prize (the only person to win the award twice).

Wilson Bell is a fine scholar, but BH is cherry picking a small part of a single review while ignoring the rest again demonstrates BH's POV pushing and complete disregard for due weight.  // Timothy :: talk  02:49, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• TimothyBlue, the small part (introduction) these multiple reviews talk about is the part that matters. Your enumeration little matters to the discussion at hand - how many lectures she gave, how many non-academic awards she got, which journals she writes for, etc. Academic awards, the publisher, reviews, and so on, would. The introduction has been criticized by all scholars I came across that wrote about it.

My very best wishes, that would've been the case if the book was published by an academic publisher, which it's not.

False: GULAG is published by Penguin RandomHouse Higher Education [14].  // Timothy :: talk  04:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

A single book, by a single author, whose introduction - which supports the Gulag being that section - has shown to be a point of conversion in terms of criticism, should not be treated as academic consensus. This is a violation of WP:DUE, although not a violation of WP:FRINGE, and so I concur with Beyond My Ken.

As shown above this book has overwhelming praise, support and use in the academic community.  // Timothy :: talk  04:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I still don't understand the POV of those who refuse to move it to contemporary slavery, when Slavery#History clearly only mentions chattel slavery. In the meanwhile, is there a consensus to remove labor camps that do NOT get described as slavery by reliable sources (as is the case with the Gulag)? --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:32, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

It is only your contention that the Gulag system is "not described as slavery by reliable sources", and you have not shown that the academic consensus is as such. So far, the consensus here is against you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:36, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Beyond My Ken, I'm sorry, but only Applebaum is used here. The onus is on the editors who want to prove there's academic consensus. Also, please reply to my other question. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 04:48, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I've demononstrated this book has overwhelming praise, support and use in the academic community above.  // Timothy :: talk  04:58, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

It does, and even those who criticized it above highly praise the contents of the book. However, the content being praised is not the whole book. There's a clear line of criticism made by various scholars to the introduction and epilogue, and I've yet to see one say otherwise. Nonetheless, the fact that it's being highly criticized shows they do not agree with Applebaum and therefore there's no academic consensus. --BunnyyHop (^talk) 05:10, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• I have to mostly concur with BMK, Mvbw, and TB on the sourcing interpretation matters. However, I tend to agree with BH that it's confusing to commingle chattel slavery with forced labor, especially when the bulk of the article focuses on the former, while the "Contemporary slavery" section is broader and arguably is primarily about forced labor of several non-chattel kinds. I see this as more of a clarity-for-readers matter than as any kind of citation squabble. It would not hurt to largely confine things like the gulags to that section. Or maybe to restructure the article to better separate them. E.g., have a section devoted to prison forced labor, which would include gulags (often political not penal prisoners) as well as PoW forced labor. I don't see a necessity for us to have an article with a general overview of "slavery" (mostly actual, chattel slavery), then jam everything semi-recent into one "contemporary" section. It might make more sense to have each kind of outlined forced labor have its own section, with historical-to-contemporary material.

  Better yet: To the extent much of this could be moved to Unfree labour the better, leaving behind only compressed WP:SUMMARY material, with this main article focused on chattel slavery. In short, I think we have something of a WP:POVFORK problem happening. I'm not sure the OR fight is actually worth having. We know for a fact that various sources consider several forms of forced labor that are not chattel slavery to be "slavery" and so they will at least be mentioned here. We know also that these definitional questions are a real-world debate. And we know that any given work in this field will have its boosters and detractors, and even its boosters who detract one chapter or aspect of the work. So, we need not spin a lot of wheels on this. We're having a fight because of the forking, because of the desire to cover some non-chattel slavery in-depth here when it can be better covered at Unfree labour. Then at this article we can include it in a list of force labor that is sometimes classified as a form of slavery by some writers, but not by some other sources. Easy-peasy. PS: "unfree labo[u]r" is obviously not the WP:COMMONNAME of "forced labo[u]r"; I think someone has picked up a rather recent academic neologism and imposed it as the article title. This is demonstrable with an N gram in mere seconds: [15]. I've opened an RM at Talk:Unfree labour.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:16, 28 February 2021 (UTC); updated 14:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I think that's a decent suggestion. If you've looked at the Armstrong law review article I linked below, the author states that "Chattel slavery, as practiced in the United States, is the clearest form of slavery, but there is significant disagreement on whether slavery encompasses more than just chattel slavery." Likewise, the "slavery" article in Britannica notes a lack of agreement on single definition among scholars but discusses "property" as the first of multiple characteristics. In another thread on this talk page I previously suggested that we keep the article focused on chattel slavery and use a "separate section to discuss and exemplify any expanded definitions applied to modern phenomena such as forced labor, in proportion to such discussion in reliable sources." [16] In that section we could provide links to any closely related topics such as forced labor / penal labor, and so forth, but provide only a compressed summary to inform the reader of the conceptual relationship, e.g. "Forced Labor [or X phenomenon] has been described as a modern form of slavery by X, Y Z]." This seems to be similar to what you propose, right? Zloyvolsheb (talk) 14:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, our "job" in the encyclopedia is to present real-world source/definitional conflicts, not pick a side in them (beyond WP:DUE balancing). That kind of informational custodianship often resolves to data architecture decisions, like where the information is stored, rather than what claims are being made. Or, in a case like this, a claim need not be made and a debate need not occur about the veracity of the claim, if the material is in the right page. There is no question that gulag forced labor is forced labor, and there is no question that some sources define "slavery" broadly to include all forced labor, but we can simply avoid having an argument about whether gulag labor "is" slavery but not specifically enumerating is as slavery rather than as forced penal labor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:47, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

No objection to keeping this as a summary style article, but this is the broad topic article, not just an article about chattel slavery; penal slavery, child slavery, sex slavery, human trafficking should not be excluded. Also its untrue that Applebaum is the only source for the Gulag section (BH suggested the other author as a reference) and as her academic creds and reviews show she is not just any author, she is a leading scholar on this topic, and the opposition to including her is based on one comment by a historian and an article in a law review. There a bit of a catch 22 setup here, if its a summary style article, a lot of detail and references are inappropriate, but then at the same time pushing for the removal of a section because its not large enough to accomodate authors/references is an impossible position. This also was an existinig stable section before this discussion, so the onus is on those that wish to remove the material to form a consensus, which does not exist. We should just leave the article as a summary style and leave the details to the child articles. Adding the US section while wanting to remove the other sections on NK, SU, China is part of what the POV puhing ANI is currently about.  // Timothy :: talk  15:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

just an fyi, I'll be in medical treatment next week with poor internet access, so I might not reply quickly after this morning.  // Timothy :: talk  15:51, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@TimothyBlue: Good luck with your treatment. Re: "...she [Anne Applebaum] is a leading scholar on this topic, and the opposition to including her is based on one comment by a historian and an article in a law review." You seem to refer to me, as it was I who suggested looking at a historian's article in on slavery in Britannica and at a recent law review (among other sources that discuss American penal labor as slavery). So that's a misstatement: I haven't said anything about Applebaum. Clarification: we do not necessarily have to "exclude" Applebaum, but we would attribute what she says, as I suggested doing above, e.g. "The Soviet system of labor camps is described as a slavery by Anne Applebaum..." etc. But we also don't necessarily have to include specifically her opinion either, as long as the viewpoint is accurately represented; it doesn't make a big difference either way. I also do not suggest entirely "excluding" forced labor etc. (I did not say that we must remove it altogether). I'm saying that we need to structure the article in a way that adheres to WP:BALASP. If most reliable sources about "slavery" discuss chattel slavery only or focus on chattel slavery, then we should do likewise. We have already have an article for forced labor, so there is no need to duplicate the same content here. It would suffice to inform the reader that some scholars (e.g. Applebaum) discuss forced labor as, or compare forced labor with, slavery, and point the reader to the main article for further information. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 01:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

United States

@Crossroads: I see that an attempt to include penal labor in the United States under the section "Late modern period" was recently reverted [17]. While I am not entirely convinced of including slavery and forced labor in the same article, if we do that for some nations at this point, we should probably include the United States based on the same justifications as provided for the Soviet Union, above, so as to follow a uniform standard; why adhere to one standard for one and another for the other? Here is an interesting article by American legal scholar Andrea Armstrong [18], which discusses penal labor in these terms: "Enslaved inmates harvest the crops in lines from one end of the row to the next. Decisions... are solely the province of the overseer without any decision-making authority by the enslaved" (895), "Devoid of vocational or rehabilitative elements, the penal plantation... is reminiscent of features of chattel slavery, which was formally abolished in 1865. Forcing African-American prisoners to pick cotton and soybeans for approximately thirty-two cents a day in modern times looks, smells, and feels like slavery." (909) Slavery by Another Name won the Pulitzer, like Applebaum's book. Also, this subject connects seamlessly with an ongoing political movement in the United States - only two months ago, a number of Democratic Congressmen introduced a Constitutional Amendment to abolish slavery [19]: "The resolution, spearheaded and supported by Democratic members of the House and Senate, would amend the 13th Amendment’s ban on chattel enslavement to expressly prohibit involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime" (PBS), which the same news article refers to as "a form of slavery." Thoughts? Zloyvolsheb (talk) 13:47, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

This actually relates to what I was saying a subsection above. That is, if there's already resistance to including penal labor in the Slavery article, at least in detail, then it really might be better covered in-depth at Unfree labour and only covered in WP:SUMMARY form here. That is, gulags don't seem to be a mystically special exception.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:01, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, Bunnyyhop was actually the person that wrote and added the section on the United States,[20] which confused me since they want to remove the other sections on SU, China, NK, Nazi Germany.  // Timothy :: talk  14:35, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Sure. My point is that if we're not collectively keen on treating penal labor as slavery, then we should be consistent in that, and treat it under forced labor (mostly at the article for that). Being opposed to US penal labor being "slavery" while supporting treatment of gulag penal labor being "slavery" is confusing. Much dramatics (which goes down rat holes like huge argument about interpretation of reviews of single sources, etc.) could be avoided by not permitting in the Slavery article anything that doesn't pertain to chattel slavery, except in WP:SUMMARY form, so that all the detail (and debates about detail) pertaining to non-chattel force labor are at the other article, and unclouded by "Can we call this 'slavery'?" disputation. In short: do not pass up opportunites to make disputes go away by just rearranging things.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:43, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

'slave' vs 'enslaved person'

I am glad this article contains a section on the debate on which term should be used. However going by the various articles I have looked at, wikipedia itself already seems to have taken a stance on this, that 'enslaved person' is the correct term. I wonder if this can be justified; it seems to me the term 'slave' is far more common and well understood, while 'enslaved person' has only become more popular recently and only amongst certain people. It also implies that a slave was someone that at some point was actively enslaved, rather than say, being born into it or selling oneself into slavery, neither which requires any 'enslaving' action. Should we also use 'imprisoned person' rather than 'prisoner' and 'enserfed person' rather than 'serf'? Furthermore if the term slave is problematic, we should not really use it in composite terms, for example 'slave labour', which suggests the labour is done by 'slaves'. Instead we should use 'enslaved person labour'. Similarly we should talk of 'enslaved person plantation', 'enslaved person rebellion', 'George Washington was an enslaved person owner', etc. LastDodo (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

The reduction to absurdity is not useful. A person who is "born into slavery" is enslaved by their "owner" from birth; "enslavement" is both active (refers to the act of a creating a slave) and passive (refers to the status of enslavement). So the answer to your question is, "no." --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 18:18, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

That's not actually a reductio ad absurdum, at least not as to this particular word. You can be quite certain that if we had a formal guideline to replace slave[s] with enslaved person[[s] / people] that editors would in fact go around replacing adjectival use in exactly the kinds of ways outlined by LastDodo. What LD has done, actually, is make a slippery slope argument, which if you read that article you'll learn is not a fallacy when the prediction is reasonable. (The "enserfed" example may be reductio ad absurdum, since that doesn't seem to be a real word. And it and some of the other non-slave examples are a false analogy at least, since the exact arguments made about slave are not the same as those made about other terms like prisoner.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:58, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

There's no official position on WP that one term or the other is "correct". It's simply a matter of who is most often editing this article and what their socio-political positions are. If you put this to an RfC at WT:MOSWTW, for example, I can virtually guarantee that the result would be a consensus that either term may be used, since both terms are regularly used in modern reliable sources. We very recently had esssentially the same debate (again) about "committed suicide" and whether it should be replaced with something else like "died by suicide", and there was a clear consensus not to force one or the other, because it is not a real-world writing norm (despite advocacy to make it so) to prefer "died by suicide". The fact that certain other publishers have formally adopted such terms as their house style standards is irrelevant.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:52, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Mathieu Kerekou

change ((Mathieu Kerekou)) to ((Mathieu Kérékou)) 2601:541:4580:8500:2146:7265:20BD:DE4C (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done, and thank you very much! P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 20:23, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Citation Edit

The page number for citation number 74, the article by James Harper, is 341. The full MLA citation from JSTOR is:

Harper, James. “Slaves and Freedmen in Imperial Rome.” The American Journal of Philology, vol. 93, no. 2, 1972, pp. 341–342. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/293259.

Cheers.

KevinMillerLegio (talk) 00:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

@KevinMillerLefio:  Done thanks Funandtrvl (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I wish that the 10 Commandments were included in this article since they mention slavery.EKantarovich (talk) 11:09, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

@EKantarovich: the reference to the Bible is already in the article under "Early history", and there is a separate article at The Bible and slavery which goes into more detail. Funandtrvl (talk) 07:38, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 February 2021

Under the "Terminology" section, add a section called "Derogatory Implications".

Use of the ethnonym "slave" is inherently derogatory and offensive to Slavic people. It is a perpetual reminder of a brutal history of anti-Slavic and Slavaphobic oppression. It demeans and lessens the Slavic experience by misappropriating their unique struggle with the unique struggles of other cultural groups. Slavic people have their own history which needs to be their own. Thinkplay (talk) 02:13, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: Thinkplay, it is unclear what you want done. It might be a good suggestion to add an Etymology section about the origin of the word. If you suggeset a neutrally worded short Etymology section about the origin of the word with scholarly secondary sources, I will be glad to propose it for discussion. Best wishes,  // Timothy :: talk  02:34, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• @Anythingyouwant, Lfstevens, and My very best wishes:, what do you think about the above and possibly adding an Etymology section?  // Timothy :: talk  02:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

TimothyBlue, thanks for looking at this. I am a new editor so please correct me if I am not following proper procedure. The article already covered some etymology in the "Terminology" section. However, my intent it is explain why this terminology may not be a good choice due to its negative ethnic connotations. As a Slavic person, I do not want my ethnicity to be associated with forced servitude or associated with the forced servitude of other cultural groups. I don't expect this language to disappear but I believe this is a conversation that needs to be started to bring awareness to this issue.Thinkplay (talk) 03:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

This has been discussed previously at this talk page. One editor said this in 2013: “I can assure you that, as a native speaker of British English, for me there is absolutely no connection between the words ‘slave’ and ‘Slav’. They are pronounced differently, they refer to fundamentally different things, and I feel confident in saying that there is no link in either the modern English language or the modern English mind between slaves and Slavs: not in popular conceptions, not in politics, not in propaganda.“ If reliable sources can be found to the contrary, or reliable sources saying the term “slave” is viewed by some people as racist, then maybe we should include those reliable sources. Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:35, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant The ethnonym word association of "Slav" and "slave" is already documented in the existing article. It says "The word slave is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav.[11][12][13]". Here are the references: 11. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition 1989, s.v. slave 12. ^ "slave | Origin and meaning of slave by Online Etymology Dictionary". www.etymonline.com. Retrieved June 11, 2020. 13. ^ "Slave definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved June 11, 2020. . If there are different opinions, then both point opinions can be expressed with their supporting evidence. Thinkplay (talk) 03:57, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Thinkplay, My family is from southern Poland western Ukraine so I get where you're coming from. I'm sure we can discuss this and find a solution, but we do work by consensus and guidelines. Have you read our guidelines on terminology?

btw, I forget to say, welcome to Wikipedia, I hope you enjoy building the encyclopedia.  // Timothy :: talk  04:04, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

TimothyBlue Thanks for the welcome and hearing me out. I did find a page entitled "List_of_policies_and_guidelines". Is this the document you are referring to? If this proposal will be considered for inclusion with some revisions, I am vested to see this though to completion. Thinkplay (talk) 04:27, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why your proposal wouldn't be considered (not necessarily accepted). For the best chance at success, you should try and have:

1. A clear proposal (I'm still not sure what you would like to change, remove or add).
2. Sources that support the proposal you're suggesting.
3. Guidelines that support the change you're suggesting.

Finding guidelines to support your proposal might be the most challenging, I'm not sure Wikipedia guidelines support what your proposing (but as I mentioned, I'm not entirely sure about what your proposing, so I might be wrong).  // Timothy :: talk  05:01, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

TimothyBlue Sorry for failing to make my proposal clear. There is an existing article on "Slavery". In the "Slavery" article, there is a section called "Terminology". Under the "Terminology section, it explains the etymology of the term "slave" as coming from the ethnonym "Slav". i.e. the Latin word "servus" was replaced by the name of an ethnic group. “The taking of slaves and furs down Russian rivers resulted in significant Norse cultural influence there and in the substitution of the ethnic word slav to replace the Latin serves for ‘slave’” (The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Volume 1; Volume 7m, p. 674). The proposal is to expand this existing "Terminology" section to include an explanation of why this term can be offensive for the following reasons: 1) the Slav ethnic group is associated with the negative concept of forced servitude as per the etymology. 2) In using to word to apply to other people groups it misappropriates Slavic culture and history by definition 3) It perpetuates bigotry towards Slavic people who have experienced a long history of Slavophobia and anti-Slavic sentiment. There is already existing article on Anti-Slavic sentiment that contain references. I believe the appropriate guideline would be "Offensive material" since the word is derogatory toward Slavic people without a disclaimer.

• So if I understand correctly, you wish a statement included that some individuals find the term offensive because of its historical origins? Anythingyouwant comment above is certainly relevant to this, historically the term may have been considered offensive in its original form, much like the word "Christian" was originally used in a derrogatory fashion, but the term has evolved so much, certainly in English, that the inclusion seems like it does not meets the weight guideline. Do you have sources that show this is widely understood in English as derogatory? Points 2 and 3 above would also need sources that meet weight.  // Timothy :: talk  10:50, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Did this word derive from the historical English word for the Slavic people? A quick search didn't reveal the history. If it is a true controversy (source?) then it is certainly within scope for this article. Lfstevens (talk) 02:39, 28 February 2021 (UTC)