Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes

1RR restriction

I have been following this discussion for some time, and I have concluded that additional remedies are needed to stop the edit warring. Per the discretionary sanctions authorized in the Digwuren case and clarified to apply to this article by the Arbitration Committee, I am hereby placing this article under 1RR. Any violation of this restriction will lead to either a block or a ban from this article and its talk page. NW (Talk) 22:11, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The time stamp above has deliberately been altered. The original message was placed on 22:11, 18 January 2010 (UTC). NW (Talk) 03:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Edit war on lede section

In the recent edit war on the lede section it has become clear that a number of editors on one side of the dispute object to having any mention in the lede of the theory or idea that mass killings and Communist ideology are causally related. Yet these are the same editors who are arguing that such a relationship exists. If we cannot say this in the article, then what is the point of having the article under this name? The article should be renamed to List of mass killings... and any speculation about causality removed.

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:54, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I demur that an "edit war" existed. I would further say that any claims in the lede which are not properly cited per WP:BLP and WP:RS are problematic at best. I would also aver that no causal relationship must be proven in order for the article, representing, as it does, rather incontrovertible fact, to properly reside in mainspace. Nor have an extraordinary number of AfDs made such a claim. Collect (talk) 13:42, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

object to having any mention in the lede of the theory or idea that mass killings and Communist ideology are causally related I don`t object to it being said they are related, i do object to it being described as a right wing conspiracy job though, I have actually asked TFD and Snowded this but they decline to give an answer for some reason, so perhaps you will are the following people right wing purveyors of anti communist propoganda? Midlarsky, Manus I. (20 October 2005). The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press. p. 315. ISBN 978-0521815451. ^ Kersch, Kenneth Ira (1 March 2003). Freedom of speech: rights and liberties under the law. ABC-CLIO. p. 194. ISBN 978-1576076002. ^ Staub, Ervin (31 July, 1992). The roots of evil: the origins of genocide and other group violence (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (). p. 86. ISBN 978-0521422147. ^ Weitz, Eric D. (3 March, 2003). A century of genocide: utopias of race and nation. Princeton University Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0691009131. ^ Kiernan, Ben (14 September 2007). Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0300100983. ^ Cahill, Kevin M. (31 August 2003). Traditions, values, and humanitarian action. Fordham University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0823222889. All are from academic publishers and all connect ideology to mass killing mark (talk) 17:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

This article is in a constant edit war state which suspends from time to time only to start again later. The major reason for that, in my opinion is that, whereas (mostly anti-Communist) sources do exist that derive mass killings from the Communist ideology, majority of other sources do not state the opposite explicitly, although numerous reliable sources exist that explain these events in each particular country taken separately, and not in connection with Marxist ideology. A typical quote is below:

"There was no blueprint for the creation of socialism. Marxist ideology provided party leaders with a virulent anticapitalist orientation, but it was their day-to-day, often ad hoc decisions that created the concrete features of Soviet socialism" (David L. Hoffmann Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 786-787)

However, it would be incorrect to combine this type quotes, which relate to some Communist country taken separately, with the works of, e.g. Rummel who draws general conclusions, although these two type works are in a direct contradiction. In connection to that, I again propose to move all general theorising to the end of the article as opinions of some scholars. That would be a big step towards ultimate cessation of this edit war and removal of the tag.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Please move the "general theorizing" to the end of the article, but keep the facts in front. Please don't argue that since there are different theories about this, that there cannot then be an article about the facts of the case. That some folks have one point of view and others another - are facts that can be documented, but let's concentrate on the basic facts first. Smallbones (talk) 17:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Categories

Surely the most appropriate categories for this are Homocide and Communist States? Also, I don't see why it's part of decommunisation. Munci (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Conquest vs. Soviet archives

This is an interesting comparison between Robert Conquest and the post-Soviet Russian studies based on Soviet archives – as presented from a "apologist Stalinist" point-of-view.

• Mario Sousa (April, 1998). "Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union". Proletären. Swedish Communist Party. Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Alternate link

Well, it seems that this is nothing new, Mario Sousa is already mentioned in the article Denial of the Holodomor. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 07:54, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

It is indeed astonishing what one can find on these foreign communist websites. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 05:00, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

NPOV tag

I've removed the NPOV tag in accordance with the discussion above - nobody wants to add any other POVs to the article. This was reverted saying "Please tetain tag until POV issues are resolved."

OK - let's be extremely clear here. State the POV that is MISSING from the article, and if there is any documentation for it, we'll add it. Smallbones (talk) 23:15, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

1. Missing POV -
2. Missing POV -
3. Missing POV -

Currently the article does not present any mainstream views. We need a lead that represents mainstream thinking on the topic and I propose the following:

"The debate over the comparison of Communism and Nazism re-emerged in France in the 1990s, popularized by Francois Furet's The passing of an illusion (1995) and the Black Book of Communism (1997). The comparison became popular with the far right, who now claimed that Communism killed more than Nazism. The "genocide of a class" was seen as the moral equivalent of the "genocide of a race".[Stalinism and nazism: history and memory compared (2004) Henry Rousso, Richard Joseph Golsan, pp. xi-xv] This new thinking, which is especially popular in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, where Communism is associated with Jewry, has been to diminish the significance of the Holocaust, with the Holodomor presented as a crime of equal magnitude. This reasoning has been described as a new form of anti-semitism.["Anti-Semitism in Europe, 1914 - 2004" (2006) Jan Herman Brinks, pp. 17-18)]"

TFD (talk) 23:39, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The main problem with these sources is that they do NOT give any evidence on Mass killings under Communist regimes. Rather they are attacks on the POV that Communism has committed similar atrocities to Naziism. Hopefully we will concentrate here on exactly what mass killings were committed under Communism, and there is little need for comparisons. To the extent that you want to include this material, I think it has to be secondary, included after the main discussion about the facts of the mass killings under Communist Regimes. That is, it is about the interpretation of the facts, and how some authors considered that some other authors misinterpret the facts. Clearly secondary or even tertiary. Could you spell out in plain English an example of what you want to include?

Then maybe include a couple of paragraphs in the section Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#Comparison_to_other_mass_killings, as long as it is not just saying "everybody who thinks that Communist Regimes killed tens of millions of people are Anti-Semites." That would simply be rediculous and has nothing to do with any mainstream views. Smallbones (talk) 02:11, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

You do not appear to understand the lead I wrote. Please read the source documents and recommend how it could be written morely clearly. TFD (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

No way could what you wrote above be the lede - most importantly because it doesn't address mass killings under Communist regimes. As far as a tight rewrite and the sources - I can't find that Brinks has been published - could you give a reference for the published work - "Scribner's Encyclopedia" is actually pretty vague. Summarizing Rousso and Golsan in the "Comparison" section might be something like:

Rousso and Golsan view the comparison of Nazi and Communist crimes as a tactic of the far right and particularly object to "genocide of a class" being seen as the moral equivalent of the "genocide of a race".

I'll put that in the Comparison section and remove the POV tag unless you want to summarize it in a different way. Smallbones (talk) 15:57, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

You seem to have a rigid view of the topic that prevents you from seeing that it is not mainstream. You assume that there is a connection between Communism/communism (the article does not even explain which one it is) and mass killings which needs no explanation. That may be fine for some types of writing but inevitably leads to a POV article, which is why it has been tagged. TFD (talk) 00:59, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

See 2nd and 3rd sentences of the article. If you can't see the connection, please don't accuse me of being biased. "The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[nb 1] " Smallbones (talk) 02:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not I "can see the connection", the point is that the reader must be able to see the connection which must be done by explaining what the connection is, who has made it, and how accepted their views are. Otherwise it is POV. TFD (talk) 05:02, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

But them being communist isn't necessarily relevant to them having caused mass killings. There are commonalities between the three governments other than communism: they're all single-party states. Someone could equally say that single-party states have a connection to mass killings. Also, all of Stalin, Mao and the Khmer Rouge took their ideas partly from Lenin so one could also say that only communism with influences from Lenin have a connection to mass killings. Or maybe they just don't think the three massacres had much to do with each other. Munci (talk) 06:33, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The main problem is that the claims MUST derive specifically from the cites, and not represent "combinations of cites". The amonth of SYNTH and OR in the proposal is excessive. Collect (talk) 23:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no SYN, and could you please explain how you WP:KNOW that policy about more than one source for the lead. The first sentence: "The killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states, including some that have declared adherence to some form of Communist doctrine". This needs to be removed because it implies a causal connection between communism and mass killings, which is not found in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 00:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I do not see any claim of causality in that sentence. I suppose I need stronger glasses. Collect (talk) 00:18, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you understand the difference between an implication and an overt claim? TFD (talk) 00:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I find the sentence to be NEITHER an "implication" NOR "an overt claim." Do "NEITHER" and "NOT" elude clarity? Collect (talk) 01:11, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying and also that you are wrong. It is an implication. For example if one were to write "mass killings under democratic regimes, "The killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states, including some that have declared adherence to some form of democracy", it would imply a connection. We could then put American and Soviet mass killings in the same article. TFD (talk) 01:23, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Four Deuces, The CCCP communists, the NAZIs (also communists), etc. were all democracies. There is no mandatory connection between the political system and the economic system (although theoreticians claim a "de facto" requirement for a police state to have a communism).Aaaronsmith (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Is this an entry for an 'How many things can you get wrong in two sentences' competition? Complete bollocks, and best ignored. If Aaaronsmith wants to dispute this, can he do it somewhere else (eg his talk page - he can PM me if he likes)? AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

The idea that the Nazi were Communists is funny. That suggests that in your mind "Communists" and "Bad Guys" are synonyms. Please, educate yourself.

I doubt it is possible to collect more wrong statements in such a short post.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Wait... so communists aren't bad guys? —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheSoundAndTheFury (talk • contribs) 00:28, 27 November 2010

They may well be, but this is a neutral encyclopedia, not a U. S. high school textbook. TFD (talk) 04:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Please -- we all know very well that genocidal slaughter in order to steal people's treasured property and various personal possessions is what communism is about. "Communism's goal is a society without rulers. A society where the people govern themselves. But until this is accomplished a superior government has absolute power. The people do not have any private possessions. Everything belongs to the government. One of communism's worst effects was in 1933. Adolff Hitler was a communist dictator. Under his instructions, the holocaust began. Over six million Jewish people died. Not counting the people fighting in the war.The holcaust lasted until 1945..." ([1]) Please educate yourselves before making further claims on these talk pages. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 00:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

That is a high school essay. TFD (talk) 13:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

@Zloyvolsheb. All of that would be quite correct, had the definition of Communism proposed by you been commonly accepted. However, in actuality, Communism is something else. In particular, the idea of internationalism ts one of the most essential part of its concept. This fact is quite sufficient to claim that Hitler could not be a Communist even in theory, and Nazims and Communism are two quite different things. Therefore... "physician, heal thyself"...--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:24, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Paul,

There is a raging discussion going on now on the "NAZI" discussion page over exactly that point.

As for the other two points: You got me on Stalin, although it gets murky as Lenin believed in a form of democracy. But I hold to a half correct on Hitler. He ran for president - lost, was appointed chancellor by an elected president, and took over power in what was a constitutional democracy by intimidating and unarmed populace to look the other way while he ignored the constitution and his thugs murdered. At one time he was officially president AND chancellor.Aaaronsmith (talk) 00:15, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

(I believe you don't mind me to format your post).

Re Hitler, although it is a deviation from the talk page's subject, let me point out that he was not a dictator according to a Roman definition of this word. The power of old Roman dictators was enormous, but it was limited by time and in some other aspects. The most adequate term to describe Hitler is tyrant, a leader, who was democratically elected by ordinary people to fight against aristocracy, and who had absolute power in his police. You probably know that Plato considered tyranny and democracy (as opposed to monarchy and aristocracy) as a manifestation of the power of demos. In that sense, yes, Hitler was a democratic leader (as well as all other tyrants).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:04, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

If Hitler had been a democratically elected leader, 'tyrant' might apply. He wasn't. He was appointed, as Aaaronsmith states, though whether those that appointed him had the legal power to do so is questionable at least. In any case, mere labels tell us little, particularly when trying to compare ancient Rome with 20th-century Germany. And for the record, if he was a 'communist' then I'm a cheese and pickle sandwich. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:23, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

By contrast to dictators, tyrants were not elected or appointed according to some formal procedure. Early tyrants used to come to power as a result of informal support of the demos. That is exactly what happened in Germany: although legality of Hitler's power was questionable, he was supported by a large fraction of the German society.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with "democratically elected by ordinary people to fight against aristocracy". He did not fight the aristocracy to any great extent. He did fight the communists a lot though. In fact, that was often part of the reason those that voted for him did so, especially the upper classes (they were generally more likely to vote for him more than the lower classes. see 'Who voted for Hitler?' by Princeton) Munci (talk) 23:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

In actuality, many tyrants didn't fight the aristocracy. However, people frequently believed they did, and that was the way tyrants used to come to power. That is exactly what happened in the Hitler's case.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:36, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

for Hitler doing this. I have read about this in any of the articles or books I have been reading. There was no aristocracy in power in Germany at the time. And the NSDAP was allied with and supported by the monarchist DNVP for some time. Who else would you think of doing this anyway? Munci (talk) 17:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Documentation of massive killings (2.5 million) by CCP cadres during GLF warrants its removal from “Controversies” section

The evidence provided in Frank Dikötter's new book Mao's Great Famine, hailed by other China scholars such as Andrew J. Nathan as "the most detailed account yet," demonstrates that not only do many of the famine deaths constitute mass killing (Dikötter: “In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death”), but the mass violence practiced by party cadres and militia resulted in an estimated 2.5 million people being tortured or beaten to death. The latter ALONE constitutes mass killing according to Valentino's criteria (50,000 or more mass killings of non-combatants over a 5 year period). While Dikötter isn't the first to discuss mass violence during the GLF (Valentino himself, citing Jasper Becker, notes that "communist officials sometimes tortured and killed those accused of failing to meet their grain quotas" p.128), he is the first to DOCUMENT it using Chinese archival sources. In light of this, I am removing the Great Leap Forward from the “Controversies” section again.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

We should always be careful of new books making new claims because we do not yet know what acceptance if any they will receive. This book in particular presents problems because, although it is by a scholar on Chinese studies, it was published outside the academic mainstream ant the author has received funding from the Kuomintang-backed "Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation". It may be that it will gain acceptance, but we have no way of evaluating this. TFD (talk) 16:40, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Clearly mainstream and there is NOT any policy, guideline, etc. to "go slow" on new academic work. Take it to WP:RSN if you don't accept this source. Smallbones (talk) 00:21, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Directly to the point is [2] When I do research on articles I use recent books by experts which seems at odds with the position that new books are not to be used. Note also the discussion at RSN which seems to agree that this book is absolutely RS. Collect (talk) 01:36, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Recent books are helpful because they explain how subjects are viewed in previous literature. That does not mean that we abandon accepted views every time a new book is published. That should be clear to you and I do not understand why are talking about this. If you have difficulty in understanding how to use sources, please post a note on my talk page, and I reply to you. When I used the term "recent" I meant more recent than the 1958 Cold War text that had been presented. Do you believe that articles should be based on 1950s Cold War texts? TFD (talk) 03:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

IOW you back "recent" work which coincides with what you "know" and oppose "recent" work which does not so coincide. Thanks for making this crystal clear. Collect (talk) 12:40, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Please avoid attempts at sarcasm. You need to understand the difference between facts and opinions. Notice that I argued for the use of a 2010 book by a member of the Shah's administration in an article about the 1953 coup:

The source is fine - it is published by Palgrave MacMillan. While the author is not neutral (no author is), we can expect based on the publisher that the facts would be accurate and complete and that it would provide a good summary of the various interpretations of the events as well as explaining the degree to which scholars have accepted different views.... The fact that the book is "revisionist" means that we must be careful in including the conclusions reached. We must not represent them as the agreed interpretation, and must present them using proper WP:WEIGHT. The nature of the publication however means that it is a reliable source for facts and for a description of how historians interpret the events. If there are errors and omissions in the book then they can be addressed on a case by case basis. However, most high quality sources are written from a unique view. Scholars usually write books to present new opinions.... There seems to be confusion about the nature of peer-review. During the process, independent scholars are asked to review a manuscript to determine whether the facts are accurate and complete. Book reviews by "peers", even in learned journals, are not "peer review". It must also correctly acknowledge how scholars interpret the events, even if the author is arguing against them. We can expect the facts will be the same regardless of the viewpoint of the writer.[3]

The difference here is that the book was published outside the academic mainstream and we are giving weight to the opinions without any evidence that scholarship has given them any weight.

Notice also my opposition in the Tea Party article to include criticism of the Tea Party from non-academic sources and also arguing to exclude sources that connect the U.S. to terrorism, war crimes and human rights abuses, when the claims come from non-notable sources, or to describe the John Birch Society as "far right", to use the term terrorism without inline attribution, etc., when scholars do so, etc. We need to enforce standards and you should stop assuming that people oppose you for ideological reasons rather than a simple desire for neutrality.

TFD (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see too much mentioned in his text that can't be found in other scholarly materials on Mao. As far as a higher death toll than 15-30 million, Yang Jisheng confirms this in his groundbreaking study "Tombstone," which has been lauded by Western scholars (although not by Dikotter).[4] Other researchers have come to death tolls as high as Dikotter's, such as Chen Yizi, a CCP member who was an architect of the economic reforms of the 80's, who estimated that some 43 million people perished in the GLF.[5] Regarding violence practiced by cadres during the GLF, Jasper Becker (1998, p. 93), Dali Yang (1996, p. 36) and Benjamin Valentino (2004, p. 128) all note this in their respective texts. As far as Mao and the CCP's complicity in the mass destruction that followed, Jung Chang discusses this in her controversial yet well sourced biography on him, which also prompted R.J. Rummel to reconsider the mass deaths during this period as democide and revise his own estimates accordingly.[6] Ralph Thaxton's research shows that there was significant resistance to Mao's destructive policies by villagers.[7] Dikotter's work is unique because he is the first to be granted access to large swaths of archival materials, which basically confirms much of what the aforementioned scholars have written about. That along with praise from several China specialists (such as Jonathan Mirsky, Andrew J. Nathan, Jonathan Fenby, Orville Schell, and Jasper Becker) seems far more significant, to me at least, than where he gets his funding (which isn't mentioned in one single review I've read - although, interestingly enough, I have seen this point brought up on blogs and forums where blatant Mao sympathizers are trying desperately to discredit his book) and that his book was published outside the academic mainstream. I've seen his book in at least 3 different local bookstores in my area, so I'm thinking he might have made a wise choice in choosing a publisher. I imagine his book will be read by a great many people, as it should be.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:50, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Because the book was published outside the academic mainstream, you are suggesting that we conduct our own academic scrutiny of the book to determine whether it is reliable. If a similar book coming to different conclusions is published I doubt that you would find it acceptable. Scholars do of course publish books in the popular press. But if they want their research to enter the academic mainstream then they also publish in the academic press. At present, I can find zero citations of the book in Google scholar.[8] It may be that he will publish his findings in the academic press and they will be considered the final truth. But I do not have a crystal ball. TFD (talk) 14:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The idea that this "book was published outside the academic mainstream" is your own invention and, basically nonsense: "(Dikotter) is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China on leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.". That sounds like "academic mainstream" to me. Also, see [9]. You can't just label sources you don't like "outside the academic mainstream", especially when they clearly are well within it. Perhaps what needs adjusting is your definition of what "academic mainstream" is. Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:21, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It was published by Bloomsbury Publishing which is not an academic publishing company. As someone with a PhD in economics you are well aware of the difference. TFD (talk) 21:10, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

So? The author is an academic who specializes in China. There's no requirement, implicit or otherwise, that only titles with the words "University Press" are acceptable. At the very least you might wanna drop the terminology of "outside of academic mainstream" as it insinuates things which are not true. Your (false) analogies with books by John Birchers and Shah administrators also insinuate the same thing. The book is mainstream. And it's academic enough. Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

All these sources satisfy WP:RS. They are not self-published, but published by experts and authors of numerous books, such as R. J. Rummel. No, you can not claim any sources of your choosing to be "outside the academic mainstream", based on your personal opinion. Doing so is against RS and NPOV policies.Biophys (talk) 21:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I am sure that as a biophysicist you would object to new books published outside the academic mainstream that contained original research and challenged existing views being used as sources for articles about biology, even if they were written by experts. Your comment about my "personal opinion" is insulting. I do not use mainstream sources because they reflect my personal opinion but use them because they reflect mainstream opinion. TFD (talk) 22:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course not. I am not sure what is your field of study if any. Just a few very basics. A typical scientific publication describes someone's original research. Everyone reads and publish it. Publications by good experts that challenge existing views are the most valuable scientific contributions, and I enjoy reading them as everyone else. However, telling that studies by established researchers belong to bad science (and that is what you apparently mean) is indeed insulting and goes against WP:BLP policy.Biophys (talk) 01:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I did not say it belonged to "bad science", just that it is published outside the academic mainstream. If a scientist wants an article to enter academic discourse they publish it in an academic journal, not in Popular Mechanics or as an editorial in a local newspaper. Incidentally, when new scientific papers challenge existing understanding we do not assume that the science has changed, but wait to see whether the new thinking has gained acceptance. If a new paper for example claims that the estimate the universe began 15 billion years ago is wrong, we do not immediately change articles to reflect that scientist's findings. TFD (talk) 14:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually if that new paper is a RS, then yes we do. We also don't make this distinction you've created regarding papers and books, at least not in terms of RS. Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Let me provide an example. Aspartame is the most widely tested food additive, and the scientific consensus is that there is no evidence it is harmful. However occassional studies have claimed that it is harmful, although all these claims have later been disproved by subsequent research. Using your reasoning, we would change the aspartame article to say that it is unsafe every time one of these studies emerges, rather than wait to see whether the scientific consensus has changed. TFD (talk) 15:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The subject of this discussion is not Aspartame, but the Frank Dikötter's book Mao's Great Famine that received positive review and satisfy WP:RS. You are trying to disqualify the source by merely claiming it to be "outside academic mainstream", which is your personal opinion. You do the same with regard to other academic sources. Doing so in inconsistent with RS, NPOV and BLP. This is all I wanted to tell.Biophys (talk) 17:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Both of us understand the difference between an academic publisher and a publisher of popular books, and the difference between peer-review and a book review. We also know that new research may or may not be accepted by the academic community. TFD (talk) 19:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Will you please stop referring to people's real life occupations? They are mostly irrelevant here and though it's not Outing per se, it is unconstructive and can make the discussion uncomfortable. BTW, what is your profession and education? Might as well as tell us your first and last name while you're at it. Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It says on your user page that you have a Ph.D. in economics and I assume that Biophys is short for "biophysics". I have said nothing beyond that. I do not believe it is advisable to provide personal information on Wikipedia. TFD (talk) 23:11, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Back to the Dikotter issue: he is an impeccable scholar and easily a reliable source. So what if his book was published by Bloomsbury? It means more people will read it and he gets more royalties. Great. Oh, and it won't be full of PoMo jargon. It has nothing to do with reliability. Who could impugn the rigorousness of this man's scholarship with a straight face? The Sound and the Fury (talk) 02:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

In the last U.S. election did you vote for Obama because he told you to and he is an academic and therefore a reliable source or were you able to distinguish between his scholarly writings and his pronouncements in the popular media? TFD (talk) 05:15, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Removed NPOV tag

I have removed the NPOV tag since there was no ongoing discussion. A50000 (talk) 19:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

First question. Did you familiarize yourself with the talk archives since the article's creation in 2009? (Igny (talk) 00:50, 9 December 2010 (UTC))

Why does that matter? Template:POV states:

The editor placing this template in an article should promptly begin a discussion on the article's talk page. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant, then this tag may be removed by any editor. A50000 (talk) 16:45, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

We are discussing it right now. (Igny (talk) 22:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC))

No, we are not. A50000 (talk) 15:45, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Your reply here indicates otherwise. (Igny (talk) 16:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC))

We are discussing whether we are discussing it. A50000 (talk) 22:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

LOL. --FormerIP (talk) 22:42, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Is that an admission that you are participating in an edit war without discussing your controversial edits to an article on a controversial topic on the talk page? Don't you think that it violates a WP policy or two? (Igny (talk) 23:35, 11 December 2010 (UTC))

How is it possible to remove an NPOV tag? A50000 (talk) 18:34, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Can you show that all POV issues raised since 2009 have been fixed? BTW, that us why I asked you whether you familiarized yourself with the talk page archives.(Igny (talk) 18:37, 12 December 2010 (UTC))

I don´t have to show that. If there is no ongoing discussion the NPOV tag may be removed at any time. A50000 (talk) 16:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If anyone attempts to remove the NPOV tag, I'll put it back in until the issue of how an article can legitimately discuss "Theories, such as those of R. J. Rummel" but not "discuss academic acceptance of such theories" is dealt with. This is an overt admission of a breach of NPOV. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

You're right. Fair enough. --FormerIP (talk) 19:50, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's be done with all this arguing. Could editors please present examples of non-NPOV sentences for discussion? Obviously not all of us see them. I have responded to the two sentences raised in the section below. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:08, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

First sentence: "The killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states, including some that have declared adherence to some form of Communist doctrine". TFD (talk) 05:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

(See the section below) AmateurEditor (talk) 01:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Apparent POV-pushing in article

"The killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states, including some that have declared adherence to some form of Communist doctrine".

Can anyone explain why mass killings in states that have declared 'adherence to some form of Communist doctrine' should be the subject of an article, rather than 'Mass killings' in general, or 'Mass killings under Stalinist and Maoist regimes'? Why is 'communist' the necessary criteria for analysis? With 'some' appearing in the sentence twice, it appears that this is almost certainly a synthetic intersection, arrived at to push a particular POV.

I note also that "Theories, such as those of R. J. Rummel, that propose communism as a significant causative factor in mass killings have attracted scholarly dispute; this article does not discuss academic acceptance of such theories". How can not discussing academic acceptance be anything but an admission that a POV is indeed being pushed? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:52, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

"Communist", rather than "Stalinist and Maoist", is used in the article because that is the term used in the sources. "Some" is used in your first quoted sentence to address a criticism of the article that there was an implication that all communist regimes engaged in mass killing, which is not supported by sources. Your second quoted sentence was also included to address a criticism of the article: that the level of academic acceptance was in dispute by various Wikipedia editors. Since no source could be found which specifically discussed the "level of acceptance" of communism-as-cause, the issue was side-stepped. Both of those sentences are examples of attempts to avoid POV. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:59, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you please provide evidence that "Communist" is the term used in the sources. TFD (talk) 05:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I've highlighted the term in bold in the copied passages from four academic sources here.AmateurEditor (talk) 00:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass killings under Communist regimes is the subject of the article because many people have noticed that Communist regimes have killed large numbers of people and made the connection between mass killing and Communist regimes, e.g. in the Black Book of Communism, Victims of Communism Memorial, Valentino, Benjamin A (2005). "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia". Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century in Cornell University Press, "From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States" Appelbaum; Fein, Helen (1993). "Soviet and Communist genocides and 'Democide'", "Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review", etc., etc., etc. (Just look at the article and its sources). Given that many scholars and others have made this connection - this is a fair subject for Wikipedia. This has been upheld about 6 times in AfDs. Its time that folks who don't like this article in general for whatever reason accept that it is a proper subject for a Wikipedia article and try to avoid obstructing it - does that answer AndytheGrumps's question? Smallbones (talk) 05:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Then you should be able to explain (with reliable sources) what connection they have drawn and whether their viewpoint is consensus, majority, minority or fringe. Once you have done that we can re-write the lead and will have a neutral article. TFD (talk) 05:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

One thing that has always been missing from this discussion is a source (other than Wikipedia editors) who say that there is no connection between Communism and the mass killings under Communist regimes. Apparently some Wikipedia editors think that it is just a coincidence that there were mass killings and that there were Communist regimes at the same time. But these same editors don't provide any sources that say this. Certainly if there were scholars who think this, they would present evidence on it! So include these, if they exist. Otherwise, you are being obstructionist. Smallbones (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Show us the WP policy requiring that we have such. Collect (talk) 11:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The policy requiring that we have a neutral article ??? Am I misunderstanding something here? --FormerIP (talk) 13:16, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding that editors have to imagine that there is some kind of opposing view and then explain it. See WP:Weight. If there is a view that opposes the connection between Communist regimes and the mass killings committed under them, please include it. But arguing that all POVs are not included without trying to include them is simply obstructionist.

WHAT SOURCE IS GIVING OPPOSING VIEWS? Please provide them. Smallbones (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Smallbones, I did not say there is no connection between communism and mass killings. It is not our role to decide that. I have asked that the article explain who makes the connection, what they say and what acceptance their beliefs have. This article should meet the same standards as any other article about history or social sciences. TFD (talk) 17:45, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

See my response to AndytheGrump above about who says there is a connection. Or just look at the references. The article gives a lot on what they say. As far as their acceptance - scholars from Princeton and Harvard, etc., published by Harvard University Press, etc. That is a very basic case for acceptance - if you have a case that these views are not accepted or that there are other views that are also accepted - you have to provide reliable sources that make that point. I can not read your mind about who you think is accepted. PROVIDE THE SOURCES! Smallbones (talk) 18:08, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You might explain what the connection is. TFD (talk) 18:53, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

See, e.g. "Anne Applebaum asserts that, "without exception, the Leninist belief in the one-party state was and is characteristic of every communist regime," and "the Bolshevik use of violence was repeated in every Communist revolution." Phrases said by Lenin and Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky were deployed all over the world. She notes that as late as 1976, Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed a "Red Terror" in Ethiopia.[150]" That seems pretty clear to me, and there are lots of other explanations in the text.

BUT YOU ARE AVOIDING THE QUESTION, AGAIN - please identify what you think is missing and give a source for it - we'll put it in if the source is reliable. Smallbones (talk) 20:22, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

It has already been pointed out what is missing. As directed by WP:FRINGE#Notability_versus_acceptance, "Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community. If proper attribution cannot be found among reliable sources of an idea's standing, it should be assumed that the idea has not received consideration or acceptance..."

Yes, we have a smattering of people drawing a connection, but the academic acceptance of these ideas receives no treatment in the article, though WP:NPOV policy suggests that it should. BigK HeX (talk) 20:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Furnish cites which contradict the RS sources then. WP does not say "as long as one editor asserts that he konws something is a 'fringe' opinion, then it must be removed." Add as many cites as you wish with differing opinions first. Collect (talk) 21:15, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

BigK has highlighted the part he wants you to read, Collect. The question is whether or not the article uses any sourcing to show what level of recognition there is for the concept discussed within the academic community, not whether there are any sources that contradict any particular claim. --FormerIP (talk) 21:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

This article's topic appears to be universally recognized within the academic community, according to UCLA Sociologist Michael Mann, who said (bold added for emphasis), "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not." Please note that he treats "the Communist regimes" as a unit. If you want to read the context of that sentence, see here. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

All accounts, really? Like in each and every one of them? Are you sure such an extreme claim is recognized anywhere? (Igny (talk) 00:42, 14 December 2010 (UTC))

You may be confusing two different issues here. The Mann quote speaks to the acceptance of the article topic itself (a tangent we seem to have gone on), not to the acceptance of the communism-as-cause idea, the dispute of which resulted in the sentence about the level of academic acceptance not being discussed in the Wikipedia article. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The academic sources, e.g. Harvard University Press, are given in detail. That indicates a general level of acceptance by the academic community. The only thing that is missing is any source that contradicts the idea that there is a connection between the mass killings under the Communist regimes and the Communist regimes. NOBODY THINKS THAT THIS WAS PURE COINCIDENCE - not even the Four Deuces (aka TFD). Forgive me if I'm losing my patience but the idea that there isn't a connection is a fringe theory without any reliable sources. TAKE IT TO WP:FTN AND THEY WILL LAUGH YOU OFF THE PAGE. Now quit being obstructionist. Smallbones (talk) 21:47, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually the publication of a theory does not indicate its level of acceptance, that can only be determined by reading subsequent writing. Nonetheless could you please explain the connection that these sources make. Imagine that you had never heard of Communism and came to this article for the first time, and asked someone to explain the connection and your reply was "NOBODY THINKS THAT THIS WAS PURE COINCIDENCE...TAKE IT TO WP:FTN AND THEY WILL LAUGH YOU OFF THE PAGE". Incidentally the book republished by Harvard has different writers who may have different views so you need to be more specific. TFD (talk) 00:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the sentence

I've removed the following sentence from the lede Mass killings under Communist regimes occurred during the twentieth century with an estimated number of victims as large as 100 million. Even the Black Book of Communism does not imply that all people they count as "victims of Communism" were killed, not to say killed in course of "mass killings". This has been discussed many times, see the archive.--Dojarca (talk) 21:56, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you need to be careful on this - having been just placed on some sort of probation on this - please do not make this a battle ground. Yes the Black Book of Communism does count the dead as the victims, and not just any dead - the people whose unnatural deaths were caused by the Communist regimes. You seem to want to split some hairs here as to whether that is killing. In the normal everyday use of the word it is killing, and 100 million is mass killing. I'll revert the sentence back in. Smallbones (talk) 22:17, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Re:I'll revert the sentence back in. Don't. Apply your own judgment (please do not make this a battle ground) to yourself. (Igny (talk) 00:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC))

Ugh this is almost the exact same argument about the opening phrasing which has resulted in numerous editwars already, is the article going to need protection again? Everyone please stop reverting and start discussing it here; otherwise the article will simply be protected yet again. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 00:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The claim, which has been widely discredited, including by Nicolas Werth who contributed to the Black Book, only appears in the introduction. It's main significance lies in its use in right-wing literature. But yes it does refer to deaths. TFD (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I already pointed it out in this talk page, that the Black Book of Communism includes as "victims of Communism" many people who were not killed by Communists. Examples include:

• Demographic losses compared to the pre-Communist trends of population growth of the Russian Empire. This may include even non-born children
• People who dead as a result of incompetent or ineffective government policy (famines, excess casualties during World War II etc).
• People who were killed during military conflicts with other powers (i.e. casualties of Vietnam war, Afghanistan war).

These categories clearly do not fall under "mass killings" and the Black Book of Communism does not claim so.--Dojarca (talk) 01:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass killings under Communist regimes occurred during the twentieth century with an estimated number of victims as large as 100 million. (See page x, page 10, and page 14 of the Black Book of Communism) The sentence is perfectly factual - the estimates on those pages go up to 100 million. I think people should be free to add what the minimum estimates are, but why should anybody delete what the high estimate (identified as such) is? The essence of NPOV is deleting POVs you don't like. Dojarca's deletion is NPOV. Smallbones (talk) 01:16, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, this is estimate of "victims of Communism", not of killings. They even add to the number of "victims of Communism" those Russian POWs who was starved or killed in Nazi POW camps, blaming that on Stalin's refusal to sign the Hague convention. Although they blame these deaths on Communism, they are certainly happened not "under Communist regimes" (unless you consider Nazi Germany Communist).--Dojarca (talk) 02:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Read please - Black Book of Communism "The total approaches 100 million killed." Smallbones (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh in that case it is probably used allegorically. Note also that they count any person who died in the prison from whatever reason, even natural. --Dojarca (talk) 02:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

"Allegorically"??? No way, no how. Read it. Smallbones (talk) 03:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Such an extravagant "estimate" does not belong to a a lede of an article per WP:UNDUE (to the first sentence even more so). Case to the point, take a look at this table, where any impartial editor would observe a significant drop in the death toll estimates after 1990, that is after Soviet archives have been opened. (Igny (talk) 02:26, 14 December 2010 (UTC))

Feel free to put your estimate in the 1st sentence as well - as long as it has a reliable source behind it. If you can find something with a publisher as prestigious as Harvard University Press it would be best, but any reliable source is ok with me. Smallbones (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, NPOV does not work this way. You can not put extravagant claims into the lede of the article only to rebuke it. That alone gives that claim too much credit. (Igny (talk) 02:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC))

This is reference work. Just look at good WP:RS and use the information. "Black book" (page 5, quote): "the total approaches 100 million people killed". Same book, page 15. It tells: 100 million, " in contrast to 25 million victims by Nazi". The book explains how did they arrive to such numbers and so on. If there are alternative estimates of the total numbers of victims then find these sources to provide a range of numbers. This is very simple. It does not matter if we talk about the numbers of people or the number of proteins in a human cell. Biophys (talk) 03:09, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

As I already said, they count people who died of natural causes or killed by foreign powers (i.e. US in Vietnam) as killed by Communists. That's why it it evidently allegorical meaning of the word. Anyway, the number certainly includes people who did not die as a result of "mass murder", it includes war casualties, those died in prison of unknown cause, those who died as a result of government's mistakes and poor performance and so on. That is it includes mostly people who died not in a course of mass murder. Finally, it includes victims of illegal Communist parties in non-Communist states, that's why those who died not under Communist regimes.

Anyway, academic level of this book is indicated by the fact that they use Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" as a source, while it is not a scholarly work, but a fictitious novel. Even Solzhenitsyn himself denounced some criticisms of his book by just putting out that it was just a fictitious narrative.--Dojarca (talk) 03:59, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

What you assert does not matter. Get a source. Smallbones (talk) 04:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

A source for what? That The Gulag Archepelago is a work of fiction? That people who died of natural causes weren't 'killed'? It is your responsibility to prove a source is valid, not other's responsibility to prove it isn't. If one of its authors suggests a claim is wrong, you aren't exactly off to a good start. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

A source with alternative estimate(s) for the number of people killed under all communist regimes. If there are no alternative estimates, let's use what we have.Biophys (talk) 04:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The authors of Black Book of Communism include in the number of people who died of different causes, including cased by mismanagement by the government (the greatest number included in those 100 million victims was the alleged 65 million who died during Chinese famine due to mistakes of Mao Zedong), those who were killed by the US in Vietnam and those who were killed in non-Communist countries by Communist guerilla members. So nor all of them died in a result of mass murder, neither all of them died under Communist regimes. That's why the number does not belong here.--Dojarca (talk) 04:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

RE:"It is your responsibility to prove a source is valid" - it's in a reliable source, that's all I have to prove. It's been taken to WP:RSN several times and each time they said, yes, it is a reliable source. Take it there again if you'd like but the same result will come up. The simple assertions here of people who want to delete the material mean nothing. And the same folks refuse to come up with a source. Smallbones (talk) 05:07, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not it is reliable source is irrelevant because the number anyway does not belong to this article. Even if all those people were killed, it does not follow from the Black Book of Communism that all them were killed in the course of a mass killing. Even people who were executed during the Great Purge of the USSR weren't killed en masse mostly. There are some exceptions, such as alleged Katyn massacre where indeed was a mass killing and the victims were buried in mass graves, but regarding the majority of other executions (not to say, indirect causes of death) this was not the case.--Dojarca (talk) 05:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I think this is valid point by Dojarca. One should create article Communist repressions instead. Biophys (talk) 05:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It is a valid point that the article is about mass killings and any totals must be of mass killings, not killings in general. TFD (talk) 14:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It is not a valid point. The sources decide the definition of mass killings. A50000 (talk) 17:45, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

See Valentino, the only source used in the article for the definition of mass killings, "Rather, for the purposes of this definition, a massive number is defined simply as at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years".[10] TFD (talk) 17:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

So, are you arguing that the sources are inconsistent? A50000 (talk) 21:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I am not arguing anything. You said, "The sources decide the definition of mass killings. I replied that only one source used in the article for the definition. If you disagree with the definition then you must provide sources. TFD (talk) 22:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The article doesn´t need to be consistent. If the sources have an inconsistent definition of mass killings then the article should also have an inconsistent definition. Furthermore, this is original research. If you compare the definition that one source uses with the definition that another source uses, that is original research. A50000 (talk) 17:35, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

""If you compare the definition that one source uses with the definition that another source uses, that is original research". What? That has got to be one of the most bizarre interpretations of what constitutes 'original research' I've ever seen. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)\

It is not that different sources have an" inconsistent definition of mass killings", but that they do not have a definition at all. TFD (talk) 17:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

They don´t have to have a definition. A50000 (talk) 20:16, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

If they give a number without defining what it means, it cannot be a 'reliable source' then, can it? (And don't try to tell me that 'they have been recognised as reliable sources': nothing is RS in the abstract, it can only be described as reliable in relation to what it contains - or in this case, doesn't). AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:26, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it can. A50000 (talk) 17:39, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

367.492! AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm just appalled that folks write things like "Whether or not it is reliable source is irrelevant." Now you want to limit the use of "mass killing" to something like "simultaneous massacre"? Maybe you also want to limit it to killings where bullets were used as well? Why don't you look at what the sources say - it's extremely clear that most sources include such things as mass starvation. Smallbones (talk) 15:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not the Black Book is a reliable source, there are occassions when information appears in them that is shown by later reliable sources to be incorrect. For example a 2004 newspaper article said that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, a claim contradicted by most reliable sources. The community decided that the article about Obama should say that he was born in Hawaii and ignore the reliably sourced claim that he was born in Kenya. TFD (talk) 18:12, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

1. All reliable sources can have errors. WP uses the term to mean "a source which is reliable for WP purposes" not to mean "infallible." 2. Are you saying the Black Book made any claims at all about Obama? If not, then the aside is totally irrelevant to this discussion. 3. The Black Book has repeatedly been found to be RS in discussions on WP. If you wish to raise it once agaon at RSN, then do so. Collect (talk) 19:09, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Collect, are you suggesting that it is reasonable to include something from WP:RS, even when later WP:RS shows that it is wrong? This is going to make for some interesting edit warring if applied in other articles. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice if you noted what WP:RS and WP:V say. WP:Infallible source does not exist. Is this clear? We do not excise The Times as an RS because it erred in an article - the whole idea of WP is that we not seek to determine truth only that we make sure the claims are properly backed by the citation given. Or, to make it very clear: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. That is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. It is not up to us to assert truth, it is only up to us to list claims which are made in reliable sources, as defined by WP, not by any standard of infallibility. Thrice stated - should be sufficient. Collect (talk) 20:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice if you actually answered the question I asked... AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Please note that to any rational person, for this "discussion" to have gone on so long is insane. If some anti-communist said that communists have drowned ten trillion kittens, that would not make it an appropriate comment to put in the lede. Rick Norwood (talk) 20:44, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Collect, again, editors using your reasoning raised this when they tried to include that the American president was born in Kenya, because it was reported in a reliable source in 2004. TFD (talk) 21:13, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

to deny the estimated dead from the famines and purges by communist is truly sad. you are letting your ideology blind you from documented facts. the sentence belongs in the lead, we all here believe the tragedy occurred, but some are blocking the truth to push a pov. Darkstar1st (talk) 22:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

If only it were the "truth". At best what you refer to is a speculation and sensationalist journalism. (Igny (talk) 00:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC))

People who believe absolutely in memes contrary to fact often accuse those who point out their errors of being the ones blinded by ideology. If you weren't blinded your astronomical ideology, you would realize that the moon is made of green cheese. A serious writer on the subject of deaths due to communism would not title his book, "The Black Book of Communism". A serious writer of an encyclopedia article on deaths due to communism would not title his article, "Mass killings under Communist regimes". If your goal is anti-communist propaganda then 1) Wikipedia is not the place for it, 2) Extreme claims undermine the willingness of reasonable people to accept reasonable claims. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Then what do you think the title should be? AmateurEditor (talk) 23:01, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

We should use the title normally used in the literature to describe the subject. TFD (talk) 23:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

We would if there were a single title for this topic. Different sources prefer different terms. We've been over this before, TFD. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:04, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

If you know any sources that write about this topic and have a name for it, then it would be helpful if you provided them. TFD (talk) 02:18, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Many of the terms used have already been provided in the "terminology" section of the article. As I recall, "mass killings" was agreed to be the most neutral term by every editor who took a position on the issue back when we achieved consensus on a name change for the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:49, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it is the title "Mass killings under Communist regimes", which is not found anywhere except as a chapter title in Valentino's book. TFD (talk) 02:56, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't follow. What exactly are you saying "No" to? AmateurEditor (talk) 03:04, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

You are actually arguing for the deletion of the article. A50000 (talk) 19:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you please provide sources that explain the subject that this article is supposed to explain. TFD (talk) 22:48, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Here are four. Now please explain the relevance of your prior point that the descriptive title of this article not being used verbatim in the sources. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:59, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The article isn´t supposed to explain anything. It´s about mass killings under communist regimes. A50000 (talk) 19:52, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Only one of them (Valentino) is about "mass killings". While yyou may be able to draw connections and express frustration that other people are not able to see things in the same way, Wikipedia requires that connections are explicitly stated in sources. If sources do not make the connections that you do, then yo must accept that. TFD (talk) 23:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

So when another source refers to "mass murder" under communist regimes, to you it's talking about a completely different, unrelated topic? AmateurEditor (talk) 23:54, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Please do not distort my words and represent that you do not understand them when they are clear. The "mass killings" written about by Valentino are a different concept from what other writers discuss. It does not include for example people who were never born. If you have a source that connects all these concepts then please present it. TFD (talk) 00:12, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

No, "mass murder" and "mass killing" and functionally equivalent terms in this context. It is true that Valentino proposes a precise definition for "mass killing" which differs from its conventionally understood definition (which he also uses), but this article cannot, is not, and never has been limited to Valentino's book or his definition of that term. So, again, do you believe that sources which refer to "mass murder" under communist regimes are talking about some other topic, or are you now satisfied that there are reliable sources for this article? AmateurEditor (talk) 00:32, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any sources that explain that or do you think that we should rely on your own original research? TFD (talk) 00:46, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I've directed you to the sources already, but I can't make you read them. If you looked at the sources, you would know the following: They discuss the same regimes during the same time periods and the same events. Both "mass killing" and "mass murder" define out war deaths, both terms require lethal intent, both terms are "killing" (check the dictionary) on a large scale (hence the use of the word "mass"; again, check the dictionary). Neither involves anything remotely similar to "people who were never born" (I have no idea where you got that from). For practical purposes, Valentino restricts his precise definition of "mass killing" to 50,000 killed within 5 years, but also states that "mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out" by communist regimes, so clearly the term itself is not limited by those numerical boundaries. Now, what is your basis for thinking that they are different? AmateurEditor (talk) 02:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Here is a link to a paper, "New directions in comparative research on genocide" that reviews the sources you have provided. The writings were about genocide or mass killings (their terminology and definitions differed) and used the deaths under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as examples. They were not primarily concerned about Communism, and their explanations differ. More importantly, no one has written any comparison of their conclusions about these cases, but have compared their conclusions about genocide in general. While an article about comparative genocide studies could be written, using these articles as a hook to for this article will necessarily lead to POV problems. Even if you could argue that these writers could form the basis for this article, you will still be restricted by the topics they discussed. For example, Valentino does not include mass killings in Communist Afghanistan under Communist mass killings but under counter-insurgency. He sees no difference between Soviet actions there and those of right-wing governments in South America.

You will notice that the paper does not mention the Black Book, and while it mentions Rummel and Horowitz, it does not mention their theories about Communist mass killings. That speaks to the weight their views deserve.

Note also that the article states that comparative genocide studies are recent, Therefore we are not yet able to determine the acceptance of these theories in the academic community. We cannot for example treat the subject of mass killings under Communist regimes in the same way we would Communist revolutions.

TFD (talk) 17:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is not about comparative genocide studies. It´s about mass killings under communist regimes. A50000 (talk) 00:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

What is your point? TFD (talk) 01:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

My point is that comparative genocide studies are irrelevant. A50000 (talk) 18:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

TFD, I agree that some of the sources used in this Wikipedia article (the ones discussed in the link you just provided) are not "primarily" concerned with Communism and that their explanations differ. I do not agree that this necessarily leads to POV problems with using them as sources here. The sources in question have substantial sections on the topic of killing by Communist regimes and are entirely appropriate for use. I agree that we must be careful in their use and attribute any theorizing to the opinion of the relevant author, rather than to the consensus of the academic community, but that is exactly what has been done. You are simply factually incorrect about Valentino not including mass killing in Afghanistan as communist mass killing (he puts it in both categories, although primarily "counter-insurgency") and him seeing no difference between that and right-wing killings in South America, as I specifically refuted during the AfD.

The paper you link to is about the wider topic of genocide studies, rather than the Communist Genocide, as this article was originally titled, so no mention of sources such as the Black Book is not surprising or noteworthy. Likewise any lack of mentions of theories specific to the crimes of communism rather than genocide studies per se reflects on the focus of the paper, not the weight or notability of those views. The "Crimes against humanity under communist regimes" paper is more relevant in that regard and even it is incomplete. I agree that we must treat the subject of "Mass killings under Communist regimes" on its own terms. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"they count people who died of natural causes or killed by foreign powers (i.e. US in Vietnam) as killed by Communists" What? Cite the page number and quote this please.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"the alleged 65 million who died during Chinese famine due to mistakes of Mao Zedong" "Mistakes"?????? I think that when the absolute rulers of a country know their people are starving and yet continue to extract exorbitant amounts of food from them for export, this makes it more than just simple "mistakes" on their part. Scholars such as Steven Rosefielde acknowledge this: "Mao's slaughter was caused in considerable part by terror-starvation; that is, voluntary manslaughter (and perhaps murder) rather than innocuous famine." (Red Holocaust. Routledge, 2009. pg. 114) Dikotter's research in Chinese archives also documents this, along with millions being beaten to death by cadres, which is why I removed The Great Leap Forward section from "Controversies."--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"Even people who were executed during the Great Purge of the USSR weren't killed en masse mostly." I'd like to see a source for this one, or are you just making stuff up again? Even if true, the fact remains that the vast majority of people killed in the purges were condemned to death en masse (proscription lists containing hundreds and sometimes thousands of names were summarily sentenced to execution by NKVD troikas or by the vozhd himself - he signed 357 death lists that condemned some 40,000 people to execution.(Ellman, 2007) Here's one example:

Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin, asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and of the Soviet authorities" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying activities" Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support). Right: The Politburo's decision is signed by Secretary Stalin

The plethora of mass graves discovered in subsequent years are a testament to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in huge numbers during a short period of time (1937-38), and by Valentino's own criteria (50,000 people killed in 5 years) the purges absolutely qualify as "mass killing." This is just yet another example of ridiculous hair-splitting by those who want to see the article deleted for ideological reasons.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Mann writes in his book, The dark side of democracy, "Most deaths inflicted under Communist regimes were not intentional murders".[11] TFD (talk) 16:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Simply pulling a small quote out of context in no way refutes what I posted about Mao's culpability for deaths in the GLF (based on archival evidence provided not only by Dikotter but also Yang Jisheng and his authoritative account "Tombstone" (2008) - the latter is what prompted Rosefielde to classify GLF deaths as "terror-starvation" and at best voluntary manslaughter and perhaps even murder) OR that the shooting deaths of nearly 700,000 people in 1937-38 qualifies as mass killing. Furthermore, Michael Ellman (2007) considers some of the deaths in the 1932-33 famine to be mass murder. "The three physical elements of the alleged crime are well known and uncontroversial (as facts, though not their interpretation)": exporting 1.8 million tonnes of grain during the mass starvation (enough to feed more than five million people for one year), (ii) preventing migration from famine afflicted areas (which may have cost an estimated 150,000 lives) and (iii) making no effort to secure grain assistance from abroad (which caused an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths), and that the only way to defend Stalin from a charge of mass murder is "to argue he was ignorant of the consequences of his actions." Historian Norman Naimark (Stalin's Genocides. Princeton University Press, 2010. p. 133-135) asserts that Stalin's actions should be considered genocidal.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:51, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Note WP:NPOV. The approach you should take is to choose the best sources and read what they say about the general understanding of the subject. Expressing opinions that have not been subjected to academic scrutiny as facts and continually searching for the most extreme views of the topic is the wrong approach. You should know that "genocide" has a specific meaning, and relates to murder directed against ethnic groups. You should also be aware of the limitations of articles based on misrepresentation of sources. While the gullible and the converted will accept it, it alienates discerning readers who will easily see through it, especially if they look at the talk page. In the end readers will question why, if Communism was so bad, we cannot just stick with the facts and feel the need to exaggerate. The effect may be the opposite of what is intended - it may even create Communist converts who assume that if anti-Communists are lying, the Communists must be telling the truth. TFD (talk) 17:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of "academic scrutiny," the works of the reputable scholars I cited in my last posting (Rosefielde, Ellman and Naimark) have all been published by reliable academic institutions or publishers, such as Routledge and Princeton University Press.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ellman's paper was initially a reply to the comments of Davies and Wheatcroft and the author clearly states that he is describing his POV: "This article contributes to the debate....It is suggested that starvation was a cheap substitute for the cancelled deportations. It is argued that in 1932 33 Stalin pursued a multi pronged policy of state terror against the population of the USSR." We cannot decide that the opinions expressed in this paper are the truth, and choose them over the opinions of other scholars. We cannot even assign any weight to Ellman's opinions based on this paper because we do not know what weight the scholarly community has given it. We need a reliable secondary source that explains what weight to give the various viewpoints. TFD (talk) 18:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I've already provided one, Norman Naimark's book, again published by Princeton University Press. I'll quote him at length: "There is enough evidence - if not overwhelming evidence - to indicate that Stalin and his lieutenants knew that the widespread famine in the USSR in 1932-33 hit Ukraine particularly hard, and that they were ready to see millions of Ukrainian peasants die as a result. They made no efforts to provide relief; they prevented the peasants from seeking food themselves in the cities or elsewhere in the USSR; and they refused to relax restrictions on grain deliveries until it was too late." (pp. 134-135) And Steven Rosefielde makes a similar argument in his book (again published by Routledge): "Grain supplies were sufficient enough to sustain everyone if properly distributed. People died mostly from terror-starvation (excess grain exports, seizure of edibles from the starving, state refusal to provide emergency relief, bans on outmigration, and forced deportation to food-deficit locales), not poor harvests and routine administrative bungling." (pg. 259) It's funny... When those in favor of this article's deletion quoted Ellman in an older article published in the same academic journal (At least one reliable source exists (Ellman) that claims the most excess death in the Stalin's USSR were not results of executions but of "war, famine and disease"), I don't recall you making the same argument, that we need "reliable secondary sources" to corroborate such a statement. But when I cite a more recent article in which he makes the argument that some of these famine deaths were intentional... well, that's different. Even though, again, I provided Naimark's view on the subject. The double standard is quite apparent here, and you are clearly not some objective voice in this debate either.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

(out) C. J. Griffin, this is an encyclopdia, not a debating forum for Slavic ethnic disputes. You should look at the articles about the Irish famine. We do not seem the same sort of argumentation there. TFD (talk) 00:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

"Tolling methodologies"

I'd like to ask folks not to use terms like "tolling methodologies." Frankly I don't know what you are talking about, and I think most native English speakers wouldn't either. Just to be sure I googled "tolling methodologies" and there were 153 results. This article was number 3 and most seem to be about congestion pricing for toll bridges and the like. As far as the low estimate on the numbers killed, I believe that comes from Valentino - so if your term is meant to show there is a range of estimates - well yes 21-70 million according to Valentino. Smallbones (talk) 23:13, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Although I am not a native English speaker, this wording sounds awkward for me also.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:09, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, it's nonsense. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 19:56, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Lede

A current lede has some neutrality issues. To avoid edit wars, I propose to fix them here on the talk page first.

1. "The killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states, including some that have declared adherence to some form of Communist doctrine. The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number of deaths vary widely..."
   The main problem with this piece of text is that an ordinary reader understands "mass killing" as "mass murder", so the text will be understood as if all these peoples (21-70 million) were murdered, although most of them weren't killed or executed, but died as a result of "war, famine and diseases" (Ellman). We need to either explicitly state that the article tells not about mass killings sensu stricto, but about the Valentino's concept (including his concept of "deprivation mass killing") or to rewrite the lede in another way, to specify that we discuss all mass mortality cases, including those associated with famines, deportations, population transfers, diseases, camp mortality, etc, which constituted overwhelming majority of all deaths.
2. "Estimates of the number of deaths vary widely: Benjamin Valentino, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, cites estimates in these three countries ranging from 21 million to 70 million." Do we really need to put in the lede these details about Valentino? Do we really need to rely so heavily on the works of this scholar, who never did his own studies and just made a compilation of secondary sources dealing with mass mortality cases in various countries? Any mention of Valentino in the lede is redundant.
3. "There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries." In other words, "in some other Communist states" (exactly what the first sentence states). Redundant.
4. "These killings, which took place during civil wars, mass elimination of political opponents, mass terror campaigns, or land reforms, may fit a definition of mass murder, democide, politicide, "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined genocide." If we speak about "21-70 million", this sentence is simply false, because most deaths were a result of famines, diseases, and others events that from a commonsensual point of view are not considered as killing. Again, an ordinary reader will conclude that all those people were executed or murdered, that is not true. All of that should be fixed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:09, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

This NPOV tag would only be justified if the article were pushing a POV. It´s not. A50000 (talk) 23:51, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes it is... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:26, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Where specifically? GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 01:32, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Starting with the title, and continuing downwards until it reaches the bottom of the page? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not helpful. Either explain why you feel there are neutrality problems, or concede that there are none. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 01:43, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality problems in the lede are briefly outlined by me in this section. Concretely, my comments on ##1,2,4 are directly relevant to the neutrality issues.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. In any case, if A50000 can make terse claims about the article not pushing a POV, I'm entitled to give equally terse replies. And I'm under no obligation to answer specific questions or 'concede' anything. That is frankly ridiculous... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:07, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

See WP:LEAD: "It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points". The lead implies that there is a connection between Communist government and mass killings but does not explain who has made the connection, what connecion they have made or the degree of acceptance their theories have received. I think that the difficulty a number of editors have is that they assume there is a connection and see no reason why this should be explained. It actually reads like a Cold War propaganda piece. TFD (talk) 02:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Per Michael Mann, acceptance of the "connection" between the communist regimes and mass killings is universal ("All accounts of 20th century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not."). It is only the estimates of numbers and causes which is controversial. TFD, we are trying to discuss and fix POV issues in the article, and you keep trying to argue instead against the article's existence. Whether you intend to or not, you are disrupting the process. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

...And flawed logic creeps in again. That mass murder occurred under 'communist regimes' may be indisputable, but that isn't the same thing as saying it occurred because they were 'communist'. Given that mass murder occurred under 'non-communist' regimes too, the connection is anything but self-evident. Also, you are conflating 'mass murder' with the more broadly (and vaguely) defined 'mass killings' that this article is supposed to be about. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

In Mann's book, The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing, he wrote, "murderous ethnic cleansing has been a central problem of our civilization, our modernity, our conceptions of progress, and our attempts to introduce democracy". (p. ix) I do not read this to mean "acceptance of the "connection" between the communist regimes and mass killings is universal". TFD (talk) 04:17, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

To Andy and TFD, the "connection" (I don't know why you insist on that word) between communist regimes and mass killing which justifies this article is simply that many communist regimes engaged in them and that multiple reliable sources discuss the killing which occurred under this type of regime. That is all that is necessary to have this article. For example, the article Slavery in ancient Greece does not mean that only ancient Greece engaged in slavery, or even that ancient Greek slavery was extraordinary in any particular way. It does not mean that there was a special "connection" between ancient Greeks and slaveholding. The "connection" is that slavery occurred in ancient Greece and multiple reliable sources discuss it sufficiently to write a Wikipedia article. So it is with this article. This article does not say that mass killing was required by communism. A reliable source which promotes that theory may be included as a theory attributed to the source, but the article does not take it as fact. I am having less and less time for Wikipedia as the holiday approaches, so I am taking a hiatus from this discussion for a week or so. Please don't read anything into my lack of response during this time. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You still do not understand that you are drawing a connection. I may for example write an article about crimes committed by English kings called Henry (there were eight of them). I could begin the article by saying, "Crimes have been committed by many English kings. This article is about crimes committed by kings called "Henry"." It would be implicit that I believed that there was a connection between the name of the king and crime. TFD (talk) 02:38, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

False analogy. Do you think that the only thing that the communist regimes had in common was that they were called Communist? A50000 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

It does not matter what you are I think. You need sources that draw the connection. Please read about WP:SYN. TFD (talk) 16:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

That was a rhetorical question. I was showing how your analogy is false.Your analogy would only work if the only thing that the communist regimes had in common was what they were called. The article does not draw any connection. A50000 (talk) 16:22, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

"The article does not draw any connection". Utter nonsense. The connection is in the title. Can you at least tyy to come up with sensible arguments? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:30, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on you. The only argument that TFD was able to come up with was a false analogy. A50000 (talk) 17:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Burden of proof over what? That the article title includes the words "mass killings" and "communist"? Either the article is suggesting a linkage, in which case it should provide the evidence for this, or it isn't, in which case it can only be either utter nonsense, or a synthesis. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You have to prove that the article draws a connection. A50000 (talk) 18:24, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The analogy is apt. A50000 believes that there is no connection between the names kings and their actions but believes there is a connection between Communism and mass killings. In both cases we need to show what connection has been made, who has made it and what degree of acceptance it has. People in fact have drawn all kinds of connections between events, e.g., sunspot activity and business cycles, and we may have articles about them so long as we follow rs, notability and NPOV. TFD (talk) 18:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

TFD, A50000 has stated that "The article does not draw any connection". What he believes is irrelevant. If he says the article doesn't make a connection, then he must accept that it is nonsensical, or accept that it does. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

How is it nonsensical? A50000 (talk) 18:47, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

If one tells A50000 that there must be a connection in order to have an article he replies that there is a connection. When you ask him to explain the connection he says that none exists. We can keep going in circles or just accept that A50000 is unwilling to discuss this. TFD (talk) 18:48, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

There doesn´t have to be a connection in order to have the article. A50000 (talk) 19:20, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Complete bollocks. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:31, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You forgot to state your argument. A50000 (talk) 19:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The arguments in favor of this article seem to take the following form: Axiom: All communists are mass murderers and all mass murderers are communists. Adolph Hitler was a mass murderer, therefore he must have been a communist. Martin Luther King was a communist, therefore he must have been a mass murderer. I say it's spinich and I say the hell with it. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Nope. And setting up straw arguments when the article just had an AfD is not helpful. Nor is Thurber helping here. What we have, as near as I can figure, is 1. fact that lots of peole died due to deliberate acts of regimes which are generally accepted to be "communist" (claims backed by reliable sources) and 2. that claims made in the article are backed by WP reliable sources. It is, in point of fact, not up to any editor to assert that they know that a connection does or does not exist otherwise. Collect (talk) 13:01, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Please, focus on the main point: I claim that, since the Valentino's "mass killing" is not the same as the commonsensual "mass killing", the lede should either specify what concretely do we mean under this term (so we need to tell about the Valentino's "deprivation mass killing" concept), or to separate the victims of "mass killings" (commonsensual) from other victims. In any event, it is necessary to clarify in the lede that the majority of those 21-70 million were not murdered or executed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you really think we need to say "Most people killed were not executed"? And do you have an RS source for such a claim - or do we simply use OR to make it? I trust readers to know the English language here, and the term "killing" is separate from "murder" and from "execution" so that most people are not confused. Collect (talk) 15:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

At least one reliable source exists (Ellman) that claims the most excess death in the Stalin's USSR were not results of executions but of "war, famine and disease". Another source, Valentino, distinguish between "mass killing" and "deprivation mass killing". However, my point is that we must write the lede in such a way that false impression is not created that all these people were "killed", "murdered" or "executed".

Let me also point out that this article was initially created as an article about Khmer Rouge genocide, and the article was generally quite correct, although the article title, "Communist genocide", was redundantly general. The Khmer Rouge genocide, the only mass killing committed by Communist authorities that was officially recognised as genocide and was a pure manifestation of genocide, had at least three independent roots: Stalinist and ultra-Maoist ideology (which was extremist even by Maoist standards), Khmer's extreme nationalism, and Khmer's tradition of revenge. Therefore, this genocide had very strong national specifics, so "Communist genocide" was redundantly generic, and "Kampuchean genocide" would be more correct. One way or the another, after adding various and numerous examples of mass mortality during Communist era to the article about genocide the article became a mixture of synthesis and WP:UNDUE, and the lede is the worst part of the article (for the reasons described above).

And the difficulties we faced with the lede is a result of these non-neutrality and synthesis: we have sources that clearly and unequivocally state that the mass deaths during Stalinist era were mostly a result of "war, famine and disease", but we cannot expand this statements onto all events described in this article, because that was not the case for KR genocide: KR's victims were, as a rule, murdered. That is a direct consequence of combining of different and tangentially related events in one article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it has to be said again. Communism doesn't work. Communist governments have killed a lot of people. These deaths should be reported in the articles on the countries involved. The objection is to an article whose title screams "propaganda". No real encyclopedia has an article with any such title, and Wikipedia loses respect because it has such an article. The article hurts Wikipedia, and does nothing to further the anti-communist cause. Rick Norwood (talk) 16:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Cries of "propaganda" have no place here. Take it to AfD (for about the 7th time) if that is what you really believe, where they will likely accept that the article belongs here (for about the 7th time). If your goal is simply to undermine or disrupt the article, you shouldn't be editing it.

Siebert's objections on the surface seem more reasonable. He thinks that our readers may confuse the ideas of mass killings and mass murder or mass execution. I think that the large majority of readers know the differences between killing, murder, manslaughter, execution, etc. It's clear common sense to most people that you can murder somebody by, for example, starving them to death intentionally. On the other hand, if you only ignored without thinking about it, the obvious consequence of your actions that that people would die if they weren't fed, then that would probably be manslaughter - still a form of killing. Using Ellman to argue that these deaths aren't mass killings is clearly wrong - he argues that they were mass murder, rather than mass manslaughter - but clearly mass killings in any case. If you want to state that some scholars believe that these deaths weren't mass killings, you need to find one that actually states this, rather than misinterpret Ellman who clearly believes the opposite. Smallbones (talk) 18:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Propaganda, n.: "Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. (OED).[ttp://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/propaganda] It is not up to us to compare and contrast different sources and develop a unique understanding of the subject. Instead, we should present the views of scholars, following proper weight. TFD (talk) 19:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

That's obvious - for the most part i think we do present the views of reliable sources. There is always this tendency that creeps in, however, that somebody deletes reliable sources and claim that it is propaganda, or simply misinterprets material so that a question of propaganda appears. If there are reliable sources who claim that "mass killings" are propaganda, they should be included. But to suggest that this is all propaganda is simply disruptive. So do not claim that this is propaganda, come up with a reliable source who says these ideas are propaganda. Smallbones (talk) 20:17, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: "Take it to AfD (for about the 7th time)" The fact that the article's subject is notable (and therefore it cannot be deleted) is not a carte blanche for adding non-neutral statements or original research to it. We discuss the ways how to fix these issues, not how to delete the article. I outlined major lede's issues. If you have any comments on that (or any ideas how to improve the lede), please propose them here. If not, do not distract others from their work. Re Ellman, you should read him more carefully. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:45, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You do not appear to be following the reasoning presented to you, so I will present it again. No one is questioning the accounts that have been given of mass killings in the USSR, China and DR. What we are questioning is the the theory that these events are connected. As editors, it is not our role to make our own connections, but we must rely on secondary sources that do this. We must explain who has made the connection, what connection they made, and the degree of acceptance their theories have received. If we push the theory that the events are connected, they we are engaging in propaganda. TFD (talk) 20:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Courtois, Goldhagen, Apelbaum, Valentino, Rummel and others cited in the article DO make the connection between Communist thought and the mass killings. As far as I can see no reliable source says that they are not connected. Seriously, are you suggesting that in totalitarian societies run by communists, it was just a coincidence that so many of them engaged in mass killing? If so you need to get a reliable source that says so. Smallbones (talk) 22:34, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Taking into account that Courtois has been extensivelly criticised by scholars, their views are hardly mainstream. Rummel was known primarily for his application of factor analysis to reveal the correlations between the onset of mass killings and the regime type. He found the correlation between totalitarianism and mass killing, not between Communism and mass killing. In addition, since correlation is a purely phenomenological approach, the question about any casual linkage is simply irrelevant here, that is why Rummel is much more modest in his conclusions drawn in the articles published in scholarly journals than in his books, that had not been vetted by scientific community (and on his web site); in other words, in actuality we have "two Rummels" (only one of them fully meets RS criteria, and this Rummel does not support your claims). Moreover, since his figures are grossly inflated, his conclusions (made primarily based on these figures) should be cardinally revised, which he refuses to do. Goldhagen seems to repeat what Rullem says. Anne Appelbaum is a journalist (not scholar), who specialises on the USSR/EE related topics only, so she is hardly a good source for general conclusions.
The last one in your list is Valentino. As I already wrote, I have nothing against writing this article based on his "Final solution", however, it require us to present the content in such a way that a reader would understand that we discuss not "mass killing" (understood commonsensually), but the Valentino's concept of "mass killings" (primarily as "deprivation mass killings").--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting collection of writers. Valentino of course did not connect mass killings and Communist thinking. The other four writers are all right-wingers writing outside the mainstream academic press. You can read their WP articles: Stéphane Courtois, Daniel Goldhagen, Anne Applebaum, R. J. Rummel - sounds like the authors listing from a National Review book of the month club. Goldhagen has never published any major work in mainstream academia, and his views on Germans and Muslims are definitely fringe. Applebaum is a journalist, not an historian. Rummel and Courtois' views, including their estimates, have not gained acceptance. Why not add David Horowitz and Richard Pipes and round out the list. TFD (talk) 23:19, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

(out) So RS sources which you deem to be "right wing" are, ipso facto, not RS. Sorry -- the discussions at AfD, at RS/N etc. all disagreed with that interesting POV. Collect (talk) 00:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Collect, please do not misrepresent what I wrote. When we find a theory is only expressed by right-wing writers in polemical works outside the academic mainstream, and ignored by mainstream academics, then we may conclude they are not presenting a consensus view. I would form the same opinion of views that were peculiar to any political group. TFD (talk) 00:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

IOW, the fact that a writer is deemed by you to be "right wing" is relevant? Why? And RS sources are "polemical" if they are by "right wing" writers? Nope. That is not how WP:RS works. If a source is RS, it is usable without saying "this is right wing therefore it does not count, and must be fringe." You need specific RS sources for that sort of claim. Collect (talk) 01:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

For crying out aloud, Collect, do you really think that WP:RS implies automatic NPOV? If Both the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian are accepted as WP:RS (I assume they are), does that mean there is no POV difference between them? NPOV over a contentious issue requires taking a broad range of views over a controversial topic into consideration, not just finding a single RS source that suits your objective, and basing an article on that. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I am saying that if support for opinions can only be found among a narrow ideological segment, have not been published in the academic press and are eithered ignored by other writers or mentioned in articles describing right-wing ideology, then let us proceed with caution. Wikipedia articles are not supposed to push a POV, whether left-wing, right-wing, or liberal. TFD (talk) 01:25, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

What is the reliable source for your specific claim that these are all "right wing" ideologues? It is not up to WP editors to make such claims without precise and proper sourcing for them. BTW, RS != NPOV, nor is it expected that miraculously all sources for any topic will instantly be NPOV in and of themselves. NPOV refers to the WP process to make sure all POVs are included. Nothing else. Collect (talk) 02:00, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Taking into account that you didn't answer on my post, I assume you agree with what I say: the article should either focus on mass killings understood from the point of view of common sense, or it should rely primarily on the Valentino's book (and that should be clearly and openly written in the lede).--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I made no such statement. The article should contain all claims pertinent to the topic of each section reliably sourced per WP:RS. Collect (talk) 02:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

So it does appear that editors are saying that this is all propaganda. What's missing is any evidence - reliably sourced or otherwise. Attacks on reliable sources that I've mention are as always there, but no evidence whatsoever for the "propagandists" POV. So there is a simple calculation here - reliable sources say there is a connection between communist thought and mass killing, no reliable sources dispute this claim, therefore the claim may appear in the article and the counter-claim (if there is one) may not. Smallbones (talk) 03:14, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

See "Stephan Courtois Historical revisionism and the Black Book of Communism controversy" in French writers and the politics of complicity (JHU Press, 2006):[12] "Courtois does ultimately reveal himself to be complicitous not only with a fundamentally anti-Semitic reading of history but, through some of the "evidence " provided in his introduction, with the French (and European) extreme Right today" (p. 159). "...it is not surprising that The Black Book of Communism was welcomed by the extreme Right in France (and in the United States as well)" (p. 160). Applebaum's book is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a group "known for having distinctly American Conservative views". It was founded by Frank Chodorov and William F. Buckley. The section R. J. Rummel#Political views is well-sourced. There are sources that Goldhagen's political views are popular with the far right in Europe and neoconservatives at home. TFD (talk) 03:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

To all participants of this dispute. When I started this discussion, I outlined four lede's issues that in my opinion should be fixed for the article to satisfy minimal quality criteria. All of that has no direct relation of the question is the article is a piece of propaganda or not. If you want to discuss this question, create a new thread, and do it there. Please, stop doing that here and focus on the section's topic. @Collect. We do not discuss here what the article should contain; @ TFD and Smallbones. We do not discuss here if the article is a piece of propaganda. We are supposed to discuss the lede. Please, do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

It is original research. TFD (talk) 07:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Paul that people should stay on-topic of the thread. In regard to Paul's first point:

1. "The main problem with this piece of text is that an ordinary reader understands "mass killing" as "mass murder", so the text will be understood as if all these peoples (21-70 million) were murdered, although most of them weren't killed or executed, but died as a result of "war, famine and diseases" (Ellman)."I

I have to disagree. The problem with this argument is that it is based on the premise that ordinary reader understands "mass killing" as "mass murder". Unless Paul has some RS that describes what the "ordinary reader" understands, I don't see how anyone can claim that premise is valid. I as a native English speaker understand the difference between mass killing and mass murder perfectly well. Unless most native english speakers didn't receive a high school education, then most would understand the difference too. Some basic definitions are in order:

• Die: to stop living or existing, either suddenly or slowly
• Kill: to cause someone or something to die
• Murder: to commit the crime of intentionally killing a person

The phrase most of them weren't killed or executed, but died as a result of "war, famine and diseases" is somewhat tortured too. If someone dies as a result of "war, famine and diseases" then the "war, famine and diseases" killed them. For example GI Joe was killed by enemy artillery fire, he died from shrapnel wounds. Both assertions are equally true. In any case, are we going around in circles here? This was all discussed before and can be found in the archives. --Martin (talk) 22:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This page is a fraud

"The main problem with this piece of text is that an ordinary reader understands "mass killing" as "mass murder", so the text will be understood as if all these peoples (21-70 million) were murdered, although most of them weren't killed or executed, but died as a result of "war, famine and diseases" (Ellman)." There are a raft of problems with the various unsupported assertions of this page but this is a huge one. It is, at best, a huge equivocation to claim "mass killings" when actually the majority of what is being claimed here is an _estimated_ (i.e., imagined, fantasized) number of people who "died" of natural causes which are then arbitrarily attributed to the actions of "communist regimes" according to the arbitrary estimations of certain selected book writers. This is largely based on arbitrary demographic calculations which are notoriously incapable of distinguishing between mortality and migration. These techniques have no way to know which it is. Asserting that these ultimately baseless demographic estimates "deaths" are "killings" is, at best, a huge equivocation, and at worst a deliberate fraud.76.15.192.5 (talk) 17:02, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The claims made in the article are based on reliable sources, and thus what you know to be the truth has very little weight. Collect (talk) 17:15, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

"If we speak about "21-70 million", this sentence is simply false, because most deaths were a result of famines, diseases, and others events that from a commonsensual point of view are not considered as killing." - Exactly, but this is even way too generous. It is not just that they are not "killings", as fraudulently declared by the title of this page. It is that many of these "deaths" have either no credible foundation of even having occurred at all. And the notion that these imagined deaths are even _indirectly_ linked to policies of "communist regimes" by anything other than the baseless fantasies and speculations of certain book writers, is backed by nothing but assertion. This stuff is just a complete religious fantasy. The Lede even speaks of this gibberish as "documented". "Documented"!!! What nonsense. Some brainwashed American crackpot who writes a book imagines something into existence and it is "documented"! At best only a tiny fraction of the fantasized gibberish on this page is actually "documented". The rest is pure superstition and mysticism.76.15.192.5 (talk) 17:26, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The claims made in this article are not based on the sources given. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:28, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

So which fraudulent source says that those imagined deaths of people who "died as a result of 'war, famine and diseases' says they are the result of are "mass kilings"?76.15.192.5 (talk) 17:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

":The claims made in this article are not based on the sources given." I'd agree. They are mostly not based on any sources, cherry-picked or otherwise. They are based on selecting wholly baseless "estimates" from some US books published during the Cold War, and then fraudulently re-framing these wholly baseless estimates of non-violent deaths into "mass killings".76.15.192.5 (talk) 17:47, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

To the contrary, there are multiple reliable sources that are reasonably paraphrased in the text of the article. There are few if any sources given that support the claims of those who think the article is biased; and that's because those folks have never offered any sources. Rather they argue (see above) that "reliable sources are irrelevant." [13] If you have sources that support your POV, please include them - as I've said multiple times. If you see a claim that is not supported by the source given, please note this. Since the article is locked up, please just include your sources and the allegedly unsupported claims below. I'll ask that we not include personal attacks (such as the anon borders on, e.g. "deliberate fraud"), more arguments that reliable sources are irrelevant, or arguments that the basic premise of the article is false (that type of argument belongs at AFD - where it has failed about 6 times). The basic premise of the article, as I see it, is that multiple academics and others have stated that Communist regimes have engaged in mass killings. Of course counter evidence may be included, if there is any, but just saying this is all propaganda is a nonsense argument that doesn't belong anywhere, even on this talk page. Smallbones (talk) 17:58, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that the phrase presented in quotations by Smallbones "reliable sources are irrelevant", presented as his main argument appears nowhere but in his own posting here. The article is not only biased. It is a fraud. It presents some things that are RS by WP standards, but that does not justify presenting speculations of deaths that are fantasized by certain RS to be from disease or famine that these RS fantasize as being due to "communist regimes", and then presenting these imagined non-violent deaths as "mass killings".76.15.192.5 (talk) 18:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

It's supported in reliable, mainstream sources. Therefore it's verifiable. And calling it "fraud" is very close to making a legal threat... GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 19:53, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Rubbish. Calling it a fraud might possibly be a breach of WP:NPA (unless of course it was a fraud), but there is no way this can be a 'legal threat'. And incidentally, your 'therefore' is a logical fallacy. Even if the sources are reliable (which I don't necessarily accept), the way they are represented in the article may still be incorrect. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:59, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Fraud is a legal offence; calling the article fraudulent is therefore barely skirting a legal threat. And my logic is sound. If something is supported in reliable sources to which we have access, it is verifiable since it is stated in those sources, and we can verify that that is the case. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 00:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

That is not fully correct. A legal threat would be a statement like: "I claim that the editor X committed fraud and I am going to take some legal steps against him". By contrast, the claim that the lede contains fraud is no more than a perceived legal threat, however, taking into account that it is not addressed to anyone concretely, I don't think the anon can be blamed in anything but rudeness.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Which is why I said it's getting awfully close to a legal threat, but doesn't quite qualify. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 01:30, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"They are based on selecting wholly baseless "estimates" from some US books published during the Cold War" This demonstrates that you really have no idea what you are talking about. The vast majority of citations are post-Cold War. And your constant attacks on "American crackpots" is also quite telling...--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"but died as a result of "war, famine and diseases" (Ellman)" Is this the same Ellman who claims in his 2007 article that the actions of Stalin and co. during 1930-1933 constitute crimes against humanity and that some of the famine deaths constitute mass murder (and even genocide by the loose definition)? I think so....--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:29, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is the same Ellman. By the way, you incorrectly quoted him.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem is I didn't quote him. Here's a quote for you:

"In 1932 – 33 Stalin caused numerous deaths by acts of omission. He omitted to appeal for or accept international help (unlike in 1891 – 92, 1921 – 22, 1941 – 45 and 1946 – 47) although this was proposed by the Ukrainian president in February 1932. He also omitted to import grain. His crime of omission is accepted by Davies and Wheatcroft. In 1932 – 33 Stalin also caused numerous deaths by acts of commission. Numerous deportees and camp and prison inmates—victims of a major Stalinist policy—died. Grain which might have been used to feed the starving population was exported (though in much smaller quantities than originally planned). Peasants who tried to flee from famine-stricken Ukraine and North Caucasus were turned back. Many of them will have died as a result. From the standpoint of national criminal law, the debate is about whether Stalin was guilty ‘only’ of (mass) manslaughter or whether he was guilty of (mass) murder. From a criminal-law point of view, the only way of defending Stalin from the charge of (mass) murder is to argue that he was ignorant of the consequences of his actions. Stalin was undoubtedly ignorant about many things, but was he really that ignorant? From the standpoint of contemporary international criminal law, a crime (or series of crimes) for which Team-Stalin was clearly guilty in 1930 – 34, is that of crime(s) against humanity. Whether or not Team-Stalin was guilty of genocide in 1932 – 33 depends on how ‘genocide’ is defined. If a strict legal definition is adopted, based on the UN Genocide Convention, genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932 – 33 is a charge for which there is some evidence, but it seems to the present author that it does not meet the standard of specific intent required to prove genocide. Furthermore, recent judicial interpretations of ‘in part’ would reduce still further the chances of a successful prosecution. The only exception is the Kuban Ukrainians, who by deportation, starvation, Russification, settlement, and changed national self-ascription, were eliminated as the major group in that region in 1932 – 36. However, it seems likely that the de-Ukrainisation of the Kuban falls into the categories of cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing, which fall outside the UN Convention on genocide. The ‘national operations’ of 1937 – 38, notably the ‘Polish operation’, may qualify as genocide as defined by the UN Convention, although there is as yet no legal ruling on the matter. In addition, the 1937 – 38 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church (and of other religions) may also qualify as genocide as defined in the Convention.."--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

(out) C. J. Griffin, this is not a blog. I take it you do not like Communism, which is fine, but this talk page is not the "Why I hate Communism" talk page. If you are interested in discussing your opinions with like-minded people, then there are plenty of websites that specialize in this. I would start with the Sun Myung Moon's World Anti-Communist League. He is actually the main supported of the Victims of Communism Museaum that supports the views you have adopted. TFD (talk) 23:56, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The quote provided by you perfectly demonstrates Ellman's opinion on the crimes of Stalinism. However, since you have already had extensive interaction with me before, you should have realised that I am familiar with this work and this quote in particular. Yes, many actions of the Stalin's regime are considered as crimes against humanity or loosely defined genocide. However, you should understand that "mass killings" and "crimes against humanity" are not synonyms, and many crimes against humanity were not mass killings. Genocide is also not necessarily mass killing (it may include, for instance, cultural genocide, etc.). Therefore, the quote provided by you doesn't support your idea, and it doesn't contradict to the Ellman's statements that most excessive deaths in the Stalin's USSR were a result of "war, famine and diseases", not killings, murders and executions. In connection to that, please, try to remember that this article deals only with "mass killings", not with other crimes of Communist regimes. Therefore, we must decide if we use a term "mass killings" in the same sense as most people do, we need explicitly specify that for some reasons "war, famine and diseases" are included into the article. Alternatively, if we use Valentino's definition of "mass killings" a clear and unequivocal explanation must be added into the lede that the article is based mostly on this concept.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:28, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

And what of the other bolded part of the quote: "the only way of defending Stalin from the charge of (mass) murder is to argue that he was ignorant of the consequences of his actions..." and then his (clearly rhetorical) question: "Stalin was undoubtedly ignorant about many things, but was he really that ignorant"? Ellman is trying to remain as objective as possible, but clearly he is saying that some of these famine deaths were intentional. In his previous article, he flat out states there is evidence of this: "As far as intent is concerned, there is some evidence that in 1930 – 33 in addition to deportation, sending to prisons and the Gulag, and shooting, Stalin also used starvation in his war against the peasants. In other words, there is some evidence that an unknown fraction of the mortality in the 1931 – 34 Soviet famine resulted from a conscious policy of starvation." As I've pointed out before, other scholars, such as Naimark (2010, pp. 133-135) and Rosefielde (2009, p. 259) have made similar arguments. The latter outright says: "People died mostly from terror-starvation." (italics and bolding mine) --C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that the discussion paper is called "Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932 – 33 Revisited". It is of utility only in discussing that topic. It is relevant to this article only to the extent that it draws a connection between the famine and mass killings under Communist regimes. TFD (talk) 15:58, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

@ C.J. Griffin. Although what you are writing is generally correct, that cannot serve as a support for some most important article's claims. Yes, according to Ellman and some others scholars some actions of Stalin's authorities can be qualified as mass killings, mass murder, loosely defined genocide or crimes against humanity. However, is that sufficient to claim that all victims of Stalinist were the victims of mass killings? Obviously not. Nevertheless, the article claims that "the killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states [...] that have declared adherence to some form of Communist doctrine. The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number of deaths vary widely [...] ranging from 21 million to 70 million." Obviously, by writing that we imply that all these 21-70 million were killed, not died from "war, famine and diseases", as Ellman writes.
Re Rosenfielde, his inflammatory wording and tendency to provide higher figures than many other scholars do put him closer to the edge of the opinion spectrum.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:28, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

"war, famine and diseases" I don't have access to the article at this time, but I believe Ellman is referring exclusively to deaths in the USSR is he not? So you cannot use that in the lede to describe deaths under Communist regimes in general (especially when death tolls from China and Cambodia are included). Furthermore, you cannot simply quote this from Ellman without qualifying it by adding he also argues that some of these 1932-33 famine deaths constitute not only crimes against humanity but also mass murder, based on the evidence available. Regarding Famine in China, which makes up the bulk of deaths attributable to Communism, specialists in this area with archival access, such as Yang Jisheng and Frank Dikotter, are much more reliable. And the evidence they've utilized point to the CCP's culpability in these deaths, as they knew well in advance that people were starving yet increased grain procurements anyway. Dikotter explicitly states that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history," which I rightly added to the GLF section of the article. But considering the use of Valentino's estimate in the lede, perhaps his explanation should be included: "Although not all the deaths due to famine in these cases were intentional, communist leaders directed the worst effects of famine against their suspected enemies and used hunger as a weapon to force millions of people to conform to the directives of the state." Regarding Rosefielde, he is a reputable scholar and estimates in his most recent work are in line with what many other scholars are now saying. So any notion that his work should not be used in the article will be rejected by myself.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:45, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

If you stick to sources about mass killings under Communist regimes, then we can avoid original research about how sources about specific events relate to each other. (BTW the UK and US governments were aware of the famine in the Ukraine, but chose to conceal the information from the public and buy grain anyway.) A am providing a source-finder to assist.

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

TFD (talk) 19:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

@ C.J. Griffin. Re: "I believe Ellman is referring exclusively to deaths in the USSR is he not?" You are absolutely right, however, as i already pointed out in the previous talk page section, that is an additional demonstration of the fact that the article is a combination of different and poorly connected events. In any event, although the Ellman's statement cannot be automatically expanded on China or Kampuchea, the opposite (i.e. the implicit claim that all victims of Stalinism were killed, murdered or executed by the regime) is also incorrect. Please, read my post there and we continue our dispute after that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

No estimates in lede

In the Criticisms of communist party rule article the first sentence in the "Loss of life" section simply places the death toll in the "tens of millions." Something similar could be a possible solution for the lede as it seems there will be a constant edit war over definitive estimates (i.e. 21-70 million). So perhaps something like this could be a solution: "Scholars believe that millions, perhaps tens of millions, lost their lives in various episodes of mass killing." Surely few would dispute that at the very least millions were killed by Communist regimes collectively, no? I can think of three citations for this already, Valentino (his range is in the tens of millions), Rosefielde (communism's internal contradictions "caused to be killed" approximately 60 million people), and Naimark ("...Stalinist Russia, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia - where millions of these country's own citizens were killed in campaigns of mass murder..." 2010, p. 5) I'm sure others could be used. Actual estimates could be placed in the appropriate sub-sections that pertain to individual episodes of mass killing (i.e. red terror, great purges, land reform, etc). I'm not sure if something like this has been suggested before, and don't feel like reading over previous discussions. Thoughts on this? (italics mine of course)--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

How about "a very large number" which "millions" certainly is, at the least? I trust no editor seriously disputes that such killings existed, to be sure. Collect (talk) 14:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

That might be too vague. A "very large number" could also be tens or hundreds of thousands, which surely isn't adequate. But if other editors feel this is a solution then I won't object.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:43, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Using Valentino's numbers in the lede seems pretty POV, seeing as his numbers have been criticized as always being on the high-end of estimates. Something as suggested in this thread seems like the appropriate approach, since the variation between estimates requires a decent amount of verbiage to convey the (scant) literature accurately. BigK HeX (talk) 15:08, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree with the general argument, but "mass killings" is still problematic, in that by far the largest proportion of the deaths have been attributed to the effects of famine, and though there are certainly grounds to see this as deliberate in several cases (particularly the largest ones), or at least as the result of criminal negligence on an obscene scale, it doesn't really fit in with what most people are likely to understand "mass killing" as indicating. Can we not use the same phrase as in the Criticisms of communist party rule article: replace 'killings' with 'loss of life'. This will require a substantial rewrite of the lede, to indicate the great degree to which such loss of life was due to policy (this is indisputable), but it may be a solution. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

It should be written explicitly that significant portions of the deaths are attributed to famines, plague, estimates on children that "should have been" conceived and born, and whatever else people are tossing into these estimates. There used to be a sentence like this in the lede. If it's not there, it should be replaced ASAP, in my opinion.

Something like "some estimates of mass killings include not only murders or executions but also lives lost due to war, famine and disease. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to calamities, and, based on that conclusion add a considerable part of these deaths to the death tolls under their study. The validity of such an approach in calamities, such as those in Russia, China, and elsewhere has been questioned by others." BigK HeX (talk) 15:42, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that it would be better as "some estimates of mass killings include not only murders or executions but...". AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree that is better. Going to edit my suggested sentence above. Thanks. BigK HeX (talk) 15:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the 100 million should be in the lead, because it is the number chosen by the scholars who write about the subject. TFD (talk) 16:02, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

You are trying to combine several different things.

1. Most victims of the Kampuchean regime (2+ million) were murdered, even those who died from starvation, because the scholars (Fein) draw a parallelism between Kampuchean genocide and Warsaw ghetto.
2. More than a million of victims of Great purge were either executed or were killed in the Gulag camps.
3. A land reform in China lead to intentional killing (murder, execution) of large number of peasants; "Cultural revolution" also lead to mass killing of real or perceived political opponents.
   All these deaths are indisputable and fit the commonsensual "mass killing" criteria. Therefore, it is correct to write that "scholars believe that millions lost their lives in various episodes of mass killing." With regard to "perhaps tens of millions", we can include that only if some explanations are added about "deprivation mass killings" (famine, diseased, deportation deaths, camp mortality). We can write, for instance, that since some scholars consider these events as mass killings, the estimates of a total death toll amounts tens of millions.
   I don't think we need to provide concrete numbers, because that creates a false visibility of accuracy. In actuality some figures used in such compilations (e.g. Rummel's data) were obtained during Cold War era and were just rough estimates (that have not been confirmed by recent studies).
   In any event, I believe it is incorrect to combine indisputable cases of mass killings (listed above) with other events that are considered as mass killings by only some scholars.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I think we must start with Furet-Courtois, because they developed the theory that these events are connected. Courtois wrote, "Every Communist country or Party has its own specific history, and its own particular regional and local variations, but a linkage can always be traced to the pattern elaborated in Moscow in 1917. This linkage forms a sort of genetic code of Communism" (Black Book, p. 754). That should be in the lead. TFD (talk) 17:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

because they developed the theory that these events are connected.

What do you mean by this? A50000 (talk) 20:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I mean that they developed the theory that these events are connected. We should see the subject "Jewish Bolshevism" as a model. Many leading Communists were Jewish, which has fueled right-wing conspiracy theories ever since. But while the article is poor, it does not attempt to push the view that there is a connection between the two. TFD (talk) 21:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

They are obviously connected since they all happended under communist regimes. A50000 (talk) 21:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

That is an irrational argument. Even so, we need to reference it, not engage in synthesis. TFD (talk) 21:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

How did you come to the conclusion that that was supposed to be an argument? A50000 (talk) 22:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Whatever you want to call your reasoning process that connects events, this is not the place to present it. TFD (talk) 22:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

So are saying that not all mass killings that happened under communist regimes happened under communist regimes? A50000 (talk) 14:48, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Note to TFD: while I won't edit the article, because of the threat of the major editors to unite to have me banned from Wikipedia if I do, I do follow it. You're in danger of losing your sense of humor. A50000's comment was obviously a joke. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:03, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

So how about something like this for the lede:

The killing of a large numbers of non-combatants has occurred in certain states, including some that have declared adherence to some form of Communist doctrine. The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. It is believed that millions, perhaps tens of millions, lost their lives in various episodes of mass killing by these regimes. There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries. Some estimates of mass killings include not only murders or executions but also lives lost due to war, famine and disease. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to calamities, and, based on that conclusion add a considerable part of these deaths to the death tolls under their study. The validity of such an approach in calamities, such as those in Russia, China, and elsewhere has been questioned by others. (Insert citations where necessary)

It seems to me this would revolve some of the issues being discussed here, and will hopefully prevent future edit wars.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:58, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It's good to see specific wording discussed here but I have to disagree with much of it. 1st, like 99+% of all Wikipedia articles, we should put the name of the article in the first sentence. 2nd, "Mass killings" is a very quantitative subject - numbers should be in the lede, we can't hide from the numbers and they summarize much of what is important about the article. Yes, there are different estimates, but despite the chaotic conditions during the killings, it seems that the differences are not so much due to counting the dead, but how the dead are classified. Thus there should be a range of numbers presented and a summary of the differences in classification. I'll get back with a carefully considered lede sometime during or just after the holidays, but for now I'll suggest getting rid of that horrible 1st sentence (I read it as : Other stuff happened and something similar may have been done by people who called themselves Communists); it is a complete cop-out. Also we should look at the lede in Holocaust and see how they do it. Notice the total numbers in their 1st sentence, reinforced in the 2nd.

So, a first try for a lede:

Mass killings under Communist regimes occurred during the twentieth century with the number of victims estimated between ?? million and 100 million.[with sources for high and low estimates] The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number of killings vary widely: for these three countries ranging from 21 million to 70 million.[nb 1] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries.

Higher estimates of the killings include deaths during civil wars, mass elimination of political opponents, mass terror campaigns, famines and land reforms. Lower estimates exclude deaths, for example, from famines because government policy errors and management mistakes may have caused more deaths than intentional killings.

In either case, some of the killings may fit a definition of mass murder, democide, politicide, "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined genocide.

Smallbones (talk) 15:01, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It is poor writing style to say "mass killings occurred". We should use the verb "to kill", which takes a subject and an object. We should not mention that mass killings occurred elsewhere, unless we are making a comparison. Also, we need to explain who draws a connection between mass killings in various states that happened to be Communist, why they believed they were connected, and the degree of acceptance their theories have received. TFD (talk) 15:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Since you haven´t responded above I take it as an admission that you are wrong. A50000 (talk) 18:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

This talk page is for discussing the improvement of the article not for general debate. If you want to debate, I suggest you go somewhere else. If you wish to improve the article then you should make suggestions for how that may be done. Also, could you please phrase your comments in a more collegial tone. TFD (talk) 19:06, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Isn´t repeating an argument, after it has been refuted many times, considered to be disruptive? A50000 (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you please state your comments clearly. TFD (talk) 19:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Why don´t you just answer my question? A50000 (talk) 22:25, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Because it is a loaded question that contributes nothing to the discussion, and borders on a personal attack. TFD (talk) 16:54, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

How is it a loaded question? A50000 (talk) 17:32, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Smallbones. According to WP:BOLDTITLE, the article's subject should be stated as early as possible in the first sentence, and placed in boldface. As far as numbers are concerned, I also agree that a range should be included, since the numbers is one of the more important aspects covered in the body, per WP:MOSBEGIN. Taking onboard TFD's concerns, how about:

Mass killings under Communist regimes during the twentieth century resulted the estimated deaths of between ?? million and 100 million people.[with sources for high and low estimates] The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number of killings vary widely: for these three countries ranging from 21 million to 70 million.[nb 1] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries.

Higher estimates of the killings include deaths during civil wars, mass elimination of political opponents, mass terror campaigns, famines and land reforms. Lower estimates exclude deaths, for example, from famines because government policy errors and management mistakes may have caused more deaths than intentional killings.

In either case, some of the killings may fit a definition of mass murder, democide, politicide, "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined genocide.

--Martin (talk) 19:25, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

There is still an implicit POV in this writing which can only be removed by explaining what connection scholars have made between Communist regimes and mass killings, who those scholars were and the degree of acceptance their theories have received. We have for example a reliable source, provided by User:C.J. Griffin, that says, Murdersous cleansing is modern, because it is the dark side of democracy.[14] We could use this as a source for an article "Mass killings under democratic regimes". If we were to properly explain the author's argument and the degree of acceptance it has received it would be a neutral article. But if we used it to push a view that democracy leads to mass killings, listing atrocities committed by democracies, it would fail neutrality. TFD (talk) 18:48, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

The article doesn´t make any connection. A50000 (talk) 19:09, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

1. Had the article made no connection between Communism and mass killing, I would see no reason for this article to exist, because in that case it would combine unconnected events (each of which already has its own article). Therefore, unless you propose to delete this article, please stick with the assumption that article does make strong connection between Communism and mass killings.
2. As I already wrote many times, any figures in the lede are misleading, and, therefore unacceptable: these figures show the number of total excess deaths under Communist regimes, not only the victims of mass killings. We should either remove all figures from the lede, or write explicitly in the lede that the article is based primarily on the concept of "deprivation mass killing" developed by Valentino. I personally am comfortable with both options.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:53, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources talk about mass killings under communist regimes. A50000 (talk) 16:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources state that some of these deaths were a result of mass killings. Some (few) reliable sources state all these deaths were the results of mass killing. As I already wrote, I see no problem with writing the article based on these (latter) sources, however, in that case the reservation that it is an opinion of only a part of scholars should be added into the lede (and, accordingly, their definition of mass killing, which differs from how people usually understand this term, should be provided).--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

A50000, you must learn to distinguish between facts and opinions mentioned in reliable sources. The number of deaths is an opinion and cannot be reported as a fact. On the other hand, that scholars have provided a range of estimates and some are more credible than others is a fact, and may be reported as such. TFD (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Then the article violates NOT#IINFO and should be deleted. TFD (talk) 20:08, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass killings under colonial regimes

Note this part of the article:

"Rosefielde also notes that "while it is fashionable to mitigate the Red Holocaust by observing that capitalism killed millions of colonials in the twentieth century, primarily through man-made famines, no inventory of such felonious negligent homicides comes close to the Red Holocaust total."

R J Rummel has recently revised his estimate for 20th Century colonial democide up from 870,000 to a minimum of 50 million. It was only recently that King Leopold's slaughter of Congolese (10 to 20 million victims) was brought to his attention.

Rummel compares the crimes of colonialism to the Gulags. He states "I’ve reevaluated the colonial toll. Where exploitation of a colony’s natural resources or portering was carried out by forced labor (in effect slavery of a modern kind), as it was in all the European and Asian colonies, then the forced labor system built in its own death toll from beatings, punishment, coercion, terror, and forced deprivation. There were differences in the brutality of the system, the British being the least brutal and Leopold and the French, Germans, and Portuguese the worst. We all know what the Soviet gulag was like. These colonizers turned Africa into one giant gulag, with each colony being like a separate camp." http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/exemplifying-the-horror-of-some-european-colonization%E2%80%94leopolds-congo/

Rummel's claim seems reasonable - this makes colonialism at least as murderous as communism. Note that part of the reason for communisms high absolute toll is the large populations of Russia and China. The proportion of the population killed should also be considered.

Some mention should be made of the murderous of colonial democide, to provide an alternative perspective from that of Rosefielde's.

Prairespark (talk) 13:17, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is about mass killing under communist regimes, I don't think we should start coat racking off-topic material into this article, but by all means feel free to create an article Mass killings under colonial regimes, it seems to be a notable topic. --Martin (talk) 16:30, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting comment, Martin. Prairiespark was questioning the accuracy of a statement in the article that the number of colonials killed by capitalism was far lower than the number killed by Communists. However, we should not use Rummel's blog or other writings that have not been published in the academic press. Note too that Rummel describes colonialism as a form of socialism, not capitalism. TFD (talk) 16:58, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if the presumption that colonialism is necessarily a capitalist phenomena is valid, there seems to be a lot of sources in regard to communist colonialism, perhaps there could be an article on Communist colonialism. The text that Prairespark refers to is attributed to Rosefielde, thus that is his viewpoint, we have no way of knowing if Rosefielde made his assertion in light of Rummel's figures or not, may be he has other information Rummel does not have access to, we just don't know. --Martin (talk) 20:44, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Rummel is clearly referring to 19th and early 20th century Western European colonialism and names the powers (UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, the US). He exludes earlier colonialism (e.g., the Conquistadors), European and Asian land empires, and later "imperialism" by Communist and Western nations. TFD (talk) 21:07, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Why would colonialism be a form of capitalism? A50000 (talk) 16:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The colonialism referred to was carried out by capitalist countries and the colonies were largely established as privately owned business enterprises. TFD (talk) 17:20, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Capitalism means private ownership of the means of production. Colonialism is always carried out by states. A50000 (talk) 19:01, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

In the case of Congo - the killings were done under feudal ownership by Leopold personally of the Congo - it was not even owned by Belgium. We should have an article Mass killings under feudal regimes to be sure. Collect (talk) 19:11, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The Virginia Company, the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Falkland Islands Company, the Dutch East India Company, etc., were all private corporations. Even where colonial administration was directly controlled by the colonial powers, as in Hawaii, effective economic control has usually given to private corporations. Collect's view of the Belgian Congo is pure OR - it was the private property run as a privately-owned business. As Collect points out, Leopold's role as Belgian head of state and owner of the Congo were distinct. It later became a colony of Belium and its economy was organized along capitalist lines, with private investment in mining and agriculture. TFD (talk) 19:30, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

British colonisation of Terra Australis was a government enterprise, being originally a penal colony for Britain's criminals. The primary destination for these convicts was New South Wales, but the worst those were re-transported to Van Diemen's Land. The attempted eradication of the Tasmanian Aborigines in the Black War was sanctioned by the governor who proclaimed martial law for the purpose. --Martin (talk) 10:27, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Transportation, indentured servitude and slavery were used as methods of supplying cheap labor to privately owned plantations in the colonies. Indigenous populations were enslaved, deported or exterminated in order to allow for economic development. In the U.S., where during colonial times most immigrants arrived as convicted criminals, indentured servants, or slaves, the process continued long after independence, with the exception of transportation from the British Empire. TFD (talk)

While these practices by colonial regimes ended by the mid 20th century, communist regimes continued to use internal transportation, indentured servitude, slavery and penal labour camp systems to provide cheap labour to the state, in the case of the Soviet Union this system was called GULAG. --Martin (talk) 19:51, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Rummel includes the 50 million colonial democide figure, not only in a blog, but on his webpage summarising 20th century democide. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM

I do find it interesting that people emphasise the 100 million victims of communism, yet do not take into account that the USSR and China especially had very large populations. There were simply more people to kill - or ill-conceived policies would automatically cause large numbers of deaths. Surely what also needs to be taken into account is the proportion of the target population decimated.

If proportion of the population is taken into account then the crimes of King Leopold in the Congo would certainly exceed anything that Mao and Stalin got up to, as well as the American genocide of Phillipinos, with 600000 to a million civilian deaths - out of a population of about 7 million.

It should also be noted also that the excess deaths of the GLF famine were measured relative to very low mortality rates which the communists had achieved in the first decade of their rule (and for which they had drawn much praise). In fact the death rate of 25 to 30 per thousand during the worst year of the GLF (ie 1960) was not that much higher than the 24 per thousand mortality rate in India and other developing nations of the time, and was in fact less than the death rates of many of the years in China before 1949. But 25 deaths per thousand over the 11 deaths per thousand achieved in China previously did mean a lot of excess deaths. To provide context it should be mentioned that overally mortality did decline significantly during Maos rule (even during the period of the Cultural Revolution) and life expectancy doubled- in spite of the tragic setback of the GLF. The results of this are obvious. The increase in population under Mao (the most rapid population rise in Chinese history) was seven times the percentage increase of the 27 years leading up to 1949. Yet fertility declined under Mao -thus the only explanation for the doubling of the population under Mao, is dramatic declines in mortality.

Prairespark (talk) 18:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Well if you find a published reliable source that states just what you have postulated, then I'm sure it could be worked into the article with proper attribution, otherwise some editors here may deem it to be WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. --Martin (talk) 20:44, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

As I explained many times, Rummel's figures are questionable: he gives 40+ million Gulag death, whereas the amount of people passed through Gulag was 14 million (and the amount of documented deaths, estimated based on various independent data sets, was ca 2 million), he gives grossly exaggerated figures for Yugoslavia, for Russian civil war, etc. His approach has been criticised by many scholars and his numbers (especially the numbers taken from his web site) should not be used.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:22, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that Rummel's numbers for the USSR are too high (especially Gulag fatalities). However, if his colonial democide estimates are added to the article, then his Communist democide estimates should be added as well (110,000,000 revised upward to 148,000,000).(http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/getting-my-reestimate-of-maos-democide-out/). And based on the name and the arguments put forth by "Prariespark," I'm suspecting this could be yet another Jacob Peters sock. One of his confirmed socks was Spark31.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:53, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, Rummel seems to be completely unreliable. For instance Jung Chang's biography of Mao has been roundly panned by China scholars, yet Jung Chang is the only reason why Rummel revises upwards China's democide total, based only on Chang's utterly dishonest arguments. Maybe we should consign all of Rummel's work to the proverbial dust bin.

There were no 30 or 40 million deaths from starvation in the GLF famine. There were about 25 million excess deaths, relative to the very low mortality rates that the communists had achieved in the first decade of rule. There was only one year where the mortality rate exceeded the level of 1940s China. And that was 1960 (mortality of 44 per thousand), a year of massive flooding and the most atrocious climatic conditions in a whole century. In the other years, Judith Banister (the doyen of China demographic studies) has found mortality rates (around 25 per thousand) at about the same level as those in India, Indonesia, and other developing countries of the time. Jung Chang to max out her excess deaths calculation assumed a 1% mortality rate (10 in 1000) for 1957. In fact this was the crude death rate of the US at the time - obviously a ridiculous figure for China. The actual number of GLF deaths that can be directly attributable to famine, if excess deaths are calculated relative to the levels to pre-revolutionary China, and India, Indonesia etc at the time is something of the order of 4 to 5 million.

There is convergence of evidence with other sources. Look at life expectancy trends for China, India, Egypt, South Africa, Indonesia, and South Korea from 1960 to today. http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=life+expectancy+china#met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:CHN:IDN:IND

Two significant things from the trends. 1. The life expectancy of Chinese in 1960, the year of supposedly the worst famine in all of human history, was higher than that of India and Indonesia. Again the excess deaths were calculated relative to very low levels just prior to the leap. 2. The years of the Cultural Revolution saw perhaps the greatest jump in life expectancy in the history of the PRC. Fully a decade of life expectancy was added, ie a one year increment in life expectancy for each year of the Cultural Revolution. Far from a holocaust, the Cultural Revolution period was the most successful in all of Chinese history, in raising life expectancy and literacy, in spite of its may excesses which we all know of.

In fact far from being a murdering tyrant, Mao presided over the most rapid decrease in mortality, in consequentially the greatest rate of increase in life expectancy in all of documented history. This is the subject of an ongoing Stanford University study. http://healthpolicy.stanford.edu/research/health_improvement_under_mao_and_its_implications_for_contemporary_aging_in_china/

And by the way I'm not Jacob Peters. Anyone with even a modicum of Chinese historical knowledge will be able to guess correctly the inspiration behind 'prairespark'.

Prairespark (talk) 04:12, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

It will take a year or two, but Dikotter's work will soon be going the way of Rummel's - to the dustbin (or at least it should). I have not the time nor space to go into all the things wrong with his work in any great detail, but just three points:

1. As with Jung Chang, Dikotter assumes an unbelievably low annual mortality leading up to the GLF of 1% (and unwittingly credits the communists with having reduced mortality even more than the communists credit theselves - Banister has a death rate of 3.8% in 1949), to max out his excess death count. Like I said previously 1% is completely unbelievable - it's about the same as the United States at that time and not that much higher than the US mortality rate of 0.84% today. The typical mortality rate in the developing world in the late 1950s was 2 to 3 per thousand.

2. Dikotter, from reviewing the archives of public security organs, that violence must have been widespread during the GLF. He offers absolutely no statistical calculation of this. One would suspect if one went to the police archives of any country in the world, one would naturally be faced with pages and pages of documented violence - its just common sense that this is so. However even Dikotter says this violence was not orchestrated from the top, rather violent excesses were in fact recorded by people at the bottom and these reports were passed to the top in an effort to keep the leadership apprised of what was going on. Some of the acts of violence, as well as famine deaths, were found out by investigatory teams sent out by Beijing to find out the true picture of what was going on. So obviously the violence (which was probably less than the violence in an average American city) was not ordered from the top. By recounting incidents of random violence, Dikotter conscripts the reader into his point of view - and by the final chapter when he presents his 'analysis' of the death toll, the reader will be loathe to challenge him on his 'facts.'

3. Dikotter's fraudulent misuse of a picture of a begging child from a 1946 famine (not an 'official' famine) on the cover of his paperback edition, is not only an appalling act of intellectual dishonest, but also essentially racist. His attitude is 'any starving asian will do'. He has been taken to task by Adam Jones (the renowned Canadian genocide scholar) for this. Adam Jones says on his website "may I also suggest that the very extensive airbrushing, replacement/grafting of background, colourization and so on of the original image is curiously reminiscent of communist practice under Mao and Stalin?" http://jonestream.blogspot.com/2010/10/did-dikotter-misrepresent-famine-image.html

Dikotter's fraudalent use of this image and other famine images from pre-revolutionary China can be seen on videos he appears in to discuss the famine: http://web.mac.com/dikotter/Dikotter/Interviews.html

Dikotter elsewhere, and in fact in his book, says there are no non-propaganda images of the GLF, yet he fills his book cover and videos with famine images from old China. Again, just utterly dishonest.

Prairespark (talk) 04:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Certainly we should not be using books published outside the academic mainstream, even when written by scholars, because they do not have the same rigorous standards and or have the same intensive scrutiny that academic writing does. Jones, for example,says he has not read the book. Essentially we are relying on WP editors to do the fact-checking and decide the weight that should be accorded the conclusions in the book, even though no scholars have yet commented on them. Aside from the problem of the fake photo on the cover, and the fact that Dikotter has received funding from a KMT group, it seems bizarre that he claims he was given access to documents, yet none to photographs. TFD (talk) 05:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

There may be no photographs of outright starvation. For example my wife's grandfather died during the leap from illness - probably prematurely from malnutrition. That is altogether different from the whole place looking like Belsen or Auschwitz (although specific parts of China might well have). China at the height of the GLF would have looked little different to India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, or Egypt of the time. The only year in which conditions were truly exceptional was 1960, due to extensive flooding.

The image used on his book is no doubt fake, if you follow the link provided by Jones, and in Dikotter's book itself, on the first page of the photographs section, there is a note in small print saying that no non-propaganda images of the period have been found, at least by him to date. Dikotter again confirms this in this newsweek article. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/26/mao-s-great-famine.html

Therefore Dikotter must know full well that the images he uses for his book cover and videos are not from the GLF. But obviously he does not care. They have emotional impact and help him get his point across.

Again any intelligent person could not fail to note that the excess deaths are calculated against very low assumed initial rates of mortality. This maximizes the excess death count. But the most widely respected mortality rate for 1949 is 38/1000 by Judith Banister - a typical figure for developing nations of the time. Dikotter, and Chang by using a ridiculouse 1957 figure of 10/1000 unwittingly give credit to the communists for reducing death rates in less than ten years by 28 deaths per thousand! So surely Mao, if he is to be condemned for the credit of excess deaths during the GLF, to be fair he should be credited for the deficit in deaths from 1949 up to the GLF, which would surely outweigh even Dikotter's outlandish figure of 45 million (in fact a very rough calc puts the lives saved from 1949 to 1958 due to a reduction in the death rate to around 90 million).

The fact is Mao's overall record should be looked at. And it seems that all the data, the demographic data agree on one thing. China's population exploded (increasing at about 3 to 4 times the rate in Mao's time) of the 3 decades leading up to 1949. Why is this? All the evidence points to falling fertility during Mao's time. So the only possible reason for the doubling of population under Mao is a dramatic reduction in mortality. The fastest rate of increase in life expectancy happened under Mao and is currently the subject of an ongoing Yale University study. http://healthpolicy.stanford.edu/research/health_improvement_under_mao_and_its_implications_for_contemporary_aging_in_china/

Other authors have estimated that had China had the mortality rates of India, Indonesia, or other developing countries of similar GDP during Mao's time, there would have been 100 million more excess deaths. These facts are easily verifiable, with the data that is readily at hand to Western researchers. Even the most anti-communist of scholars do not dispute the data.

But when it comes to communism, it seems rhetoric and emotion override any objective analysis of the actual data.

I'm sure if someone comes out tomorrow and says Mao killed 200 million, people would just swallow it as fact.

Prairespark (talk) 06:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

A simple analysis:

I am not the first to point this out. We use Judith Banister's CHINA'S CHANGING POPULATION, which is widely considered the most authoritative work on China's population. The figures presented below are adjusted from the official rates by Banister, to take into account underreporting of deaths.

Year Deaths per thousand among the population

1949 38

1950 35

1951 32

1952 29

1953 25.77

1954 24.20

1955 22.33

1956 20.11

1957 18.12

1958 20.65

1959 22.06

1960 44.60

1961 23.01

1962 14.02

1963 13.81

Note that the Famine years are considered to be 1958 to 1961. However it would be a mistake to say that the conditions of 1958,59, and 61, were famine years. If so why not the years 1949 to 1954 when mortality rates were actually higher than 1958, 59, and 61?

So you can see the famine, except for 1960, is a statistical construct.

Compare the death rates of the 1959 to 61 with the mortality rates of India at the same time (Fig 16.3): http://envfor.nic.in/divisions/ic/wssd/doc2/ch16.htm

You can see that in the late 1950s, India's mortality was about 22/1000. That is more or less the same mortality rate as Banister's figures for 1958, 59, and 61. The single outlier is of course 1960. Here is something else that is interesting. If India was at 22 deaths per thousand, yet not considered to be in famine, why not China?

Let's go back a bit further. Look at China in 1949. Banister puts mortality at 38 deaths per thousand. Yet 1949 is not considered as a famine year by any researcher, nor are any of the years of the late 1940s. So for our purposes lets consider 38/1000 as the norm for pre-revolutionary China (it was actually probably a lot higher).

If we then take 44.6 deaths - 38 = 6.6 excess deaths per thousand in China in 1960.

6.6 deaths per thousand * 650 million / 1000 = 4.29 million deaths.

Thus the actual famine deaths, taking 38 per thousand mortality as the threshold between famine and non-famine, would give 4.29 famine deaths in China associated with the GLF. Such a famine of course would be a typical size one in China, with 5 million deaths claimed for a 1930s famine in China. Of course proportionally it would have less impact because China's population in the 1930s was around 450 million, whereas by 1960 it was around 650 million.

That is the fair way to look at the figures. Far from the greatest famine in history, the GLF famine should perhaps be considered the greatest REVERSAL in history - because up to the GLF the communists were doing so well in reducing mortality. And they came back on track after the famine.

Prairespark (talk) 06:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC) --Prairespark (talk) 06:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

An incredible amount of OR does not really affect what RS sources state - which is what WP editors are required to use. As for assuming that a rate of 38/M is "normal - that is past credulity indeed. And if one wishes to do mortality comparisons, the ages of death are important considerations - there is no doubt, apparently, that the early years of PRC saw a very large number of deaths due to war/rebellion/political reasons, and that 1958 - 1961 saw large numbers of death officially attributed to famine (noting regions which were heavily affected, and deaths by age cohort). It is not up to us to do the calculations when RS sources have done so. We are not to know facts not easily determined in sources. Collect (talk) 07:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

"As for assuming that a rate of 38/M is "normal - that is past credulity indeed."

But 38/thousand would quite likely normal, especially when we consider that this was the average rate of mortality in India in the 1920s (not considered a famine period). And unlike India, China went through foreign invasion and political upheaval on a huge scale in the 1930s and 1940s - something that India escaped. The Chinese government also did not have effective control of the entire country for many decades. It was the unity that the communists gave China, that started to move the country ahead. Note also that pre WWI Russia had average mortality of around 33 per thousand.

In any case 38/1000 for 1949 is the best estimate by researchers to date. I think we have to accept the figure.

Anecdotally, my grandparents in southern China (a relatively rich area) were relatively well off. In the 1930s and 40s my father and his siblings were born. Of eight children born, 3 died in early childhood. This was for a relatively prosperous land-owning and educated family. One can only surmise the actual mortality rates for the entire country - they would have been absolutely horrendous - in fact probably at or even exceeding 1960 GLF proportions.

Interestingly Life magazine (where Dikotter stole the picture of the starving boy for his cover) clearly shows horrendous famine in nationalist China in 1946. The link is here. The title is 'Millions are starving in the once-rich rice bowl". http://books.google.com/books?id=81QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=1946,+china,+famine,+child&source=bl&ots=PipWY2aPx-&sig=EaQQV01IVdN85DLlZ2yLdbGYQc0&hl=en&ei=HiyhTPq-BcvFswaM6p3wAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=1946%2C%20china%2C%20famine%2C%20child&f=false

Yet, incredibly no researcher considers 1946 a famine year!

The 38/1000 is all too believable.

In fact the reason why so few Chinese hold the GLF against Mao is probably because for them it was nothing unique. The conditions in prerevolutionary China were every bit as bad.

The important thing to note however that the GLF was the only famine to afflict New China. The overall record for Mao's time, is the most dramatic decline in mortality rates in history, saving tens of millions of lives, when compared to the performance of other developing countries.

As for an academic study addressing some of the points I have made above, I refer you to Utsa Patnaik: “On Famine and Measuring ‘Famine Deaths.’” Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner. Ed. Sujata Patel, Jasodhara Bagchi, and Krishna Raj. New Delhi: Sage, 2002. Prairespark (talk) 07:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

"And if one wishes to do mortality comparisons, the ages of death are important considerations - there is no doubt, apparently, that the early years of PRC saw a very large number of deaths due to war/rebellion/political reasons, and that 1958 - 1961 saw large numbers of death officially attributed to famine"

That is true. And famine, according to many researchers, hits the very young and elderly the worst. But look at infant mortality for China in 1960 vs India. Both are at 150 / 1000. Yet China is in famine and India is not?

China infant mortality rate, 1960: http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?IndicatorID=25&Country=CN

India infant mortality rate, 1960: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_imrt_in&idim=country:CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=infant+mortality+rates+china#met=sp_dyn_imrt_in&idim=country:CHN:IND

Prairespark (talk) 07:55, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

This incredible amount of highly dubious OR is not going to affect the article in any way, shape or form, so I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish here with your diarrhea of the mouth. You spend alot of time trashing Dikotter, yet there is not one review that I have seen which disputes any of the key points in Dikotter's book. Quite the opposite in fact. Regarding the blog by Adam Jones, he spends most of his time refuting the views of the individual who brought the alleged photo misrepresentation to his attention, which are very similar to yours interestingly enough. He also recently posted this to his blog under "China/Famine Crimes" which you might find interesting: Finding the Facts About Mao's Victims.

Anyway, we need to get back to the issue at hand, which is finding a consensus on how the lede is going to be written. Here is another attempt:

Mass killings under Communist regimes during the twentieth century resulted in the estimated deaths of between ?? million and 100 million people. The highest death tolls have been documented in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number of killings vary widely: for these three countries ranging from 21 million to 70 million. There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries. Some higher estimates of mass killings include not only murders or executions that took place during the mass elimination of political opponents, mass terror campaigns, and land reforms but also lives lost due to war, famine and disease. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion add a considerable part of these deaths to the death tolls under their study. The validity of such an approach in calamities, such as those in Russia, China, and elsewhere has been questioned by others. Some of the killings may fit a definition of mass murder, democide, politicide, "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined genocide. (Insert citations where necessary)

--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The question is whether we should use the analysis that is agreed to in academic writing or that of Dikotter's book, which was published outside the academic mainstream (this year) and has received good book reviews. Whether or not Dikotter's views will gain academic acceptance or even if they will gain any attention is something that we cannot know. I suspect that if another scholar comes up with a new book representing Prairespark's viewpoint, you would be the first to object. TFD (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin said: "so I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish here with your diarrhea of the mouth." Moderator - is this considered a civilised way to carry out a debate?

C.J. Griffin said: "You spend alot of time trashing Dikotter, yet there is not one review that I have seen which disputes any of the key points in Dikotter's book."

True. They also praised Jung Chang's book to the skies when it first came out. Give it another year or two. By then those with a sincere interest in the topic will note its myriad misrepresentations. It certainly has a more scholarly veneer than the Jung Chang tome. But I confidently predict it will follow the latter work to literary and scholastic oblivion all the same.

How about the following -

Mass killings under Communist regimes during the twentieth century have been alleged to result in the estimated deaths of between ?? million and 100 million people. The highest alleged death tolls have been documented in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number of killings vary widely: for these three countries ranging from 21 million to 70 million. There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries. Some higher estimates of mass killings include not only murders or executions that took place during the mass elimination of political opponents, mass terror campaigns, and land reforms but also lives lost due to war, famine and disease. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion add a considerable part of these deaths to the death tolls under their study. The validity of such an approach in calamities, such as those in Russia, China, and elsewhere has been questioned by others. Some of the killings may fit a definition of mass murder, democide, politicide, "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined genocide. However other scholars have cautioned against taking a one-sided approach to the issue, and to see the issue in a wider context. For example Gao (2007) suggested that the Great Leap Forward did in fact have its own logic and rationality, and that its terrible effects came not from malign intent on the part of the Chinese leadership at the time, but instead relate to the nature of rule at the time, and the vastness of China as a country. Gao says "..the terrible lesson learnt is that China is so huge and when it is uniformly ruled, follies or wrong policies will have grave implications of tremendous magnitude". Others have suggested that while China did undoubtedly experience large numbers of famine deaths in the years 1958 to 1961, this toll has to be evaluated in light of the otherwise overall impressive achievements of Maoist China in dramatically improving life expectancy. Gao (2008) also quotes estimates that the Maoist revolution gave an estimated net positive value of 35 billion extra years of life to the Chinese people. Li (2008) has produced data showing that even the peak death rates during the Great Leap Forward were in fact quite typical in pre-Communist China. Li (2008) argues that based even on the average death rate over the three years of the Great Leap Forward, there were several million fewer lives lost during this period than would have been the case under the normal mortality conditions of pre-revolutionary China. (Insert citations where necessary)

--

Look forward to everyone's comments.

Book references as follows:

http://www.amazon.com/China-Demise-Capitalist-World-Economy/dp/158367182X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293857013&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Gao-Village-Rural-Modern-China/dp/0824831926/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293857041&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Chinas-Past-Cultural-Revolution/dp/074532780X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293858302&sr=8-1

Prairespark (talk) 05:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid this isn't going to fly. First of all too much detail is given to events in the PRC. Secondly these sources are clearly WP:FRINGE and by placing them in the lede you are giving them WP:UNDUE weight--C.J. Griffin (talk) 05:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely ridiculous. Minqi Li, and Mobo Gao are not fringe academics at all. Left wing perhaps. But not fringe. In fact Dikotter is far more 'fringe'. Firstly he is bankrolled by the Chiang Chingkuo foundation (sort of like getting paid by Glen Beck to write a biography of Obama), has come out and said that there was nothing wrong with the British forcing opium onto the Chinese, and Japanese imperialism should not be condemned 'root and branch.' Talk about fringe!

Yet here we have Mobo Gao, an honest writer from rural China who actually lived through the Great Leap Forward, (and has conducted field studies on his village) and had siblings die in it, and Minqi Li, a former dissident and political prisoner in China - and their views, according to Griffin, are 'fringe'.

Yet Dikotter, who knows little about China outside a history textbook (he even gets the character for 'tomb' (mu) mixed up with 'wood' (also mu) - something an eight year old Chinese would not trip up on - refer article by Jonathan Mirsky), and yet because he is a Westerner, praised by other Westerners, his word on China counts for more than that of Minqi Li and Mobo Gao? What a transparent and disgusting display of academic imperialism by Griffin.

Westerners of course understand more about Chinese than the Chinese themselves! Yet, if we had a Chinese academic from say Gansu province, who learned english to a moderate level, resided in the USA for 10 years, and he wrote a biography of say, Andrew Jackson, how much respect do you think it would get from the academic community? Very little of course. Because people would rightly note that simply from 10 years in the country, that would still not be enough time to pick up the cultural context, nuances and subtleties, and understand the motives of Andrew Jackson.

Yet anytime a Westerner says anything about China, his word is taken as gospel over that of a Chinese. The hypocrisy, and yes borderline racism of Griffin is as despicable as it is transparent.

Prairespark (talk) 05:57, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The publishers are Pluto Press and the University of Hawaii Press, which are clearly academic publishers and therefore reliable sources. Since most of the numbers relate to deaths in China, it makes sense that China should receive the majority of coverage in the article. TFD (talk) 06:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you TFD! :)

When are we going to get a decision on the lede - and implement?

Prairespark (talk) 06:04, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Minqi Li is a Marxist whose work was published by Monthly Review Press, a Marxist publisher. Mobo Gao's unrelenting pro-Mao polemic The Battle For China's Past is "about… 'strange concepts', so strange that they challenge the mainstream orthodox narrative; it questions many 'truths' told in memoirs, biographies and autobiographies, both in Chinese and English." And Pluto Press is a "radical" (i.e. Marxist) publisher ("Pluto Press has always had a radical political agenda") that has been accused of putting forth anti-semitic screeds. Yeah, I think "fringe" is the right way to describe them. And they do not belong in the lede of the article.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 06:26, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

"Yet anytime a Westerner says anything about China, his word is taken as gospel over that of a Chinese. The hypocrisy, and yes borderline racism of Griffin is as despicable as it is transparent." Apparently you failed to see that I cited Yang Jisheng several times on this very talk page, along with Chen Yizi and Jung Chang. I suggest you retract that ad hominem about my supposed "racism."--C.J. Griffin (talk) 06:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Radical? To who? Mobo Gao's work would in fact align with the views of most Chinese on Mao. Minqi Li is a well respected economist. If they are radicals or fringe, what in heaven's name is Dikotter - who praises drug use and colonialism?

Jung Chang's book has been thoroughly debunked by all serious China scholars - even you know that Mr Griffin. Chen Yizi has close ties with the Falun Gong movement (as flakey a group as you ever will find), and Yang Jisheng, if you read his other works, has a clear political agenda. His dad died during the GLF, as he keeps on going on about? Yeah - was it one of the 'excess' deaths? He never says so. Three of my aunts died in childhood in pre-revolutionary China under Chiang. Does that mean that I can write a biography damning Chiang Kaishek and have it free from criticism? Of course not.

In any case the article is already chock full of people of Mr Griffin's ideological disposition. Very well. Can we, in the interests of fairness, try and inject some balance by including Mobo Gao, and Minqi Li's work?

Or do all sources have to get with Mr Griffin's agenda?

Prairespark (talk) 06:49, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Pluto Press is considered an academic publisher and is distributed by Palgrave MacMillan. The view that only right-wing publications, even those published in the popular press, are reliable, while left-wing books published within the academic press are "fringe" is contrary to Wikipedia policy. Incidentally Furet wrote for Telos and Courtois was a Maoist. TFD (talk) 06:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. In fact if Griffin is still not happy, I can go to Maurice Meisner, Chris Bramall, Lei Feigon, as well as Banister, Eggleston, all Western writers who can substantiate what Li and Gao say. I thought it would be good to include a left-wing Chinese perspective. In fact there are also recent Yale and Harvard studies which back up what I have written (and Gao and Li's points) - especially the stuff about life expectancy and literacy.

Prairespark (talk) 06:58, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Basically the quotes of Li and Gao that I have included are not all that outlandish. Here are two recent studies - one by Yale University, the other a Harvard Study which more or less back up the stuff I have included in the lede:

An ongoing Stanford Universy study on Maoist China's phenomenal achievement in doubling life expectancy: http://healthpolicy.stanford.edu/research/health_improvement_under_mao_and_its_implications_for_contemporary_aging_in_china/

Furthermore a group of Harvard researchers have made a compelling case that the reason for China economically outperforming India over the past three decades is related to the health achievements of modern China. An excerpt from the article:

"However, the authors note, China's economy has exploded, expanding by 8.1 percent per capita per year on average between 1980 and 2000, while in the same time period India saw a sustained growth rate in income per capita of 3.6 percent--a rate that, while rapid by the standards of most developing economies, is modest compared to China's. What accounts for the difference? Part of the answer, the HSPH team suggests, is that dramatic demographic changes in China began decades before those in India. After 1949, China's Maoist government invested heavily in basic health care, creating communal village and township clinics for its huge rural population. That system produced enormous improvements in health: From 1952 to 1982, infant mortality in China dropped from 200 to 34 deaths per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy rose from 35 years to 68. And under the government's family planning program, fertility rates dropped by half, from six births per woman in 1970 to three as of 1979." http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/review/rvw_summerfall06/rvwsf06_bloom.html

Is that good enough Mr Griffin?

And also - ff you want to, look up Judith Banister's work - 'Chinas Changing Population' - widely considered the most authoritative work in the West on China's population. Crunch through the numbers yourself - you will find what Li says about mortality is true.

Prairespark (talk) 07:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

"Yang Jisheng, if you read his other works, has a clear political agenda." I can't help but laugh at this. Certainly Mobo Gao and Minqi Li don't have a political agenda.. not at all....</sarcasm off> And Yang's authoritative work Tombstone (2008) has been praised almost across the board by China specialists, and, like Dikotter, he has had access to Chinese archival data on the tragedy. I doubt that Mr. Li or Mr. Gao could say the same thing.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 07:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

User:C.J. Griffin's user page says, "This user thinks Chairman Mao Zedong is the most evil person to have ever lived" and that "Communism killed 100,000,000 people...." I do not imagine that he is very flexible in his beliefs. TFD (talk) 07:14, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, both Dikotter and Yang have had access to the archives - does not stop them being charlatans - anyone who believes China had a 'normal' death rate of 1% in 1958 in order to max out the 'excess' death count (the same as the US and Canada at the time, while India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Kenya, etc had death rates 2to 2.5%) are either incredibly stupid, or agenda driven fanatics. Or are they secret admirers of Mao? Because if it was 3.8% in 1949 (as Banister has it, and the accepted level for pre-revolutionary China) then a drop to 1% by 1958 is an astounding achievement on the part of the Maoist government. So Mao and socialism should get credit for saving huge number of lives before 1958?

But never mind all this. By all means include Dikotter, Yang, Chen etc. But in the interests of fairness, I propose we also include Mobo Gao and Li Minqi.

Fair deal?

Prairespark (talk) 07:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

"This user thinks Chairman Mao Zedong is the most evil person to have ever lived"

I thought it would be perhaps King Leopold. He killed about 25% of the population of the Congo (Pol Pot killed 21%) and in absolute numbers killed almost twice as much as Pol Pot(4 million compared to 2.1 million for Pol Pot). Yet statues of him still abound in Belgium.

Also the Americans wiped out out about 1.4 million Phillipinos out of 9 million during the Phillipines American war. If Mao killed at that rate he would be responsible for close to 110 million deaths. So perhaps it should be McKinley or Ted Roosevelt or whoever it was in charge at the time who are the most evil men in history.

Prairespark (talk) 09:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)