Talk:Law of Spikelets

Dates

Concerning "the date in Russian is written as 7/8/1932" - that is the way dates are written by civilized people who use the Gregorian calendar, either from the shortest time unit to the longest or else from the longest to the shortest. But I thought the explanation should be left as is unless there is a consensus to correct it. As for the importance scale, it seems important to me. Axel 21:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

children

The number of persons condemned to death under the age of 16 in USSR during Stalin era is by most accounts less than 10. I strongly oppose allusions that it was common practice to execute children picking up spikelets as it was in the previous version of the article. BesterRus (talk) 10:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Instead of edit warring one simply needs to provide an RS which tells: "this law was used against children" (or "it was not used against children"). But of course it's a matter of common knowledge that it was used against children. Biophys (talk) 16:10, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Neither did one did not need a trial to be shot on the spot. The number of formally condemned is not indicative of actual victims. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:02, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

@Biophys, not that it's relevant, I'd like to say that it's a matter of common knowledge that children were not executed in the soviet union. It's common knowledge "that they were" only among Russian liberals, who constitute ~6% of the population. There's a famous case where a band of youth raped a fair amount of women before getting caught, the leader of the band was 16 and others were from 14 to 18. A letter was sent to Stalin and Molotov, asking if the the young offenders could be charged with brigandage and if yes, should the prosecutor ask for death penalty. The response to the second question was 'no'. And no, simply providing someone's opinion on the subject wouldn't suffice, that opinion should be based on real cases, not on hearsay or fantasies.BesterRus (talk) 17:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

@Vecrumba, you're confusing USSR with Nazi Germany. I strongly suggest reading either Biophys' authors or my authors, any authors would do for that matter. BesterRus (talk) 17:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I suggest you desist from ugly personal attacks constantly bringing up Nazis and now suggesting I don't know the difference between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. And we're not discussing your case of brigands. We are discussing the case, actually going back to the 1920's and the Volga disaster, of the practice of shooting those who even had a few grains of wheat in their hands they had picked up in the field or, as parents, had in a pocket for their children, after all else had been requisitioned, and that no one was immune. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 18:14, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

@Vecrumba Please, don't allude to something that didn't happen. I never attacked you, nor suggested any relation between you and the Nazis. Reread my comments carefully. Provide source for your outlandish claims, or don't put them into the article, that is all I've got for you. BesterRus (talk) 18:20, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, you will pardon my interpretation of your intent when you bring up Nazi "mainstream" scholars and now accuse me of not knowing the difference between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—when the conversation in both cases had absolutely nothing to do with Hitler or Nazi Germany. Re-reading won't improve my understanding in that regard. As for your claims of outlandish, I can only sigh. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 18:40, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Just a piece of info

Just wanted to tell you about this case. The radio "Echo of Moscow" once had the inadvertence to say that Stalin had children from age 12 executed. The grandson of Stalin went to court against the radio because the remark was a slander. The radio's lawyer and editor in chef didn't manage to prove in court that children were executed in USSR, simply because there was no proof. I hope you reconsider your position in the light of this info. Goodnight. BesterRus (talk) 18:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I do not have time right now, but I will check some sources that describe repression of children in the Soviet Union to make changes in relevant articles accordingly - as time allows. There is plenty of that in books by Yakovlev, Solzhenitsyn, Conquest and others. Biophys (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

On the other (going to court), my understanding is that Radio Echo Moscow has contended that Evgenyi Dzhugashvili has no claim to protect Josef Stalin's honor without genetic evidence as to familial relationship—so, no further claims until Josef is exhumed and DNA testing done. Dzhugashvili's latest (AFAIK) claim was dismissed in April. As for the case you mention, which I expect would have restricted arguments to strictly archival evidence = formal trials, sentences of death, and the carrying out thereof, that is simply a variation on your theme of archival-evidence-only-need-apply presentation on the subject matter. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 18:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Perhaps seeing our areas of apparent contention as less of a combat zone might help. At the moment, I'm reminded of the old adage associated with Stalin: Лес рубят, щепки летят. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 19:04, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Alas, for the modern industrial mechanized age PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 19:32, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• @Biophys, sorry, but Solzhenitsyn isn't a historian. If you remember, he claimed that USSR killed 110 million of its people. And you don't see how reliable he is as a source of information? Seriously? BesterRus (talk) 05:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

• @Vecrumba This is where the process ended eventually, but the defending side could not prove their claims, because they are unprovable. P.S. "лес рубят..." is attributed to Stalin through hearsay. That is very exemplary of how your side "comes up" up with information. "Truth can only percolate in the form of hearsay" and "on political matters basically the best, though not infallible source is rumor". Any idea who gave birth to those two pearls? R. Conquest. BesterRus (talk) 05:03, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

"Official" records of those convicted and executed, unreliable from the start

As good a place as any for another side discussion. On only using official statistics/archives of the dead:

"Dzerzhinsky acknowledged imprisoning and executing large numbers of people despite lack of evidence: 'The law gives the Cheka the option of isolating by administrative measures those violators of labor laws, those parasites and persons suspected of counterrevolution, against whom we do not have enough evidence for punishment by trail and whom any court, even the strictest, will always or usually find not guilty.' Dzerzhinsky's associate I. S. Unshlikht made a similar admission: 'There is a whole range of cases where the tribunals, for lack of factual evidence, will hand down decisions of not guilty even though we have quite enough information from our agents to justify the severest sentences, up to and including capital punishment. In certain conditions in the republic as a whole or in certain localities, it is necessary to take repressive measures of various kinds against those active in the anti-Soviet parties, even when we have no concrete evidence against them.'"

Powell, J. How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II. Powell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Let's not foment for Soviet archives being the "last word" in anything. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 00:45, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

And regarding children:

Children were frequent victims of Bolshevik violence. Yakovlev reported "mass terror, concentration camps, hostages, with mothers, wives, and children shot because their sons, husbands, and fathers refused to cooperate with the adventurers in power. The number of hostages runs into the thousands. As early as 1918, on orders from the Petrograd Cheka, 500 hostages were shot. Shot the following year, also in Petrograd, were the relatives (including the children) of officers of the Eighty-sixth Infantry Regiment who had gone over to the Whites. In May 1920 the newspapers told of the execution in Elizavetgrad of the elderly mother and four daughters, ages three to seven, of an officer who had refused to serve the proletarian regime, Arkhangelsk, where the Cheka shot children of twelve to sixteen, was known in 1920 as the 'city of the dead.' Between 1918 and 1922 the Bolsheviks frequently held children hostage in their struggle against peasants attempting to resist the regime's agrarian policy. The fall of 1918 saw the creation of concentration camps whose prisoners at first were largely hostages, including women with infants, taken as relatives of the 'rebels.'"

and reports of torturing children as young as nine to extract confessions of treason, etc., etc. All from the very start of Bolshevik power. Stalin refined and enlarged the scale of repression (per same source). PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 00:58, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

As this is extremely hilarious, this is also very sad, what some people will write and what others will believe without a shred of evidence and even when the hypothesis is so absurd and surrealistic. Hopefully somebody will write a book soon and claim that toddlers were tortured to extract confessions, then eaten alive by Stalin himself. Then I'll be the one to run to my computer and write that on wikipedia. BesterRus (talk) 05:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)