Talk:White Terror (Russia)

Extreme anti-white bias

This article is nothing more than a SHAMELESS PIECE OF PRO-SOVIET PROPAGANDA based almost exclusively on sources that are pro-Soviet and anti-White (either willingly or, in some cases, perhaps unwillingly). In particular, the "Kolchakists on trial" paper REALLY takes the cake, being a transcript of one of them commie show trials where the defendant is always guilty no matter what (the key phrase in that rag being "Almost all the material for the prosecution was taken from declarations by the defendants themselves" -- those "declarations" no doubt having been obtained under torture or under threat of death, as was common practice under the Bolshies). Besides this, almost all other sources cited in this article are clearly biased toward the Red side: e.g. the Serge and Marik books are openly pro-Communist, and the two Yandex entries are taken from the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, which was published in the Soviet Union under the communist regime and therefore representing only the Red POV. In fact, any source that was officially published in the Soviet territory from 1917 to 1985 (such as Kondufor) can only represent the Soviet POV (due to Communist Party censorship of the media) and therefore AUTOMATICALLY violates BOTH WP:RS and WP:NPOV. According to Wikipedia policy, such sources are UNACCEPTABLE and must be red

67.169.177.176 (talk) 06:31, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, while Tsvetkov is admittedly an unbiased and reliable source, the article uses only cherry-picked and out-of-context quotes from that particular source in order to prove its thesis, and ignores those parts that contradict it. It is true that Tsvetkov does quote Kornilov as authorizing the shootings of Red prisoners and saying "The more terror, the better"; but right after that he quotes Kornilov saying "We do not make war against the wounded". Also, other quotes from this source do not bear out the article: for instance, Tsvetkov discusses at some length an incident where some Red artillerymen whom Kornilov's forces took prisoner were given a fair trial by military tribunal and ACQUITTED because they were "serving [the Reds] under duress and [also] intentionally laid their fire inaccurately" (they were allowed to enlist in the Volunteer Army and reportedly fought well against the Reds). And while Tsvetkov mentions Kornilov's forces executing a civilian who was allied with the Reds, he makes clear that the civilian in question was executed not so much for his political beliefs as for raping the local rich people's wives and daughters. In fact, Tsvetkov makes it clear that many of the "white terror" murders (other than the shootings of prisoners) were in fact reprisals rather than officially sanctioned repressive measures, and that the shootings of prisoners were often dictated by military necessity.

67.169.177.176 (talk) 06:52, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, the article quotes Hartmann as recounting "a particularly brutal massacre", but in fact that particular source says nothing of the sort -- instead, it discusses at some length a property dispute having to do with the Sovs' nationalization policy which ended up in the British courts. Therefore, this source is irrelevant to the article, and the claim that was falsely attributed to it must be removed as well. 67.169.177.176 (talk) 06:07, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

What's the matter kid? The Red Terror page is also based on biased source that are fiercely Anti-Red and Pro-White, may I remind you. So why are you so upset anyway, are you upset that Reds have retaliated in kind? 188.25.37.242 (talk) 19:18, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

This article is a sad joke; it's not like it is even necessary to exaggerate the history of the various anti-Bolshevik forces' crimes to have an intelligent article, but the sources here are heavily to absurdly pro-Bolshevik and give absolutely hysterical accounts. The numbers and anecdotes cited are complete fabrications for the most part, and this article is in dire need of attention from some expert with sources at hand who is not an ideological fanatic. The immediate anonymous user above me serves as a perfect illustration of why this article needs attention; this is more of a retaliation for articles about communist atrocities (where Wikipedia articles present some false "balance" about views), rather than an article that has real historical or factual merit. InformedContent (talk) 04:48, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this article is biased and includes some wrong information. I added two tags on the top in the hope that someone will clean this up. The article should be also copyedited as it contains many Runglish phrases, for example "Bands of Kornilov’s officers left behind more than 500 dead in a Don village in early 1918.[8]"...--Kürbis (✔) 09:42, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing in the article that violates NPOV or RS. The article contains the highest quality sources: A. Litvin, P. Golub, I. Ratkovsky, and others are the world's leading experts about this topic, and they cannot be characterized as unreliable. Litvin has been a professor in Kazan and is the author of hundreds of scientific books and articles. Ratkovsky is a professor in Leningrad and did his doctoral thesis about the topic. Golub is a leading historian about the Russian revolution and is the author of many scientific books and articles. Understandably, we do not have sources of comparable quality in the English language, as Russian history is not of interest to westerners the way it is to people in Russia.

To InformedContent/67.169.177.176 (same person?): you do not understand historical research very well. A historian does not ignore a source just because it is biased. A historian has to gather information from all sources and evaluate accordingly. And the authors I named above decided that their sources are trustworthy. Much of our information from the Mongols comes from strongly anti-Mongol sources by Chinese, Arab, and other historians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.51.167.249 (talk) 08:57, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

The bald phrase "Historians emphasize that the White terror was premeditated and systematic", especially when lacking a reference to the much worse Red Terror, shows the bias of the article. It needs more work to be fair and balanced; the warning tags are needed. cwmacdougall 15:48, 18 October 2012

What kind of research have you done on this topic for you to make the false statement about "much worse Red Terror"? Do you speak Russian? If not, then how can you make an informed opinion about this topic? That you are making these misinformed remarks about a "much worse Red Terror" and "bias of the article" is unhelpful

We have this fact in an article by a leading Russian historian that the White Terror was infinitely more violent than the measures taken by the Soviet forces to maintain peace and security. Yet, you make the absolutely unsourced claim that the "Red Terror" was much worse.

Evgeni Losev in his book "Mironov" shows the monstrous cruelty of the "decossackization" statistics by the Reds in the Don, with more than 1000 shot...Recall at least that in the period of the Krasnov's rule on the Don, more than 45 thousand were shot and hanged. The total number of the executions was more than half of the entire Krasnov army. A recent book estimates that Krasnov's forces shot 25 thousand... But this is still 25 times the measures taken by the Reds.

There is an abundance of scholarship on this topic

A leading Russian scholar summarizes Kolchak's record: Only in the province of Ekaterinburg, more than 25 thousand people were shot under Kolchak. Kolchak's representative for suppressing the peasantry, General Rozanov, issued orders for mass executions and taking of hostages. One of the most noteworthy decisions on 27 March 1919 called for the shooting of every tenth participant involved in any form with the resistance...

The leading expert about the White Terror, P. Golub, completely refutes the propaganda that has influenced a lot of the misinformed remarks above. He writes in an article published by the journal Dialog (#8, August 2003): In 1923, SP Melgunov, one of the most active instigators of the civil war and an apologist of Kolchak and other military dictators, published in Berlin the pamphlet "Red Terror in Russia - 1918-1923" He asks, "Where and when in the acts of government policies and even the press of the anti-Soviet camp will you find a theoretical justification of terror as a system of power?"......[He is] unaware of the monstrous cruelty of Kolchak's "Law of Rebellion" of 23 March 1919 commanding harsh methods to deal with the Siberian partisans, or his order of 14 May 1919 calling for the shooting without trial of soldiers who refused to fight? He knew of course, but told the big lie that the White reign of terror was not a systematic nature.

This article also proves: "White apologists often say that the White Terror was just the excesses of individuals aggrieved by the Bolsheviks, while the Red Terror was a deliberate policy of the Bolsheviks in general and above all Lenin . This is a lie. It has already been demonstrated that it's impossible to reduce the White Terror to individuals."[1] 75.51.167.249 (talk) 22:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

An anonymous IP above blurted out this misinformed remark:

"In fact, any source that was officially published in the Soviet territory from 1917 to 1985 (such as Kondufor) can only represent the Soviet POV (due to Communist Party censorship of the media) and therefore AUTOMATICALLY violates BOTH WP:RS and WP:NPOV"

Y.Y. Kondufor served as director of the Institute of History of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences, and his sources are absolutely reliable. His work represents perhaps the best possible scholarship on the subject: he was the editor of a 10-volume history of the Ukraine, which is the most comprehensive and highest quality source available on the region. If you have a better source that contradicts Kondufor's work, then present it here so that it can be evaluated.

There was no monolithic "Soviet POV". Russian historians have not been in unanimous agreement about every single subject of history. They debate about and have debated about many different issues. The Soviet encyclopedia summarizes a debate among Russian scholars: "Many aspects of the history of the Peasant War of the early 17th century are still considered debatable by Soviet historiography, including the chronological limits of the war, its historical importance, and the social composition of the rebels."

Another debate among Russian scholars:

To this day debate continues among Soviet scholars on a number of very important questions, such as the socioeconomic preconditions, the time when the transition to absolutism occurred, and its class nature. Thus, on the question of the reasons for the transition to absolutism in Russia, some historians consider it to have been connected with a sharpening of the class struggle of the broad popular masses against the class of feudalists; others see absolutism in Russia as the result of a struggle within the ruling class between the feudal aristocracy (the boyars) and the nobility (the dvorianstvo). There is also no unanimity of opinion on the question of the social nature of Russian absolutism. While the view current among scholars is that absolutism in Russia reflected the interests not only of the aristocracy but of the rising bourgeoisie as well, some historians regard the origin and essence of Russian absolutism as purely feudal in character. A number of other questions connected with the problem of Russian absolutism are also resolved in divergent ways.

Furthermore, the data found in Soviet-era sources are cited and accepted by present-day Russian scholars. Thus, Soviet-era scholarship such as in this book (p.172) established that Kolchak's regime engaged in a reign of terror that included the killing of more than 25,000 people in the Ekaterinburg region. This book (p.133) by present-day Russian scholars also established that Kolchak's regime murdered approximately 25,000 people in the Ekaterinburg region. Based on this, Soviet-era research on the White Terror is reliable. It's noteworthy that while the anonymous IP moans about "clearly biased" sources, he fails to consider that the bulk of this article is based on recent Russian scholarship that is relatively even-handed towards the Soviet and White sides. The sources chiefly consist of: А. Литвин. Красный и белый террор 1918—1922. — М.: Эксмо, 2004 (A. Litvin, Red and White Terror of 1918-1922); И. С. Ратьковский. Красный террор и деятельность ВЧК в 1918 году. СПб.: Изд-во С.-Петерб. ун-та, 2006 (I.S. Ratkovsky, "Red Terror and the Cheka activities in the year 1918"; and П. А. Голуб. Белый террор в России (1918—1920 гг.). М.: Патриот, 2006 (P.A. Golub. White Terror in Russia in 1918-1920). I have done a lot of research on this topic, and there is nothing in English that is comparable to the quality of these Russian scholars' work. Yet, the anonymous cherrypicks and complains about Victor Serge, who was actually anti-Soviet and wrote rather even-handed works of history about the Revolution. This book published by Indiana University recommends readers to refer to Victor Serge: "Debates over the Civil War's impact on Soviet history may never be resolved, but the reader may wish to become familiar with some of the more thoughtful and thought-provoking works assessing the Civil War. See; Walter Laqueur, The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet History (London, 1967); Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution (Chicago, 1972)" - so Serge's work is reliable. 75.51.167.249 (talk) 03:40, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

The earlier commentator is obviously right in saying that any Soviet source "automatically violates BOTH WP:RS and WP:NPOV". There may have been some good historical work done in the Communist period, but it can not be accepted on an issue like this as an unbiased source without independent verification. Similarly, Victor Serge though he wrote in the West was a Bolshevik in the Civil War, so is hardly unbiased. Western histories need to be consulted and much more work needs to be done before the tags can be removed. cwmacdougall 14:38, 20 October 2012

I like how you almost completely disregard the facts above and still cling on to this strange idea that a source cannot be used because it allegedly contains biases that you do not like. Wikipedia shouldn't be censored, and all reliable sources should be considered. Books published by Nauka and Russia's Academy of Sciences are absolutely reliable sources. That's why virtually every English-speaking scholar relies on Russian primary sources and Russian secondary sources like books published by Soviet Academy of Sciences for their information.

I already explained above that we do not have sources in the English language of comparable quality to Litvin, Ratkovsky, and Golub. All that I've located is White Terror: Cossack Warlords of the Trans-Siberian , which is too narrow for this article's scope.

I also showed above that Serge is a reliable source. Professor Koenker specifically directs her readers to refer to Victor Serge's work: "Debates over the Civil War's impact on Soviet history may never be resolved, but the reader may wish to become familiar with some of the more thoughtful and thought-provoking works assessing the Civil War. See; Walter Laqueur, The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet History (London, 1967); Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution (Chicago, 1972)" - so Serge's work is reliable.

Did you actually read the article before commenting on it? Western histories ARE consulted in this article: Professor Arno Mayer and Walter Lacquer.75.51.167.249 (talk) 21:01, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

To take a comparable example, we now know that the Nazi reports on Katyn were essentially correct, but we would not use a Nazi source for a Katyn article, at least not without further investigation and support. It is wrong to use Communist sources for alleged White Army activities. The tags must stay until further work is done. cwmacdougall 21:55, 20 October 2012