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Original research, SYNTH, and why we needed a rewrite

Note: This is a long post, but please read it through to the end. I think significant changes need detailed explanations, so this is as detailed as I could make it. Ohff (talk) 09:17, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I've been looking at this article for a long time, since it is about a historical topic that I'm very interested in, and where I'm quite familiar with the academic literature. So, as you can imagine, at first sight I was excited and pleasantly surprised that we have an article on it. But as I began to actually read it, I was shocked by its abysmal quality. The prose style was not bad, of course, and the article was peppered with references, so it may have looked okay. But for someone familiar with the topic it was immediately apparent that most of the article was pure original research. It largely ignored the actual scholarship on the topic and instead relied on random unrelated sources cobbled together to support assertions that the sources themselves do not make.

I have read the discussions above regarding potential NPOV issues with certain sections, but the real problems were WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, as identified some time ago in a now-archived talk section. The article looked like it had been written by someone who just picked up random books on Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR, found things in those books that sounded vaguely similar, and wrote an article based on that. This was particularly disappointing because there is actually a significant body of scholarship comparing Nazism and Stalinism, which was even mentioned in the article introduction, and then never actually used in the article itself. There are many sources that compare Nazism with Stalinism, but for some reason the article only used a few of them, and for the most part relied on other sources that don't compare Nazism with Stalinism. If there was any POV issue, it was a side effect of the fact that a lot of the article was evidently written by people who never actually read the scholarship on this subject.

Hannah Arendt's work, arguably the first scholarly comparison of Nazism and Stalinism which gave birth to the entire field, was not cited at all except to say that it exists. Carl Friedrich's work with Zbigniew Brzezinski was mentioned in the introduction and then not cited at all. Several books on comparison between Nazism and Stalinism were listed in the bibliography but never actually used in the text - books such as "Stalinism and Nazism: dictatorships in comparison" by Kershaw and Lewin, or "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel lives" by Bullock. The article didn't even feature a single use of the term "personality cult" for God's sake. The only significant work comparing Nazism and Stalinism that was actually cited extensively was Geyer and Fitzpatrick's book. That was a decent start, but it didn't change the fact that most of the article was OR.

Let me be more specific when I say "OR". The article, as it stood, was mostly referenced with sources that do not actually compare Nazism and Stalinism, or even talk about Nazism and Stalinism in the same source, but rather talk only about Nazi Germany alone or the USSR alone. These were then synthesized together to justify a number of comparisons that the sources themselves never actually make. Take, for example, the section entitled "classless society". It was referenced with one source that talks about Stalin's elimination of the kulaks (and doesn't compare it with anything), a Hitler quote from a primary source (Mein Kampf), a biographical work on Bertolt Brecht, and a source that talks about German school children. None of the sources compare aspects of Nazism with aspects of Stalinism; indeed they do not compare anything with anything else, and are not even talking about the same concept. Whoever wrote that section simply threw together vaguely similar-sounding statements from disparate sources and constructed an argument that none of the sources remotely suggest. I don't think I've ever seen a more blatant example of original research in my entire time on Wikipedia.

Not all of the sections were this bad, but most of them were equally OR. Even when they made statements that were undeniably true, somehow they still managed to base them on original research. A good example would be the section called "Centralization". It said that both Nazi Germany and the USSR were centralized states that opposed federalism. This is certainly true, and probably the least controversial thing that a person could say about those two countries. Yet none of the sources used in that section actually compared Nazi Germany with the USSR. They were sources that talk about the internal administration of Nazi Germany and sources that talk about the internal administration of the USSR. The comparison between the two was made only by the wiki text, not by the sources themselves. So the section drew a parallel which is arguably true, but which none of the sources actually support. And that was one of the better sections.

Rather than going section by section, I will now list the sources used in this article (as it used to stand) that I checked over time and that I found to not even mention Nazism and Stalinism together in any kind of comparison. I've been keeping this list to get an idea of the magnitude of the OR problem. Some of these are simply primary sources, like Mein Kampf, or various Hitler speeches where he just talks about his own ideas. One source is an American pamphlet written in 1918, before Nazism even existed. Another source is the "Stalinism" article in the New World Encyclopedia, which is an online mirror of Wikipedia. A few sources are talking about entirely different topics and only mention the USSR or Nazi Germany in passing.

Old citations from sources that only talk about Nazism or Germany, without mentioning the USSR or Stalinism
(note: these are not in the order in which they occurred in the article, they are in the order in which I checked them; so citations from the same book are usually grouped together even when they occurred in different parts of the article)
  1. Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939, New York:NY, Penguin Press, 2005, p. 264
  2. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, New York: NY 2005 pp. 489-491
  3. Richard Grunberger, The 12-year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945, New York: NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 46
  4. Richard Grunberger, The 12-year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945, New York: NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 47.
  5. Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich, President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2008, p. 45
  6. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, pp. 263-264 [notice the extensive reliance on not merely one source, but on just a few pages within that source; even so, there is no actual comparison here]
  7. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 265
  8. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 265
  9. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 263
  10. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 265
  11. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 249
  12. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 248
  13. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: NY, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 249, Hitler public education speech on November 6, 1933
  14. "Why We Are Anti-Semites," August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. [primary source]
  15. John J. White and Ann White, Bertolt Brecht’s Furcht Und Elend Des Dritten Reiches: A German Exile in the Struggle Against Fascism, Rochester: NY, Camden House, p. 60
  16. R.J. Overy, "War and Economy in the Third Reich ", Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 231
  17. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945, Vol. 2, Random House, Inc., 2001, p. 317.
  18. Diemut Majer, Non-Germans Under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939-1945, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p. 43-49
  19. Laurence Thomas, "Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character", Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 1989. p. 36
  20. S. Lillian Kremer, Witness Through the Imagination: Jewish-American Holocaust Literature, Wayne State University Press, 1989, p. 38 [this source talks about literature and mentions Nazism only in passing on the page given]
  21. Aaron Fruh, 7 Factors that Led to the Holocaust: Could it Happen Today,” WND, March 28, 2017 [online article, not RS]
  22. Robert O. Paxton, "Vichy Lives! – In a way," The New York Review of Books 25 April 2013
  23. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, New York: NY 2005 pp. 489-491
  24. Aristotle Kallis, Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922-1945, London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 165–166
  25. Maiken Umbach, ed., German Federalism: Past, Present, Future, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 pp. vii-viii
  26. Maiken Umbach, ed., German Federalism: Past, Present, Future, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 p. 207
  27. Maiken Umbach, ed., German Federalism: Past, Present, Future, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 pp. x
  28. “Germany: Death of the States“, Time magazine, Feb. 12, 1934
  29. “Chronology of the Nazi Record: 1933-1943,” The Ukrainian Weekly, Jersey City: NJ, January 30, 1943
  30. Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, New York: NY, Penguin Press, 2004, p. 381
  31. Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto, Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives, Oxford: UK, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 92
  32. Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto, Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives, Oxford: UK, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 93-94
  33. Timothy W. Mason, Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and the ‘National Community’, 1918-1939, Oxford: UK, Berg Publishers, 1993, p. 160, Völkischer Beobachter , Nov. 21, 1936
  34. Robert Hessen, editor, Berlin Alert: The Memoirs and Reports of Truman Smith, Hoover Institute Press, 1985, p. 62
  35. Gaetano Salvemini, The Fate of Trade Unions Under Fascism, chapter 3: “Italian Trade Unions Under Fascism”, New York: NY, published by Anti-Fascist Literature Committee, 1937, p. 35
  36. Louis P. Lochner, What About Germany? New York: NY, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1942, p. 32
  37. Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican: Inside the Secret Archives that Reveal the New Story of the Nazis and the Church, New York, NY, Free Press, 2004, p. 66
  38. John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Regent College Publishers, 2001, pp. 114-115. Goebbels’ speech on August 4, 1935
  39. Tomi Ungerer, Tomi: A Childhood Under the Nazis, Robert Rinehart Pub.,1998, p. 63
  40. Tomi Ungerer, Tomi: A Childhood Under the Nazis, Robert Rinehart Pub., 1998, p. 78
  41. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, New York: NY, Hill and Wang, 2001, p. 236
  42. Peter D. Stachura, "Hitler Youth" In Dieter Buse; Juergen Doerr, editors, Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture 1871–1990, 2 Vols. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998, p. 478
  43. Richard Weikart, Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich, Washington D.C., Regnery History, 2016, p. 130
  44. Konrad Heiden, A History of National Socialism, Vol. 2, New York: NY, Rutledge, 2010, p. 100, first published 1934
  45. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, New York: NY, Hill and Wang, 2000, p. 255
  46. Otto Strasser, Hitler and I, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940, p. 59
  47. Otto Strasser, Hitler and I, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940, p. 93
  48. Richard Grunberger, The 12-year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945, p. 442
  49. Jochen von Lang, The Secretary: Martin Bormann, The Man Who Manipulated Hitler, New York: NY, Random House, 1979, p. 221
  50. Paul Berben, Dachau, 1933–1945: The Official History, Norfolk Press 1975, p. 276-277
  51. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, New York: NY, Konecky & Konecky Bullock, 1999, p. 389
  52. “Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. [primary source]
  53. Speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Navy and Total Defense Day Address”, Oct. 27, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1941, vol. 10, p. 440
  54. Adolf Hitler, “Adolf Hitler’s Order of the Day Calling for Invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece,” Berlin, (April 6, 1941), New York Times, April 7, 1941 [primary source]
  55. Anthony Read, The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle, New York, NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 142
  56. "Joseph W. Bendersky, A History of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945, 2nd ed., Burnham Publishers, 2000. pp. 58–59
  57. R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 1-2
  58. “Down with Judah!” Nazi poster from Münster dates from shortly before the April, 1933 boycott of the Jews. [primary source]
  59. Conan Fischer, The Rise of the Nazis, Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7190-6067-2. p. 53
  60. John Tolan [sic], Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography, New York: NY, Anchor Books—Doubleday, 1976, p. 314
Old citations from sources that only talk about the USSR, without mentioning Nazism or Nazi Germany
(note: these are not in the order in which they occurred in the article, they are in the order in which I checked them; so citations from the same book are usually grouped together even when they occurred in different parts of the article)
  1. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 232
  2. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 233
  3. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 126
  4. Peter Beilharz, Labour’s Utopias: Bolshevism, Fabianism, Social Democracy, Routledge, 1993 p. 48
  5. Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 7
  6. Grégory Dufaud, “The Soviet Union: A Shaky Welfare State,” Books & Ideas.net, April 10, 2012, Review of: Dorena Caroli, Histoire de la protection sociale en Union soviétique (1917-1939), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010 [this is a book review, not a book]
  7. Grégory Dufaud, “The Soviet Union: A Shaky Welfare State,” Books & Ideas.net, April 10, 2012, Review of: Dorena Caroli, Histoire de la protection sociale en Union soviétique (1917-1939), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010 [this is a book review, not a book]
  8. Grégory Dufaud, “The Soviet Union: A Shaky Welfare State,” Books & Ideas.net, April 10, 2012, Review of: Dorena Caroli, Histoire de la protection sociale en Union soviétique (1917-1939), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010 [this is a book review, not a book]
  9. Miklós Kun, "Stalin: An Unknown Portrait", Central European University Press, 2003, p. 287
  10. Mark B. Smith, “Social Rights in the Soviet Dictatorship: The Constitutional Right to Welfare from Stalin to Brezhnev,” Humanity, June 11, 2014
  11. Mark B. Smith, “Social Rights in the Soviet Dictatorship: The Constitutional Right to Welfare from Stalin to Brezhnev,” "Humanity", June 11, 2014
  12. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "The Russian Revolution", Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 136
  13. Nora Levin, "The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917", New York, 1988, p. 57
  14. Benjamin Pinkus, "The Soviet Government and The Jews: a documented study", 1948-1967, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 147
  15. Zvi Gitelman, "A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present", New York, NY, Schocken, 1988, p. 118
  16. Benjamin Pinkus, "The Soviet Government and The Jews: a documented study", 1948-1967, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 13
  17. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 11: “Whither the Soviet Union?” 1936 [primary source]
  18. R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, (Volume 5), The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. xvii+555. 49 tabs
  19. Samuel Gompers and William English Walling, Out of Their Own Mouths: A Revelation and an Indictment of Sovietism, New York: NY, E.P Dutton and Company, 1921, p. 89 [source originally written in 1918, before Nazism even existed]
  20. Samuel Gompers and William English Walling, Out of Their Own Mouths: A Revelation and an Indictment of Sovietism, New York: NY, E.P Dutton and Company, 1921, p. 87, p. 187, p. 76, p. 79 [source originally written in 1918, before Nazism even existed]
  21. Samuel Gompers and William English Walling, Out of Their Own Mouths: A Revelation and an Indictment of Sovietism, New York: NY, E.P Dutton and Company, 1921, p. 80 [source originally written in 1918, before Nazism even existed]
  22. Rod Jones, “Factory committees in the Russian Revolution, Libcom.org, Aug. 7, 2005 [online blog, not RS]
  23. Roman Szporluk, Russia, Ukraine and the Breakup of the Soviet Union, Hoover Institution Press, 2000, p. 164
  24. Russian Since 1917: Socialist Views of Bolshevik Policy, 1948, reprints of past articles in the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s journal The Socialist Standard (1915 to 1948), Chapter Eight: “Economic Policy and Development”
  25. Joseph Zajda, Schooling the New Russians: Transforming Soviet Workers to Capitalist Entrepreneurs, Albert Park, Australia, James Nicholas Publishers, 2008, p. 18
  26. Victor Zilberman, “Physical education in the Soviet Union,” Journal of Teacher Education, Winter 1982, Vol. XVII, No. 1, p. 66
  27. Leslie W. Ross, “Some Aspects of Soviet Education,” Journal of Teacher Education, Dec. 1, 1960, Vol. XI, No. 4, p. 550
  28. Nicholas DeWitt, (National Science Foundation), “Soviet Professional Manpower,” Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1955, p. 1
  29. ”The One-Track Mind,” Time magazine, 66:46, November 28, 1955
  30. V. I. Lenin, “On Proletarian Culture,” Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 31, pages 316-317, Julius Katzer, translator, written on October 8, 1920 [primary source]
  31. Bill Williamson, Education, Social Structure and Development: A Comparative Analysis, The Macmillan Press, 1979, p. 96
  32. Chris Rowe, Sally Waller, Oxford AQA History for A Level: Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-1953, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 156
  33. Chris Rowe, Sally Waller, Oxford AQA History for A Level: Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-1953, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 156
  34. Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism, RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, p. 207
  35. “Stalinism,” New Work [sic] Encyclopedia [this is an online mirror of Wikipedia, with its title misspelled]

That's at least 95 citations which do not discuss the subject of the article (i.e. the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism) at all, and were used purely for original research. There may be others. Some of the other sources that I checked only barely mention the two regimes (there is one other source, for example, cited three times, which doesn't compare Nazism and Stalinism politically but it does describe the war between them, so technically it mentions both of them, so I didn't list it). And there were some sources which I was not able to check.

Of course, it may be fine to use the occasional source that talks only about Nazism or only about Stalinism without comparing them. For example, if such a source was cited by another source that does compare them. If a source which does not make a comparison is closely connected with another source that does, we could use both in this article. But the article as it stood was based mostly on sources that do not compare Nazism with Stalinism. Many sections did not have a single source that actually compared Nazism with Stalinism, or Germany with the USSR, or anything of the sort. This was unacceptable.

The sections "Biopolitics" and "Violence and violent societies" were actually among the better parts of the article, because at least they actually used sources that compare Nazism and Stalinism. The majority of the rest of the article did not.

But even the sections "Biopolitics" and "Violence and violent societies" were worded in a misleading way, because they were in fact summaries of chapters from Geyer and Fitzpatrick's book (specifically the chapters entitled "Utopian biopolitics" and "State violence - violent societies" in the book). Yet the wiki text did not even mention Geyer and Fitzpatrick by name, despite closely mirroring their work and even using section titles that were almost identical to their chapter titles. Of course, it's perfectly fine to have article sections that summarize the views of specific authors, but they should be clearly identified as such. The information from those two sections should have been under a heading entitled "Geyer and Fitzpatrick", making it clear that it's a summary of their work.

For all these reasons, a complete rewrite was absolutely necessary. The article had to be rewritten from the ground up, using the actual scholarship on this topic - some of which was already named in the introduction and the bibliography. There are plenty of good sources that can be used here, and I don't understand how we got a long article that somehow avoided using them. The article also needed to be restructured so that its sections are about the various scholars and their work, rather than "themes" of comparison. The "theme"-based structure is probably what attracted all this original research in the first place. Editors presumably felt free to add sections on something they believed to be a similarity between Nazism and Stalinism. If we structure the article to be based on scholars instead - Arendt, Friedrich and Brzezinski, Kershaw and Lewin, Geyer and Fitzpatrick and so on - then it will be clear that the article is meant to describe the comparisons between Nazism and Stalinism that were actually made by reliable sources, not the comparisons that a particular editor thinks should be made.

Once I realized this, I immediately... did nothing for a while. After all, it's easy to say "this article needs a complete rewrite". It's a lot harder to actually do the work. And a rewrite isn't really something that you can talk about in advance, before actually seeing it. Someone has to actually write it first. And it might as well be me. So eventually, I found the time to do it. Thus, the reason why I am posting this now is because I have completed the rewrite, and I wish to provide all the necessary background information about why it was needed.

To summarize: Most of the article was original research, and the parts that weren't original research closely followed the work of specific authors (to the point of almost copying chapter titles) without naming those authors. Furthermore, almost all the major scholarship on the topic was ignored (with some of it mentioned by name but never used as a source). Therefore, a complete rewrite was needed, to remove the original research, to properly attribute the points made by specific sources, and to add information from some of the major scholars on this topic. Ohff (talk) 09:17, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I should also mention that my rewrite is by no means supposed to be a complete or exhaustive summary of the academic literature on this topic. For one thing, I originally wanted to add a section on Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, but that's a huge book and I ran out of energy before I could really get to it. As one possible avenue for further improvement of the article, I strongly suggest using that source. And then there are a number of journal articles, written by the authors already cited, that could be used to improve their existing sections (I mostly limited myself to using their major books as sources). In the case of Hannah Arendt, her work is famous enough that there are also sources talking about her. Not sure if we need to add anything from those, but we could.
Ohff (talk) 09:32, 15 May 2018 (UTC) who after doing all this writing probably doesn't count as a WikiGnome any more

Discussion

Agree, even a brief look at the article creates an impression of an original research.--Paul Siebert (talk) 13:47, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  • @Ohff. Yes, this is now a completely different page. You effectively deleted old page and created new page on the subject of totalitarianism. Of course some parts of old version was arguably an "original research", but you completely changed the overall organization of the page: instead of describing what these regimes had in common (old version), you describe views by persons X, Y and Z, which does not answer main question a reader could have, namely, "What these regimes had in common?". This is not good, although this is definitely a big and good faith effort on your part. Not sure how to fix it. My very best wishes (talk) 15:36, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I understand how it might look like a completely different page, but it is not entirely different. I kept all of the material that was referenced with non-OR sources (that is to say, sources which actually compare Nazism with Stalinism). For instance, the section "In political discourse" is made up entirely of material that was on the page before. So is the section "Other scholars". And the majority of the section "Geyer and Fitzpatrick" is made up of material that was previously in the sections "Biopolitics" and "Political violence and violent societies" (as I mentioned in my explanation, this material was based entirely on the book by Geyer and Fitzpatrick, which is why I felt it necessary to move it to a section named after them).
Now it is true that I describe views by persons X, Y and Z, but I believe that is precisely how we should handle this comparison. There is an academic consensus that the Nazi and Stalinist regimes were murderous, oppressive, and led by dictators with personality cults... but that is all that the sources agree on. All other issues regarding similarities and differences are debated by various scholars. Therefore, it's not really possible to list similarities in Wikipedia's voice. We have to say: "Author X says that these regimes had Υ thing in common. Author Z says that they had Q thing in common." And so on. That is what I tried to do. Different authors talk about different similarities, and they don't agree.
I also understand how it may look like the article talks about totalitarianism too much now. But that's because they are so intimately connected. The first person to systematically compare Nazism and Stalinism (Hannah Arendt) was also the first person to use the term "totalitarianism" in its modern sense. Most sources that compare Stalinism and Nazism talk about totalitarianism. Ohff (talk) 17:01, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
No, the page must be structured in the same way as it is structured in RS we are using. Consider a chapter on this subject from "Russia under Bolshevik regime" by Richard Pipes (currently cited on the page). It is structured as the description of specific similarities and differences. Only such way of presentation is readable and understandable. Actually, this is a common plague for many WP pages, when instead of summarizing multiple sources of the subject (old version), people are making a list: author A wrote this on the subject, author B wrote that on the subject (this new version). This general approach actually degrades WP content. Unfortunately, I do not have time for that. My very best wishes (talk) 18:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Our policy doesn't say that. We don't have to borrow the structure from some particular source. We have special guidelines about the structure of articles.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:40, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
My very best wishes, I understand what you're saying and I sympathize. As I mentioned, I wanted to keep the old organization of the article at first. But then I realized that in order to do that, I would have to decide which statements by which sources belong under which heading. For example, I found myself asking things like: "Is this source talking about dictatorship now, or about the cult of personality, or about mass murder? It seems to be talking about all of them at once. Where do I put this in the article, if we're going to have three sections on those three things? Or maybe we should combine them?" etc. Trying to follow the structure given by RS themselves doesn't help, because different RS have different structures. Different scholars structure their comparisons of Stalinism and Nazism differently. For example, Geyer and Fitzpatrick have a chapter on Biopolitics. No one else does. Rousso has a chapter on "the dictator and the system" and a separate one on "the logics of violence", while other sources combine dictatorship and violence in one chapter. Kershaw and Lewin have separate side-by-side chapters for aspects of Nazism and aspects of Stalinism. Hannah Arendt goes in chronological order, comparing the movements before they seized power and after they seized power. Which structure do we follow? I don't know. That's why I decided to go by author in the end. Ohff (talk) 18:50, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  • If you follow such logic, you must create a separate section about each researcher on this subject. Why you did not make a separate section about Pipes? There are many more. You must focus on different aspects of the subject (and make them subsections), not on hundreds authors who have written something about it. Consider page Protein structure as an example. What would happen if someone created a separate section about each researcher of protein structure, instead of focusing on different aspects of protein structure. My very best wishes (talk) 19:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Not exactly, Biophys. Proteins are some concrete class of molecules that really exist. It is a well defined, and objectively defined concept. And, it addition, it has no relation to the life of human society. That means the analogy with history and development of race theories is more pertinent.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  • I actually wanted to make a separate section on Pipes (and especially one on Alan Bullock, like I said above), but I ran out of energy and time. If you would like to add more information from Pipes and create a section for him, I would fully support that. I might come back and add more Pipes myself when I have more time. I think that, ideally, he should have his own section.
  • We don't have to worry about hundreds of researchers here. This is a much more narrow topic than protein structure. The researchers are only numbered in the dozens, and they usually collaborate in teams. Notice that most of the sections (except for the one on Arendt) are about pairs or teams of researchers rather than individuals. By the way - in their books, they all reference each other all the time. Friedrich and Brzezinski talk about Arendt, Lewin and Kershaw talk about Friedrich and Brzezinski (and Arendt), and so on. They're a pretty small group, overall.
  • The other big difference between this and protein structure, of course, is that (I assume) different protein researchers don't have different opinions about what a protein contains. There is a broad consensus which can be summarized.
  • But in the comparison between Nazism and Stalinism, the consensus is much more narrow, on only a few points - one-man dictatorship, mass murder and the personality cult, basically - and everything else is debated between the various scholars. Remember the section on biopolitics, which reflected the views of a single team of researchers without saying that it did so? We would just end up that way again if we structured the article based on aspects. We would have the aspects that Arendt talks about, the aspects that Friedrich talks about, the aspects that Pipes talks about and so on. We would still have sections talking about a single researcher, just not explicitly labeled that way. Ohff (talk) 20:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
It does not really matter if researchers agree or disagree on certain aspects (there are controversies in the field of protein structure). For example, you tell that all researchers agree on (a) one-man dictatorship, (b) mass murder and (c) the personality cult. Then made them subsections. However, only Pipes and Arendt emphasize that (d) both systems prosecuted Jews. That's fine, make such section (d) and refer to Pipes and Arendt. And so on. If there are disagreements, state them in the corresponding section. My very best wishes (talk) 20:55, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Let's see if we can find some common ground, though. What do you think about the idea of an Overview section? Your concern is to ensure that the similarities and differences between Stalinism and Nazism are summarized in a way that is obvious to the reader, right? An Overview section could do that, with proper attribution in the case of ideas specific to individual researchers. I could write something like that and then post it here for comments. What do you think? Ohff (talk) 20:47, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
You can certainly try it. My very best wishes (talk) 20:55, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I made sub-headings, and this mostly fixes the problem. I saw version of an overview in your userspace and see why this is difficult: one must be an expert on the subject to do it. As about Pipes, yes, I think we need an extra section for him, especially because he made some important points currently missing on the page. My very best wishes (talk) 15:41, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
This looks good. Thank you! My only disagreement is that I think you made too many sub-headings (in other words, you sometimes made dedicated sub-headings for short paragraphs), but this is only a matter of personal preference and I'm not going to change anything. The sub-headings are a good solution.
I'm currently traveling for a conference, and I haven't been very active on the wiki recently because I have a large backlog of work in real life that I really need to get done (it seems that writing for the wiki makes me fall behind on writing for my actual job). But after I am done with that, I think I'm going to try writing a section on Pipes here. Ohff (talk) 10:23, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
There is one more problem. Some authors do not write about Stalinism vs Nazism, but about Communism vs Nazism. However, many of them mean Stalinism, not Communism.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:17, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  • The rewrite mostly looks good to me; the previous version was clearly a product of original research. As far as improvements, I would suggest adding a section such as "Overview" or similar, to summarise the findings by various scholars - what do they agree on? what are the main themes (similarities vs differences)? What is the current state of the debate? Then it would be more logical to go into sections dedicated to particular scholars. K.e.coffman (talk) 16:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this is precisely the point: what are the similarities and the differences between the regimes? This is impossible to understand in new version. I would suggest to keep old organization of the page, but improve referencing and remove OR. My very best wishes (talk) 16:20, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I think the current organisation is fine article as of 15 May; the article just needs an overview section that could be added as a first one on the page. K.e.coffman (talk) 16:24, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
When I started writing the new version, I wanted to keep the old organization. But I found it impossible to do so (without doing original research myself) because the sources do not provide lists of similarities and differences. They do talk about similarities and differences, but they talk about them at the same time, mixed together. On the same page, an author would say something along the lines of "the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin were similar because of X, but they were also different because of Y". Trying to separate the similarities from the differences in the wiki text is, I feel, contrary to how the sources talk about the subject. It would be artificial to have an article section that only talks about a similarity, based on page 10 from source X, page 20 from source Y and page 30 from source Z, and then to have another article section that only talks about a difference, based on the same pages in the same sources. I confess I don't know how to separate the similarities from the differences without misrepresenting the sources.
But when writing the new version, despite changing the structure, I did try to focus on the things that Nazism and Stalinism have in common. Most of the sections I have written focus on the similarities (and to a lesser extent the differences) identified by source X.
I like K.e.coffman's idea of an overview section. Maybe that could make the similarities more clear - with proper attribution where sources disagree, of course. Ohff (talk) 17:22, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure if the question I am going to rise has been asked before, but don't you think we need to define the subject of the article first? The title is ambiguous: it may mean (i) a discussion of different attempts to compare Stalinism and Nazism (i.e. why, with what purpose, and when were these attempts undertaken), or (ii) a discussion if differences and commonalities between these two regimes. Both topics are notable and deserve separate articles. They can combined in a single article, but for that, the article should be properly structured.

If we decide to make a combined article, the first part should be devoted to the topic (i). It should be explained why, and in which historical context, the attempts to compare Stalinism and Nazism were made. Thus, a number or authors say that one of primary goals behind writing the Black Book of Communism was to demonstrate that Communism (and Stalinism) was greater evil than Nazism, and one of the reason why this book was written was a collective Vichy syndrome many French intellectuals are suffering.

My second point is that it should be stressed that, whereas the term "Nazism" has a double meaning (an ideology and a regime), Stalinism refers only to the certain regime. Stalinist ideology never existed, this regime unilised Marxist ideology that was not suitable for its goals. Soi=ures exist where it has been demonstrated that Marxism was harnessing intrinsically murderous nature of Stalinist regime, thereby decreasing the level of its brutality.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

You raise a good point. However, it seems to me that (i) and (ii) are intimately connected and cannot be handled separately. For example: there are sources that support the concept of totalitarianism, and classify Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin as totalitarian regimes, and there are sources that reject the concept of totalitarianism and classify those regimes in a different way. The two groups have very different ideas about what the similarities and differences of the two governments were. So, in order to talk about similarities and differences in a way that makes sense to the reader, we have to say something about the debate around totalitarianism. In order to talk about (ii), we need to give background information on (i). Ohff (talk) 18:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but, again, we have two type discourses. In the first one, the author A says, e.g. "Nazism and Stailinism are the good", the author B says "Stalinism was innocent, Nazism was terrible" , the author B says: "Stalinism was a much greater evil".
In the second type discourse, some authors say that, e.g., "historically, the mainstream viewpoint was leftist (rightist, male-chauvinist, creationist, whatever), and it was that Stalinism and Nazism were nice (reference to the source A), that was because the our civilisation was contralled by reptiloids." Another author says: "recent sharp drop of marijuana stocks caused many authors (for example, a historian C) to challenge the old views of Nazism, and to claim that it was better than Stalinism. And so on. Obviously, these are not actual facts, just an example.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:34, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Regarding the dual meaning of "Nazism" (and the lack thereof for "Stalinism"): I think we should simply follow what the sources say. If a source says it is comparing "Nazism" with "Stalinism", then that source belongs here, even if it may not mean the same thing when it says "Nazism" as another source. In practice, most sources talk about both the regimes and their ideologies, using various terminology. But the focus is definitely on the regimes. At least among the sources I have read. Ohff (talk) 18:08, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
When historians use the word "Stalinism" they always mean the regime. When historians write about Nazism, they may mean the Hitler's regime or the ideology he created. This should be properly explained in the article, probably, in a separate section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:36, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I think, the first section should be devoted to the question (i) from my above post. Its structure should be as follows:

  1. When the first attempt was made to compare Stalinism and Nazism? Who did that, and why? What were the historical circumstances that made such a comparison necessary? Were any notable minority viewpoints on that?
  2. How was this subject developing during last 70 years? How the mainstream views on that subject were changing with time? Which historical events affected these changes?
  3. Have been any major revisions of this subject? What was a primary driving force behind these changes?
  4. And, finally, we can start describing present days mainstream and notable minority studies where a comparison of these two regimes is provided. that will be a transition to the subject (ii).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:51, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Could that first section also serve as an overview? I'm thinking we could combine this with K.e.coffman's overview idea. Ohff (talk) 18:59, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I would say, not an overview, but a "historical background"...--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:08, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

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"Nationalism and socialism" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Nationalism and socialism. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed, Rosguill talk 17:08, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Reasons for disposal to delete

There is no way to compare the two lines of thought. 'Communism does not impose racial superiority, much less advocate for segregation.' On the contrary, in dozens of studies communist thought is defined as gregarious. Other than that, one came out of a book that has a thousand concordance errors, and no scientific study (Nazism). And the other came out of a book that scientifically studied the relationship of classes and production (communism). Which, by the way, is still used in economics courses even in liberal countries.

It is clear that people with liberal right-wing thinking (perhaps the extreme right of which Nazism is linked) are clearly trying to use Wikipedia for propaganda of political hatred.

These comparisons have always been made, but there are several studies that show that the direct comparison is wrong [1]

Differences in Thought Base

Let's see what to say Marx:

"The history of the whole society so far existing is the history of class struggles. The free man and the slave, the patrician and the plebeian, the feudal baron and the servant, the master of a corporation and the officer, in in short, oppressors and oppressed, they were in constant antagonism with each other, waged an uninterrupted struggle, sometimes hidden, open at other times, which always ended with a revolutionary transformation of the whole society or with the common decline of the classes in conflict ... ”' ' - Karl Marx

Now let's see what Hitler says:

“We want, one day, to no longer see classes or castes; so start to eradicate that in yourself now. We want, one day, to see one piece in the Reich, and you should already be educated in that sense. We want these people to be, one day, obedient, and you must train that obedience. We want these people to be, one day, peaceful, but worthy, and you must be peaceful. ” - Adolf Hitler

Conclusion

Through these findings, we can see that the difference between Nazis and Communists revolved around the importance devoted to class struggle. From Marx's point of view, the struggle between classes was fundamental for the recurrence of historical transformations over time. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler saw that the extinction of social classes was of paramount importance for the development of a harmonious nation.

In this context, it is worth remembering that Marxist theory believed that the struggle between bourgeois and proletarians would be fundamental for the liberation of the peoples themselves from their oppressors WITHOUT AN EXTERIOR CONQUEST. In contrast, Nazi theories were strictly focused on building a strong German nation, which should be above other nations. Thus, we can see another difference between these two political perspectives. [2]

So this article would have to have all the other comparisons, like Capitalism that killed 30 million Indians and 50 million Africans in the Americas. The biggest holocaust in human history. The article has a clear political nature, as if the reader himself, reading about the two regimes, could not reach his own conclusion. Wikipedia is being used to build the ideas of the extreme right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anhaabaete (talk • contribs) 09:12, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Ref

child and adolescent prisoners - family members of "traitors"

Dear Sir, you've noted "Some of them look a bit to old to be children." That's partly true, I've rephrased the original sentence into "child and adolescent prisoners." May I also draw your attention to:

  • On the background behind them you can clearly see brickwork columns with decorative plasterwork and ornaments typical for Imperial Russian schools converted into Soviet child prisons, while normal Soviet FLCs elsewhere were wooden structures without ornamentation and other "excesses of capitalism,"
  • On the top of the picture, on the ceiling of the room you can clearly see a chandelier (!,) which is unheard of to be a part of FLC interior.
  • Lower deck, boys sitting in Lotus position, and some on the upper deck, who hit the sack for a while, are probably priblatnyonnye underage thieves, while those children standing in waiting are most likely "family members of traitors," but that is only a speculation on my part, though based on the livingspace division hierarchy of Soviet penitentiary facilities (sitting on the bench in any position during the daytime is STILL a no-no in Russian penitentiaries today, same is true for leisure recline.) Sadly, but even in such inhumane conditions, there is a hierarchy and peer oppression as elsewhere in the Soviet Union.

Regards. 176.37.192.236 (talk) 19:46, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Photos of authors

Are they truly necessary in the article? With all due respect to Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other authors, their photos in the article (currently 3 of them) seem a little bit overuse of third-party personality photos in a non-biographical article. In my opinion, the space should be devoted to the graphic comparison of two regimes (which is in itself striking to say the least.) Otherwise the reader is left distracted by a mishmash of historical reality and modern personality portraits. 176.37.192.236 (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 24 February 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Crobin06.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:02, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

  1. ^ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-needs-stop-falsely-claiming-that -nazis-were-socialists /
  2. ^ https://educador.brasilescola.uol.com.br/estrategias-ensino/comunismo-x-nazismo.htm
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