User talk:Igny/Annexation of Baltic states by Soviet Union

Note a sniff of POV bias in the "re-occupied" being in quotation marks.

I am curious, since you did not answer this point on the discussion page of the Occupation of the Baltic states article: the current official Russian POV is covered in that article, it is not ignored. Why did you claim it was "neglected"? As someone else pointed out, it is the viewpoint of the (fringe) Baltic nationalists that is missing.

Well to be clear, the Baltic POV has been given an undue weight by placing the word "occupation" in the section title. My opinion is that the section should be named "Liberation..." with mentioning the POV term "re-occupation" somehow in a less prominent way. (Igny (talk) 00:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

Don't you think that "Liberation" is as badly POV as "Occupation"? --Illythr (talk) 21:45, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

No, because there is no question that the Baltic states were in fact liberated from fascism/nazism in 1944. The republics even gained some territory as a result of this event. The "terror" which followed had in fact very little to do with what happened in 1944, and probably had more with the baltic cooperation with Nazists and other anti-soviet activity. However it is not true that they lost independence in 1944, because clearly they were not independent at the time. There is an NPOV term for that, annexation. (Igny (talk) 22:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC))

In this sense, we can talk about them being liberated from Communism as well in 1941. Or that Iraq was liberated in 2003 (official point of view in the US during Bush presidency). I think these terms should be reserved only for absolutely uncontroversial situations, like the occupation and subsequent liberation of Petrozavodsk (that is, a place that had always belonged to one side and had experienced a military takeover by another for a short period of time). In any case, liberation from Nazism was immediately followed by a military occupation after which the incorporation into the USSR was resumed (the governments in exile didn't return, after all), rendering the usage of the term "liberation" meaningless, as with the two examples I cited. --Illythr (talk) 01:04, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

There is this phenomenon in human history, when noone judges the winner. Like in 1945 and in the few following years no one really judged USSR's actions in the WW2, and naturally Germany did not have a chance in the game of pointing fingers. But as soon as someone loses his footing, all of a sudden there are people who jump at the opportunity to kick the fallen, like it happened to the USSR or to the communist ideals after 1990-92. This phenomenon is called historical revisionism. And somehow people who were thriving before the revolutions, change their ways as the circumstances change. All of a sudden the former communists become all democratic and start criticizing everything they could find in the past history of a broken country, the history which was never black and white, evil v. good, you know. The gray colors become white/black only in the eye of the beholder. E.g., everyone points at the holodomor now, and very few notice the huge Ukrainian industry and Ukrainian cosmonauts and the territorial gains, etc. When is Lithuania giving Vilnius back to Poland? That is right, I didn't think so.

At that time that event was the liberation, it was characterized as such and very few actually objected that. 1990s changed that event to occupation, I concede that. I also concede that I alone can not fight the recent tendencies to revise the past. I will give you an example why not. Say sometime later Texas or New Mexico decides to separate from the USA. I can promise to you that all kind of historians, scholars, and politicians will come up from some closet they were hiding before and produce studies calling the years under the US rule as an occupation. Attempts to criticize such views will naturally fail. (Igny (talk) 03:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC))

Indeed, but history is written from the modern point of view, not one contemporary to the event. I bet the Tatar-Mongol yoke was considered something like a mutually beneficial protectorate by the Mongols themselves (and even some later-day Russian historians), let alone the Ottoman sovereignty over most of Eastern Europe by the Ottomans. And if, due to some political reasons, the view of the "US occupation of New Mexico" becomes established in future historiography, Wikipedia will reflect it just the same. This is kinda the point - occupation and liberation are but politically-charged views on events that, objectively, are a military takeover followed by annexation. Besides, in the particular case of the 1944 events, at least 11 states did certainly object. --Illythr (talk) 12:03, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

This modern point of view is not universally shared today even in these "formerly occupied" countries. And certainly Russia does not share that modern point of view. (Igny (talk) 13:20, 9 September 2009 (UTC))

By the number of sources cited in the main article, I think we can agree that this point of view is currently dominant in the Western world. Of course, the dominance of one political point of view over another doesn't mean Wikipedia has to adopt the bias of one of the sides (nobody's writing, for example, about "European occupation of the Americas" despite them being "ongoing", thoroughly illegal and involving mass murder, deportations and enslavement of native populations). However, judging by the explosive reaction an uninvolved admin got when he tried to neutralize the POV there, this issue will not be solved within at least 10 (or rather, 100) years. The current official Russian stance of employing odious figures like Dyukov to fight "fire with fire" doesn't exactly help matters either.

Therefore, it's absolutely pointless to complain about double standards, break Godwin's law, hold grudges or, heavens forbid, start revert wars. All that can and should be done is, to adapt Vecrumba, refute nationalist propaganda by rigorous application of fact. For example, the article about the Bombing of Tallinn in World War II used to claim, citing a report by the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, that the bombing of 9 March 1944 was done by 300 IL-24 planes - a postwar design that was never actually built (perhaps IL-2s or IL-4s were meant, who knows). The claim was subsequently removed, but it would be interesting to study the report to see whether it contains any more such "facts". Another example: the article Sovietization of the Baltic states includes the following description of post-election processes: Those who failed to have their passports stamped for so voting were shot in the back of the head. Just like that, 16.9 % of Estonia's population (official election attendance figure!) shot in the back of the head right there.The source cited, however, states: Those who failed to have their passports stamped for so voting may be shot in the back of the head. Thus we have a speculative sentence added by the editor for dramatic effect transformed into a statement of fact. These are, admittedly, fairly minor issues compared to the big picture, but I think this is where work should be applied, rather than wasted in meaningless bickering on talk pages, RFCs and RFArbs. --Illythr (talk) 01:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

(reindent) Oh yes, the Western world. This is like that sort of friends who join the fight after it ended to kick the losing side. This is the kind of friend who after the break up of USSR picks up the pieces and move them to their sphere of influence by smooth-talking, "look, we have always been claiming that you have been occupied, poor you." (emphasis mine) The sad part is that Baltic states may think they gained independence. But it is a matter of fact they have never had it and still do not possess it and in fact do not know what to do with the independence even if they had it. What is their sphere of influence? They can not even control their own politics without EU and NATO looking over their shoulder, and to join EU/NATO was their first priority in 1990s. They may think that their anti-Russian rhetoric stems from their newly established national identity. But think for a moment... The newly independent country may have just considered to become a friend/ally of the stronger neighbor just for the old times sake. But in case of Baltic countries, as well as long time friends of Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, the opposite happened, they applied considerable efforts to distance themselves from Russia and alienate themselves as much as possible. That much effort to paint the Russia as an enemy, do you think that was a spontaneous, naturally occurring phenomenon? No that was the classic Divide and Conquer tactic. (Igny (talk) 02:33, 10 September 2009 (UTC))

As I said, complaining about things will not help anything at all. Everyone makes their own choices and Wikipedia is definitely not the place to chide about it. There are specific things that can be done to improve factual contents of articles by removing the (obviously) factually incorrect statements and that should be the immediate goal. --Illythr (talk) 10:17, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems like we are arguing about different things. I never claimed that improving factual content was not important. I just tried to find an explanation for continuing edit wars despite that it should seem straightforward just to describe the facts. Basically, you say that factual content is all what matters for now, I say that interpretation of the facts should matter too. (Igny (talk) 12:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC))

I don't think we're actually arguing here . The explanation to edit wars is simple - POV differences on all levels (editors/authors/politicians). Interpretation of the facts naturally matters even more than the facts themselves, it's just that the prevalent POV in Western sources disallows NPOVing this interpretation down to the level of, say, European colonization of the Americas. I'd say it'll stay that way for a comparable period of time, which is why focusing on undeniable facts/removing obvious propaganda is the better alternative to complaints about double standards and other such POV-conflict-rooted things. --Illythr (talk) 01:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)