Talk:Soviet Union/Archive 2

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

I copied the layout and most of the text from the Temp page. That meant deleting most of the history section, but that was duplicated on History of the Soviet Union anyway. --Guppie

Did you check if that the text here had been edited? It had gone through some extensive editing. Please be more careful in the future. --mav
Yes, I did check the text for edits, sorry if I missed something. I was just tired of seeing the same changes on Soviet Union and History of the Soviet Union, so I went for a big-bang approach. I promise to be more careful in the future, I'm almost always careful. ;-) --Guppie
The two versions weren't that different after all. The main difference is that the history in the Soviet Union article was nicely divided in different sections. But I still did find some text that was lost. --mav

Rather than trying to cite the most sensational figures from black books and Robert Conquest, readers should focus on trying to improve this terribly weak article. The History of the People's Republic of China,for instance, is a far more informative and illuminating article. I take credit for most on the post-Mao era. This article tells you little if anything about the Soviet economy, Soviet society, the Cold War, the origns of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the casuses of the breakup, Perestroika, Glasnost, the Brezhnev Era, the Sino-Soviet Split, Communist ideology. In short, it’s not really going to help people understand why Soviet history unfolded as it did. I look forward to revamping it.

"Following the rise of Premier Joseph Stalin the Soviet Union greatly expanded, conquoring neighboring countries and assimilating them into what became a vast Soviet Empire." I'm not satisfied by this paragraph. Soviet Empire is a Reaganism and which countries did Stalin conquer before the WW II division of Poland? ²¹²

Would calling it a Soviet Empire not be consistent with calling the pre-1917 state the Russian Empire? Unless of course you define "empire" narrowly as a country whose governmental structure features an emperor, in which case the USSR should not be termed an empire. Wesley

Is the holiday "Hero's Day" or "Heroes Day"? -- Zoe

I think it is inappropriate to list the "Final President" in the table. With the USSR being a defunt entity, we are looking at it as a whole--what it was during its entire existence--not in one snapshot in time. --Jiang 09:41 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I see. "Kishka" deserves an honorable mention, but the first man in space doesn't. I don't think this is professional.
Michaely 07:49, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This is a wiki. If you think it belongs, add it. --Jiang 10:38, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I added some text on the historical significance of the USSR. The 3 lines of text saying effectively that the only good thing USSR did was destroing the Nazi was a disgrace and sounds like something from 1940s. Please check what I said for NPOV, I tried to be objective, but couldn't really afford to pay enough attention to that right now. Paranoid 20:25, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think some of it sounds like a press release from the Kremlin... Secretlondon 20:43, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)
: Look, I lived in Soviet Union and I live in Russia now. I understand these issues quite well. But it's not the correct place to explain why I do in fact understand them, I will rework that and add to the History of the Soviet Union article. As for the tone, Secretlondon, I challenge you to find anything other than Stalin's repressions and lack of freedoms (to certain extent) that was really-really bad about Soviet Union (and which is not just as bad or worse for either the US, modern Russia or many other world countries). Or to find anything factually wrong or heavily spinned in what I wrote.
The history section is already too long. If you want to add, do it at History of the Soviet Union. --Jiang 21:18, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
: Jiang, I understand why you decided to remove these two paragraphs - I will rework this content and move it to History of the Soviet Union, but the existing part about the retrospective just cannot stay as it is. Because if it's considered the only Russian achivement worth mentioning, I simply don't see that other countries did anything worthwhile whatsoever. The last sentence implies that the price paid in human misery was so great that the net effect of the Soviet Union's existence might have been negative. This is not neutral point of view at all.
: :Just a minute. It says (I wrote it) that the greatest achievement of the Soviet Union was the destruction of the Nazis. And does anyone dispute that? Given the Nazis were perhaps the greatest evil of human history surely their defeat is an achievemntment beyond compare? But, yes, maybe the price of human misery paid by the Soviet people was too great (25 million and more when the famines are considered). To ask the question is not to express a point of view but to sum up, briefly, the debate about the USSR.
      I don't think you can "sum it up briefly" in 3 lines. No more than you can sum up the history of the US like "The greatest achievements of the United States was sending a man to the Moon. But the price in human misery — the genocyde of American natives and slavery of Blacks may never be calculated." Is this a way to sum up the debate about America's historic role? No way. It's extreme oversimplification. Another important thing is that repressions and defeating Nazi are two almost completely unrelated things. Because of that you can't say "but". If it was worded some way like this: "The greatest thing was destroying Nazi, the worst thing was repressions", it would be passable. But to imply that the second somehow diminishes the value of the first (and that it has any relation to it) and of all other things that were good about USSR is not fair and not logical.
I think the problem is that you want to insist the Soviet Union was a positive force for humanity - in the absence of almost any evidence or support from the Soviet people. I visited the Soviet Union, I know it wasn't some prison camp nor some empire of evil. But nor was the fact it proposed to incinerate me with its nuclear weapons a positive force for human development (as your text ridiculously suggested). Apologies for Stalinism (like they only indulged in mass murder for 24 years of the 74 years of the USSR's history) don't cut it either. The difference between the USSR and the USA is that the people of the USSR overthrew the state, and the USA continues. So it is much more possible to definitively evaluate the USSR's historical significance than it is the USA's. Apart from a year or two at the end of its life the Soviet Union was a harshly repressive state. And, as a European social democrat, I resent the idea that it in some way promoted progressive politics. it diodn't. it was the excuse of every right wing dictator, from Pinochet to Franco, for their actions. If you are going to spout all the stuff about how it helped all those nations (helped mainly == gave them guns) then put that in too.

Feel free to tweak the current history section. Just make sure it stays the same length or becomes shorter. --Jiang