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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

General discussion 2003

The majority of the content of this article on an important, controverial subject is new; yet nobody else seems interested. But regardless, I'll filling the gaps little by little. 172


Right now, the biggest gaps needing to be filled are the Sino-Soviet Split and the implications of the post-Cold War world. The latter is a heated debate among political scientists, historians, economists, and other social scientists with an abundant array of literature needing to be covered somewhere. I don't know if it belongs in this article or another one. If it belongs in another article, what title would people prefer? 172

This article is well-written and detailed, but I feel that that the criticism was unbalanced against the West, and almost seems to be intentionally misleading in some places. For example, in the section about the collapse, it says "Today, over half the population in the former Soviet Union is now impoverished in a country where poverty had been largely non-existent; life expectancy has dropped drastically; and GDP has halved." Millions of starved Russian peasants would probably have disagreed with you about proverty being non-existant.

Also, repeatedly enclosing the term free in quotation marks whenever describing the West is a rather juvenile technique, and I would go so far as to say that it is an insult to the legacy of the hundreds of thousands of people shot by the KGB and millions of people shipped off the the Gulag. Lastly, referring to the Khmer Rouge as "US backed" seems to be something of a stretch, and seems to imply that they were as much of a US proxy force as the Contras. I do not believe there is any evidence at all that the US provided them with any military of economic aid: we simply did not actively oppose them. While I always appreciate attempts to wade through all the propaganda and the distortions that it caused in writings from the time (this article does it nicely in some places), this article seems to do it in a rather one-sided way. Mprudhom 19:56 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Come on. A week ago or so I was accused of writing from the perspective of a Reaganite Cold Warrior neoconervative hawk. Now this. This article isn't supposed to be a form of anti-Communist indoctrination. All right? Keep in mind that the Cold War took place after 1945; you are alluding to events that were occurring under Stalin in the 1930s.
The section to which you objected is also completely factual. We are speaking of the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 1980s, after all, not the 1930s. Not impoverished does not mean prosperous. This is just in terms of basic access to amenities like food, clothing, and shelter; universal employment; and universal access to health and education. I myself wrote about the structural problems of such as system, despite the near non-existence of poverty. 172
(I put in colons for the response of the previous paragraph so it comes out as a threaded discussion). Perhaps some of my criticisims where a bit harsh, but you shouldn't accuse me of wanting the article to be "a form of anti-Communist indoctrination"; I certainly don't want that. Maybe some other people can chime in with their opinions of whether the coverage appears biased or not. Anyway, you are obviously more an expert on the subject than I. However, I still think that saying that the Khmer Rouge was "US Backed" is simply not true. I would be interested in seeing any sources (that aren't Chomsky) that provide evidence to the contrary. Mprudhom 01:35 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Maybe you'd like to do some research on this and rewrite that section. I plan to rewrite it, because right now the section on Cambodia simply isn't woven into the rest of the text well enough. That's the case with much of the article, which still requires considerable work. 172

My god! This article is huge - could you break it up into useful pieces 172? 54 kilobytes and growing is not an encyclopedia article. For example I wanted to put this piece of info in this article: "On July 20, 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued the first peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union." But since this article is so HUGE I couldn't figure out where that info best fits. --mav 06:30 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Very good job, Mav. I really like the sentence! I'll find a home for it in the article. And you're right about the length. Someday, it can become a series of articles. 172

The article can be cut farily easily if Intelligence agencies' roles and the Cold War and culture are made into separate daughter articles. 172 09:35, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"As another example of shifting courses among the increasingly independent-minded Western allies, this time, it is France that has opposed US adventurism in the Middle East during the 2003 "pre-emptive" attack on Iraq, a reversal of roles from the Suez crisis. " Is this sentence realy at his place here and adventurism is a POV ? Ericd 01:43, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

As it is this article is disbalanced. It relates in detail the Vietnam War, this is unecessary there is also an article about. It forgot the consequence of the Cuba missiles crisis (red telephone, revision of nuclear doctrines) it also forget european missiles crisis in the 80's (Pershing vs. SS20). Ericd 01:59, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This article is POV from the first to the last line it's a performance to insert the name of George W. Bush and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and omiting words like MAD and ICBM. Ericd 10:11, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The first line makes me thik that it was a conflict between the USA and NATO. :-)

I've removed : "As another aside, Iran is yet another example of the parallels between 1950s and contemporary US foreign policy. Popular anger, seething and repressed for a generation, eventually culminated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to a hostage crisis that would perhaps later bring down the Carter administration. Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which, from the standpoint of the US, had the audacity to overthrow CIA-imposed absolutist regime, is a part of President Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil" along with North Korea. Korea is a focus of George W. Bush's administration, another administration, like Reagan's, notable for its striking affinity with the "massive retaliation" polices of John Foster Dulles. "

POV and out of the subject. Ericd 10:29, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

172 You have restored all as it was without any comment and marqued the reversion as minor. You still don't play the game of NPOV. Can you at least answer to this question : What's the use of the Soviet coat of arms ? Ericd 17:43, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

First, let me respond to the restoration of the photo. In a long article pictures make the layout more attractive. Please feel free to add more pictures where another picture cannot be seen in the browser screen.

I'm a great fan of pictures or photo but the choice of a picture is non-neutral. Why this one ? A map of influence zone in Europe will be more informative. There is also a bunch of free of right photos of Kennedy in Berlin, or Nixon in China. Why not these one ?
Ericd 20:02, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Why this one? It's one that I could find. I don't have a picture of JFK or Nixon in China. The coat of arms was placed in the section on ideology and diverging visions of the postwar world, so the coat of arms was something ideological, a sickle and hammer over a globe, representing world Communism and the Soviet vision for the world. 172 06:04, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Second, I also restored part of the section on 1950s US foreign policy because it describes continuity between Cold War-era foreign policy and both pre-Cold War and post-Cold War US interventionism. That section illuminates how the Cold War influenced the present-day Middle East and the US role in the region. This section would be of interest to a historian trying to discern the origins of the Cold War, and especially the relationship between the 1950s era of "massive retaliation" and long-term Western strategic and economic interests in the Middle East pre-dating and outliving the Cold War. 172 18:17, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree that there's a continuity in US foreign policy but isn'it a bit out of topic ? This article huge and very weak on many points nuclear doctrines and SDI seems to have played a minor role. Afghanistan is worth more than 2 lines don't you think ? The fact than half of Europe was more or less Russian-occupied is minored. Russian interventions in Hungary is forgotten, Solidarnosc in Poland doesn't exists. The role played by the Pope is also worth a mention.
As it is, this article is huge, incomplete and disbalanced.

Is it possible to make something more complete and more concise ? You could develop an in-depth analysis os US foreign policies as a subtopic in another article ?

Ericd 20:02, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This is a very broad and complex topic, and it will always be possible to add something. I'm fairly sure that the invasion of Hungary is mentioned; If not, I'll get around to adding it. I'm also certain that SDI or "star wars" is mentioned. As for your other suggestions, I'd be happy to see them added, but I won't add it myself, since it could perhaps be better placed in an article on the collapse of Communism. 172 06:00, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Its to large (but that is also a VERY good thing :-)) maybe it could be split up in chunks based on eras? 1945 (when Churchill said "Iron Wall") - 1953 (Stalin's Death) - 1961 (Cuban missile crisis) - 1975 (End of Vietnam War) - 1983 (Afganistan) - 1991 (USSR collapse). But I guess there are 1000 ways to subdivide the article. BL 06:19, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Robert Merkel:

I reverted your edit- the content that you removed sketched the concerns of US policymakers over the effects of Détente.

Dear 172:
I have reverted your reversion of Robert Merkel's edits. There was (to my mind) very little actual content that was removed, apart from resurrected propaganda without any referent except as a demonstration of poppycock offered as propaganda at the time. Personally I think it should be recorded and also the (possible) western acceptance of such poppycock can freely be recorded on wikipedia, but not without labeling it as the poppycock it was! -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

Retrospectively, most Russia specialists agree that Détente was more beneficial to the USSR. While the end of Détente certainly was not determining, most specialists with hindsight notice that slowing growth correlated with the re-escalation of the arms race.

Without getting into an argument over the facts, so what? Has nothing to do with the edits in question... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

Those "meaningless" statistics removed to "neutralize" the article were not there to tilt the article in a pro-Soviet bent, but encapsulate by example the pessimistic morale in the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate United States.

If that was your intention, may I suggest you avail yourself of some instruction on how to put your point across, since you certainly weren't doing too well in that department... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

We are dealing temporally with roughly the years in the US characterized by failures in foreign policy, such as the most poignant blow in Southeast Asia, but also failures in Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Southern Africa, etc.); growing suspicion of the federal government, due in large measure to Watergate, US casualties in Vietnam, and the divisive social conflicts of the '60s and '70s; and the end of postwar prosperity, with rising unemployment and inflation mostly due to rising energy prices. In fact, some observers at the time were arguing that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War!

So what! We certainly shouldn't presuppose the US propaganda was even near the truth either, but still it wouldn't even be a tough assignment to tally up a much more impressive litany of things that appeared to be going right, and still in retrospect appear to have been good choices. Both sides should be represented. And Robert Merkels edit, even though not perfect, was 'much closer to being neutral. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

And in this country these people were generally not pro-Soviet; in fact, the statistics that you removed would be most emphasized by a conservative favoring an aggressive US foreign policy! This revert is one example of how often someone can remove crucial content, failing to understand that a historical fact is really evidence, not simply, for instance, "something good said about the US" or "something good said about the Soviet Union."

I definitely have to disagree here. Talking about the 75% raise in wages and heightened industrial production, is just pure and simple poppycock. Removing it definitely doesn't deface anything of significant historical importance. "Crucial content", I don't think so! Removing and revealing a facade, is closer to the truth. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

The professional academics on Wikipedia are so fed up with this. To so many users, everything in an article on history or politics has to be normative (i.e. beliefs and values). NPOV to them means a balance of "good things" and "bad things". Academia too recognizes that an encyclopedia should strive for neutrality. But historians really recognize what this really means. Individuals have their own moralities, ideologies, and values. But disputes among historians mostly involve how factors affected the course of history, and what does the end result mean. In a sense, it's all squabbling over what facts are more significant in affecting something than others.

Very nicely put. I really hope you speak for all professional academics on Wikipedia on this matter. But, why don't you act by it? Why? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

It's essential to keep conclusions tentative and measured without years of hindsight. Policy should be examined in the temporal confines of the context (i.e. what was generally assumed at the time in question), not in the context of what we know now. With that in mind, the article will have to note that a number of things were appeared to be on the bright side for the Soviet Union at the period in question.

Even if one granted that this was a justification for including every bit of soviet propaganda one could find, and every bit of western propaganda screaming: "they are ahead of us!", don't you think it would be only rudimentarily professional to label propaganda as such? I am just asking. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

The outcome of the Cold War was not known to observers in the 1970s a decade and a half in advance. Scholars still have not reached a consensus on whether or not the Soviet Union was fatalistically bound to collapse, or if the outcome of the Cold War was predetermined. Some wonder if Soviet collapse could have been avoided if some strategic decisions had been made on their part or if different policy decisions had been employed by the US. I myself have done some work examining such a more agent-centered approach. While I don't want to bore anyone with details, I'll just say that a consensus on such a sweeping deterministic assumption is extremely rare.

Thus, such a section sketching a picture of trends in the twilight years of Détente for both superpowers is an important context for discussing the frame of reference of policymakers and the public before the election of Reagan, the end of Détente, and the more aggressive policies of the Reagan administration. 172 21:07, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with the last bits of your post at all... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 20:59, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

"The outcome of the Cold War was not known to observers in the 1970s a decade and a half in advance."

IMO they were some turning points that need to developped :

- Hungary and Czekoslovakia, a real turn-off for those who were looking for some Finland-like solution in Europe,

- Neutralization of China,

- Afghanistan (a fatal mistake for USSR IMO),

- Reagan policy (especially the SDI),

- The choice of the USSR to compete in the arm race instead of increasing living standards,

- Poland (cf. Hungary and Czekoslovakia) and the influence of the Pope.

Ericd 22:15, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I notice that the US-backed Khmer Rouge are still there. Ericd 22:25, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I reverted the non-neutral terminology, which does not reflect any consensus in history or political science, characteristic of Fred Bauder. Fred Bauder is a valuable contributor and a smart guy, but he's prone to act as an ideologue when any issue involving Communism comes up.

I removed the term "totalitarian" from the intro. This term is a typology, not an official regime-type codified by a constitution (e.g., absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, Communist state, republic, federal republic, confederation, parliamentary democracy, military regime, etc.). Wikipedia articles have to use the official, constitutionally-derived government-type.

Government-types, as opposed to regime typologies, are universally accepted. But sometimes official government-types tell us very little. For instance, Nepal's theoretically and constitutionally a constitutional monarchy right now, but in practice it is an absolute monarchy. Since political scientists always consider regime-type as a variable, they have developed qualitative typologies in order to consider other characteristics. And the term "totalitarian" is one of them. But it does not belong in the beginning of this article because there is simply no consensus behind applying this term to all constituent regimes of the Warsaw Pact.

Some classify the post-Stalin Soviet Union as "post-totalitarian" because certain characteristics of "totalitarianism" were no longer evident, such as unrestrained leadership. After Stalin, the top leadership base was becoming more constrained horizontally by institutions that were becoming more and more influential in the party, ministerial, and state decisional flow. Hence, there was the considerable bureaucratic or institutional pluralism of "post-totalitarianism". On the other hand, others reject the "totalitarian" model wholeheartedly as a valuable typology, and prefer "civilian-led authoritarian regime" or "single-party state." Others apply the "post-totalitarian" typology to the Soviet Union, but not to all governments in the Warsaw Pact. Many of the most influential political scientists today apply "mature post-totalitarianism" to Hungary (due to the growing economic pluralism stemming from the Kadar economic reforms); and "authoritarianism" to Poland, where the elements of civil and economic society of the previous era were not uprooted to the extent they were in the Soviet Union, especially due to the relatively small scale of collectivization.

Few Soviet specialists in the West were using the "totalitarian" model by the Brezhnev years, preferring "post-totalitarian" due to its "bureaucratic pluralism." And why? Not because they liked the Soviet Union, as I'm sure the Fred Bauders of the hard ideological right are assuming, but because they wanted to understand the inner workings of the decisional flow of the Soviet Union in order to design effective policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. You don't want to set foreign policy when you have a model that obscures reality, do you?

Now, this isn't just a concern of policy-makers, but also historians. I don't give a damn what model makes a regime seem more or less unsavory. The Soviet Union existed spatially at a certain period temporally. I just want a model that illuminates, rather than obscures, what was significant in the past and in reality.

While it's obvious to me why a typology, which does not relfect a consensus in academia on the post-Stalin USSR, does not belong in a neutral article, let me give some examples for those who conflate typology with government-type.

First, let me explain the more widely accepted typology, "post-totalitarianism." The post-totalitarian model assumes that a regime went through a totalitarian period; during which the regime completely reshaped society, and wiped out the means of the support-bases of the ancien regime to mobilize opposition. But after this stage; party-state institutional practices have become so rationalized, regularized, and institutionalized that organizations and certain individuals, through horizontal integration; are able to affect decisions from above.

Second, let me give some examples illustrating where this model might better explain the characteristics of the Soviet regime. Take into consideration the abortive Kosygin reforms of the early Brezhnev years. The top state leadership wanted limited market reforms, which retrospectively might have saved the Soviet Union, but the planning ministries did not. And the latter group prevailed. Planning ministries wanted to ensure that the ministries would keep proliferating as occupational specialization grew more complex (to protect their role in society). They prevailed over the top leadership base by drafting more complex planning arrangements; rendering the ability of managers of state enterprises to affect pricing, chose the destination of inputs, and chose the destination of outputs, far more difficult. Such restraints on the aims of leadership are not assumed in the totalitarian model.

I use the "post-totalitarian typology" vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, but I wouldn't place this term in an article because this typology isn't universally accepted. Nor will I allow Fred Bauder to inset his typology, which is accepted even less often by Eastern European, post-Communist, Soviet, and Russian specialists. 172 01:17, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Heh, according to an apologist like you there was no issue which might have resulted in a war, just differences of opinion about how to live. Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

No they don't. There is no such rule except a self-imposed one. Describing the Soviet Union and its system as totalitarian is just as neutral point of view as so describing Nazi Germany. Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

There is consensus outside of a few dead-enders who will not admit the dream is dead. Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This is a general encyclopedia not a political science seminar. Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Heh, still a big elephant in the room, 172 is trying to hide it behind the smoke.... Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A totalitarian model assumes a party and just as there were disputes in the Nazi party there were and are disputes within Marxism-Leninism. Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So we have an incipid introductory paragraph which fails to adequately describe the cause of the war. Fred Bauder 14:09, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Please don't disrupt the coherent flow of my arguments with snide comments, sarcastic remarks, and irrelevant tangents designed to confuse people and divert attention. I'm restoring the coherence of my comments, and thus moved them the space below my last entry, and above this one.

I went to great lengths to detail very clearly, with a number of examples to illustrate my points, why I reverted your edits. Had this been a student's research paper on the Cold War, I would have just crossed out the word "totalitarian," used in the context in which you were using it, and demanded that either evidence be given for this typology, or that attribution be given to certain specialists, or historical actors, who have used it. I would not have written any more than a couple of sentences.

Since I gave you more consideration than I'd give most others, I'd appreciate it if you could come up with a coherent response of your own. Or you can just drop this issue, rather than sniping at me with these immature quips, which are unbecoming of someone of your background and ability (you are a retired lawyer, I gather). Despite your less than thoughtful response, I'll be even more decent and patient. I'm going to explain why I'd do this; perhaps everything will become clear to you afterwards.

If the writer decides to utilize, and endorse, the totalitarian typology in his/her work vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, and the topic is the Cold War, it would have to be backed up with evidence. Second, it would have to illuminate the kind of relationship between the structure and institutions of the Soviet regime and Soviet foreign policy. Third, this relationship will have to pertain to the thesis.

On the other hand, if an article, paper, research project, etc. relates to US foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, then an empirical demonstration isn't necessary. Instead, primary sources can be used, illustrating how key figures, in a certain timeframe, viewed the nature of the Soviet regime, and how that affected their actions. You can point to foreign policymakers who honestly viewed the Soviet Union as a totalitarian monolith, citing secondary and primary sources. But that only shows that the Soviet Union was viewed as totalitarian by some, not demonstrating that one typology was more illuminating, and less obscuring, than others in describing the inner workings of the allocation of power and the regime's decisional flow.

Thus, we can bring up regime typologies when discussing the crafting of foreign policy. But unless there is a consensus (and there rarely is on Communist states), Wikipedia articles cannot endorse one of many competing models among the key specialists in the field. Doing so is a violation of NPOV guidelines to the utmost extreme.

BTW, next time please respond in a more constructive manner or not at all. 172 20:13, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Aren't those dates at the beginning of the article rather arbitrary? The end of the Cold War has been proclaimed on many occasions. The dissolution of the Soviet Union is just one possible option. In fact a crude Google test shows:

"Cold War ended in 1989" - 231
"Cold War ended in 1990" - 73
"Cold War ended in 1991" - 120

And likewise who says the Cold War started immediately on the day World War II ended? --Wik 05:55, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What the hell is up with this "part 1, part 2, part 3" crap? Have people forgoten how to properly name articles or are they just lazy? If an article is too long then spin off daughter articles based on specific sub-themes and leave a summary here. This sequential rubbish is not at all useful. I'll see if I can fix this load. --mav 02:29, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It wasn't as bad as I thought. The "parts" just needed real article names. Better ideas on article names welcome. --mav
A week ago, Cold War was a redirect to Cold War:Part 1. The series box did not exist. --Jiang

I am not responsible for dividing this article, but I can't stand this latest revision. Dividing it in 3 parts was crude; but this new section on the "causes" of the Cold War is far more appalling. Historians often sketch the "origins" of the Cold War; the term "causes" suggests a deterministic arrogance and a reductionistic over-simplicity that historians cannot bare to stomach. 172 08:11, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It seem odd to have two different pages at Cold War and cold war. Should this page be moved to The Cold War ? Andy Mabbett 12:02, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The whole way this article is set up is appalling. cold war and Cold War being different articles - the Causes of the Cold War article is wrongly titled for the reasons stated above. I haven't even looked at the content yet. This needs lots. Secretlondon 12:07, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
I thought "Causes of the Cold War" was already renamed. --Jiang
no, that's against our naming conventions. --Jiang
There have been lots of cold wars, going back into ancient times, although they weren't recognized as such at the time. The Cold War is named with no qualifiers because it is known as such to every educated person on the planet, while only a smallish number of people know about the general concept. It's a little delicate distinguishing the specific from the general with only one letter, but the only alternatives I can think of are verbose monstrosities that violate various WP conventions. Stan 21:57, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The worst part is it isn't one letter - it's a case distinction. But I can't think of a better name for it either. Morwen 21:59, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

General discussion 2004

172, where did you put the section "Intelligence agencies' role" that you removed from the third page? --Shallot 19:59, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's in this article. 172 23:23, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC).

It concerns me a little that the "cold war" (non-proper) has been removed now. There is indeed a a phenomenon of rivalries in which war seems imminent but never occurs, going far back in history. Should that not have its own entry explaining? --Wolf530 18:58, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Another criticism

I stumbled across this article (or rather, series of articles) and saw how biased it was--someone pointed out the very same problem with Hungary I noticed when looking through the middle part; Hungary got one line while Iran got a page. Nasty right-wing governments are dictatorships and have death squads; however, phrases like "totalitarian" that may apply to the Soviets and leftists are only used when quoting the opinions of others.

But there are some other oddities. For instance, the 1962-1991 part has a huge section on the "Vietnam quagmire" but Afghanistan gets a few brief mentions in a body of miscellaneous text, and Czechoslovakia in 1968 gets half a sentence (and is called "unfortunate"--can you imagine a single sentence about 'the unfortunate US intervention in Iran'?). Lech Walesa and Solidarity in Poland get no mention at all--but there are two paragraphs on Jeane Kirkpatrick.

The section "Two Visions of the World" is about two visions by the US, with the USSR barely mentioned.

The word "gulag" doesn't appear even once in any part of the article.

There is no reference to the Baltic States.

The 1947-1953 section doesn't actually start at 1947, and mentions World War II, but doesn't bother to say that the Soviet Union (by partitioning Poland with Nazi Germany) had anything to do with the start of that war.

The section also goes into detail to explain just why Stalin invaded Eastern Europe, phrasing the justifications in a way that justifications for anything the West does are not phrased. (And somehow I doubt that Stalin's major reason for making East Germany a Communist state was war reparations, regardless of anything Stalin may have stated at the time.)

The 1962-1991 part repeats the rather dubious claim that there was almost no poverty in the Soviet Union. It certainly did go up an order of magnitude after the end of the USSR, but I wouldn't call 14 million nearly nonexistent.

There isn't even a mention of the space race.

Basically, it seems like everything that would make the USSR look bad is reduced to a sentence or to nothing, while anything that makes the USA look bad gets a page or more.

There are also a couple of odd bits of wording that make me wonder. The article says that the Reagan administration was commited to stem the advance of "socialism" in the Third World, which is correct, but curiously non-specific. It might be better to say Marxism; phrasing it this way makes it sound like a left-wing political tract that equates Marxism with socialism. Likewise for "racist apartheid regime". Again, the phrase isn't *inaccurate*, but that particular phrase is a left-wing catchphrase and we never see any references to "the racist Nazi regime in Germany".

FYI: User:172 is the main author of this series and similar criticisms have been said about some of his other edits to communist/leftist totalitarian-related articles. --mav


I don't believe in "good guys" and "bad guys," but I do believe in weighing the significance of events and changes. The United States was the victor in the Cold War and played the far, far, far more predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing world politics and world economics in the Cold War era. When WWII ended in Europe on 5/8/45, Soviet and Western troops were located in particular places - essentially, along a line in the center of Europe that came to be called the "Oder-Neisse Line." This applied to Asia as well, as evinced by US occupation of Japan and the division of Korea. Aside from a few minor adjustments, they stayed there. The Soviets were the great power for one third of the world and the United States for the rest. This is why there's generally more content about the US. If you try to find normative rationales, you're engaging in a futile endeavor. 172 09:38, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I wasn't reporting anybody to any committee. All I did was give the new user some background about the main author and watcher of this article. --mav
You're good at being misleading without literally lying. Note the following: "FYI: User:172 is the main author of this series and similar criticisms have been said about some of his other edits to communist/leftist totalitarian-related articles. Hopefully, others will fill in the gaps in time without 172 reverting them. Please try - this article needs some help." You say nothing of substance, but you essentially agree with him/her on the basis of what was, at best, an indirect attack on my credibility. 172 10:01, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
? You deny that some people say those things about some of your contribs? --mav
Well, a lot of people are full of shit around here. 172 10:34, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Just to add another point, the article on the origins of the Cold War probably is based on an internal logic and structure that perhaps bares a closer resemblance to the article on the Origins of the American Civil War than to these so-called "Communist-related" articles of which you speak. In the Civil War origins article, roughly 3/4 of the content deals with the North and 1/4 deals with the South. Does this mean that I'm espousing a "War of Northern Aggression" POV? I trust that you're quick enough to realize that the answer is no. I'm just noting that a diverse array of historians, e.g., Beard, Nevins, Foner, Genovese, Randall, Craven, Donald, McPherson, Holt, etc. all come back - in one way or another - to emphasizing how the dynamic growth and development of the Northern society and economy was at the root of much of the divisive forces that led to the War. This is easy to understand, given the vastly superior economy of the North and population advantage - 22 million in the Union in 1860 to 9 million (of whom 3.5 million were slaves). When it comes down to it, at the root of the Civil War was the relative decline in power of the South in national politics, which arguably owes more to the growing strength of the North than anything going on in the South. I admit that there's a greater focus on the victor in the Civil War and the Cold War in both of my articles, but so what? It's warranted. 172 11:43, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Uh-huh.

Apparently the idea that the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Lech Walesa, gulags, the Baltic States, or the space race might have something to do with the Cold War is "normative b.s.".

And my criticism about the emphasis on the US wasn't just that it was all about the US. The space race involved the US, for instance, but wasn't mentioned at all. And references to the Soviets don't just get fewer lines, they are also phrased in such a way as to take blame off the Soviets. Would you really have said "the unfortunate US presence in Vietnam" no matter how many or few lines you gave it?

Look, in case you haven't realized, Wikipedia is a work in progress. If I had the time, I literally could sit in front of my computer for days on end adding more content to this article series until I passed out for need of rest. When I see articles that are possibly incomplete, I don't become a conspiracy theorist. Nor am I interested in writing propaganda for either side.
When I wrote about Hungary '56, e.g., I noted that although the Soviets had ensured continued control of Hungary, this was a sign that the Soviets' control of their own camp was imperiled, foreshadowing the fall of the Soviet bloc more than three decades later. By the late '80s, the Soviets were no longer able to withstand nationalist, ethnic, and democratic demands in Eastern Europe any longer.
I admit that I saw no need to elaborate on how the invasion of Hungary was a shitty thing to do. Isn't this what the readers are going to be thinking anyway? Even if it were perfectly valid, putting in anti-Soviet content, for the sake of an anti-Soviet POV, wouldn't strengthen readers' understanding of the sources and trajectories of superpower tensions in the Cold War era. But noting, e.g., underlying cracks in Soviet power that would result in the sudden overthrow of pro-Soviet regimes in the late '80s, or the nature of Soviet economic growth, is essential.
Also, keep in mind that the last two articles in the series are naturally going to spend more time on the US. Here's why: in the '50s and early '60s, the postwar world dominated by the two superpowers and the old European colonial powers was now transformed into a pluralistic world of de-colonized African, Asian, and Middle Eastern nations, and of surging nationalism in Latin America. Although the first time the status quo balance of power between the superpowers was tested seriously occurred during the Berlin blockade of 1948–49, from that period onward the Third World would generally become the principal arena of superpower competition. For the sake of brevity, here's a good rule of thumb: a greater focus on Europe means more focus on the Soviet bloc, while greater focus on the Third World means greater focus on the US. As mentioned, there's no contesting the notion that the US played the far greater role organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the politics and economics of the Third World.
The Soviets, in contrast, only managed to send troops beyond the confines of the Warsaw Pact once (Afghanistan - a country with a long common border with the USSR). The legacies of these divergences obviously live on today. The US GDP, e.g., is more than twice as large as that of the country with the world's second largest GDP, while Russia's GDP is smaller than the Netherlands. Hell, it's even smaller than Mexico's! So there's little wonder why there tends to be more content focused on the US than on Russia.
Even back in July 1947, George Kennan, in his then-anonymous Foreign Affairs article entitled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," made it clear that the US exerted far more power on international affairs than the USSR:
It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.
Not bad, right? The Soviets managed to stay put in the areas where they had had troops stationed at the end of WWII in Europe on 5/8/45 for roughly four decades. But they were cordoned off and "contained," and Soviet power collapsed faster than we all had been expecting. Not to oversimplify, but the ball wasn't in their court very often, so there's little wonder why the US warrants more attention most of the time. 172 05:18, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My complaint is *not* just that you are spending more time on the US than on the USSR. When you respond by explaining in great detail why you are spending more time on the US than on the USSR, you're completely missing the point. Ken Arromdee 18:15, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

From the article : "There have been three distinct periods in the western study of the Cold War. For more than a decade after the end of World War II, few American historians saw any reason to challenge the official US interpretation of the beginning of the Cold War: that the breakdown of relations was a direct result of Stalin's violation of the Yalta accords, the imposition of Soviet-dominated governments on an unwilling Eastern Europe, and aggressive Soviet expansionism." I like the shift from western to American... This is so... American ? Usonian ? Ericd 21:55, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've created . and seeded it with a feeble outline. There are basically three big sections with subsections for the chronological narrative, then sections on relations to culture, technology, etc. The current goal is to ensure that all key topics are mentioned, so that the article will be considered "complete" when all the topic mentions are replaced with text. I'll continue on the outline's talk page. Stan 04:32, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

this article needs major work

This article is written for acedemics to read. We need to re-organize it. I hope to have some time this week. Kingturtle 03:08, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

I think you'll find it's very easy to get overwhelmed, because there's a lot of material to organize. I'm guessing you're partly reacting to the historiography content; the outline at talk:Cold War/temp proposes making a separate article for the more academic discussion of the historiography (although that could be enlivened with a few quotes of the historians calling each other "blithering idiots" in best professional style :-) ). Stan 05:10, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree with that idea too. I should've mentioned earlier that I favor a separate article, like for, say, historiography, in addition to the articles I've listed above- so an organization along the lines of New Imperialism's. 172 06:34, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Cold War started on March 5, 1946 – ended on November 9, 1989

It can be argued that the Cold War started in 1917 when aid was sent to the White Russians, or Yalta Conference or End of World War II in 1945. But the best date for defining the start is March 5, 1946 when Winston Churchill spoke at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri: "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent..." because that is when most people in the West realised for the first time that there might be a new war and that is what lead to NATO etc. (Not that Churchill had ever had ever had any illusions in that area: "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." – Winston Churchill.)

The best date for the end of the cold war is the day that the Iron Curtain was ripped open in Berlin on November 9, 1989. It was all over and everone knew it.

There can be mention of events before and afterwards which contributed to the start and end, but those are the two key dates for the Start and End. PBS 00:54, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Anon Essay?

The problem with the article as written is its lack of historical context -- i.e. the Cold War as seen from a futurehistorical perspective. That and its overt reliance on "playing it fair" ( = attempting to assert moral equivalence between the Soviet and Western blocs -- hoo boy) makes for a weak porridge indeed.

And why delete my "anon personal essay", Mr. 172? First, I didn't post a personal essay -- I posted my informed take on the above-mentioned context and equivalency issues. Second, this topic is in desperate need of a balanced approach if it is to avoid becoming what the late John Brunner memorably called "biased dreck". Folks, if all we're going to do here is regurgitate the same old homogenized northeastern-u.s.-liberal-establishment-brewed pap that encyclopedias have been feeding us for the past seven decades, fine, but I thought the point of Wiki was to present human knowledge as a tasty mixed salad.

Anyway, I invite you all to examine my "anon personal essay" at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_War&diff=0&oldid=9615495 and decide for yourselves if the view of the Cold War as a Third World War -- as a "long twilight struggle" against tyranny -- is worthy of consideration by those who may seek knowledge of that turbulent period here.


this article needs major work

This article is written for acedemics to read. We need to re-organize it. I hope to have some time this week. Kingturtle 03:08, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

I think you'll find it's very easy to get overwhelmed, because there's a lot of material to organize. I'm guessing you're partly reacting to the historiography content; the outline at talk:Cold War/temp proposes making a separate article for the more academic discussion of the historiography (although that could be enlivened with a few quotes of the historians calling each other "blithering idiots" in best professional style :-) ). Stan 05:10, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree with that idea too. I should've mentioned earlier that I favor a separate article, like for, say, historiography, in addition to the articles I've listed above- so an organization along the lines of New Imperialism's. 172 06:34, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
I think terms like first/second world are pointless. They should be replaced by capitalist-predominantly democratic (or Free World), Communist-poorer (Communist Bloc). 3rd World I think is fine. --CJWilly 22:57, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cold War started on March 5, 1946 – ended on November 9, 1989

It can be argued that the Cold War started in 1917 when aid was sent to the White Russians, or Yalta Conference or End of World War II in 1945. But the best date for defining the start is March 5, 1946 when Winston Churchill spoke at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri: "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent..." because that is when most people in the West realised for the first time that there might be a new war and that is what lead to NATO etc. (Not that Churchill had ever had ever had any illusions in that area: "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." – Winston Churchill.)

The best date for the end of the cold war is the day that the Iron Curtain was ripped open in Berlin on November 9, 1989. It was all over and everone knew it.

There can be mention of events before and afterwards which contributed to the start and end, but those are the two key dates for the Start and End. PBS 00:54, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Intelligence agencies

I have some problems with the intelligence agencies section; mainly it makes it out like the rest of the world did nothing during the whole Cold War than play a spy game. Such is patently ridiculous. Aside from major conflicts involving superpowers (Korean War, Vietnam War, War in Afghanistan) there was many proxy wars, coups, insurrections, etc. I think it is really pretty ridiculous to say: "The agent war of mutual espionage both of civilian and military targets may have caused most casualties of the Cold War." I find this really, really unlikely. I mean, the Vietnam War alone had around 50,000 US deaths and 1.5-5 million Vietnamese deaths. Can the agent war compete? --Fastfission 05:16, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Different names for Eastern and Western Blocs

There was no universally held expression to describe the two camps of the Cold War. I think most of the expressions used should be listed in the opening paragraph. Revealingly, this article has gone from 1st World VS 2nd World to West VS Eastern Blocs. It just shows how there are many, equally valid expressions. There is no sense in trying to pic the most neutral, especially as many of the terms have subtly different meanings (Warsaw Pact is not the same as Communist Bloc or 2nd World), many of these terms have seperate articles. I therefore vote to have the seperate terms listed, Free World/NATO/Western Bloc/1st World alongside Communist World/Warsaw Pact/Eastern Bloc/2nd World. --CJWilly 19:10, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Comments

Better than the old article, but I see a lot of the same problems, just to a lesser degree.

There are still some references to "socialist" that should be more specific and say "Communist". Using the word "socialist" this way was a staple of Cold War era Communist propaganda and used to imply that only Communists are true socialists.

Lech Walesa and Afghanistan are now mentioned, but take up little space compared to, for instance, Iran. The article uses loaded phrasing such as 'a melodramatic polemic denouncing the "containment" of the Truman administration, and espousing an active program of "liberation"' which have no business being there. And count the references to the CIA, and compare to the number of references to the KGB. Likewise, the Nazi-Soviet pact is mentioned, but gets a sentence, yet the US economy below gets ten times the space.

And then we have paragraphs such as the following:

"US behavior in South Asia during the Cold War has been criticized for supporting autocratic governments in Pakistan, and for contributing to the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir."

The problem with that paragraph is that one way to make an article one-sided is to accurately report what claims are made by one side, but simply to omit any rebuttals that the other side made. I'm sure that while some people criticized US behavior in South Asia, other people had replies to that criticism, but you'd never know from reading this.

And a much simpler problem:

'The Atlantic Charter was publicized regarding this with principles such as "people have right to choose own government" - this was given about as much credence by the West as by the East however.'

That is neither NPOV nor true. (Note that it's a much stronger statement than merely saying "the West didn't always let people choose their own government", which would be true).

"Nixon ordered illegal military incursions into Cambodia". Umm, NPOV?

"Enormous deficits to pay for the bloated defense budgets". NPOV?

And I'm just picking examples. It's full of this stuff.

Ken Arromdee

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