Talk:1973 United States–Soviet Union wheat deal/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Wasted Time R (talk · contribs) 11:16, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I have begun reviewing this article. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:16, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

A reasonable article as far as it goes, but needs to go farther in a number of areas
 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * A few MoS issues, see below
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):  d (copyvio and plagiarism):
 * Unlike some on the Talk page, I think the title is okay, but the derivation of it is wrong, see below
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * Some important additional aspects need to be covered, see below
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * Unlike someone on the Talk page, I think the top image is fine
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:

Regarding the 'Background' section, what is the source for The problem was heightened by the fact that only a small fraction of the Soviet Union was arable land, ...? I didn't see that in either of the cites given for the rest of the sentence. If you look at the table at Arable_land and sort it by the second column, many parts of the old USSR rank highly - Kazakhstan, Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia all in the top 15. What I have read in one book I happen to have is that the arable land poses difficulties due to the challenges of the local climates - see Jack Miller, Life in Russia Today (B. T. Batsford, 1969, 2nd impr. 1971), pp. 52–53.
 * Done. Flalf Talk 16:34, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Mentioning the Holodomor, or the wider article Soviet famine of 1932–33, as an instance of Soviet agricultural failure is okay, but it risks gets into debates about how many of those deaths were due to agriculture issues versus how many due to Stalin's mass-murderous intents. More relevant would be a recap of the state of Soviet agriculture in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Time 1963 piece you list mentions "acute crop failures throughout the Communist bloc". And there are plenty of available sources that address the shortcomings of the Soviet agricultural system in general, for instance, the above Miller pp. 56–79.
 * Since the article had already addressed crop failure and used the Holdomor as an example, I just removed the sentence as it wasn't necessary. Flalf Talk 16:41, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the environment in which the grain sales took place, there are two important contexts that need to be discussed. One is that this took place right in the middle of the 1972 United States presidential election. Several of the sources that you are already using touch upon this. You can also look at books about the campaign - for example, Theodore H. White The Making of the President 1972 (Atheneum, 1973), p. 308, has a description of how in September 1972 the McGovern campaign was able to get some effective moral outrage over the disclosures about how large grain exporters were able to get inside information and obtain grain export subsidies from the U.S. government.

The second and more important one is that this occurred at the height of détente with the Soviet Union. Several of your existing sources touch upon this too. But there are also a number of books that can help put this in historical context. For instance, Walter LaFeber, The American Age (W. W. Norton, 1989), pp. 615–619, talks about how economic deals were part of the Nixon-Kissinger "linkage" concept whereby trade and technology that the Soviets wanted would be tied to restrained Soviet political behavior that the U.S. wanted. And in addition, Nixon and Kissinger were looking for Soviet help to get a peace deal in Vietnam, and maybe they saw the grain deal as a way of gaining leverage there. LaFeber suggests that if Nixon did know about what was going on with the grain deal, he deliberately did nothing.

Other sources may get further into these two aspects. It would also be useful to include what Nixon's and Kissinger's memoirs say about this if anything. And from the opposite perspective, what is the Soviet/Russian view on this? There might be some post-1991 sources that examine Soviet archives or interview Soviet figures about what happened. For that matter, by what name is this episode known by in Russia?

The role of big agribusiness corporations in this should be explored, such as that of Cargill. I think several of your existing sources, such as the 1979 WaPo story, have some coverage of this. There were also Congressional hearings held about what happened, that needs to be included as well. These are also mentioned in some of your sources. The aftermath section can be expanded out in the timeline a bit. This 1982 UPI story seems like a good ten-years-later retrospective, for instance.

Regarding the derivation of the title: "Great Grain Robbery" is indeed a play on "Great Train Robbery", but not to the Crichton novel, which did not come out until 1975. There are hundreds and hundreds of press references to the Soviet grain deal as the 'Great Grain Robbery' during 1972 through 1974, as can be seen from this newspapers.com search. Instead the "Great Train Robbery" phrase being played on refers either to this famous 1903 silent film or to this famous actual train robbery in England in 1963.

In fact, in a variety of contexts writers have been making the "Great Grain Robbery" play on words ever since the 1903 film came out, see this newspapers.com search. There was a spate of "Great Grain Robbery" headlines in 1963 in connection with a U.S. wheat shipment that may have ended up behind the Iron Curtain, per this newspapers.com headline (some of usages were made before the robbery in England was in the news, some after).

The first usage I see of "Great Grain Robbery" being used for the 1972 Soviet deal is on October 8, 1972, when a bunch of papers ran an AP story – this one from The Tampa Tribune-Times is representative. The piece itself was about a report titled "The Great Grain Robbery and Other Stories" by Martha M. Hamilton of the Agribusiness Accountability Project. Had Scoop Jackson already been using the term by this time, or was she the first to use it in the context of the Soviet grain deal? I'm not sure.

The statement After the deal, many Americans were concerned about businesses having advantages in similar situations due to their early access to information. is unclear to me. Is that early access to Landsat information, or something else?

A few MoS things:

The 'Aftermath and International Consequences' section title should be in sentence case, per MOS:HEADINGS.

Using "percent" rather than "%" is preferable, per MOS:PERCENT; in any case, one or the other should be used consistently.
 * Done Flalf Talk 14:11, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Footnotes 15 and 17 (Powers) look to be the same thing and should be coalesced.
 * Done Flalf Talk 14:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Footnote 25 (Larsen) should make clear that it's a master's thesis.

Given ISSN numbers for sources seems like overdoing it to me, especially for well-known publications like the NYT or International Organization.

A few sourcing things:

In my view, some of the 'Further reading' entries should really be incorporated into the article. The Time 1963 story should be used in the 'Background' section, as mentioned above. Unless I missed it, the NYT 1987 story doesn't seem to relate to what happened in 1972, unless you draw the final section out even further in the timeline. The two 1973 pdf's are official government reports by the Comptroller General of the United States; they are okay for here but their citations need to be expanded to make it clear what they are.

The two Trager books that are mentioned, in a footnote and in Further reading, are actually one and the same; the 1975 volume is essentially a republication of the 1973 one with a snappier title (see the Larsen thesis p. 5). It's not clear to me whether you've read either version of the Trager book, since both are listed with page number cites to the last page of their indexes (?). If you haven't read either, there should be one Further reading entry that gives the biblio details of both. If you have read one, it's surprising that it isn't cited more often. But in any case, you should cite the page numbers you are actually using and then explain that there's another edition of it under a different title.
 * No I actually haven't read them, but I guess I will now Flalf Talk 14:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Anyway, to sum up, I think the article is good for what it covers right now, but it needs to cover more. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:39, 12 September 2020 (UTC) Not great I haven’t really been super motivated to do this despite putting so much work into it.Flalf Talk 23:25, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * How are we going on this? AIRcorn (talk) 22:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * (ec) I wanted to give extra leeway on this one because Flalf had gone through peer review to get it ready for GA and these times are obviously stressful for everyone.  And there was a discusssion at User talk:Flalf where I tried to list what were the most important of the  missing coverage items I discussed in the review.  But that was five weeks ago and I don't know if further work has been done on the article or not.  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:30, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Honestly, no the work I should have done is not finished although now that it’s been brought to my attention again I will start working on it tomorrow. Flalf <em style="font-family:Lucida;color:Indigo">Talk 01:17, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * All good. Just trying to keep these moving. AIR<b style="color: green;">corn</b> (talk) 08:16, 23 October 2020 (UTC)


 * A few changes in response to the review were made to the article right after these posts, but now there has been two more weeks of inactivity on it, while the nominator has been working on various other articles. It's pretty clear from a couple of the above remarks that the nominator is not that into working on this right now.  And that's fine.  This is a volunteer activity and no one should feel compelled to labor on something if they don't want to.  So I am going to fail this nomination to get it off the pending list.  When and if the nominator is interested in it again, further work can be done on it then and a new nomination submitted.  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:17, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I haven’t found the time or motivation to get this done, so it’s alright. Thank you for taking you time to review this! :) <em style="font-family:Lucida;color:Indigo">Flalf <em style="font-family:Lucida;color:Indigo">Talk 19:48, 8 November 2020 (UTC)