Talk:Arkady Shevchenko

Death
It says in the text he dies from heart attacks, but in the summary it says liver cirrhosis. Which is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.56.144.66 (talk) 13:56, 10 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both reported the cause of his death as a heart attack. More significantly, Template:Infobox person advises that the death_cause parameter "should only be included when the cause of death has significance for the subject's notability", so I've removed the cause of death from the Infobox while leaving it in the article itself. -- Pemilligan (talk) 15:07, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Untitled
A nice article overall, but could use some more work, e.g.:

1. "the OMO, a branch of the Foreign Ministry". It would be nice to spell out what "the OMO" stood for.

2. "the Soviet Union was cheating on the intent of the agreements for political reasons and to their own detriment". This is a bit unclear. Did Shevchenko feel that the Soviets were cheating to the detriment of their long term interests?

3. There are still a few sentences that could be profitably reorganized to flow better. Ahasuerus 23:51, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Response:
 * 1. OMO, I don't know what it stands for. It is a Russian acronym and the book never spelled it out that I could find. Perhaps Bakharov can help us out here.


 * 2. Basically yes. What I gathered from his auto bio was that Shevchenko was a Russian patriot who thought the policies fo the communists was holding back the country from being a great nation and he felt frustrated at the leadership, (or lack thereof). I'll work on it a bit and try to express it more clearly without getting too involved. The point is he didn't defect to help the US. He defected because he thought that was the best way to help Russia, (according to him).


 * Thanks for your comments. Xtrump 10:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks, folks, looks much better now :=) Ahasuerus 19:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Shevchenko and the guns

 * I have removed the folllowing fragment from the article

A number of year ago, I attended a speech by one Arkady Shevchenko, then the highest ranking Soviet official to defect to the West. He had been their top guy at the UN.

A number of year ago, Shevchenko spoke at KENNESAW COLLEGE -- and we all know what Kennesaw is famous for.

His talk dealt with the clear intent of the leadership of the Soviet Union to somehow take America. He mentioned their ICBMs and the nuclear blackmail threat they then posed to the United States.

At one point, he broke from his prepared remarks and offered this: "The leaders of my country are as AFRAID OF YOUR 200 MILLION PRIVATE FIREARMS as they are of your ICBMs. NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUNS."

At the time, he was under FBI protection and had to be careful about what he said, giving his comment significantly more weight to those of us who heard him that day.


 * The article is a collective work and should be written in the third person. The info also is not validated - see WP:V. Personal testimony of the editors are not validation, the info should be published somewhere. abakharev 04:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be cool if anyone could find a reference to that. If it actually happened. 64.238.49.65 19:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Soviet, Russian, Ukrainian…
Although “Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian” is a triad of terms that due to historical reasons can mix among each other, reading the article about Arkady Shevchenko I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s never been Russian at all, since he was born in a city that in 1930 was already part of Ukrainian SSR of Soviet Union, spent the initial part of his life in a territory that nowadays belongs to Ukraine, defected at a time that Russia was (theoretically) just one of the SSR’s of URRS, died when Ukraine was already an independent country and had a typical ethnic Ukrainian surname.

To describe Arkady Shevchenko as “Russian” is somehow innacurate; so I’m changing the article to reflect this conclusion.--MaGioZal 07:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It appears in the book he was proud to be Ukrainian but Eupatoria is in the region of the Ukraine where Russian is the predominant first language. Crimea is even now a disputed territory between Russia and Ukraine. I would imagine that Shevchenko considered himself Russian, much as David Cameron, despite his Scottish surname, considers himself English. Lstanley1979 (talk) 20:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Secerets
So he was privy to USSR's policies and high-level stuff. ie, he knew Russia's secerets and them to the CIA. But what information exactly did he hand over? Sub movements? Russia's plans and fears? If the guy was still alive I'd definatly feel bad for asking for all the info which he pretty much makes his living off of, but he's gone, I don't want his contributions to fade away as well.64.238.49.65 19:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a quarter of the way through his book but it might well be in there. The chapter "The Reluctant Spy" doesn't go into too much detail before the main "Education of a Spy" part (and I am only up to his voyage on the Baltika with Khrushchev) but I am sure more is explained later on which would be within the remit of Wikipedia's policy on needing citations. Lstanley1979 (talk) 20:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Memoirs of his son
The link to the Russian pages written by his son (Gennady?) are interesting and perhaps his life after leaving the USSR should be expanded on to show what happened to him and why he died. If there is a Russian-speaking translator here then the memoirs could be translated into English and summarised to make the article more complete. I only speak Polish but I know someone who is a native Russian speaker (bilingual with English) and could translate and summarise the memoirs for us here. Lstanley1979 (talk) 20:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

OK to add external link?
I worked on the site, so I have a conflict of interest, but would an interview with transcript with Arkady Shevchenko from 1986 be useful here as an external link? Focus of conversation is nuclear weapons policy. http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_406562B54AFB4916A04872F3767B2141 Mccallucc (talk) 13:16, 23 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It meets WP:RS as WGBH documentary info broadcast on PBS. Now cited as a reference. Karmanatory (talk) 04:14, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

prostitute
Added this information:


 * In the summer of 1978, the FBI ordered a 22 year old Washington call girl named Judy Chavez for Shevchenko. Chavez later went public with the affair and published a book in 1979, entitled Defector's Mistress, The Judy Chavez Story.

Infinitepeace (talk) 16:41, 8 November 2020 (UTC)