Talk:Derg

What's this?
"With a state-run, centrally-planned economy, Ethiopia descended into a long period of economic collapse."

Is this NPOV? I don't think so. There's no law that says planned economies fall into "economic collapse". This should be removed. Redflagflying 04:02, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Also see my following comment, from nearly a year ago (and which I had forgotten about). Seeing how no one has objected since last December I will remove the statement. -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 03:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

A couple of comments, regarding a couple of statements: First is "It is now known that he was suffocated in his bed by his captors." Can someone provide a source for this? I remember reading that he was strangled. Mengistu (as one would probably expect) has denied such reports. Second is "With a state-run, centrally-planned economy, Ethiopia descended into a long period of economic collapse." This strikes me as being PoV. Couldn't the previous system, similar to feudalism, also be considered "state-run" and "centrally-planned?" And I can't provide a source (right now), but I also remember reading that the most devastating famine of all occurred several centuries ago, in which up to half of the country may have died (of course, at that point it wouldn't have been "Ethiopia" in the modern sense). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 08:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

End date of the Derg
"The Derg government was finally toppled by a coalition of rebel forces, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), in 1991" yet it says until 1987 at the beginning.. hmm??? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.93.194.25 (talk • contribs) 16:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The government nominally changed to a democratic republic in 1987 (see People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia), but Mengistu remained in power until 1991. But it was helpful of you to point this out: strictly speaking the '87 to '91 government was not the Derg. -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 19:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The Derg as Marxists
I have a problem with the labelling of the Derg as "Marxist". As LaFort's & the Ottoway's books point out, at first the Derg had no overt leftist leanings; considering that as many as a third of the members were non-coms with barely a grade-school education, one could argue that a significant share were monarchists! And labelling them as "Marxists" appeals to the mindset of surviving Ethiopian monarchists & conservatives. ("Communists not only killed the Czar, they killed Haile Selassie, descendant of King Solomon.") When the Derg assumed power, they discovered they needed a theoretical approach for modernizing Ethiopia, & then turned to Marxist-Leninist theory, which addressed the problems of political economy. (Even now, it is far easier both inside Ethiopia & out to find Marxist literature than Gebre Heywat Baykadan's Mangestna YaHezb Astadadar -- the pioneering Ethiopian political economist, whose book is potentially insightful reading for all African intellectuals.) Then there is the issue that if we consider the Derg Marxist, what should we make of the current Ethiopian government, many of whose ideas & approaches can be easily found to have origins in Marxist theory or writings? -- llywrch (talk) 19:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You're going to have to provide a good deal of reliable sources (WP:RS) to overturn this characterization that is upheld by the majority. Whether they were faithful to the teachings of Lenin is irrelevant, the government took on the ideology and the trappings of a Marxist state and aligned with the Soviets and Chinese. SWL36 (talk) 18:42, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

The Derg and the 1 million famine deaths
The last sentence of the lead, "The Derg is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of more than one million Ethiopians," suffers from a number of problems. The main problem is interpretation. The quoted portion of the source (pages 44 and 45) are describing estimates of the famine deaths. This section DOES NOT attribute all of these deaths to the Derg. After estimates of the famine are presented, the source delves into detail about how complicit the government was in the suffering. I would like to remove this misleading sentence from the lead and expand the section "Aid and Controversy" with more source-accurate information about exactly how the Derg exacerbated the famine (resettlement camps, deliberate withholding of aid from rural areas suspected to support rebels, censorship of the famine during the 10th aniversery of the Derg revolution) based on the Gill book. The book is a forceful indictment of the Derg regime, but it doesn't support the claim that currently exists in the article. These changes address the second problem with the sentence, which is the lack of context for the number cited. , and  have been active in the debate about how to present the famine-related death toll. SWL36 (talk) 18:59, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Was the country actually named the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia?
I haven't been able to find anything that proves the official name of the country was that. The only name I've found was the Provisional Military Administrative Council. User:Ue3lman (talk) 04:45, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Amhara-Oromo POV edits
Recent edits by u|MfactDr introduced the POV-driven changes that a) the Derg had nothing to do with Oromos, b) that it was entirely motivated by Amhara supremacy, and that c) only the Oromos are worth mentioning as victims of the Derg. This was also accompanied by a significant amount of edit warring.

I think none of these changes have merit. Both sources provided make no specific mention that Amhara domination was a strong characteristic trait of the Derg (the iimn source doesn't mention the Derg at all, so it should not be included in this article). The JSTOR source singles out the effects of Ethiopian language policy on the Oromos, so it is not appropriate to base on that any claim that only the Oromos were victims. Before any further reverts we need to discuss here what reasons there should be to make these changes, and come to a consensus. LandLing 09:15, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

The inclusion of the State flag
Whether to or not to include the state flag on the page has been a matter of contention for a while. There are multiple revisions with only the state flag, only the plain tricolor, and both over the last year or so. I went through the edit history and user Havsjö argued for the removal of the state flag because it was rarely seen in comparison to the federal flag. Personally, I believe in the inclusion of the state flag as it beter represents the Derg regime than the plain tricolor which has been used multiple times throughout Ethiopian history. See: Flag of Ethiopia ሰይፍ (talk) 01:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)