Talk:History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

all lies
Almost everything in this article is a lie, but they are lies that are copiously well documented with no end of official documents, so no point in correcting them. In many cases, even where the story given in this page is definitely known to be untrue, no one knows what was in fact true.

James A. Donald 20:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The above comment is essentially still correct! I have made a small contribution towards truth, but this article is dire Hillhead boy (talk) 13:39, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

...
Just for a (preemptive) clarification. The document used as source on my latest edits is PD, as it was published in Soviet Union prior to WWII. --Soman 16:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

splitting article
Obviously, this article needs to be splitted. Any suggestions? --Soman 21:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Puzzling sentence fragment
The section on Stalin's rise to power contains this:
 * Zinoviev and Bukharin ... proposed that the Orgburo which Stalin, but no other members of the Politburo, be abolished...

I cannot parse the sentence contain this. From context the implied meaning is that Stalin belonged to the Orgburo and the others didn't. Is this what was intended? Molinari 20:57, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested move
I propose that the page be moved back to its original location. --Soman 07:56, 1 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Support a move to original title. It should not have been made without discussion and posting notice at WP:RM. —   AjaxSmack     16:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Support move back to History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - which seems to have happened anyway! Optionally, we could even split out another article on the Official history... that is, how the Communist Party itself has reported its history from time to time, presented of course in as encyclopedic a fashion as we can manage. But his article is about the history. Andrewa 09:39, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Discussion
This move is warranted solely because the previous move was undiscussed. However, there are other reasons why "History of the CPSU" is a more appropriate title. "Official" in the title implies that the article is either an officially sanctioned history of the party (it is not) in which case it doesn't belong at Wikipedia. If it were solely an exposition of the various official histories of the CPSU proffered by the CPSU at various times, it could be titled "Official histories of the CPSU." However, the article is or attempts to be an actual history of the CPSU and should remain at that title. The solution to the problems supposedly addressed by the "Official" title should be addressed with editing and citation. —  AjaxSmack     16:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Veracity
After reading this article I can tell that a good deal of the information is whitewashed, if not fabricated. I don't think anyone can ever be certain that this article depicts what actually happened and not what merely made the party look good. Might it be wise to mention this dilemma in the article's introduction? &mdash; User:ACupOfCoffee@ 22:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Not even close to wiki NPOV standards
This is a strong candidate for worst article on Wikipedia for a subject of this scope. As near as I can tell, the first two-thirds of this article (up to the Tenth Party Congress) is a summary of the notorious ''History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). Short Course'' issued by Stalin in 1939 to revise the party's history, inflating his role in the 1917 Revolution and Civil War and denigrating the contributions of most of the other Old Bolsheviks, first and foremost Trotsky. Even the most doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist will admit this is a wholly unreliable source. Given the primacy of the party's role in the country from 1917-1989, is this article even necessary separate from the history of the Soviet Union? Perhaps an NPOV article on the history of the RSDLP(b) party up to February 1917 would be worthwhile; I doubt this article as is can otherwise be salvaged. - Timchik (talk) 02:44, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that there could be a place for the Short Course, but not in a way that it takes up 80% of the sources on one hand and quotes verbatim from much of it on the other. I think the reason it's so prominent in this article is because it's freely available online, whereas other English-translated Soviet-era histories (such as the ones commissioned under Khrushchev and Brezhnev) are not. The absence of Leonard Schapiro's work on the CPSU's history is a particularly glaring omission. --Ismail (talk) 19:43, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Split
I propose this article be split in the vein of History of the Soviet Union. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 15:26, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Given the state of this article, splitting would just create lots of work at articles for deletion. Sort the content out and then perhaps consider a split. Op47 (talk) 21:14, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

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External links modified
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Improving the article
Five years have passed and this article is still basically akin to the way it was back then, most notably having the bulk of its citations come from Stalin's Short Course. Sometime next year I intend to rewrite the entire article using a variety of sources (both Western and Soviet.) --Ismail (talk) 10:14, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
 * So, when writing an article on a party's history I think it makes sense to cite, mainly, histories of the party. Accordingly, these are the books I intend to utilize when I work on the article (preferably later this year): History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (an official account written under Khrushchev, 761 pages long, obviously self-serving but clearly an overall better source than Stalin's Short Course), The Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Leonard Schapiro (second edition), A Concise History of the Communist Party of The Soviet Union by John S. Reshetar (revised edition), Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R. 1917-1967 by T.H. Rigby, Lenin's Legacy: The Story of the CPSU by Robert G. Wesson, History of the Communist Party of the USSR, Past and Present by Rudolf Schlesinger, The Soviet Communist Party by Peter J. Hill and Peter Frank (third edition), The Soviet Communist Party in Disarray by E.A. Rees, and The Demise of the Soviet Communist Party by Atsushi Ogushi. One work not focused on the party, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End by Peter Kenez (second edition), will also be made use of. These ought to be sufficient. --Ismail (talk) 07:30, 18 May 2019 (UTC)