Talk:Leo Tolstoy/Archive 2

Religion section lacking breadth?
There are quotations associated with Tolstoy that don't add up with the face-value Christianity espoused in this article. (Suggesting more of a Jeffersonian Deism with Jesus-as-philosopher than anything.) Most notably: "“It is true, I deny the incomprehensible Trinity, and the fable regarding the fall of man, which is absurd in our day. It is true, I deny the sacrilegious story of a God born of a virgin to redeem the race.” (The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy: Miscellaneous letters and essays, D. Estes & Co. 1905) Does this not merit clarification in the religion section? I leave more experienced Wiki editors to make the call. EmilClark (talk) 01:00, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I've tried to find more complete quote.

"...It is true, I deny the incomprehensible Trinity, and the fable regarding the fall of man, which is absurd in our day. It is true, I deny the sacrilegious story of a God born of a virgin to redeem the race. But the God - Love, The God - beginning of everything, I don't reject. To my mind, nothing really exists except but God. The whole meaning of life I can only see in following the God's will expressed in Christ's rules."

Source: http://az.lib.ru/t/tolstoj_lew_nikolaewich/text_0500.shtml ”...То, что  я  отвергаю непонятную троицу и  не имеющую никакого смысла в наше время басню о падении первого человека, кощунственную историю о боге, родившемся от девы, искупляющем род человеческий, совершенно справедливо. Бога же - духа, бога - любовь, единого бога - начало всего, не только не отвергаю, но  ничего не признаю действительно существующим, кроме бога, и весь смысл жизни вижу только  в исполнении воли бога,  выраженной в христианском учении." 91.77.139.108 (talk) 23:18, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Typo in "The Last Station" section of the article
Can someone fix it? It's kind of annoying to a grammar Nazi like me! :) It says "respectfully" instead of the correct "respectively". Thanks! TutorGirlx3 (talk) 19:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)TutorGirlx3

Rostov characters in War and Peace
This issue should be resolved, and if it has been, then this talk page needs some scrubbing. I'll look into it - if this article is to be improved, some issues need to be resolved and this space made available for ongoing discussion.Levalley (talk) 16:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Ok so, the article says that in War and Peace Tolstoy based two of the Rostovs on his own parents, but I'm reading the Norton Critical Edition of War and Peace (1966) right now and the footnotes say that these particular characters are based on his grandparents, not his parents. The NCE is generally very reliable on these issues and since I can cite it as a source I think this article should be changed. Meaningful text is below, footnote from page 36:

"Count Ilya Rostov is a close copy of Tolstoy's grandfather, Count Ilya Andreevich Tolstoy, and his wife has much in common with the author's grandmother, Countess P.N. Tolstoy. --A.M."

I'm out, Perry —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.249.130.5 (talk) 03:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right of course, Perry. I see it's only been since December that this was brought up, though.  Tolstoi even says this - in the first section of War and Peace.  He's writing about 1805 in 1863 - obviously not his parents.--Levalley (talk) 21:35, 13 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Double information
Virginia Woolf argued that Tolstoy was "the greatest of all novelists."

This is at the start of section 2 in the first paragraph and in the last paragraph of section 2.1. I don't think two are necessary but I don't know which should be edited out for fear of mucking up where the information is most needed. Does anyone have a solution? Psychonautic (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Schopenhauer

 * There was, at one time, a paragraph regarding the enormous influence that Schopenhauer's writings had on Tolstoy. Someone saw fit to remove it. If anyone has ever read the fourth book of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Vol.I, they would understand the motivation behind many of Tolstoy's actions and writings, which might otherwise remain a mystery. Of course, reading a book like this is probably the last thing a 21st century sophisticate would want to do. Tolstoy's turn to Christian asceticism and his fascination with monasticism, among other interests, can be readily comprehended after reading Schopenhauer's works. This especially applies to Schopenhauer's doctrine regarding the denial of the will and the subsequent selflessness and renunciation of the world. Tolstoy, himself, claimed that Schopenhauer had a life–changing effect on him. However, if the Wikipedia readers want to ignore this information, then so be it. Let it be a puzzle as to why Tolstoy wanted to renounce wife and property, dress as a beggar, and enter a monastery.Lestrade (talk) 20:02, 21 June 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Following is the deleted information:

After reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Tolstoy gradually became converted to the ascetic morality that was praised in that book.

In Chapter VI of A Confession, Tolstoy quoted the final paragraph of Schopenhauer's work. In this paragraph, the German philosopher explained how the nothingness that results from complete denial of self is only a relative nothingness and not to be feared. Tolstoy was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. After reading passages such as the following, which abound in Schopenhauer's ethical chapters, Tolstoy, the Russian nobleman, chose poverty and denial of the will. Lestrade (talk) 15:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)Lestrade


 * Thanks, Lestrade, for at least restoring it here in the comments. I, for one, would love to see an encyclopedia listing of Tolstoi's influence (major influences first, with dates and citations such as you provide.  --Levalley (talk) 21:39, 13 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

This little journal entry that he learned a lot over the summer is your evidence? Why doesn't he ever mention Schopenhauer as an influence in his works then? Why does he criticize him instead when he does mention him? This is quite an interpretation to attribute Tolstoy's life change to reading Schopenhauer's book. Were Tolstoy's writings a facade to cover this up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.63.127.39 (talk) 05:02, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Lestrade, why would the reason for the course Tolstoy took in his later life be a mystery? All his writings of that time are devoted to nothing else but explaining that reason - he was trying to mold his life after the teachings of Jesus. Not of Schopenhauer. He shouldn't even be mentioned, let alone given the most prominent place in the section with big boxes- what a misrepepresentation. You are attributing more significance to an obscure comment made a decade prior than to the whole of Tolstoy's writing at the time. Plus you ignore his criticisms of Schopenhauer in several works- including the very work you mention- anyone who has read his Confession knows that he quotes Schopenhauer's conclusion (as well as quoting Socrates, Solomon, & Buddha in the same chapter) as an example of the view that life is inherently bad or meaningless (not saying Tolstoy represented them accurately, just saying this is how he portrayed them)- a view which he considers but ultimately- and this is the whole point of the work- rejects, in favor of the view that life has a definite meaning. Either you have some ulterior motive for wanting Schopenhauer in here, or if you really do think including him provides the most accurate representation of Tolstoy, then you are badly mistaken- Tolstoy clearly states who he was influenced by (and besides Jesus, he mentions Adin Ballou, William Lloyd Garrison, Jonathan Dymond etc- he devotes the entire 1st chapter of TKoGiWY to this- it is no mystery, and Schopenhauer is nowhere to be found), and yet Tolstoy's true greatest influence is someone else, someone who every time he's mentioned in a published work it is to criticize him- this is a conspiracy theory.

Removal of 'Neutrality disputed" template
Whoever placed this template has failed to mention here why. Until such time, it's seems apt to remove it: it can of course be restored as soon as appropriate. Wingspeed (talk) 00:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The article needs citation. DORC (talk) 13:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. In which case, the citation template is the appropriate one. Wingspeed (talk) 15:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I know nothing about templates or how to restore them, but the neutrality dispute template should be restored here. I've given some reasons in other sections below (on Old Age and Death) and feel I've only scratched the surface.  The religious beliefs section is, well, opinionated and poorly supported.Levalley (talk) 18:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Birth date?
Is his birth date the 9th of September (as stated in the intro. paragraph) or the 28th of August, as per the infobox?--Hinakana (talk) 10:00, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

List of works
Why is there no list of works? john k (talk) 00:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It had gotten so long that it was broken out into its own list: Bibliography of Leo Tolstoy. But there should still be a link in the table of contents, in my opinion!  I'll go add that. --JayHenry (talk) 00:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Gay Man
Leo Tolstoy was gay. His marriage, children and religious beliefs were a cover. You will not find openly bisexual men in Tolstoy's time because the consequences were too horrible to risk. Since the 17th century, Russia has been very oppressive toward bisexual people. Near the end of his life his beliefs on sexuality became more conservative at the same time his affection for men became more open so much so that his wife declared Tolstoy and his disciple, Vladimir Chertkov, lovers.

"A full 35 or 40 percent of major western authors from the beginning to the present must have been gay. It would be very safe to assume." - Harold Bloom, literary critic [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.181.226.154 (talk) 16:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * None of which necessarily makes Tolstoy gay. You have a citation for your claim, naturally.  --  Jack of Oz   ... speak! ...   13:14, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes Tolstoy was bisexual. Another literary giant, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) also had bisexual attractions, which he describes both in his diary and in his autobiographical Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. He repressed these urges not only because his views on sex were Victorian, but also because he was attracted to men for their physical beauty, but to women because of their spiritual attributes! Descriptions of the physical attraction between men appear in The Cossacks and Anna Karenina.96.227.207.86 (talk) 06:26, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I have read his works and there was zero indication of homosexuality. Yes, he described men sometimes too detailed, but that does not mean he was gay in real life. Please provide reliable sources. Regards.-- GoP T C N 06:43, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

communism?
"Ever more oppressed by the apparent contradiction between his preaching of communism and the easy life he led under the regime of his wife"

Tolstoy was never a communist in the Marxist sense, though he was a communalist. Is that what the author wants to say?

Also, "Only in 1901 did the Synod excommunicate him. This act, widely but rather unjudiciously resented both at home and abroad, merely registered a matter of common knowledge – that Tolstoy had ceased to be a follower of the Orthodox Church."

unjudiciously? this is explicit narration and completely subjective.


 * Where does the word "regime" come from? And I agree about the communalism ( a distinction that many non-Russians would fail to make, but certainly, "communalism" is the more appropriate word).  "Unjudiciously" should be removed - it is prejudicial, analysis without citation, opinion, etc.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Levalley (talk • contribs) 21:41, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism Text from elsewhere
I've found some plagiarized passages that were added by Ghirlandajo in August 2006 in this series of edits. Quite a bit of it seems to have been taken word for word from A History of Russian Literature from Its Beginnings to 1900 by D.S. Mirsky. For example, this ...

"Tolstoy's diaries reveal that the desires of the flesh were active in him until an unusually advanced age; and the desire for expansion, the desire that gave life to War and Peace, the desire for the fullness of life with all its pleasure and beauty, never died in him. We catch few glimpses of this in his writings, for he subjected them to a strict and narrow discipline."

... was copied from page 309.

It would be a lot of work to go through the whole edit to find out how much was copied from elsewhere. We could instead either remove everything that was added during those edits (or anything else that looks suspicious because of the writing, though I think that would comprise a sizable chunk of the article), or we could revert to the version just before Ghirlandajo made that series of edits.

Any thoughts? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 14:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) Someone should check all his work very carefully.
 * 2) He should be promptly removed from the position of trust that I assume he holds.
 * 3) He should be warned about his future conduct.
 * 4) None of the above will happen.
 * 5) Happy new year.Grace Note (talk) 09:22, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The work by Mirsky, of which I used to own a copy, is out of copyright. So, if properly identified, I would think it ranks as a perfectly authoritative source, allowing for the fact, of course, that a lot of Tolstoy scholarship has flowed under the bridge since. Would have thought the position is much the same as that of the 1911 Britannica, which formed the original basis of much of Wikipedia. In fact, come to think of it, Mirsky may well have written the Britannica article. Just checked: he didn't, but it may well have been a close-run thing. Certainly, though, anything lifted from Mirsky needs to be identified. Wingspeed (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no dispute about whether it's a good source. Grace Note (talk) 04:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Haven't suggested there was:) Wingspeed (talk) 06:51, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The issue isn't copyright so much as plagiarism, Wingspeed. I'll leave a note for Ghirlandajo. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 05:42, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No reason to treat this much differently than the 1911 content. Since Ghirla did cite Mirsky in the edits it's unclear that he was trying to present the work to the world as "his own" rather than Mirsky's in the first place. --JayHenry (talk) 00:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Upon further inspection I notice that Ghirla did what's always been appropriate with reusing PD content. . No plagiarism ever occurred here. --JayHenry (talk) 00:27, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * (ec) I know that some editors feel it's okay to copy from public-domain works so long as there's a credit at the end, but I feel it's poor form, especially when it comes to an article about such an important writer. I've left Ghirla a note to ask if he can identify the passages taken from elsewhere; then we can decide which bits to leave as quotations, and which to reword. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 00:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Definitely agree it'd be best practice to get it inline cited and stuff. Worth clarifying that it's not really plagiarism however.  Agree that it's poor form, especially now that it's 2009 and, like you say, such an important article.--JayHenry (talk) 00:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jay. Ghirlandajo, I must apologize for calling this plagiarism, as I can see there's a credit to Mirsky at the end of the article. The issue is simply about having copied text, not of having tried to claim authorship of it. I've left this note on your talk page too. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 00:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

As nearly three months have passed without comment, I've restored the August 2006 version, as noted above, though I kept the current lead. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 00:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * What's the point of removing certified PD text clearly identified as such? Will you please purge in a similar fashion all the pages listed here? There's no reason to think they are more copyright-friendly. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:01, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Tolstoi and French
As far as I know, Tolstoi was more fluent in French than in Russian. I know, this may sound bizare, but in these days, the Russian nobleness spoke almost exclusively French at home, and the children were reared by French "bonnes". Several of my Russian friends have told me (on separate occasions) that some writing of Tolstoi in Russian are not grammatically perfect and the style at times resembles that of a westerner translating original French (or German) into Russian. One thing is certain: Tolstoi spoke French as well (if not better) as any highly educated Frenchman of his time. His correspondence with various French writers and aristocrats proves it. And many parts of "War and Peace" were originally written in French. I think this connection between Tolstoi and the French language is worth mentioning. In those days, many French authors were in the business of writing sagas revolving around the psychology of the characters rather on the style (e.g. Balzac, Flaubert, Dumas, Zola). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.180.152 (talk) 09:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This seems to contradict what I've read in Tolstoi himself. He says that in 1805, two generations after Catherine the Great imposed French on Russian nobility, people were at the height of speaking French.  After 1812, he writes that Russians were not as thrilled with French.  By his own time, Russian was again being spoken at the ballet and in salons.  His French, to my ear, is advanced intermediate level (which is why I can easily read it, it contains very little that is "literary" the way his Russian does).  At any rate, there are huge differences in literary competency between his French and his Russian.  I think he himself would find it hard to say he spoke French as well as any well educated Frenchman, there is virtually no French in the first draft of War and Peace and he spends a great deal of time from 1865-1868 attempting to dramatically improve his French - he's already quite grown up at that time, he is in the process of acquiring a second language.  He's not writing French at the level of Mallarmee, for example.--Levalley (talk) 21:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)


 * According to Tolstoi's "self-biographical" novel trilogy Childhoold, Boyhood and Youth, his family spoke both Russian and French at home. If the trilogy has any truth in it, Tolstoi definitely spoke Russian better than French, as did all of the other Russian characters in the series. I know it may be hard for Americans to understand, but achieving a near-native level in a foreign language in addition to ones own is not really such a big deal at all. Offliner (talk) 10:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Offliner, that was my memory too. I am rereading Childhood, Boyhood and Youth - and it is clear that Tolstoy read far more in Russian than in French, and the household staff with whom there are so many complex interactions is speaking Russian, with the family it was a mixture of both.  OTOH, I have no problem with the claim that Tolstoy spoke French very well (as a near-native), he makes a point in War and Peace of mentioning how quickly French slang arrived in Petersburg... Still, the article here should make no claim that he spoke French better than Russian...````LeValley


 * Levalley: "Russian was again being spoken at the ballet" :)) - seems laughable at first, had it not been for the fact that ballet performances of the period included a lot of spoken word, either as narrative or dialogue. Many performances labelled ballet would now be called vaudeville or musical or just "a show". NVO (talk) 12:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation and sentence structure
something needs to be done about the first paragraph in particular. I think there must be a way to avoid the use of all those commas, perhaps by use of conjunctions.Levalley (talk) 16:48, 19 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley
 * Why don't you simply revert to this version of the page. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:03, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Because there are more changes than just in the lead paragraph, and that should have discussion, yes? But you're right - the extra commas aren't a problem in that paragraph.  I think the two opening paragraphs are now substantially similar.  I'll try and do more comparison between the two to see what else changed.Levalley (talk) 21:29, 22 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley


 * After brief comparison, it seems clear someone went to the trouble to make the article more specific (placing Tolstoy's birthplace near Tula, etc., etc.). I think the comma problem is fixed, more or less - now some other minor clean-up needs to be done, I'm doing it slowly.  Comments welcome.Levalley (talk) 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Old Age and Death
This section needs reconstruction. In particular, the parts that claim to enter into Tolstoy's state of mind in his last years need multiple citations and references. There are three main (and conflicting) sources. In particular, the reasons that Tolstoy ran away from home at the age of 82 need further discussion. If he had already decided on a Schopenhauer-inspired life of ascetism, as claimed in this article, then he cannot decide it again just days before he dies. It would instead be finally putting into action a plan he had espoused back in 1869 (according to the article - all of this is in doubt, anyway and needs more citations). Just because a person is inspired in one direction by one writer, doesn't mean that they don't simultaneously have many other ideas and competing notions in their heads - as does Tolstoy. The immediate cause of his running away, it seems to me (and to many of his biographers and to his children and grandchildren who have spoken or written about this topic) was a falling out Sofia Andreevna, over a variety of issues, but in particular about his closeness with one of his "disciples," a man who may have been quite unscrupulous (and whose views this article tends to follow, for reasons that I find very obscure). At any rate, his relationship with Sofia Andreevna needs to be drawn in finer detail (as much is known about it) and she is, in my view, notable enough to have her own separate entry - I haven't checked to see if she has one, but it is needed. Levalley (talk) 18:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Put in citations from the two conflicting sources (Sofia and Chertkov) but am wondering why in the world Tolstoy's death is included under "Religious and Political Beliefs" and why only anarchism is discussed as a political belief? It's a valid entry, but very incomplete. The paragraph at the end about Jews, coming as it does after Tolstoy's death, seems misplaced. It could be preserved if someone can find a way of working it sensibly into the article. Right now, I believe a new section on Tolstoy's later life and death should contain the death information and that death stuff should be left out of the Religious Beliefs section - but I don't have time to do that right now - will get to it eventually.Levalley (talk) 19:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)LeValley

A new section on either Tolstoy's philosophy of history or Tolstoy's idea of history
To me, it seems like there is more secondary literature on this aspect of Tolstoy (aside from his purely literary achievements) than even on politics or religion. The politics and religion stuff is interesting, but hardly anything new has been written about his rather explicit and kaleidoscopic views on politics and religion in many years. At any rate, I'm trying to research such a section and wanted to place it above politics and religion because I think it will provide context. Levalley (talk) 06:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)--LeValley


 * Sounds like a good idea. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 15:56, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Working on it. Will welcome any comments as it develops.Levalley (talk) 20:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

In very general terms. This page seems to take an uncritically positive view of Tolstoy without any details on the realities of his behaviour towards his wife and his odd attitudes towards women and sex generally, towards his illegitimate children, towards his close friends such as Turgenev and towards the actual outcome of his various altruistic projects and the practicality with which he pursued them. It paints him as some kind of secular saint without any real details of the kind of utter silliness and monstrous vanity that is so apparent from his wife's diaries. Just because he was a great writer doesn't mean he was a great human being —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.17.59.81 (talk) 20:01, 8 April 2009 (UTC) In addition to my comment immediately above. I also agree with the earlier comment that his wife should have her own entry, or at the very least their relationship and her description of him should be given much more description. The one line about 'a very unhappy marriage' seems to entirely exclude Tolstoy of blame —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.17.59.81 (talk) 08:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with the above two comments. Be bold 212.17.59.81. Register and edit. Xxanthippe (talk) 10:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC).

Tolstoy the fabulist
Tolstoy should be in the Russian fabulists category. He had a great interest in children literature and wrote many fables and stories for children. See on Amazon his book Classic Tales and Fables for Children, ISBN-10: 1573929395. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.84.144.11 (talk) 00:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Typo...can't Edit the page...
move down to Tolstoy's Biblography..and you'll find this typo:


 * The law of love and the law of violence; publisehd in 1940

I cant Edit the Page...Why? (Mind me...New to Wikipedia)9K58 Smerch (talk) 15:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Not sure why you couldn't edit (Maybe you're too new?) Anyway- thanks for catching that, fixed it.Levalley (talk) 21:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I cannot edit the page either, I assume for my having joined only five months ago. Anyway, I had intended to change the title of the first section of the page, Tolstoy's biography. As it summarises most of the author's entire life I think that "Biography" or something similar would be a more fitting title than "Early Life". Michael Creston (talk) 23:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please delete the link at the bottom "What I believe'? It leads to an unrelated Christian website, not related to Tolstoy.82.35.52.187 (talk) 15:08, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have looked at it and it is a legitmate link with works by Tolstoy, but I have improve it to make this clearer. PatGallacher (talk) 15:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Novelist vs. Writer
The recent change, to say "among the greatest novelists"...makes me wonder why it says "novelist" when Tolstoy's literary output was so much larger than novels. He wasn't certain that War and Peace was a novel, etc. Maybe it should say "writers" rather than "novelists."--Levalley (talk) 21:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * He would be considered a novelist and a writer, as well as a dramtist. The Cossacks and Childhood are both considered novels. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/anna/timeline_text.html 74.5.111.155 (talk) 02:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Influenced
Should Ernest Hemingway also be accounted for in the list of Infuenced? I read about his strong liking for Tolstoy in the Scribner book 'Hemingway on Writing.' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.182.177.106 (talk) 02:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Dunce
Tolstoy always give the impression of being slightly backward, unintelligent. His educational record seems to back that up. Do we know anything more about his low IQ? Pliny (talk) 13:30, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * What does this have to do with improving the article? Note that this is not a forum for expressing your personal views on the subject. Offliner (talk) 20:53, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I am suggesting there should be more on his education/intelligence or lack of them. A lot of his views seem the product of a fundamental lack of brain-power. Is that something he was conscious of? Was he teased about it? Pliny (talk) 10:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "A lot of his views seem the product of a fundamental lack of brain-power" - what are you talking about? Is this just your own opinion or do you have a source? Offliner (talk) 11:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This is the weirdest rant so far, testing IQ of an old fellow who died before IQ test was invented :). And even if he was still alive, the IQ metric has never been reliably adjusted for Russian society (every society has a different 100-point reference). Vogue magazine doesn't count. Pliny has a point, coarsely put forward, that Tolstoy's lengthy moralizing may seem primitive to a modern literati. What can I say, try reading some of his simpler writing ... The_Death_of_Ivan_Ilyich or Kholstomer .. NVO (talk) 12:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The only dunce in evidence is the person who started this topic. Request proof that said person has the mental competence to read Tolstoi and then further proof that said person has actually read any Tolstoi.Levalley (talk) 20:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Hints
"Universal and museum websites on Leo Tolstoy: Leo Tolstoy - A comprehensive site with pictures, e-texts, biography, genealogy, etc."

this link is useless !!

and I miss this two:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_by_Leo_Tolstoy http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=tolstoy%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts

from micha 87.176.226.137 (talk) 02:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The Last Station
A movie about Tolstoy is on his way, i don't know where i can fit this in the article, could you guys please help me here?--César (talk) 02:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Lots of other pages have sections that are headed something like "So and so in popular culture." That would take some work though, as there are several other movies from Tolstoi's work, all should be included. I have no objection to starting a section with just the most obvious links, though.  The Last Station is also, I believe, a novel about Tolstoi's final days.Levalley (talk) 20:23, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Biography
See also the very interesting book Reminiscences of Tolstoy, by his son Count Ilya Tolstoy (publisher: Sparkling Books). In this biography, Count Ilya Tolstoy, one of the thirteen children born to the Tolstoys, provides a surprisingly frank insight into his father's personality, family life and his tormented life as a viveur and writer. Further details on www.sparklingbooks.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.4.170.198 (talk) 22:23, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

First paragraph
Like many wikipedia articles, the first paragraph here is terrible. It is either written by someone who cares not whether his readers understand him, or who has simply paraphrased an advanced argument of some thesis on Tolstoy's writing style (in which case I doubt the writer fully understood this thesis). First paragraphs should be easy to read and contain a very brief summary of the topic. The first paragraph here attempts to crowd a host of opposing critical literary opinions into a few lines, though the article obviously shouldn't open with opinions. Bygmeisterfinnegan (talk) 11:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the paraphrase of Nabokov (see below), which I think solves most of these problems. john k (talk) 15:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Nabokov in intro
I removed the paraphrase (quotation?) of Nabokov in the first paragraph, which was just wildly inappropriate. If anyone thinks it should be replaced, I'd like to hear an explanation of why - it seems massively misleading to me, and inappropriate for the introduction. If somebody wants to discuss Nabokov's view of Tolstoy somewhere in the discussion of critical reception of Tolstoy, that would be fine, but Nabokov's views tend to be idiosyncratic, and are thus inappropriate as an objective description of the nature of Tolstoy's art. Tolstoy was an even greater writer than Nabokov, but we wouldn't use his authority to state as objective fact that Uncle Tom's Cabinet is a greater work than Hamlet. john k (talk) 15:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Name
While Лев is usually pronounced "Lyev" in Russian, Tolstoy pronounced his name "Lyov" as in Лёв. Преображенский (talk) 13:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I heard this rumor, but is there a reliable source for it? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:12, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it's just the usual sort of confusion among non-Russian speakers. There are two letters in Russian, one for 'ye' and one for 'yo'. The one in Tolstoy's forename is 'yo' but it is widespread Russian practice to type or print 'ye' because everyone knows it is actually 'yo'. :-) Bottom line: his name is 'Lyov' and everyone pronounces it that way. Except for floundering foreigners, that is. Nargoon (talk) 02:20, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ahem, i am a native Russian speaker. I pronounce it Lev and not Lyov and so does every Russian speaker i know. You'll have to work harder to prove that his name is "Lyov". --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:23, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with that. My Russian teachers at uni (all born in the Soviet Union) called him Lev.  I have never in my life heard anyone call him Lyov.  Until this thread.  --  Jack of Oz   ... speak! ...   22:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Nabokov disagrees with you, as does at least one other site. This isn't just me claiming something out of the blue.  Преображенский (talk) 21:25, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be true that correct variant is "Lyov" although modern Russian pronounsation commonly is "Lev"  (mind Russian devoisation of final consonant), see ru:Ё (кириллица). Ignatus (talk) 13:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Name revisited
We're currently starting out: Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy ....

That's as wrong as John Ivanovich or Andrew Petrovich or Michael Sergeyevich or Basil Vasilievich or George Pavlovich or Nicholas Andreyevich or Eugene Alexandrovich ..... No, it has to be Leo Tolstoy (English version) or Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (romanisation of Russian), not some weird mixture. -- Jack of Oz  [your turn]  23:59, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Why thus not "Leon" (like Leon Trotsky who IMHO is mostly either Lev Trotsky or Leiba Bronstein)? although "Leo" writing seems to be more common: Google leo tolstoy: lev tolstoy:lyov tolstoy = 17,5:0,535:0,102. Sad but true. Ignatus (talk) 13:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Audiobook
Can someone add this external link for free Tolstoy audiobooks from the LibriVox project

http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=Leo+Tolstoy&action=Search —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.136.138.58 (talk) 19:34, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Unhappy marriage
The text "His later relationship with his wife would become more complicated as his beliefs became more pronounced and he sought to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works." has been tagged by as needing citation, while the same user removed the link to A.N.Wilson. (It seems that that text has been introduced in 2006 and has intermittently been replaced with some alternative versions. I haven't read A.N.Wilson, and I don't know how reliable he is; could someone who knows more about this, or who has read Wilson please add the correct reference? &mdash; Sebastian 18:56, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I just decided that that change was clearly not an improvement: It replaced an obliquely sourced opinion with an unsourced opinion and introduced a typo to boot. I believe C1010 took issue with the superlative "one of the unhappiest in literary history", but I see nothing wrong with that, as long as Wilson really wrote it. Therefore, I'll revert it. Still, it would be good if we had a direct reference for that. &mdash; Sebastian 19:08, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

rewording
Made a few tweaks, rewording, wikilinks to article. teinesaVaii  (talk)  10:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

For Spanglej, I undid your recent edit because it: To Spanglej and teinesavaii, I also deleted instances of the parameter "right" in images, which is the default. Additionally, I deleted forced image sizes. MOS:Images explains when they may be used, and I didn't find their uses here meeting the criteria. Users can set default image size as a preference, and this should generally not be overridden. If there were other unaddressed substantive edits, I'm sorry for the inconvenience of undoing them, and feel free to reinstate them. --Bsherr (talk) 17:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) It removes images from the article. Removal of images should be discussed first. As an alternative to removing images, an image gallery can be employed.
 * 2) Moves other images to seemingly disconnected locations in the article. Please see MOS:Images regarding image locations.
 * 3) Removes block quotations. Certainly, it's better to work quotations directly into the article, as you've done, and I don't necessarily support quotation boxes as used here. But long quotations (50 or more words) should be separated at least by   tags, without quotation marks.
 * No worries, at least we're all trying to make it look better. It's improving slowly but can be much better, methinks, with the photos. It is unusual to have so many photos the extra large size.... teinesaVaii  (talk)  11:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I have added the gallery due to the squashing of images into the article and sandwiching - see MOS:IMAGES. I have added blockquotes as quotes should not be italicised. Span (talk) 02:30, 28 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Nice work with the gallery and photos Span. I added 1 foto of bedroom to fill the gap in gallery. teinesaVaii  (talk)  10:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Bakunin and Kropotkin not "liberal-leaning"
There is a section of this page that describes other "liberal-leaning" aristocrats as leaving Russia to escape the regime and then goes on to list Kropotkin and Bakunin. Um, these men were not merely liberal-leaning but were outright, wild-eyed, no holds barred anarchists. Radical aristocrats would be more accurate. 67.83.184.35 (talk) 23:36, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Cite your source. CanadianLinuxUser (talk) 18:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Cite yours, or I'll yank out the whole statement. 67.83.184.35 (talk) 18:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not really interested enough in this page to wait around a long time, so I have moved the disputed statement here until it gains a source.
 * "...a period when many liberal-leaning Russian aristocrats escaped the stifling political repression in Russia." (statement follows "two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860–61")
 * 67.83.184.35 (talk) 18:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

New WikiProject: Russian literature
Hello,

See WikiProject Council/Proposals/Russian literature. Yann (talk) 03:50, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Views on Marriage and Sexual Abstinence?
This sentence:

"He also opposed private property and the institution of marriage and valued the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in Father Sergius and his preface to The Kreutzer Sonata), ideals also held by the young Gandhi."

Does it mean he opposed private property, marriage, and chastity? Or does it mean he opposed private property while he supported the institution of marriage as well as chastity?

Or perhaps it means he did not think anyone should get married while at the same time should not have sexual relations?

Some clarification may be needed.

Uriah is Boss (talk) 21:19, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Death Date
Ive been reading the chronology at the beginning of war and peace and it says his Death was on the 7th of November 1910. Aftervsearching around it appears this is correct. Schwass - 28th June 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.42.229.101 (talk) 17:15, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Terrible introduction.
I don't know why it was changed but the older version was better. The first sentence is terrible. Chekhov gets "considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature" in his first sentence, Pushkin gets "considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet[2][3][4][5] and the founder of modern Russian literature" in his first sentence, etc.. Tolstoy gets "was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories." as first sentence. Just awful. The second sentence is just as bad and insulting "Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays". It sounds like the beginning of a biography of some D list author. This is Leo Tolstoy. He is extremely exceptional and HUGE in his field, and that needs to be brought to the readers attention immediately as it is with others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.59.126.203 (talk) 18:26, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 68.12.98.136, 24 August 2011
Born in August on the 28th of 1828

68.12.98.136 (talk) 06:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Jnorton7558 (talk) 07:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Leon Trotsky on Leo Tolstoy - 1908
Trotsky, the Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, wrote a critique of Tolstoy's literary works in 1908, just two years before the novelist's death.

As a analysis of Tolstoy's outlook on life and his art, it's well worth reading for those who have been deeply moved, as I have, by reading War and Peace. I offer Trotsky's insights as a source that may be useful in improving the article, no more than that. 36hourblock (talk) 00:32, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/tols-d02.shtml

Please remove image
Is it really necessary to have the modern (dated 2011) drawing of Tolstoy copied from a photo on the page? Wikipedia is not a personal showcase. I suggest that it is removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.229.224.133 (talk) 21:53, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Which image are you refering to? There is nothing in the guidelines about restricting personally created drawings as far as I know. Span (talk) 23:30, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I am referring to the drawing in the article gallery (1st image, 2nd row) captioned "Sketch based on photograph of Tolstoy taken in 1876". My reason for its removal is:

~It is a modern drawing. It is not contemporary

~It is not by an important artist

~It is copied from a photograph, therefore is of no academic use} Therefore:

why is it neccessary to have a non-contemporary image, not made by an artist of significance, copied from an existing photo? By all means keep it in the commons section, but it has no use on the main article.

--I agree that it should be removed, and as the uploader I request the same. Arzepence (talk) 11:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I indirectly agree. I removed the gallery section completely per WP:GALLERY; this is not Commons, but an encyclopedia. Regards.-- GoP T C N 15:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Tolstoy was a Georgist
Tolstoy said many times that he supported Henry George's ideas. In fact, he went so far as to say: "People do not argue with the teachings of Henry George; they simply do not know it . He who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree."

He wrote the preface to an edition of George's book Social Problems, and met with Henry George Jr on his deathbed.

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/tolstoy_preface_to_hgeorge_social_problems.html

http://www.wealthandwant.com/auth/Tolstoy.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.73.117 (talk) 14:53, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

http://www.earthsharing.org.au/2006/09/15/tolstoy-and-george/

A lot more info in Tolstoy: Principles for a new world order" by David Redfearn.

Tolstoy mentiones Henry George and Georgism several times in his last book 'Resurrection', and the concept is explained in detail. It is an important message in the book, which deals with issues like poverty.

Tolstoy wrote several letters to the Tsar of Russia urging him to implement Georgism. Tolstoy had a picture of Henry George hanging on his wall and wrote after George's death: "Henry George is dead; it is strange to say but his death surprised me like the death of a very close friend".

Objective reference for all this: Tolstoy, Leo, Essays and Letters, Oxford University Press, 1911, Chapter XV1 Letters on Henry George, pp 213 – 238.

Tolstoy's Georgism at the last stage of his life suggests that he would have become more moderate with regards to his anarchism, because Georgism requires at least some kind of community government that spends land rent in to public services.
 * The Religious and political beliefs section is so large that I am unsure where to mention it. I will think about it.-- GoP T <sup style="color:#8EE5EE;">C <sub style="color:#8EE5EE;">N 20:57, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Confirmation Bias link in the 'see also' section
Upon fist seeing the link to confirmation bias, I thought that it was a joke/insult.

At a minimum, some more text should be added saying that he mentioned confirmation bias in his essay "What is Art?" Alternatively, the link should go to the section of the confirmation bias article that mentions Tolstoy. Also, the sentence and link should be moved elsewhere in the article.

I'd do this myself, but the article is currently locked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidhweinstein (talk • contribs) 02:33, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Awards and Recognition - there is a major street named after him
Shouldnt there be an awards and recognition section? One of the most expensive roads in South Asia is named after him. Tolstoy Rd.

https://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=tolstoy+rd&ie=UTF-8&ei=u7wSUO3CGsSyiQery4CQAw&ved=0CEQQ_AUoAg

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tri400 (talk • contribs) 16:09, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 6 September 2012
Please add this to the section "Religious and political beliefs"

Tolstoy was also a great admirer of Islam (source: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B9,_%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%B2_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87). He not only published a book on the sayings of Prophet Muhammad, but also stated his high opinion of Islam in several letters. For instance, to a question on conversion from Christianity to Islam, he wrote: "As far as the preference of Mohammedanism to Orthodoxy is concerned…, I can fully sympathize with such conversion. To say this might be strange for me who values the Christian ideals and the teaching of Christ in their pure sense more that anything else, I do not doubt that Islam in its outer form stands higher than the Orthodox Church. Therefore, if a person is given only two choices: to adhere to the Orthodox Church or Islam, any sensible person will not hesitate about his choice, and anyone will prefer Islam with its acceptance of one tenet, single God and His Prophet instead such complex and incomprehensible things in theology as the Trinity, redemption, sacraments, the saints and their images, and complicated services…” (Source: Letter to Elena Vekilova, written on March 15, 1909)

Certain commentators have interpreted this position as conversion to Islam during his late days.

Aydin4ik (talk) 09:55, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Wikipedia may not be used as a source. If there are sources behind the ru.wiki article to corroborate this please provide them. Also I'm not sure if your last statement "Certain commentators..." is meant to be added to the article but if it is it must be reliably sourced. I also believe that an edit this controversial should gain consensus before being added. &mdash; KuyaBriBri Talk 15:20, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Also the sections is already too large. If you want to create an article about his beliefes then do that. Regards.--Kürbis (✔) 11:24, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

World's greatest novelist
That opening claim is going to irritate a lot of people, even if I myself believe it. When I see that one of the supporting references is a piece of journalism in The Guardian with a question mark over the claim, I'm even less inclined to leave it as it is. I have toned it down to something more balanced, in line with WP's policies and guidelines.

I have also footnoted the humungous clutter of pronunciations, cyrillic script, and old style dates, where the information is perfectly accessible by those who wish to know. Tony  (talk)  13:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The whole article is in need of serious work, no doubt. WP:DATESNO suggests both date formats are fine. Most articles seem to use dmy. Best wishes Span (talk) 14:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Tolstoy being the greatest novelist is a truism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.59.126.203 (talk) 10:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

NPOV: This is in the same section of the article, where it reads "His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction." I find this statement far more irritating than the claim that he is considered the greatest novelist, even though I do not disagree. It's just that the text actually uses the phrase "acknowledged as" without citing by whom. I would hate to flag the whole article for NPOV, so if some of the tolstoyophiles here are interested in providing references to that claim, it would greatly enhance the article's credibility. Jerekson (talk) 16:10, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone who added this needs to learn to use strong sources, such as books, and not newspapers...--Kürbis (✔) 17:50, 19 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The claims don't mean anything. Thousands of novelists can say the same - such peacocking weakens the article. His achievements are such that they don't need adolescent "he's the greatest" over-egging. Span (talk) 18:08, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Unreliable reference A N Wilson
I think the reference to a biography by A N Wilson is inappropriate. His biography is a work of fiction and can't be quoted as a source of information. Please delete.
 * It is not generally taken as a work of fiction but a standard biography. Span (talk) 19:23, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 June 2014
Would you please add an external link to: Taraknath Das' "Open Letter to Count Leo Tolstoy in Reply to His 'Letter to a Hindoo'" in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)?

Grace saada (talk) 14:12, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting question.svg Question: Why? What does it achieve, how is it encyclopedic, and how does it improve the article.  I have no problem adding it, I'm just wondering what benefit it is suppose to have.  Thanks. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 02:05, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 July 2014
Within the "Death" sub-heading, the name of Tolstoy's wife is given wrong and given as 'Sonia', which should be 'Sofia'.

Pankhudi123 (talk) 08:58, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

❌ As the article says:-
 * Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, .... . She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofya, by her family and friends.

So either is acceptable - Arjayay (talk) 09:14, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "Sonia" is mentioned nowhere else in the article besides the one place Pankhudi123 mentioned. CombatWombat42 (talk) 16:29, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

✅
 * I have to say, using three different names for the same person is incredibly confusing Sofya, Sophia and Sonia, are all used. CombatWombat42 (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Where to link to The Gospel in Brief?
I thought I remembered reading The Gospel in Brief here, but couldn't find it, and it doesn't have it's own article. I eventually found it in https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gospel_in_Brief so my question is, what's the Wikipedia-approved place to link to this? It's not its own article, so linking to the wikisource from his list of works seems inappropriate. However, it seems silly not to link to it on his page. Could a more regular contributor figure this one out? -- 24.21.130.213 (talk) 21:29, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

MansourJE (talk) 14:10, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Color photo
THERE WERE COLOR PHOTOS IN 1908? I think the editor(s) got that picture on the top right of the article wrong Kevon kevono (talk) 04:00, 1 May 2016 (UTC) (What the hell is UTC?) 21:00 (PT)

Famous quotes
The famous quotes from Tolstoy are: 1. Honesty 2. Good books 3. Accompanying nature and art 4. Good works

To read more about the quotes, go to following website : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/leo_tolstoy.html

MansourJE (talk) 06.39 12 July 2015 (UTC)

is there any? who can talk to me and discuss leo Tolstoy Shajia Anees (talk) 23:10, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

is there any? who can talk to me and discuss leo Tolstoy Shajia Anees (talk) 23:11, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 August 2016
Please use the letter ё instead of е when writing Lyov Tolstoy's name, he was known all his life as Лёв not Лев.

00AlexanderMoses00 (talk) 12:49, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Need a source for this, particularly when the Russian wikipedia article uses an e Cannolis (talk) 13:21, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Probable wrong link to another section of Wikipedia
In the section Personal Life there is this sentence "The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution" where the words Russian Revolution point to the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution. This URL points to information to the 1917 revolution which happened after Tolstoy's death. A better link would be to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution which is the Revolution referenced on the Personal Life section. I can be contacted at carlos.pereyra@outlook.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:32B0:F130:F8B9:C403:9C6F:DC72 (talk) 05:17, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

And why would they live Russia after the 1905 Revolution? No regime change. Dimadick (talk) 09:25, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Editing necessary: minor typo
Under the "Religious and Political Beliefs" section, there's this passage: "The attack on China in the Boxer Rebellion was railed against be Tolstoy. "

It should clearly be "by" instead of "be", I attempted to edit it myself but the Leo Tolstoy entry is protected from editing. Ivanxvoz (talk) 20:21, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

You are right, and I did it for you. --Herbmuell (talk) 13:35, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

World's greatest novelist (2)
In the now archived section Talk:Leo Tolstoy/Archive 2 (2010) there was objections to the wording that included "greatest". Over seven years later the lead still states "" This is a violation of WP:NPOV policy. See the section in that policy via the link WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV on how this can be fixed. -- PBS (talk) 16:07, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Section titles
Hi Wikipedians, my first question here is in anticipation of adding a few edits. Is there a reason for having two sections, titled "Life and Career" vs "Personal Life"? (Aka, a rationale, or some Wikipedia policy?). The current content of "Life and Career" seems to be his life up to his marriage, and "Personal Life" seems to be his life after his marriage. Second, it seems that most analysis Tolstoy's life would have his personal life be pretty inextricable from his career as a writer. Thanks! If I'm not totally off base I'd like to rename these sections before adding a few more facts from his life. Jeffreydurkin (talk) 19:15, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

leo tolstoly
if anyone is able to edit the leo tolstoy page change the mohandas gandi to mahatma as there is a problem — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.50.40.106 (talk) 10:30, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Year of publication, The Gospel in Brief
The publication year of The Gospel in Brief is in dispute, both on Wikipedia and Google. Its article here says 1892. The Leo Tolstoy bibliography here says 1881. The Wikisource preface says 1883, and other search engines go even deeper into the 1890s. I've added it to the Tolstoy template as 1883, to be consistent with Wikisource instead of the 1892 date on the Wikipedia page itself, but does anyone have a definitive year of publication? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:51, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Can anyone assist with this? Right now the year of first publication listed in various Wikipedia articles is all over the map. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:45, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Tolstoy influenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and .... a man convicted for being guilty incest.
Randy Kryn has added multiple times a man convicted for incest to this sentence:

Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Four users have reverted these edits. This man found guilty of incest (James Bevel) is obviously not of the same stature as Gandhi and MLK.

Because Randy Kryn is the only one who has consistently re-added Randy Kryn to this sentence, I suggested that Randy Kryn should use to talk-page to convince us that his name must be added here. (Randy Kryn has however ignored this suggestion and has simply re-added James Bevel.) It should not be hard to find consensus if there are valid reasons to add this man next to those big names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yuyuhunter (talk • contribs) 19:43, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi . Please give a reason why the long-term placement of a link to James Bevel in that sentence should be removed. Tolstoy's book The Kingdom of God is Within You greatly influenced the three main nonviolent strategists of the 20th Century - Gandhi, King, and Bevel. The sentence is about the book's influence on the figures who initiated, strategized, organized, directed, and taught nonviolence to the participants of the major nonviolent actions and movements which occurred within the century. Excluding Bevel would be an inaccurate exclusion of one of the three practitioner of nonviolence who is responsible for most of the successful movements of the 1960s and who, pertinent to the sentence, was greatly influenced by Tolstoy's volume. The time period that Bevel was accused of having sex with his daughter was in 1992 or 1993, 25 years after his major public activities had ended. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:56, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * at this point, there is nothing more to discuss than the fact that you have returned unreferenced content without providing an inline citation to a reliable source when asked to. The WP:BURDEN to do so is on you. I've removed it again pending the addition of a citation.


 * I've been asked on my user talk page to comment here, because I've been involved in one of those four original reverts mentioned by . – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:21, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and you're right, it does need a reference or two. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:52, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The fact that Bevel committed incest doesn't really have anything to do with the question of including him in this article. Clearly, we can't list everybody who was influenced by Tolstoy,so the text quite properly limits inclusion to "pivotal 20th-century figures." Bevel didn't change the course of history like Gandhi and King did. YoPienso (talk) 00:12, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, he did. It is possible (if not probable) that you just weren't taught about him or have independently learned of the extent of his influence. Bevel was the strategist, director, and main teacher of nonviolence of the Civil Rights Movement. He and Dr. King formed the team that set and accomplished the goals of the CRM. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:51, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Conflict of interest
Randy Kryn, I've discovered you have a conflict of interest (WP:COI). Your user page shows it, and so does the internet. You have called yourself online "the only historian and journalist who has researched and written accurate accounts of James Bevel's body of work in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. . . and one of only five journalists to attend his 2008 trial." That's why I've been unable to find a single published biography on him at Amazon, at the Anchorage Public Library, or in the University of Alaska library system. There are many on Gandhi and King! You commented, "I still wonder why his historical footprint has not found wide media coverage." The fact that he's not widely covered in the media shows Bevel lacks notability (WP:N).

Eleven years ago the Washington Post Magazine published an interview that included this dialog:
 * Washington, D.C.: Did James Bevel actually know Dr. Martin Luther King? Or was he one of the people who said afterwards that he was important when he really wasn't?


 * Les Carpenter: oh no they knew each other very well. Although how well is up for debate. Randy Kryn, who is Bevel's personal historian, pushes the idea that King and Bevel had a partnership in which Bevel would be the brains of the movement and King would front it. This notion is disputed by most other historians and people like Andrew Young who say Bevel was important and influential and King listened to Bevel because the ideas were so fresh and the energy so strong, but that King also kept his distance some because he was unsure of Bevel's mental state.


 * There is no doubt they knew each other well, however.

Bevel was one of dozens of civil rights activists who helped bring about enormous change, but he doesn't belong alongside the pivotal figures, Gandhi and King, in this artice on Tolstoy. YoPienso (talk) 04:15, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, and I'll get to this further over the weekend, so this is just a quick initial response. Please read David Garrow's brief 2015 assessment of Bevel's work with King from 1965 onward (he left out the Birmingham Children's Crusade and Bevel's earlier SCLC and student movement work). Carpenter's quote above is worded incorrectly, as I never said that "Bevel would be the brains of the movement and King would front it". King and Bevel's relationship was an equal partnership where neither would have veto power over the other, but a partnership in which they discussed the science of nonviolence and its use on a daily basis. Bevel did know how to organize a nonviolent movement, and King knew he needed someone with that skill in SCLC. One of King's main strengths was his public persona, his amazing and world-changing ability to communicate love and caring to large audiences. King was the ideal public spokesperson for SCLC and the Civil Rights Movement while Bevel worked on initiating and organizing the actions and responses. Before King and Bevel made their 1962 agreement Bevel had been strategizing, and had become the main leader of, the nonviolent student movement. James Lawson, who had done much to train Bevel in nonviolence in the late 1950s and 1960, suggested to King that he meet with Bevel when the Albany Movement stalled, and this meeting resulted in what can be called the most important activist partnership of the 1960s. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:38, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * So you've been pushing your biased views stemming from your conflict of interest for several years. Please stop.
 * Bevel was a cog in a big machine who doesn't show up in lists of King's associates. He gets a half-page biography along with numerous others in a 28-page section of the book Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience. YoPienso (talk) 05:22, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Quite the cog! I'm glad you will probably get to know more about James Bevel's Civil Rights Movement career because of your opposition to including him as a major 20th century activist who was greatly influenced by Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Your hints that I may be making things up about Bevel's work, his influence on the world, and his working partnership with Dr. King, will hopefully give you a reason to find sources to attribute to someone else the initiation, organizing, and directing of SNCC's Open Theater Movement, the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, the march from Selma to Montgomery, the Chicago Open Housing Movement, the April 1967 anti-war march on the United Nations, the calling of the action in Washington D.C. which became the 1967 March on the Pentagon (Bevel left the directorship of the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam before that event), the calling of the 1963 March on Washington (the last, along with the others, confirmed by Andrew Young and Bernard Lafayette), many aspects and events of the Mississippi Movement, and Bevel's numerous other major achievements of the era. Hinting, in good faith, that I may have enough of a conflict of interest because I knew James Bevel as a friend and as a long-time research subject that I would purposely inflate his societal importance or otherwise wrongly edit Wikipedia is something that I must take exception to, if only to set the record straight. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:26, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This article is about Tolstoy, not the American civil rights movement. Chill, dude. YoPienso (talk) 17:49, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The focus of this discussion is to ascertain which 20th century activists who were greatly influenced by Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You should be listed in the lead sentence devoted to that subject. The three giants of nonviolence and nonviolent-movements of the century are Gandhi, King, and Bevel, and all three were independently influenced by that book. Suggesting the continued removal of one of them because you may not know about him is certainly not a valid reason to discontinue an accurate edit (and I will find sources), an edit which should only be removed if you can prove that Bevel's influence on the Civil Rights Movement was not as large as claimed. Objecting to my additions to this discussion, and to have my devotion to accuracy on Wikipedia questioned in the manner that you have done (be it in good faith), did and do deserve a response (and as a good editor yourself I'd think you'd probably agree). Randy Kryn (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your civil engagement here. You need to demonstrate that Bevel's influence on the Civil Rights Movement was as large as you claim. Best wishes, YoPienso (talk) 18:27, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. As for editing the James Bevel page, subject matter experts are allowed to edit pages. Although you have placed a COI tag on the page in, I assume, relationship to my work on it, I am not a paid editor, nor have I made a penny or a one-cent Euro on my Bevel research since I first added edits to the Bevel page in 2007. As a subject matter expert, is the "conflict of interest" heading on this section, as well as the COI tag meant for me on the Bevel page, a legitimate use of the term and the tag or is it an unwarranted overuse of the COI policy? Randy Kryn (talk) 11:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * COI doesn't appear only when editors are paid for their work. Any relationship to the subject can produce a COI. You knew Bevel; you have spent much time documenting his activities; you feel historians haven't given him his due; you are insisting on inserting him here where he doesn't belong. You have a clear COI. You seem like a nice person, but if you continue this behavior, you'll have to be blocked from this article. These are the first lines from WP:COI:

Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships. Any external relationship can trigger a conflict of interest. That someone has a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgment about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith.
 * One crucial point you don't seem to understand is that in order to include Bevel here, you must demonstrate that he was of equal standing to Gandhi and King as the great nonviolent activists of the 20th century. The ref you provided merely showed Tolstoy influenced him. That's great, and belongs in the James Bevel article. PLEASE DO NOT RE-INSERT BEVEL INTO THIS ARTICLE unless you can show he was of equal stature to Gandhi and King. Of course you cannot, so please desist. Thank you. YoPienso (talk) 16:17, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:COI also contains "Subject-matter experts (SMEs) are welcome on Wikipedia within their areas of expertise, subject to the guidance below on financial conflict of interest and on citing your work. SMEs are expected to make sure that their external roles and relationships in their field of expertise do not interfere with their primary role on Wikipedia." Since it is easily shown that Bevel was of course equal to King and Gandhi in using the science of nonviolence to achieve the prominent goals and results of the particular projects and movements he and King participated in (see the below discussion) I've added his name back. It seems to be up to the editors involved to somehow prove that he wasn't as prominent (in achievements altough not in publicly celebrated status, which he literally never sought) as I claim in my papers and as historian David Garrow publicly said in 2015. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Consensus to remove Bevel
Randy Kryn added Bevel on March 4, 2014 with the edit summary Bevel, the third of the three major nonviolent thinkers/doers of the 20th century, was profoundly influenced by Tolstoy. Bevel has been removed various times since then, and Kryn reinserts him. There doesn't seem to be a consensus to keep, but only a lack of noticing when Bevel once again appears.

What is the current consensus? YoPienso (talk) 18:25, 5 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Remove - Kryn repeatedly asserts that Bevel was one of the three major nonviolent activists of the 20th century. No source supports his claim. YoPienso (talk) 18:25, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep, please read the above discussion and its links, and the two sources used (both authored by myself, which I've been told are usuable as sources if they were valid-source published and sourced themselves). The 1984 paper on James Bevel was used as a source in David Garrow's 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning book Bearing the Cross, and then Garrow asked if he could publish the paper in his series of books of important papers from Civil Rights Movement history. That paper, "James L. Bevel, the Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" was then published in Garrow's 1989 We Shall Overcome, Volume II with the addition, with Garrow's permission, of an addendum updating my research from 1984 to 1988. The second paper was my 2005 update, which was published soon afterwards by James Ralph of Middlebury College, on the Middlebury website, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement. He vetted the paper and wrote a counter-paper on one point from it, and I've had a long-time link to both the paper and Ralph's criticism on my user page. There is also the 2015 statement from David Garrow linked in the above discussion. There are enough sources used and listed in the writing of those papers to show that yes, Bevel is certainly on par with Gandhi and King as one of the three nonviolent practitioners of the century. As the sentence under discussion pertains to the major nonviolent scientists who were greatly influenced by the publication and study of Leo Tolstoy's book The Kingdom of God Is Within You, my "Keep" ivote is based on solid ground pertaining to the influence of the book on James Bevel, per The Children, 1999, David Halberstam and other sources. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:02, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please offer your comments on this. YoPienso (talk) 16:08, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Remove: Sources about this are so few and far between that even the foremost expert on the topic,, struggled to find them. This is a good indication that it would not be WP:DUE to include Bevel here. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No struggle, just my time was limited yesterday. The Children, David Halberstam's 1999 book, includes the Tolstoy data and has now been cited. As for Bevel's prominent place as a nonviolent activist, please consider my papers as among the sources. Here is a list of many of James Bevel's accomplishments in the 1960s movements:
 * Worked and assisted others in the 1960 Nashville Sit In, planned and directed SNCC's Open Theater Movement, and participated in the continuation of the Freedom Rides
 * Called for voting rights in Mississippi and moved there to organize the state
 * After meeting with Dr. King, and coming to an agreement, came to SCLC and became its Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education (with free reign in the post)
 * Initiated the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade
 * Strategized and directed the Birmingham Children's Crusade
 * Taught the students who took part in the Birmingham Children's Crusade how and why to be nonviolent and loving
 * Called the 1963 March On Washington
 * Co-Initiated [with Diane Nash] SCLC's Alabama Project
 * Initiated the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement
 * Strategized the Selma Voting Rights Movement
 * Directed and taught the participants nonviolence, Selma Voting Rights Movement
 * Initiated the Selma to Montgomery March
 * Directed the Selma to Montgomery March
 * Initiated SCLC's role in the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement
 * Strategized the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement
 * Directed the Chicago Open Housing Movement
 * Chaired and directed the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in 1967
 * Joined Coretta Scott King, David Dellinger, and others in talking Dr. King into actively opposing the Vietnam War
 * Called and directed the 1967 March on the United Nations
 * Initiated the 1967 March on the Pentagon
 * These were the main actions of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and by successfully initiating, directing, and completing them, and by Dr. King advocating them, they brought about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, essentially ending legal segregation in the United States. After knowing and studying these connections it can be seen and understood why Bevel was, as I mention in my papers, an equal to King in the Civil Rights Movement, which is the subject of this discussion. Thus if Dr. King is mentioned in the sentence on the Tolstoy page, and if Bevel was greatly influence by The Kingdom of God Is Within You, his name should remain on the page (where again it has been removed, even after sourcing, although this discussion pertains to "if" it should be removed). Randy Kryn (talk) 19:24, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please stop this nonsense immediately. What you haven't shown is that Bevel's stature in the history of nonviolent activists is equal to Gandhi's and King's. YoPienso (talk) 19:36, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Shown and proven, hopefully to some editors satisfaction. This discussion pertains to removing Bevel's name from the page, not adding it. Since an editor has pinged for comments I've added this page to the talk page of the WikiProject Civil Rights Movement, and with the tone some editors are using in this discussion maybe it should be taken to a full RfC? Randy Kryn (talk) 19:49, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Remove I know quite a bit about the relation between Tolstoy, Gandhi and King. It is an important part of my research, and in my M.A. in Gandhian philosophy. Tolstoy has influenced many people, and we can't add everybody. And Bevel is certainly not in the same level as Gandhi and King. Regards, Yann (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please define what "level" you mean, as that may be the point of difference in this discussion. If it is in terms of achievements, then of course Bevel is among those honored three. If it is a point of being publicly-celebrated, then no, he is not at their "level" at this point, and never sought to be. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:09, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , hi, I've had you in mind off and on the last few hours. I think one of the best things that may come from this discussion is you finding out about James Bevel, his accomplishments, his deep connection to Tolstoy and Gandhi, and then his later work with King. A small part of you may already be wondering if maybe, just maybe, your studies of the three of them should have, and should now, include a fourth. James Bevel was given the Tolstoy book by a sea cook on his naval ship, and left the Navy as a result (with an honorable discharge, contrary to published information). Years later he learned of Gandhi's work and writings from James Lawson, studied those writings until becoming one with them, and knew almost immediately upon hearing of Gandhi and his work that he had found a way to end legalized segregation in the United States. Others in the Nashville Student Movement studied Gandhi, and together they decided to test what they had learned. And test it again, and again, and refine it (Bevel said it took him about five years to come close to mastering nonviolence), and then tested it again. Bevel did this, and changed the world. Changed it using the Sermon on the Mount, Tolstoy's book, Gandhi's information, and his association with Dr. King - an equal and extremely functional partnership from 1962 on. That you may be beginning to have a hint that maybe this is real, and that your education of the three giants of nonviolence may have to include a fourth, could put you on the correct path to personally expanding the academic field in which you obtained your M.A. The lineage and societal waves and flows of Mohandas Gandhi's work, his descriptions of that work, and his thoughts and observations about nonviolence, had another major student, someone who did honor to Gandhi by absorbing, acting upon, and further refining Gandhi's research and experiments in the science of nonviolence. In doing so Bevel obtained the expected results. If you are still interested in those topics, then you may be, indeed, both lucky and intellectually fortunate to have come upon this discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:36, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Remove Gandhi and MLK are famous figures, Bevel is not. Yuyuhunter (talk) 05:38, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The sentence under discussion reads "pivotal" figures, not famous. Pivotal means, per our Wikidictionary, Being of crucial importance; central, key. Please look at the list of James Bevel's work, his initiated and completed movements, and, if you have time, explain how his role in those world-changing events of the 20th century was not 'being of crucial importance', 'central', or 'key'. I think some editors are taking into consideration the fact that James Bevel is not now a household name as meaning that he was not one of the three pivotal individuals who practiced nonviolence in the 20th century. Fame and achievement are two different things. Gandhi, King, and Bevel did what they did without hiring press agents or other publicists. Media is not taken into consideration in a real nonviolent movement, and Bevel did not include press coverage into his planning or thinking. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Is anyone who has commented here or has come upon the discussion going to answer this? My list above shows that James Bevel initiated, planned, and directed the major events of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Can anyone point out any inaccuracy in that list? And the key word in the sentence under consideration is "pivotal". Does "pivotal" mean something other than the dictionary definition (and note, "famous" is not a synonym of "pivotal")? If someone here can't counter those two points I would ask that this discussion be closed as "no consensus to remove Bevel". Randy Kryn (talk) 15:29, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In my view,, it makes no difference if the claim here is that he was "pivotal" instead of "famous", or any adjective for that matter. If only few sources deal with the Tolstoy-Bevel connection, then the claim is WP:UNDUE even if it was true. I think there is a rather strong consensus (four against one). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:15, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Consensus is not determined by a nose count. The Tolstoy-Bevel connection is sourced, as asked. There is no undue, there is an accurate and sourced representation of the major nonviolent activists of the 20th century who were greatly influenced by the book The Kingdom of God Is Within You. As for undue, If you need a "prominent" source for Bevel's accomplishments besides my published research, see historian David Garrow's 2015 statement. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:19, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Randy, I think it would be beneficial to create, per your suggestions, an RfC, since that should put this WP:UNDUE WP:IDHT thing to rest. YoPienso (talk) 03:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Done (added to Rfc) Randy Kryn (talk) 14:03, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, and I agree that undue and not getting the point need to be addressed, but probably in the opposite way that you mean them. I'm confused that you or others cannot refute James Bevel's accomplishments and yet don't see how he fits in the sentence concerning 'pivotal' 20th century figures. Maybe another way of asking might help. How are his accomplishments, either singularly or, as they should be, taken as a whole, not pivotal, especially given that Dr. King's name is mentioned in the sentence (King would not have the public credit for Bevel's work unless he and Bevel had successfully accomplished what they had set out to do). Randy Kryn (talk) 16:11, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There is no need to refute that claim. It may very well be true that Bevel has accomplished as much as you claim. The point is that he is only seen as such by an extremely small minority, and "if a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it." Interestingly, you changed the plural in the requirement "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents" to "if you need a "prominent" source for Bevel's accomplishments besides my published research, see historian David Garrow."Yuyuhunter (talk) 17:21, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Garrow published my paper "James L. Bevel: The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" in his 1989 book We Shall Overcome, Volume II, and used cites from it in his Pulitzer Prize winning Bearing the Cross. In Civil Rights Movement research, Garrow is as prominent as they come. Many other sources back up each one of my claims of Bevel's accomplishments listed above (many are cited in the paper just mentioned), so James Bevel's work is indeed well sourced and accepted by historians. I still don't "get" what the problem is outside of Bevel not being the subject of wider public recognition, or a major film made on his life, and thus, as you say above, not famous. But "pivotal", yes, and necessary to the accomplishments of the 1960s movements. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Remove. I too find the assertion that Bevel is "on par with Gandhi and King as one of the triad of major nonviolence advocates" to be a deeply questionable conclusion, regardless of the academic focus of any scholars we might have contributing here.  However, there's a more profound issue at work here, in that most of the editors above (on both sides) are trading arguments that fall far outside of how we make our policy decisions with regard to content on this project.  It doesn't matter how highly you value (or do not value) your or another editor's expertise or rationale when it comes to personal conclusions.  Trying to adduce content on those grounds is textbook WP:Original research.  This issue has to be resolved by the WP:WEIGHT of perspectives in WP:reliable sources.  And in those terms, there's just not even a remote question here; the massive corpus of sources we have on the post-Tolstoy nonviolence tradition/movement just do not, when weighed together, treat Bevel as as a figure of comparable notability and prominence to Gandhi and King.


 * Randy, with all do respect to you as a scholar who has chosen to focus on this most important of historical and ideological subjects, I think you're way too close to this topic and are inserting your own perspective (albeit based on specialized knowledge) in lieu of that which results from the balance of reliable sources. This is one reason why editors who are also scholars are encouraged to avoid (or at least take great caution with regard to) topics that their own work touches upon.  Frankly, I feel this is a WP:SNOW issue and I'll be surprised if you get any !votes endorsing your perspective on this one.  However, I do applaud you for recognizing RfC as the logical solution to this dispute, rather than continuing to butt heads. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 05:57, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, for your reasoned comments. The point of contention is, again, how the sentence is worded. It uses the term "pivotal" without any other descriptor, without taking prominence into consideration. If the sentence included a term like "well-known pivotal figures such as" there would be no question of inclusion, I would not have added Bevel in the first place. But when taking only "pivotal" as a criteria, and weighing the accomplishments of James Bevel (most of which are commonly and perceptionally attributed to Dr. King), the sentence certainly should contain his article. That point, and only that point, is why I continue to address objections in this RfC. If editors agree to add "well-known" or something similar I'd instantly drop my own objection. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it is going to be a tough sell to get a mention of Bevel in the lead under any circumstances, but that does leave open a wide range of middle ground solutions that (to the best of my observation so far, anyway) seem to have mostly not been considered yet. For example, I think you might stand a decent chance at getting a strong consensus for a mention in the religious and political beliefs section.  Actually, if there is one thing that this issue has highlighted for me, it's that the overall format and flow of this article could maybe use a little tightening.  So, I for one have no problem with a mention of Bevel in that context, placing Tolstoy's influence within the later (and overall) history of the nonviolence movement.  If Bevel made explicit reference to Tolstoy as a guiding influence, that seems appropriate. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 06:34, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think Tolstoy's influence on Bevel belongs in the Bevel article, right where it is. The only way I could see shoehorning Bevel into this article would be to include a list of people who were influenced by Tolstoy. YoPienso (talk) 17:43, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * At this point I think the fairest consensus (which usually seeks a mid-point) would be to add "well known" to the sentence in question. It now reads only "pivotal". I've offered comments putting forward a case that Bevel was pivotal, and could go into more detail about either his combined accomplishments or specific parts of Bevel's sourced work. No one has refuted the basic information that I've provided to show that he was pivotal, and I'm assuming that maybe some editors have read one or two of my sourced papers. The only argument seems to be that the sources aren't good enough - that the credibility of my papers and their sources has been called into question - although nobody has explained why Bevel wasn't "pivotal". Or that it is in a large minority of sources in stating that claim - although no source disproves any portion of the claim while many reputable sources and the combined academic scholarship give Bevel credit for his role in each one of the individual accomplishments listed above, except for how he "called" the March on Washington, which was new to the literature in 1989 and hasn't often been repeated (although Andrew Young and Bernard Lafayette have credited the "calling" of the March to Bevel). But in fact, like one of those alternate timeline science fiction stories, take Bevel's work out of the Civil Rights Movement and it doesn't exist. It stalled at Albany and it was stalling at Birmingham, until Bevel was asked by Dr. King to take over the direct action portion of the campaign when King was purposely arrested and jailed. That was one of the two exact moments, from one arguably credible point of-view, that legal segregation in America ended, it just didn't know it yet (the other being when Bevel, then the strategic leader of the student movement, met with Dr. King at King's request and, after a discussion, they agreed to work together). So I've asked a few times, in different ways, to show how statements like that aren't true, and nobody has refuted either them or their back-up sources which, when combined, timeline the world-changing successes that Bevel had as SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education during the next four years. Haven't seen even one point refuted (although Professor James Ralph, who published my 2005 paper, takes exception to Bevel's description of how the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement ended). But adding "well known" to the sentence should be a fair consensus, and puts aside the question of Bevel's pivotal or non-pivotal role in the events of the Civil Rights Movement (which Dr. King would then represent in the lead sentence) and if he was a pivotal individual greatly influenced by Tolstoy's book. If that is fine, then yes, thank you, adding information about the influence Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You also had on James Bevel's life and work later in the page, that sounds good, and could be shaped into a brief agreed-upon sentence. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:48, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Several times I have refrained myself from responding to you because you are exhibiting such a classic case of WP:IDHT.
 * The consensus is clearly against including Bevel in this article with Gandhi and King. [Amended May 21.]
 * Wrt "pivotal": The word doesn't stand alone, but is couched in the sentence "such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr." We've demonstrated to you reminded you time and again that Bevel wasn't as pivotal as Gandhi or King or anywhere near their stature. They are not in the same set.
 * All major reliable [underlined words inserted per comment below] sources show Bevel as an aide or adviser or colleague of King. King was the pivotal figure, and Bevel was an adjunct.
 * Conciseness on your part would help on this talk page. See WP:WALLOFTEXT. Best wishes, YoPienso (talk) 19:51, 20 May 2018 (UTC_)
 * Please point out, if you would, where anyone in this discussion has demonstrated that Bevel wasn't as pivotal as Gandhi or King, especially time after time? Let alone once. When you say "all sources show...", again, my papers are not mentioned. Many other sources inaccurately say "aide" or "advisor" (colleague is accurate), but not all sources do so, as you claim (do you think the strategic leader of the student movement would move from SNCC to SCLC just to "aide" or "advise"?). King was the public pivotal figure, Bevel was a pivotal figure equal to King within the movement itself. My 1984 paper, accurately named "James L. Bevel: The Strategist of the Civil Rights Movement", was then cited in a Pulitzer Prize winning book by a major Civil Rights Movement historian, and then reprinted, with an allowed update-addendum, by the same author acting as an important-CRM-papers editor a couple of years later. Please strike all of the places where you claim "All sources", including within the first comment of this RfC, or explain why not. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:44, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've changed "All sources" to "All major reliable sources." I can't even find yours on the internet, and Garrow himself calls Bevel a "top aide," "King's most trusted and brilliant advisor," a "prominent lieutenant," and likened their relationship to father-and-son, King being the father. YoPienso (talk) 21:48, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , you have found my paper on the internet, and in fact you've just linked to it. And attributed it to Garrow. Flattering but incorrect. Your second link is actually a quote from Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader of July 20, 1984, a source I used in the paper (and please see the point made immediately below it) which was later reprinted in We Shall Overcome Volume II. Garrow was that volume's editor (i.e. Garrow chose the papers to be included). So the first two links you include above were not quoting Garrow, but papers he printed in his books, including mine and its many sources. And in changing your own statements above, please do so by striking the words and then adding the new statement, as they are comments which have already been replied to. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:43, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I confess I'm quite confused on what you're talking about. Apparently, the snippet views I could access from We shall overcome: the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's, Volume 1, by David J. Garrow, 1989, is a compilation of various writers. I have no way of knowing who wrote what, but it's under Garrow's name and editorship. You can't throw out stuff he included that you don't like and say only the stuff of yours he included is reliable. YoPienso (talk) 05:13, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * From the Washington Post's obituary of Bevel: "Jim Bevel was Martin Luther King's most influential aide," said civil rights historian David J. Garrow. So, unless the WaPo was mistaken, Garrow not only included other writers' opinions that Bevel was an aide, but said so himself. YoPienso (talk) 05:28, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Let me spell it out as simple as I can. You say in your previous comment that you cannot find my paper on the internet. You then link to it in the same sentence (pausing here to let that sink in, and maybe consider striking some of your comment). I'm not saying Bevel hasn't been called an "aide" of Kings (his "most influential aide" according to the obituary link above), just that, for purposes of this discussion, the statement isn't accurate. Bevel and King agreed that Bevel would come over from SNCC, where he soon became the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education for the Southern Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was not an aide of King's but a partner, with neither having veto power over the other's actions. As the Director of Direct Action James Bevel worked at creating, planning, and directing the direct actions which SCLC and Dr. King became publicly known for. As you say, and have linked to, Garrow chose the paper titled "James L. Bevel: The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" to include in his book. That paper is a reputable source. As SCLC's direct action leader, and as the main strategist of the movement, Bevel was pivotal to the Civil Rights Movement, just as King was. Thus I'm contending that Bevel's link should be included in the sentence under discussion unless the words "well known" are added. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:36, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The thing is Randy, as a matter of policy, the WP:ONUS is on you to prove that the additional content is WP:DUE. Finding that there is a source out there that aligns with your perspective (which in this case is not hard, because you are yourself the author of that source) is just the first step of testing the appropriateness of new content. There are lots of reasons why content verifiable by a source may nevertheless be inappropriate for inclusion in a given article. In this case, the unquestionable consensus is that the WP:WEIGHT of the sourcing collectively just does not support inserting Bevel into that statement alongside King and Gandhi.  You are attempting to push back against this consensus by repeatedly saying "please prove to me that Bevel was/is not as prominent a figure as I claim he is", but in doing so, you are attempting (inadvertently, I am sure) to turn the normal consensus process on its head.  For one thing, as rhetorical discourse goes in general, it is often nearly impossible to prove a negative to the satisfaction of the person issuing that challenge.  More to the point, our editorial policies make it clear that as the party looking to add content to change the oldest stable version, you have the responsibility of gaining consensus for that change, not the other way around.


 * I appreciate that these questions you are asking are nevertheless just efforts to debate the issue, but unfortunately, with the !vote being what it is, I fear you are failing to see that your argument just doesn't have a chance of gaining the support you need. That said, I also do not think YoPienso is entirely correct that consensus above shows that Bevel should not be mentioned in the article at all; so far, that question has not been discussed.  However, YP may be right insofar as, if that question were asked, those who !voted to exclude Bevel from the sentence in question would also !vote to exclude him from the article altogether. That is a real possibility, but I think we should avoid speculating on it and putting our presumptions in the mouths (fingers?) of other editors who haven't spoken to that broader question, as yet.  If the other RfC respondents are like me, they were only responding the much more narrow question that was explicitly put forth here (whether Bevels name should be added to that one specific sentence).  For my part, I would be willing to change my !vote to support inclusion if we were talking about a mention (that does not attempt to elevate Bevel to the prominence of King and Gandhi) lower in the article.  Whether others would also be willing to, I honestly don't know.  But I think you need to give up on the change you want to make to that sentence in lead, because the consensus really couldn't be much more clearly against you; every other editor aside from yourself who was previously involved in the discussion here or who has arrived via RfC is in agreement: it just is not an accurate reflection of what the aggregate of sources say on the topic. I would shift your approach towards lower hanging fruit which may yet be attainable. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 00:47, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've amended my statement that there's a consensus against including Bevel in this article since that wasn't precisely the question. Nonetheless, my experience at Wikipedia tells me there shouldn't and won't be any mention of Bevel at all except perhaps as part of a list of people influenced by Tolstoy. What relevance does Bevel have to this article? None, that I can see. It's interesting that Randy's paper published by Middlebury College doesn't mention Tolstoy even once, yet names Gandhi half a dozen times. YoPienso (talk) 03:21, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments Snow Rise, and yes, adding him later in the page may be the decision here (hopefully not, and if so hopefully with the words "well known" added to the disputed lead sentence). I do believe that my sources in the two papers that Yopienso links to above (the 1984 paper, which was updated in 1988, was linked inadvertently and then wrongly attributed in the comment above yours), if read with their sources in mind, do, I submit, prove my assertions, which are then augmented by later papers and quotes. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:57, 21 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Remove. Nowhere near a major influence. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:51, 19 May 2018 (UTC).
 * "Nowhere near a major influence". ?., did you even read what Bevel initiated, planned, organized, directed, and successfully achieved? I'm serious, what made you write that, it might help me understand that type of thinking. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:13, 19 May 2018 (UTC)


 * To the closer. If the words "well known" are not added to the sentence under discussion, I would ask that you consider that the only other option is to allow Bevel's name to be included. This may be one of those discussions where "head count" doesn't work, and where the sole editor going against what others are already calling a consensus decision is correct. Please read this long discussion in detail. Notice that I've shown how James Bevel was pivotal on the same order as Dr. King, and that no editor can make a case that he wasn't pivotal as defined in the Tolstoy sentence under consideration. The main editor bringing this case, for example, says that they couldn't find my paper on the internet, and then they link to it in the same sentence. This RfC discussion starts off with the incorrect statement by the same editor that "no source supports" the claim, which disregards two major sources under later discussion (although I am the author of those sources, they are reputable, and one was cited in David Garrow's Pulitzer Prize winning book). If I am going against the tide here, I ask that you put on your metaphorical bathing suit and join in. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:26, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Leaning toward removal, but there may be a compromise solution. "If only [a] few sources deal with the Tolstoy-Bevel connection, then the claim is WP:UNDUE even if it was true" is basically the WP:NOR point I would have made, just more concisely than I would have made it. Kryn may be 100% correct that Bevel will turn out to have been pivotal, but the RS aren't telling us this (yet).  That said, James Bevel is clearly notable.  Maybe there's a way to include him that isn't so questionable, like a longer list of people influenced by Tolstoy (and toward the bottom of the article), rather than injecting Bevel into a sentence that otherwise only mentions King and Gandhi. "Tolstoy has influenced many people, and we can't add everybody" is true, but we can add a list of notable figures on whose socio-politico-philosophy Tolstoy had a known tremendous influence. More to give Tolstoy his due than Bevel; this isn't Bevel's article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:44, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've made essentially the same proposal repeatedly above, but (other than you and I) nobody seems interested in mentioning Bevel in a more constrained manner. And at this point, I can't see convincing any significant number of the remove !votes to instead endorse a more moderate stance; that might have been possible at the outset of the discussion, but Randy is now explicitly arguing that his sole perspective (regarding the application of his own research as a source) should supplant the clear consensus here, even though said consensus is predicated in a pretty straight-forward an inescapable WP:WEIGHT analysis as regards his original research.  Of course, it's Randy's own prerogative if he wants to play an all-or-nothing angle, but I have to say I've exhausted my own willingness to try to bridge the gap between the emphasis he wants and what every other editor wants; it feels like a WP:SNOW conclusion at this point that Bevel will be removed from the article altogether. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 10:33, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * See my comment above made May 20. Randy's last comment here, "To the closer," indicates he wants to have his way against all consensus. Also see my talk page, where his comments convinced me he's just being disruptive. YoPienso (talk) 14:50, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, he certainly should be mentioned somewhere on the page, actually more for Tolstoy's influence on the events of the 20th century (as Bevel will someday become more known and prominent. Books, films, and other "discoveries of his role" will certainly come, hopefully sooner than later, and will thus add to the prominence of Tolstoy's Kingdom of God book on the events of the era). The idea of adding "well known" is to me the second best solution, keeping Bevel's article in the discussed sentence as first best, but yes, I did agree above that at least a mention is warranted and I appreciate and 's good faith suggestions. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've read that, and I see some miscommunication, and you reacting with unreasonable hostility to someone who's actually answering your questions, though not with ideal clarity. Not getting the answer you were looking for in wording that's clear enough by your personal standards != "disruptive"; more like "inconvenient".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:26, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't find his paper.
 * Randy couldn't/wouldn't/didn't provide a link to it after multiple requests.
 * Can you provide me with a copy of his elusive paper so I can read it? I'm guessing it shows Bevel is plenty notable enough for his own WP article, which we have, with no controversy attached. I'm guessing it doesn't say he was a pivotal 20th-century figure such as Gandhi and King, who don't need the adjective "well-known," and who were influential world-wide, not just in the southeastern USA. YoPienso (talk) 23:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please, somebody! Show me the paper. And thanks. YoPienso (talk) 23:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You linked to it. I keep telling you that. Your link was to a quote used in the paper originally from the Chicago Reader, which you wrongly attributed to David Garrow. The paper itself, and its addendum, are in, as I've mentioned, the 1989 edited-by-David-Garrow book We Shall Overcome, Volume II. There were only 500 printed, as this was an academic book printed for major learning institutions, libraries in major cities (hopefully in the rare book rooms), and the like. That Garrow had recently won the Pulitzer Prize for his book on the Civil Rights Movement only lent his 16-volume series further credibility. It was his next major CRM project after Bearing the Cross, and since the printing was so limited it was meant for serious researchers. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:29, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I linked to a lot of stuff. Why won't you just link to it for me? Please answer that question: WHY WON'T YOU LINK TO IT? I've given up on asking you yet again to please link to it. Now I'd just appreciate it if you'll tell us why you won't. I can't help but interpret your refusal as stubbornness, and your continued discussion about a paper you refuse to link to as disruption. YoPienso (talk) 03:36, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Re, "the application of his own research as a source": Well, if the papers and such are reputably published, they can be used as sources, and do not constitute WP:Original research. Kryn is hardly the first academic to cite their own legit work here. There's only a CoI problem if there's something shady going on, like demands to be mentioned by name in the article text; citation of works put out by publishers that are not actually reputable but are self-publishing mills, fake conferences, bogus journals, etc.; misrepresentation of the content of the material, (e.g. revisionism of what one wrote after later researchers disproved some of it – the place for that is in a followup article in another reputable publication); or other shenanigans. I'm not seeing any shenanigans here, just a strong difference of opinion, about whether Bevel is more important/influential/pivotal than WP is giving him credit for, and whether too few RS treat him that way (yet). It's something that will resolve itself over time; coverage of Bevel may be very different here in 5 or 10 or 25 years.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:26, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with all of that, in principle--every word. And when I first arrived here via a RfC notice about a week ago, I was prepared (as a kind of variation on AGF) to operate under the presumption that Randy is capable compartmentalizing his role as the author of that source (and the arguments it forwards) and hisrole as an editor on this project, such that he could analyze the source and the WP:weight of his own work and arguments objectively and in accordance with our policies.  Unfortunately, as the discussion has worn on, I have become increasingly convinced that this is not 100% the case.  As you say, there is no per se rule which prohibits academics from citing to their own work, and numerous articles have been improved in this fashion.  However, any contributor doing so should show extreme caution in advocating too forcefully for the inclusion of their own work and theories in an article, because there is always the concern of a feedback loop with regard to the WP:PROMOTION of their own publications and the theories in which they are invested, as well as just good-old fashioned confirmation bias in their editorial stances.  These are very reasons we have a WP:COI policy to begin with.  In my opinion, Randy is not exercising the recommended level of restraint in this regard, but is instead pushing for wording which is just not remotely consistent with the weight of sources on this topic, but is consistent with the focus of their own academic propositions vis-a-vis Bevel.  As you say, who knows how Bevel will be regarded in time, but we have to decide on present content in a fashion consistent with policies and the collective corpus of our sources.


 * Like you, I very much appreciate the civility and thoughtfulness which Randy brings to bear in his arguments; those our qualities I respect in an editor--indeed, maybe above all others. But there comes a point at which arguing uphill against a WP:SNOW consensus crosses the threshold from reasonable editorial difference of opinion and begins to impinge upon refusal to WP:DROPTHESTICK, and this can happen at a point even before a discussion is closed, in some cases.  Mind you, I wouldn't say Randy has been outright WP:DISRUPTIVE at any point thus far, but that "note to the closer" was a bit of a turning point for me in this discussion that makes feel we are getting to an WP:IDHT place; Randy is clearly indicating that their specialized knowledge (and here is where we get to my WP:NOR point) should be substituted for an absolutely explicit WP:LOCALCONSENSUS on the weight of the sources.  That's not going to happen, of course, but his urging the closer to do so suggests a lack of perspective and necessary editorial detachment with regard to the issue being discussed here, no matter how civilly he is going about it.


 * Of course all of this long-winded message is not to suggest something needs to be done; my hope is that when the RfC is closed, Randy will accept the outcome, regardless of how disappointed he is. I'm just trying to further explain my original comment, to which you responded: I think the middle-ground solutions may be a lost cause at this point.  You and I are the only ones who have endorsed that approach (Randy has, to a degree as well, but only as a whisper following more forceful arguments for his preferred approach), but I think others could have been swayed at some point, if Randy had not been quite so strident/insistent on the notion that Bevel had to be mentioned in the lead and treated as an equal to King and Gandhi; that drive pushed the other editors here (both those from the original dispute and most of us who arrived via RfC) to move towards the opposite extreme.  So I think it was a pragmatic error on Randy's part, and I don't mind telling him so (hoping that he will take it in the same constructive sense which he seems to have accepted my comments above).  I think he's way too close to the subject, far too insistent on his idiosyncratic view, and far too hesitant to reach for something which (while not his ideal approach) might have been attainable.


 * For my part, while I feel WP:WEIGHT clearly precludes according Bevel the description Randy prefers, it probably would allow for mention of this figure lower in the article and with a somewhat less hagiographic bent. If you two can marshal enough support for that approach, I will happily return to !vote for it explicitly--but, as I've said, I think Randy may have shot himself in the foot and foreclosed that possibility; most editors will simply not, at this point, be willing to change their !vote (when they were already skeptical of mentioning Bevel to begin with) now that Randy has, in essence, said that his personal professional perspective should supplant the consensus they agreed upon.  And honestly, I don't blame them; they shouldn't let personal affront influence their editorial decisions, of course, but at this point some of them are likely to have written Randy off as someone who values his own professional perspectives more than a neutral reading of policy. Sorry for the wall of text, folks; I just wanted to he clear where my perspective lays on all of this, divorcing the meta argument concerning the discussion from my own views on the content. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 01:29, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Snow Rise, a good analysis and I certainly don't mind criticism. It's appreciated. I agree with much of it, being too close to the subject makes me have original research knowledge as well as academic knowledge, and if I sometimes write from that perspective it is crossing a line between Wikipedia editor and advocate. The note to the closer, which I do sometimes, pertains to the fact that I thought I had done what was requested - prove that Bevel was pivotal by listing his accomplishments, none of which had been addressed by editors opposing that position. But of course I accept any decision by the closer, and if my answers to people's questions and concerns throughout this discussion have edged over, at times, into outright advocacy, thank you for pointing it out and calling me on it. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:56, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was good, Snow Rise, if indeed long-winded. I'll say for the third time that I would perhaps be willing to see Bevel included in a section far down the article among a list of people influenced by Tolstoy. It would be well for Randy to acknowledge he has personally affronted every other editor, not only but most egregiously, in his "To the closer" comment, and beg our pardon. Also, I have never in my years at WP had an editor working in good faith refuse to show me the document on which he builds his argument. I find this unacceptable. YoPienso (talk) 03:47, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Here is the link to the paper that you provided] in the same sentence that you said you couldn't link to the paper, and you then attributed the quote to the wrong person. I kept pointing that out to you, to no avail. Your attitude throughout this discussion is the main reason why I wrote my note to the closer, in an attempt to summarize information which may have been missed amongst personal criticism. To me the suggestion that I owe you an apology seems like one of those mirror-effects, seeing things in me that you, not I, have engaged in. Asking the closer to see through the haze to the basic question raised in this discussion - were the accomplishments of James Bevel in the 20th century "pivotal" or "not pivotal" - seemed appropriate. Your later characterization of James Bevel's work within the Civil Rights Movement as just being important to the southeastern United States and not the world shows either your continued misunderstanding or mischaracterization of the historical turning-points of each of the individual CRM actions listed above, let alone their combined societal and civilizational effects. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the link, Randy. No wonder I couldn't tell I'd found it; it's only five unidentifiable lines, juxtaposed above a passage that asserts the opposite of your claim that Bevel was equal in stature to King. Why do you berate me for misattributing it when the author isn't identified? You said I attributed it to Garrow, whereas I attributed the other passage to Garrow. You created confusion and sent off bad vibes. YoPienso (talk) 18:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * For myself, Randy hasn't done anything I feel personally offended by, such that I would find an apology to be appropriate. I voiced my concerns with some of his editorial perspectives and approaches to the consensus discussion, and hope those concerns have been taken onboard--but having done so, I see no pragmatic gain in trying to extract a mea culpa, because those objections never really had anything to do with feeling personally affronted, but rather being editorially concerned. Anyway, I think a much more fruitful discussion (since there are four of us now who agree that some mention lower in the article may be appropriate) is to discuss what such a solution might look like, in more specific terms.  Perhaps we may yet be able to come to a result that everyone is generally comfortable with.  Randy, as someone who is quite familiar with the development of Bevel's political philosophy, if you had to reduce the role Tolstoy played upon that philosophy to one to two sentences (without comparative reference to other figures of the historical movement), what might that statement or statements read like?


 * Re-reflecting on the article, I think that SMcCandlish is correct in the observation that we may need to create context for this comment with broader reference to Tolstoy's impact among other thinkers. This could be placed in a separate legacy section following the death section, though, if it ends up being six sentences or less, I suggest it instead just be slipped in as a capstone paragraph to the "religious and political beliefs" section.  A third option is to do some deeper thinking and break that section up a little; it is overly long and combines a lot of different topics that probably could be organized a little better.  An "influence" section would be probably arise organically from that process, with room for Bevel, among other thinkers who are already mentioned in the article and perhaps others who are not. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 11:11, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your thoughtful analysis and, hopefully, your ideas, if worked on, will improve the Tolstoy article. A summary of the impact of The Kingdom of God Is Within You in Bevel's thinking would have to include only published sources, and as of now that would be the fact that Bevel left the Navy with an honorable discharge because of the book (he realized that he'd be unable to kill, not the ideal military attitude for someone deployed on a Navy destroyer), and, if this is published, that Tolstoy's reasoned laying out of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount showed him and the others (Gandhi, King, etc.) that Jesus' Sermon was really a textbook summary of the power of nonviolence. Bevel then read and studied Gandhi's books and papers before he and the other Nashville students decided to experiment with the information found in those writings, and at some point during those early studies and discussions Bevel re-read the Kingdom of God book and saw how it overlapped and added to Gandhi's findings. A brief one-sentence summary of that, devoid of most descriptors, shouldn't be difficult to summarize, and I'll polish one up a little later in the day. There must be many others who were influenced by that book, I personally don't have a list or knowledge of who they may be. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Great, now I think we are getting somewhere! Providing that context for Tolstoy's influence makes all the difference for me in cementing that this is a relevant connection that bears mentioning in this article.  I would like to suggest the following approach:
 * Unless and until we restructure the "religious and political beliefs" section, mention of the impact Tolstoy had upon the nonviolence practices of the American civil rights movement should immediately follow the section relating to Tolstoy's discourse with Gandhi.
 * This new paragraph should open with something along the lines of "Tolstoy's perspectives on nonviolent resistance in civil disobedience also had a direct impact upon major figures in the American civil rights movement..."
 * Mention of the influence Tolstoy had upon King could be inserted first. This will not only provide a sequeway to mentioning Bevel, as a strategist in the movement, it will also correct a flaw that has become apparent during this discussion: Tolstoy's influence on King is mentioned in the lead, but nowhere else in the article.  This is in direct violation of WP:LEAD, which makes plain that the lead section is meant to summarize the content of the article.  Part of the reason this was not done in this case, I suspect, is because it turns out to be harder to source the relationship than one might imagine (I just now myself spent a couple of hours looking into it).  To be certain, as I'm sure everyone here knows, King did make some reference to Tolstoy in speeches and correspondence relating to the nonviolence tradition (usually by incidentally pointing out his relationship to Gandhi), but we have very little to indicate what direct influence Tolstoy's writing had upon King himself.  Right now, the statement that Tolstoy influenced King directly is sourced to a collection of King's own works (making it essentially a primary source) and in that source, there's really only highly incidental mention of Tolstoy.  That's an unsatisfactory level of sourcing/comportment with WP:V.   What we really need is a secondary source explicitly noting the effect Tolstoy had upon King (even if it was indirect via Gandhi). Those sources exist, but I have yet to find one which is ideal for our purposes here.  Anyway, once we have those sources, we can decide how to describe the connection.
 * Then we come to Bevel. Based on the details Randy has provided, I recommend something like this: "Tolstoy's writing also had a profound effect upon James Bevel, another preacher and major civil rights movement strategist, who credited The Kingdom of God Is Within You in particular for having a great impact on his life; after reading the book for the first time while in the U.S. navy, Bevel realized that he would be unable to kill another person, and thereafter sought and was granted an honorable discharge.  After entering a seminary for religious instruction, Bevel would continue to read both Tolstoy and Gandhi's works on the subject of nonviolence and civil disobedience as he began to gravitate towards and participate in the civil rights movement."
 * Thoughts? <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 01:44, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * About all this "couldn't/wouldn't/didn't provide a link to it after multiple requests. Can you provide me with a copy of his elusive paper so I can read it?" veresus "You linked to it. I keep telling you that ..." stuff: 1) It is not required that access to a source be personally convenient for you. It doesn't have to be online, for free, at all. If it requires a visit to a university library, that's just too bad, and you need to understand that. Please read WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NOR carefully on how WP is sourced. 2) If a link is available, just link it again. It's not helpful to tell someone they already linked to something if they don't know which link you mean; it clearly just pisses them off and looks obstructionistic.  So, 3) everyone please chill out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:46, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please save your admonishments; I do understand that. I still see no justification for Randy's evasiveness. What we have to be careful with here regarding that source is how Garrow presented it: was he endorsing Randy's views, or debunking them? In the same book, Garrow published contrary views. The paper of Randy's that I can conveniently access, which makes no mention of Tolstoy, is published along with two rebuttals. On that page, Randy himself acknowledges errors in the 1984 paper and said he had corrected "almost all" of them by 1988. What didn't he correct? How reliable is his paper? Since I'll be done with this school term as soon as I clean out my desk and turn in my keys, I'll have time to request Garrow's book from the library and see for myself. Best wishes, YoPienso (talk) 19:26, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There was no evasiveness. The 2005 paper had rebuttals on only one point - how the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement ended. Bevel, who organized and ran that movement, said it ended with a secret agreement between Mayor Daley, himself, Al Raby, Dr. King, and Daley's attorney. He told it pretty much the same way since I knew him (1983) until he died. James Ralph, who wrote a book on the Chicago Movement, says Bevel's telling is wrong, although he also says that Bevel told him about the arrangement years earlier but he did not use it or trust it. The other rebuttal is by Kale Williams, who worked with the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Chicago and, I think, chaired that group. Bevel brought SCLC to Chicago to work on the West Side, and the Chicago actions, which were directed at evicting the Superintendent of Education, quickly evolved into the Open Housing Movement. Bevel ran that movement, and ended it on his terms. He said that Kale Williams was not privy to the final agreement because the few participants in it promised to not discuss it. Bevel only told about it once many of the people had died, and it was no longer controversial to Mayor Daley, who urged, according to Bevel, the secrecy. More in the 2005 paper, and as I mention on my talk page, that information was not used by myself on Wikipedia's Bevel page because of the rebuttals (I felt it wasn't my place to put Bevel's version in, and no other editor has done so). The slight errors in the 1984 paper were mostly, if not entirely, corrected in its 1988 addendum or the 2005 paper. When you read the paper pay particular attention to the addendum, which brings some very interesting information to the literature. No, Garrow does not debunk my views, and in fact, over the years, has increasingly given Bevel the historical credit he deserves. Garrow was brave to print the paper in such a showcase, and he knew Bevel's contributions then. His short but important 2015 statement goes a long way, for someone of his academic status, to accurately present some of Bevel's place in history to the literature. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:15, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Colleagues, please, I would suggest that this is not the appropriate forum for this nit-picky debate. Frankly, it's straying deep into WP:OR territory regarding an analysis of Randy's own work, which is not helpful to our purposes here. The fact of the matter is, even if we establish that Randy's paper is a perfectly respectable piece of scholarship in every respect, it doesn't even matter, because it's just one source and every other editor who has responded above (aside from you two) has made it clear that they are evaluating this as a WP:WEIGHT issue; we just cannot say or imply that Bevel is a figure of relatively equal standing to Gandhi or King based solely on that one source, given the number of sources on the topic which it has to be weighed against.  That is the clear consensus voiced above, so it is a red herring (in addition to being more than a little WP:OR) to be bickering about whether the editor who published Randy's piece meant to endorse it or to refute it.  That question is neither here nor there for our present editorial purposes and the only thing this extended litigation of the point is adding to the discussion is unnecessary heat.  Can I suggest we instead focus our attention somewhere that we may have a chance of generating some agreement? <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 01:57, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You had me at "Colleagues, please,". Randy Kryn (talk) 02:17, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Would you mind moving your most recent post about including Bevel into a new section? I agree with Xxanthippe that this section is ready to close. YoPienso (talk) 01:55, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. Consensus was established long ago. I suggest that this discussion be closed. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC).


 * Hi YoPienso. I don't mind replicating my thoughts below in a subsection for the convenience of further discussion, but I am afraid that I can't agree that an early close is appropriate in this case.  We haven't yet hit the standard one-month mark which is the typical minimum duration of an RfC, and discussion of vital points is still ongoing. While most of us (you and I included) are in agreement as to whether or not to include Bevel in the lead with the wording Randy originally wanted (WP:SNOW Oppose), the related question of whether/how to mention Bevel in the article at all is still very much live.  If we were to request a close right now, it could needlessly complicate this process just when we are getting to a place where we have some chance of generating an approach that everyone can get behind.  I would rather we take just a little more time to (if possible) hammer out at least a loose understanding of whether and how we are going to mention Bevel in the article before a close, so that this sub-point can be encapsulated in the formal close.  Otherwise the potential for further procedural disagreement and disruption after the close is too great.  That said, I will create the subsection briefly. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 02:15, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Mention of Bevel in the "Religious and political beliefs" section
Recap in case we have late arrivals: Most of us who have commented above are in agreement that mentioning Bevel in the WP:LEAD is WP:UNDUE based on collective sourcing of the relevant topics. We are also mostly in agreement that any mention of Bevel "in the same breadth" as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and which presents Bevel as a figure of equivalent notability and/or relevance to the nonviolent tradition is also WP:UNDUE. However, there is some emerging consensus amongst us that some mention of Bevel is probably acceptable lower in the article. At present, the appropriate place for this reference would seem to be the "Religious and political beliefs", where the impact of Tolstoy's writing and ideology upon other nonviolent figures (mostly Gandhi, with whom Tolstoy famously carried on a correspondence) is already mentioned. Now that the debate regarding the lead seems to be dying down, it's appropriate to ask the question of what a less-prominent mention for Bevel would look like in this section. Based on what we know and can source regarding Tolstoy's influence on Bevel, I am proposing something vaguely consistent with the following approach, which I hope will be found agreeable to both sides of the previous debate:


 * Unless and until we restructure the "religious and political beliefs" section, mention of the impact Tolstoy had upon the nonviolence practices of the American civil rights movement should immediately follow the section relating to Tolstoy's discourse with Gandhi.
 * This new paragraph should open with something along the lines of "Tolstoy's perspectives on nonviolent resistance in civil disobedience also had a direct impact upon major figures in the American civil rights movement..."
 * Mention of the influence Tolstoy had upon King could be inserted first. This will not only provide a sequeway to mentioning Bevel, as a strategist in the movement, it will also correct a flaw that has become apparent during this discussion: Tolstoy's influence on King is mentioned in the lead, but nowhere else in the article.  This is in direct violation of WP:LEAD, which makes plain that the lead section is meant to summarize the content of the article.  Part of the reason this was not done in this case, I suspect, is because it turns out to be harder to source the relationship than one might imagine (I just now myself spent a couple of hours looking into it).  To be certain, as I'm sure everyone here knows, King did make some reference to Tolstoy in speeches and correspondence relating to the nonviolence tradition (usually by incidentally pointing out his relationship to Gandhi), but we have very little to indicate what direct influence Tolstoy's writing had upon King himself.  Right now, the statement that Tolstoy influenced King directly is sourced to a collection of King's own works (making it essentially a primary source) and in that source, there's really only highly incidental mention of Tolstoy.  That's an unsatisfactory level of sourcing/comportment with WP:V.   What we really need is a secondary source explicitly noting the effect Tolstoy had upon King (even if it was indirect via Gandhi). Those sources exist, but I have yet to find one which is ideal for our purposes here.  Anyway, once we have those sources, we can decide how to describe the connection.
 * Then we come to Bevel. Based on the details Randy has provided, I recommend something like this: "Tolstoy's writing also had a profound effect upon James Bevel, another preacher and major civil rights movement strategist, who credited The Kingdom of God Is Within You in particular for having a great impact on his life; after reading the book for the first time while in the U.S. navy, Bevel realized that he would be unable to kill another person, and thereafter sought and was granted an honorable discharge.  After entering a seminary for religious instruction, Bevel would continue to read both Tolstoy and Gandhi's works on the subject of nonviolence and civil disobedience as he began to gravitate towards and participate in the civil rights movement."

How does that approach strike everyone? <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 02:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Good for now, but I'll suggest some edits to your Bevel summary later in the day (i.e. "Rev." in front of Bevel's name in place of "another preacher"). Randy Kryn (talk) 02:41, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's an edit of your suggestion, edited for clarity and accuracy. The reference which was on the page before Bevel's name was removed may cover much of this:

"The Kingdom of God Is Within You also had a profound effect upon Rev. James Bevel, a major civil rights movement strategist. After reading Kingdom of God while in the U.S. navy, Bevel realized that he would be unable to kill another person, and thereafter sought and was granted an honorable discharge. After entering seminary, and while first participating in the Nashville Student Movement, Bevel re-read Tolstoy's book and studied Gandhi's works on the subjects of nonviolence and nonviolent movements." It seems pretty neutral and accurate. Thoughts? Randy Kryn (talk) 02:05, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Mind you, I'm not sure where we are with consensus on particulars, but having done some more research on the direct relationships, I think this paragraph would not only provide a context for Bevel, but indeed recognize an aspect of Tolstoy's legacy not as yet referenced in the article:


 * Tolstoy also had an impact on several generations of intellectuals and leaders of the African-American civil rights movement: Booker T. Washington corresponded with Tolstoy and W.E.B. DuBois wrote admiringly of his ideas. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when speaking to the role of freedom in individual humanity, credited Tolstoy with reaching to the heart of the matter in a passage from War and Peace: "I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead." Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You [should not be internally linked, as it is has already been previously linked in the article (WP:OVERLINK)]had a great impact upon Rev. James Bevel, another civil rights movement strategist who, after reading the book while serving in the U.S. Navy, came to the conclusion that he would be unable to kill another person; Bevel thereafter sought and was granted an honorable discharge, and entered a seminary for religious training. While first participating in the Nashville Student Movement, Bevel re-read the The Kingdom of God is Within You and studied Gandhi's works pertaining to nonviolent practices.


 * Each of those statements can be more than adequately referenced to a number of reliable sources I discovered while looking more closely at the threads of direct connection between Tolstoy and the African American/civil rights movement branch of nonviolence. The one thing I couldn't find, interestingly enough, was much of a connection between King and Tolstoy, except as an indirect matter; the sources are agreed that there was not much of a direct connection but that there was without question an influence, given the impact Tolstoy had upon King's intellectual predecessor's in the movement and upon Gandhi (who of course was much more of a direct touchstone for King), and it seems that King at least read some of Tolstoy's work, because the quote I included to anchor the relationship above was used by King in more than one piece of correspondence (King also directly referenced the relationship between Tolstoy and Gandhi on a couple of occasions, but that seemed a little too far out in the weeds for inclusion).


 * I took out some of the superlatives I had originally included in my first proposal for the Bevel sentences, both for general consistency with a more neutral encyclopedic tone and because, having written the rest of the section for the civil rights movement leaders, I found I had omitted any such value statements for the others, and the section read better for it. I also restructured the sentences a little for flow, emphasis and integration with surrounding content. In this new reading, I think the last sentence is actually kind of dubiously necessary and could perhaps be dropped as superfluous; especially given the short shrift I have given to the other leaders above, repeating this tidbit about how he reread the book later is of dubious value--we've already by that point established that the book had a transformative impact upon him, and we can expect he read it more than once after that, but pointing out that he did so again at other particular points in his development is arguably getting into WP:UNDUE territory with regard to Tolstoy's article. But I've left it in for now. Let me know what you think.  I'll provide a version with references included shortly. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 08:57, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * So, just for clarity, a slightly-stripped down and less annotated version of the paragraph might read:


 * Tolstoy also had an impact on several generations of intellectuals and leaders of the African-American civil rights movement: Booker T. Washington corresponded with Tolstoy and W.E.B. DuBois wrote admiringly of his ideas. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when speaking to the role of freedom in individual humanity, credited Tolstoy with reaching to the heart of the matter in a passage from War and Peace: "I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead." Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You had a great impact upon Rev. James Bevel, another civil rights movement strategist who, after reading the book while serving in the U.S. Navy, came to the conclusion that he would be unable to kill another person; Bevel thereafter sought and was granted an honorable discharge, and ultimately entered a seminary for religious training.


 * This should help alleviate the concerns you were facing that Bevel was being given an outsized reference in this article, by providing a context for the reference. That context itself being an aspect of Tolstoy's legacy that is significant enough to be due at least a short paragraph. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 09:36, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, good ideas. One change I'd like to suggest. To say that Bevel is "another strategist" is like saying, when talking of Lou Gehrig's pivotal role in the 1927 Yankees, that Babe Ruth was "another member of team". Bevel was the strategist of the Civil Rights Movement and of SCLC, not "another strategist". As Director of Direct Action of SCLC he was the architect of the movement from 1963 on. Just as he had become the architect of the student movement before moving from SNCC to SCLC upon the King/Bevel agreement of 1962. There's no other person sourced or accredited as being the movement's "main strategist", so it should be the accurate descriptor here. Thanks again for your thoughtful considerations. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:37, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, when I reference him as "another strategist" of the movement, I meant in addition to the other figures already mentioned in the passage, particularly his contemporary King, who is mentioned just before Bevel; I did not intend it to read as "just another strategist" and I doubt that is the way most readers would interpret it--rather I expect they would receive it as "a figure of some influence in the structure of the movement", which is all that I think is appropriate to imply when mentioning him here, where reference must be brief and without the benefit of detailed discussion of his work. I personally would not be at all comfortable labeling Bevel as the "main strategist" of the African American civil rights movement, because most sources on the topic of that movement do not describe him (or any other single person, for that matter) in such a way, so we are back to the same WP:WEIGHT issues that have been the crux of discussion in this thread previously. I just don't think there would be argument for describing Bevel in that way in even his own article, and it would be doubly WP:undue to impute it here without the benefit of context to expound upon his role.  Notice that I went through a lot of effort to construct prose across the passage that avoids reference to the stature of any of the figures, despite their prominence in that movement, and massive notability generally--not even King gets a single word of superlative.  I don't want to appear closed-off to further modifications, but that is one I just can't see as appropriate, especially in this context (and I doubt that wording could be gotten through consensus here, even if I did support it).  <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 23:56, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * To put it another way, if someone held the title "Manager of the New York Yankees" from 1953 to 1957, they'd be Casey Stengel and recognized for what the Yankees, under his direction and decision making, accomplished. Bevel held two titles with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) from 1963 to 1967: Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education. Those titles are not in dispute. Those titles allowed SCLC, under Bevel's direction and with King's participation and agreement, to accomplish deeds and create dialogues which, during those years and into 1968, ended legal segregation in the United States. Bevel was the strategist, in both name (Director of Direct Action) and deed. I can understand how "another" makes neutral sense, but I am just pointing out that it really isn't accurate in terms of responsibilities assumed and accomplished. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:23, 4 June 2018 (UTC)


 * But what you need to understand (and I don't just mean with regard to this one narrow issue, but generally, because you seem to need to be reminded of this fact quite regularly) is that Wikipedia content is not based upon our own idiosyncratic views of what is a correct factual representation of events--that known as WP:Original research and disallowed as one of the basic principles of editing on this project, no matter how much of an expert we judge ourselves to be (or may in fact be) on a given topic. Specifically, taking Bevel's positions with the SCLC (which are WP:verifiable) and then leaping to the further conclusion that we can describe him as the "main strategist" of the movement is textbook WP:SYNTHESIS, no matter how rational you view that further conclusion to be, as a pragmatic matter.  We don't add labels that are not clearly indicated by the WP:WEIGHT of the sources. Even if every editor here agreed that you had made a logical case for why we (privately) ought to consider him the brains behind the entire movement, we would still, as an editorial matter, not be able to add it to the article, because of the lack of support in reliable sources.


 * Now I know you view Bevel as a kind of silent juggernaut in the movement, believe that he was the equal and recognized partner of King, and feel that his contributions are criminally under-appreciated by scholarship and popular culture both. And who knows, perhaps one day the history books will vindicate your beliefs--I must tell you, I am extremely doubtful on all of those points, but who knows.  But that is just not the case with said history books and sources generally today.  To them, Bevel is a recognizable figure, but not the pivotal one you believe (or perhaps know) him to be.  Wikipedia is a tertiary source, meaning it reflects what primary and secondary sources say on a topic.  So when it comes to quests to shed light on "under-appreciated" figures, Wikipedia should not be one's first stop in an effort to get the world and academia to re-evaluate them; rather, Wikipedia is where you come after that effort has been successful and the weight of the sources then endorse that perspective.  Without that, you cannot push a view which is inconsistent with how most sources view the movement and the figures within it.


 * And I have to tell you--and this not to offend you or because I mean to push back against your edits elsewhere, but just to prepare you--it's kind of surprising that you have not faced pushback on this topic in the Bevel article itself: you use your own one published piece regarding Bevel to cite more than half of the footnotes in that article; there are more cites to that one minor paper of your own than to all of the other sources in that article put together. That's very telling of a problem with balance before we even begin to look at the facts that those footnotes are used to reference, which often present the notion of Bevel as the silent partner behind King who wielded equal authority within the inner circle of senior-most movement coordinators.  And that's just not a view that is common to sources on the topic of the movement and its leadership.  And again, who knows, maybe you really are the lone voice in the wilderness on this one and one day the common narrative will change to support your assertions (if I can be honest with you, it seems more probably to me that you are someone who respected and cared for this man a great deal and that you have a bit of confirmation bias when it comes to anything regarding his status, but we shall see--it would not be first time that conventional wisdom was turned on its head with regard to a historical figure).  But until then, I think I should warn you that you might have to accept a scaling down of your contributions to that article, because the narrative it currently voices is not one which seems consistent with the weight of sources to me. But that's a topic for another article (where I don't have intention in getting involved in those issues), so I'll leave the matter to you and YoPienso and the editors there. I genuinely tell you this because I would rather you stay on project and I fear that if you don't begin to prepare yourself mentally for those changes to the way the project covers Bevel, you may be terribly discouraged when they come. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 03:59, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * My papers and their conclusions, which you seem to forget are reputable sources, are well sourced themselves. The sources used back up the information in those papers about Bevel's pivotal movement contributions, which are also covered in other sources. And are you serious? I would welcome as many editors working on the Bevel page as possible, and have waited for other people to start editing it. Do you know how few people have edited it over the years, or how few have cited sources? Ever since I first met Bevel, and was made aware of who he was and what he had done, I've been consistently surprised that there is this individual, on the same order of accomplishment in American history as Jefferson, Madison, King, and so few others, who has been underreported about or just ignored. Now in death as well as in life. All it would take for that to change is for academics to look at the information with an open mind. Oprah Winfrey and others were honest enough to do some of that for their Selma film, the first dramatic account of the Civil Rights Movement that even mentioned Bevel's name. So if someone questions any of the points made about who initiated, directed, and strategized each of the major movements, there are sources other than mine. Back in the early 1980s Helen Bevel, Bevel's wife at the time, collected quite a few sources - paragraphs or sentences from previously published books - and prepared a fundraising paper, which is how I found out about Bevel just minutes after hearing him speak at a political meeting. I'd been interested in the 1960s era since it occurred, yet had never heard of Bevel before that evening. It was like being told that Jefferson and Madison and a couple of others actually had a co-equal in the 1770s and 1780s American Revolutionary era, a guy named John Doe. Yes, some of the information exists only in my papers, such as the description of the King/Bevel team and their 1962 agreement, the original plan for the March on Washington by the Birmingham children, and the agreement which ended the Chicago Open Housing Movement (as mentioned earlier, I didn't use the latter in the Wikipedia article because it was disputed by an academic, and was waiting to see if others were going to add it). But Bevel's basic "place in history", as time-lined by sourced accomplishments and positions held, shows that yes, he was the strategist and architect of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. To finish this "it's about time more editors had a hand in the pot" post, I'll link again to major CRM historian David Garrow's honest and groundbreaking 2015 statement, released at the historian's conference at the 50th anniversary of the Selma Voting Rights Movement, a conference organized by Bevel's widow. As far as I know no source has printed it. As before, thank you for your comments and for taking the time to show both concern and interest in keeping all Wikipedia pages honest and accurate. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Ok, but here's the thing: let's say I am thoroughly convinced by your conviction and the details you provide that Bevel was the strategist of the civil rights movement. Having convinced me personally, you have done nothing to advance the editorial argument, because it's not about convincing me that your findings are correct and conclusive.  It would still be blatant WP:SYNTHESIS if we go from your analysis of the "timeline of sourced accomplishments and positions held" to "he is  the  so-on and so-forth..."; that is not a conclusion we are allowed to arrive at by ourselves, no matter how convinced we may be by our own rationales and research record.  That's the essence of the WP:SYNTH policy.  And I'm sorry, but there the fact of the matter is that your one paper used as a source here (that I have seen, anyway) goes substantially against the grain of a massive ton of WP:WEIGHT in the form of scholarship and other sources regarding this defining era of American history.  And to be fair, it's not like everyone here is saying they never heard of Bevel; mostly they have just been questioning the conclusion that he is the "third 20th century pivotal figure of the movement, alongside Gandhi and King", or particular statements, or just voicing concerns about your over-reliance on your own research in content construction and debates. I believe you to be WP:HERE and to a genuine enough degree that you understand why those are legitimate concerns.


 * But I don't know that we are entirely far apart, because looking at Garrow's statement, there's nothing in that which I would object to including in the article, if I were working on it, provided the source was attributed properly. Personally I find the dismissal of "sins of the flesh" to be an offensively euphemistic means of glossing over the act of raping ones own children, but that's another matter altogether. But even if the editors on that article accept that the statement is a reliable source (which given the lack of publication and means by which it is being offered, is a big if; generally we just can't credit something to an academic which he is purported to have said but which cannot be tested with any kind of actual record) there's still the issue that Garrow's comments are admiring, yes, but they do not validate the much broader and explicit claims you make about Bevel's status.  At no point does he say that Bevel is a pivotal figure of the importance of Gandhi and King, or state that he was the strategist of the movement, or validate the notion that he was an equal authority to King in the leadership of the movement as acknowledged in a secret compact; in fact, I think the tone of those comments paints Bevel as more of an adviser, albeit one who would make stands for his beliefs: "From 1963 to 1968, no one had a greater strategic & political influence on Dr. King than Jim Bevel." [emphasis mine].


 * So even if you convinced the editors on that page to utilize the statement as if it was adequately sourced (which is probably unlikely), you could still only use it to introduce some quotes or content summarized from it; it would not, in itself, be justification to synth Garrow's comments (glowing as they admittedly are) into a statement he never made, and which only you, in a sea of civil rights academia, seem to be saying at this time. And even if Garrow and an entire cadre of historians were aligning completely with your view of Bevel, we would still only attribute those statements; we would not, in Wikipedia's own encyclopedic voice, be describing him in like terms unless and until it was a view expressed by the overwhelming majority of sources. But we're getting truly into the weeds now, as mostly regards another article, not this one.  Anyway, I hope that clarifies the editorial distinction I am trying to emphasize here.  Sometimes being an expert on this project is a challenge, I know, but there are vital reasons we have firewall between our personal perspectives (no matter how well informed we are sure they are) and the system by which we generate content. <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 10:41, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The 2015 Garrow statement cannot, of course, be used in directly visible text because it hasn't been published in a reliable source. Or anywhere else for that matter. I haven't asked or said otherwise. And there are plenty of sources which claim Bevel was King's "aide" or "lieutenant" which could be added to the page, even from Garrow. I haven't added them because I would not put information into Wikipedia if I knew it was false, even if reputably sourced, but am surprised as you are that nobody else has edited such language into his page. I'm just saying that my conclusions, as found in the 1984 paper and its 1988 addendum in Garrow's book, should also be included. I don't think anyone else is calling Bevel the strategist or architect of the movement, but they aren't calling anyone else that either, nor have they refuted the conclusion. The academic papers on Bevel are, as far as I know, limited to mine. But there are not sources claiming my conclusions wrong, because the facts and sources to do so just aren't there. So yes, many of my published views and conclusions are singular, but, importantly for Wikipedia usage, have no counter-views, except for that "aide" descriptor which anyone could have added to the article on the subject. As for Bevel's actions with his daughter, I wasn't there, or had much contact with Bevel during those years (early 1990s), and in my original research knowledge of the subsequent events am in a good place for a neutral researcher, I'm about an even 50-50 on if he was guilty or innocent. There is a case for both ends of that spectrum but no journalist or researcher has investigated the case. The events are outside of my academic interest in Bevel, which are mainly his 1960s work and theories about nonviolence. But imagine if Dr. King or Andrew Young or just about anyone instrumental from the movement years were accused and convicted of unlawful fornication while claiming innocence - journalists and writers and historians by the boatload would be investigating the circumstances and counter-claims. With Bevel, crickets. So his conviction is a large part of his legacy, I've been saying half. Yet whatever occurred did so 25 years removed from his historically productive 1960s Civil Rights Movement years, and so, although that is how this book-length discussion started (see the first comment a bit before the RfC), those later events are irrelevant to inclusion or non-inclusion in this Tolstoy page. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:25, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that it is not appropriate to add James Bevel to this article WP:BALASP. On this talk page it was noted that there is "not a single published biography on him at Amazon, at the Anchorage Public Library, or in the University of Alaska library system", and no text on Tolstoy's influence discusses James Bevel.Yuyuhunter (talk) 09:09, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, there is no policy or established community consensus saying that only sources which have the same general topic as the article may be used in said article. For pretty obvious reasons, as it would strip the encyclopedia of, oh, I don't know, 85% of its content, if I had to guess? I'm sympathetic to your urge towards BALASP, but I don't think a paragraph discussing thinkers who were influenced by Tolstoy other than Gandhi would be undue. Indeed, situating Tolstoy's work with regard to the ideological movement he helped to construct (at least in its modern conception) strikes me as entirely appropriate.  That section is currently absent, which highlights the fact that, to be frank, the standard is being applied a little less rationally than some seem to think, in regards to the status quo version.  For example, no one objects to King being mentioned in the lead (I certainly didn't think to question it, but gave the connection a reflexive pass), but as I noted above, when we look closely at that statement, the connection isn't really properly sourced at all.  So why does King get a pass in the lead (and frankly, nothing should be appearing in the lead that isn't covered at some length in the article, let alone not at all covered) but we can't concede a mention of Bevel deep towards the end of the article, even if Randy can supply a satisfactory source that clearly and explicitly establishes the impact Tolstoy had upon Bevel?  I would submit that to some extent we have all been operating by our pre-existing notions regarding the nonviolent tradition.


 * Now, I will also be blunt and acknowledge that I think Randy is clearly engaged in an extensive process of boosterism for Bevel, across this and other articles--an effort that I suspect crosses the line of POV in places. It's just that in this particular instance, he has met the burden I expect of his editorial argument for inclusion of this relatively conservative statement in this particular context.  A sentence or two here to show another person in the nonviolence tradition who was influenced by Tolstoy is a useful thing for the Tolstoy article, in my opinion--assuming it can be phrased appropriately and without out-sizing Bevel's notability.  <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 11:57, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * When asked I had provided a source in this edit, which was then reverted. The reference was from The Children by David Halberstam, a major book focusing on the Nashville students. Thanks for your concerns and thoughts. I assure you that, although I've added Bevel's work in quite a few articles in appropriate edits, I've been very restrained in adding the points where my papers break new ground in article's besides Bevel's page, and even there have added much less than I could. This restraint includes Wikipedia's articles on the Birmingham Children's Crusade, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Civil Rights Movement, the Chicago Freedom Movement, and others, which all would have important additions if I was actually engaging in an "extensive process of boosterism". I can think of no instance where my edits have crossed the POV line, and assure you I've been careful. No other editor, as far as I know, has cited my papers or added the data within them that I could add but have not. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:12, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Caption of photo in lead
I removed the detail, "This was the first colour photograph taken in Russia," from the caption in the lead photo because the article is about Tolstoy, not the history of photography in Russia. The photo is supposed to identify the subject--Leo Tolstoy. I believe what I removed is excessive, off-topic detail inappropriate for the caption. Randy Kryn restored it.

I also de-linked "Yasnaya Polyana" because it's already blue-linked in the infobox. It seems unnecessary in the caption. Randy restored that, too.

What does anybody else think about this? YoPienso (talk) 03:21, 28 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree that the detail about the colour photograph is off-topic and I'd lean towards removing it too, but I'm not sure it's worth debating. I guess you might argue that the fact that Tolstoy was the first Russian to ever be photographed with that technology says something about his prominence as a cultural figure.


 * Multiple links for the same term are generally controlled by WP:OVERLINK which advises against redundancies in most cases. But exceptions are sometimes made when the first instance is in a template parameter early in the article and the second usage in the prose much farther down; that standard is not codified in the guideline, just an observation I have made of a general practice, and one which strikes me as defensible.  Anyway, I am certain that one is too minor to be worth a kerfuffle.  <b style="color: #19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color: #66c0fd">n</b><b style="color: #99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color: #b2dffe;">w</b> <b style="color: #d4143a">let's rap</b> 07:05, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 August 2018
he died in 2005 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.191.189.130 (talk) 15:37, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

POTD
Oh, I was expecting to see the usual talk page notification that an image from this page was going to be featured in the Main Page. Here we go.

And before it gets lost, I was going to copy this information about its creator from WP:ERRORS as i can't think where else it might go.

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POTD today
The photograph is credited to F. W. Taylor. That name seems to be given as the copyright holder by the catalogue entry at the Library of Comgress. Is that the notable F. W. Taylor, or someone else? (The FPC in 2015 doubts the notable F. W. Taylor was the creator, and that seems right.)

So if not, who was this F. W. Taylor, and how did he or she come to take a photograph of Tolstoy in 1897? For what it is worth, I suspect they were just selling the photograph, and may not have created it themselves.

I suspect this was taken in woods near Tolstoy's home in Russia (where was Tolstoy in 1897 anyway?) and it does look like an amateur image, not a professional portrait. We know that Sophia Tolstaya was a keen photographer at this time, mentioned in her diaries. Could this be a photo by Tolstoy's wife? 213.205.198.160 (talk) 09:10, 9 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Answering my own question, it seems there was a Frederick William Taylor (1860-1944) who visited Russia in 1897, and his account of his visit to Tolstoy's estate in 1897 was published in a journal entitled Good Roads, volume 30, in 1899! (The magazine of the Good Roads Movement.) I have not found a freely available version of the full text, but here are snippets from Google. Accounts of other aspects of his visit to Russia are available online. It seems he had been a professor of horticulture at the University of Nebraska, and then involved with the Farmers' Institutes, and the state's departments  of agriculture and of horticulture. 213.205.198.160 (talk) 11:19, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Frederick William Taylor was my great grandfather! Aside from what you mention, he was chief of the 'agricultural palace' and 'horticultural palace' for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition aka St. Louis World's Fair. Also director of agriculture for the Philippines for 5 or so years. He travelled extensively in South America, Asia and elsewhere, looking for plants that were of use in the U.S. In Russia he collected Kirghiz oats and other specimens. There was a similarity between the steppes and the US heartland. He was a friend of Mark Twain's and corresponded with Helen Keller. He was very interested in the impact of the introduction of trains on rural communities and agriculture. That was the subject of his interview of Tolstoy. The magazine Taylor published the interview in, Elliot's Magazine, was the journal of the American Wheelman's Association,  those who were passionate cyclists and train buffs. Infomatics (talk) 23:41, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

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