Talk:Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union)

Even the redirect is wrong
Here is what's happened with this page. There was an article called People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs. This is the name of the Russian Post Office after 1917 and till 1932, and it's similar to the departments for posts and telegraphs in some other countries. Suddenly, renamed People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs to Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union) and ruined the article content, by adding wrong claims, removing a considerable part of the article and even without referring to any reliable sources. So, according to (and not to any reliable source), Ministry of Railways was originally established as the People's Commissariat for Post and Telegraph, with the latter being re-named the Ministry of Railways in 1946. This is a false claim, and I provided reliable references in the article People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs showing that one cannot make a railway administration out of a post office. Moreover, the Ministry of Telecommunications of the Soviet Union was the actual succeeder of People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs, while the real Ministry of Railways of the Soviet Union descends from the People's Commissariat of Railways mentioned in Council of People's Commissars (see for details Talk:People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs). So, I insist that this redirect page must be deleted since there should be a separate article Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union), not a redirect, or, if you keep it as a redirect, it should lead to People's Commissariat of Railways. Hope for understanding this. --Michael Romanov (talk) 02:08, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Then nominate it for deletion at WP:RFD. I declined the speedy deletion because (1) you nominated it under a criterion only applicable to articles, (2) the criterion for redirects that was closest isn't applicable, since this title is over 2 years old, and (3) there's no general criterion for its deletion.  Nyttend (talk) 02:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * This could have come about by different translations of "путей сообщения". IMO this pretty clearly means "railroads" but if you squint a little it could be see as "post roads" or even "posts and telegraphs" if you squint really hard. Herostratus (talk) 17:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

going forward
seeing the prod nomination, I merged the very informative material you gave in the deletion reason with the extremely sketchy article. The material does not overlap with the material in the article Russian Railways. It might be possible to put all of the material in a history section there, and have redirects from all previous names; I do not know what is being done with other Russian administrative bodies, but this should follow the same pattern. However, I would strongly favor keeping the pre-soviet era, the Soviet body under whatever name, and the post-Soviet era separate. I'm not sure whether we would make successive articles for the different names in the Soviet period, but personally, I certainly would--there is no shortage of material--even in English.  DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 20 February 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. EdJohnston (talk) 17:24, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Ministry of the Means of Communication (Soviet Union) → Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union) – Well it's a bit of a dog's breakfeast, and figuring out Soviet bureaucracy isn't easy, but I think that Ministry of Railroads is a better fit. For one thing, the article starts out "The Ministry of Railways oversaw..." and it's pretty confusing to have the article title use one term and the bolded introduction to the entity in the opening sentence use another. So we have to change either the article title or the opening sentence. But which one? Well, the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia is Ministry of Railways of the USSR -- at least, that's how I'd translate it. Granted there's not a one-to-one correspondence between many words in different languages, and you could render "путей сообщения" as "post ways" or "message roads" or "communication pathways" or "means of communication" I suppose, and so on. But IMO it basically means railroads. However, I don't know if it had a different name(s) at different times, and if it did that could complicate things. But at any rate, according to the article, their gig was apparently overseeing railways, period, and the Russian Wikipedia article (which covers somewhat different ground) also indicates this. Finally, we don't want to get the reader confused with the Ministry of Communications and Information, which is an entirely different entity. --Relisted. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 09:43, 28 February 2015 (UTC) Herostratus (talk) 13:11, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. If it is moved it should be to the Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union) (which is already a redirect to it) and not the Ministry of Railroads (Soviet Union). Railways is by far the more common term outside America and it looks like "Railways" has always been used in the article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:38, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * i think user Necro is right. "railways" always using in sources. i think must move to ministry of railways. current title is garbage. i could not even find article with title like this. Togashi Yuuta (talk) 05:12, 28 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Support Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union). Министерство путей сообщения is "Ministry of Railways"; "Means of Communication" is a literal word-for-word translation. (We don't call the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur), the "Federal Ministry of Intercourse" even though Verkehr is literally "intercourse".)  Notice for example the corresponding Russian Wikipedia articles to the following: Ministry of Railways/ru:Министерство путей сообщения; Ministry of Railways (India)/ru:Министерство путей сообщения Индии; Ministry of Railways (China)/ru:Министерство путей сообщения КНР.  —  AjaxSmack   15:31, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes I quite agree, it should be "Railways" not "Railroads" as I understand this is somewhat more correct, and I (original requester) have taken the liberty of making that change now in the request. This means that the comments above this were made when the request was for "Railroads". So the objections of AjaxSmack and Togashi Yuuta are accounted for, and possibly Necrothesp, athough s/he said "If it is moved..." so not entirely clear if s/he thinks it should be moved in the first place. Herostratus (talk) 18:22, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: I note that this is reversing a previous, perhaps undiscussed move, 17:54, 16 November 2013‎ TarzanASG (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (1,618 bytes) (0)‎ . . (TarzanASG moved page Ministry of Railways (Soviet Union) to Ministry of the Means of Communication (Soviet Union)). Andrewa (talk) 08:50, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.