Talk:Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union/Archive 1

Sources on Psychological Punishment of Clergy Missing
The article claims: "Many Orthodox (along with peoples of other faiths) were also subjected to psychological punishment or torture and mind control experimentation in order to force them give up their religious convictions (see Piteşti prison)." The footnotes and the Pitesti prison are however referring to Romania, not the SU. If the sentence is to stay, other sources are necessary. In general the section on the persecutions needs more sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.92.94.145 (talk) 11:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Dubious cite for Criticism of atheism ...
The lead sentence that says..."Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes lead to imprisonment.[3]" uses http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/resources/sermons/calciu_christ_calling.htm as it's cite. This is very dubious and from a POV and unreliable source. The source is a sermon, littered with biblical allusions. We can't have that in there. There must be better cites available for this claim. The Soviets imprisoned many people for many arbitrary reasons. Ttiotsw 21:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Are you actually arguing that victims of persecution are to be regarded as unreliable sources of testimony regarding their own persecution? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.211.133.118 (talk) 17:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This specific source is not good. Sure, we can use testimonies of prosecution victims, but they should be published in sources that satisfy WP:Verifiability. There are plenty of them.Biophys (talk) 19:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't have a firm grasp on the normal wiki method of discussion => edit yet, but it is clear that both Ttiotsw and Biophys' comments are completely accurate. This is an unacceptable source. Not only is it POV, but the sermon references a few young kids quoted in a magazine as the source of the priest's statement. Certainly not reliable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arjunsi (talk • contribs) 21:57, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Anti-religious campaign section
This entire article is peppered with unsourced controversial claims, but the Anti-religious campaign section is just terrible. There are dozens of claims in this section that provide no source and cannot even be verified with casual research on google. There are only two sources in the entire section, and one of them is a dead link. The writing style also conveys a clear bias. Phrases like "scathingly satirical" are the author's subjective opinion and do not belong in an encyclopedia. The term pro-Darwin is also clearly biased and it misrepresents the issue, making evolution by natural selection as described by Darwin appear to be merely one side of the scientific debate between creation and evolution. The term usage of 'pro-Darwin' alone indicates the original author's agenda.

Most of the source tags have been on here since April of 2007, leaving a significant section of exaggerated claims unsourced for nearly two years. If no one can give me a good reason to leave this information here, and if there are no reliable sources are added within a few weeks from this message, I am going to revise or delete this entire section. Two years of biased wikipedia user-opinions purporting to be fact is long enough. Arjunsi (talk) 22:32, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Title of piece
I just wonder if the article should be retitled "Persecution of Orthodox Christians in the Soviet Union". At several points the word Orthodox is mentioned at one point other faiths are mentioned. However, the article gives no indication that significant numbers of non-orthodox Christians, such as Baptists (including Georgi Vins)suffered persecution under the Soviet regime. Ferrislindsay (talk) 00:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC) Ferrislindsay (talk) 17:27, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Additions to Piece
I've added quite a bit of material to this piece, and created several affiliated pages. I did my best in order to avoid removing content except if I mention it in the part that I add. Much of the content from the old article has been placed inside the paragraphs that I wrote, or has been placed on the affiliated pages that give a longer discussion, which I created in order to limit space on this page. I also added scholarly citations for the criticism of atheism and a number of other claims in the piece. God Bless, - Reesorville, Reesorville (talk) 20:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality problems
The premise that Christians were persecuted in the Soviet Russia is highly tendentious and oversimplified. The reality was much more complex, characterized at times by mutual hostility between state and church as well as cooperation. The article should analyze relations between the two sides and the experience of Christians rather than approaching the issue in such a politicized, propagandistic manner. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.191.230.178 (talk) 21:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't wish to start an edit war. I'll let you write what you want to write, although I don't agree with what you have written. The church as a body certainly had many members who took up arms against the bolsheviks, and I didn't delete what you wrote about the church's controls pre-1917, but unless you can supply some evidence that what the scholarly authors I'm quoting are wrong by using other academic sources (and not official soviet sources), then I don't think you should be deleting what I wrote and replacing it with that. Why are you referencing deputy chairman Barmenkov and the Soviet encyclopia as authoritative sources on Christians in Russia and deleting what I paraphrase from Anderson or Pospielovsky who are both tenured academics? The article presents some material on the cooperation and hostility between church hierarchy and state. Please have a nice day. God Bless,Reesorville (talk) 07:04, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that unless the alleged neutrality problems are explained here, I will remove the tags. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 03:49, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * They're gone. Anyone who disagrees, let us talk. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 15:05, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Not an accurate portrayal of Christian persecution in the Soviet Union pre-1928/29
This article seems to have been written under the assumption that Christianity in the Soviet Union was limited to the Orthodox Church. This is plainly not true: not only was there a significant number of Catholics (thanks in no small part to Catherine II, who welcomed the Jesuits as educators and refused to enforce Dominus ac Redemptor in her domains. There were also a number of Evangelical sects (mostly imported from Germany), more or less collectively known under the name of "Shtundists," as well as a number of home-grown sects, with the Molokans, Doukhobors, Skoptsy, and Tolstoyans being merely the best-known.

With the exception primarily of the Skoptsy, many of these sects were rather well-tolerated until the Five Year Plans began. Let's not forget the 1919 decree allowing for religiously-based conscientious objection to military service, and putting the evaluation of these CO claims in the hands of religious representatives themselves.

Undoubtedly, there were fierce attacks on the ROC (and the Catholics). But remember, both churches were heavily institutionalized, strongly centralized, and quite wealthy. They were, more than anything, a potential rival power base to the Bolsheviks. And indeed, these churches were heavily persecuted. But though they of course included the vast majority of Christians in Russia, they were not the only Christian movement. Attacks on religion generally, rather than on specific (albeit quite large) religious movements that, due to their unique organizational characteristics, represented a threat to power did not come about until, at the earliest, the mid-1920s with the decline in influence of Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, and did not really pick up steam until after the 1929 congress of the League of the Godless revealed deep-seated impatience with Yaroslavsky's culturalist faction.

Barring significant objection, I will be heavily editing the first section of the article over the next week or so so that it reflects a broader picture of the experiences of Russian Christians in the first decade after the revolutions. I'm happy to discuss any problems or issues anyone might raise. Kurt Weber ( Go Colts! : 16-0 and Super Bowl XLIV Champions) 16:24, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This is very interesting. I think you should leap into it. Only thing that occurs to me: you obviously know a lot about this, but can you easily find references to substantiate the additions? Secondly, the article is already I think too long and would be helped by pictures and illustrations. So maybe some content could be refactored rather than new content simply added on top. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 16:47, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I could probably find references once I got around to it. I'm fairly familiar with the literature, it's just a matter of finding the specific pages on which specific points are discussed, and waiting for ILL to deliver some books that I don't have immediate access to.  I don't know that the article is too long; if anything, it needs to be expanded to include a discussion of Marx's interpretation of the sociological function of religion and why that led the Bolsheviks to a rather schizophrenic approach to countering it as advocates of divergent solutions competed for influence in the anti-religious and general bureaucracy.  Kurt Weber ( Go Colts! : 16-0 and Super Bowl XLIV Champions) 17:24, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Myth of the persecution of the church in Russia
This book "Миф о гонении церквии в СССР" by a Russian historian refutes the entire premise of this article. Why does this article still exist?75.51.167.249 (talk) 00:17, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Here is what the Patriarch of Russia Kirill I of Moscow says..
 * "After the 1917 Revolution, the Church was almost eliminated. Scores of thousands of priests, bishops, monks and nuns and hundreds of thousands of the faithful were subjected to repression and most of them were shot to death. Their only guilt was that they did not conform to the ideological standards established by the state. They were ideologically hostile to the regime. No religious community in the world experienced such suffering, as it was actually genocide, the elimination of Orthodox people in Russia, in the former Soviet Union." LoveMonkey (talk) 02:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * That's funny: Kirill himself was educated at a theological seminary in Leningrad prior to the start of his career in the church during the 1960s. How can he then talk about the elimination of the church?
 * Kirill's claim that the people were persecuted on religious grounds is false. The book I showed above documents how a Russian Orthodox priest went on to lead punitive detachments under Kolchak's regime that slaughtered innocent peasants. Scholarly works on the church also demonstrate church leaders' extensive collaboration with the White Guard forces. So it is incorrect to suggest that the church was overall a neutral bystander during the revolution.
 * Here is Kirill's background, by the way. For these exact same reasons, you have objected to the use of Pimen's words in this article. How come Kirill's words can be used, but not those of Pimen?
 * Kirill graduated with honors from Leningrad Spiritual Academy in 1969. In 1970, he earned his master's degree, and after several minor positions was appointed a personal secretary to Mitropolit Nikodim, chief of the external church relations. Since that moment, Kirill became the face of the Orthodox Church in all foreign trips to Western Europe. According to vlasti.net website, Kirill's colleagues and competitors linked all his travels to his work for the Soviet KGB where he was known by nickname "Mikhailov."In 1975, at a forum in Nairobi, he defended the Soviet Union and downplayed dissidents' letters by making historic claims that people of faith were not persecuted and there were no human rights abuses based on religion in the Soviet Union. 75.51.167.249 (talk) 04:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * So according to you Kirill now also is a liar and this is per your comment "Kirill's claim that the people were persecuted on religious grounds is false." So everyone is a liar but you and your sources? Since the KGB is no more that whole paradigm no longer relates to things in the here and now. Kirill (as Patriarch) is in the here and now. I really have to keep stating to you the obvious. LoveMonkey (talk) 13:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Since policy evolved from blanket persecution to infiltration and isolating certain groups, it's not hard to find contemporary church leaders from the post-Khrushchev era especially with glowing remarks about the state. Thinking that such comments undo decades of history is just as absurd as pretending the "patriotic" churches in China represent all Christians, but since that is now and this is history, it's harder to ignore. InformedContent (talk) 22:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * LoveMonkey, your remark makes no sense. I proved that that Kirill is not credible because he can't get his story straight: he used to say that there was no religious persecution, but now he claims that there is. But it's hard to take him seriously when he went to seminary during the 1960s and began his church career shortly after.75.51.167.249 (talk) 19:51, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Kirill is the Russian Patriarch and you are? So many people you are calling liars. Again was Putin KGB? LoveMonkey (talk) 01:43, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union
Requesting page be locked. Article Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union has more than 3 reverts by an anonymous IP address...Posting a URL as a source to their commentary that I can not locate anywhere else nor find in published and or peer reviewed sources.. Here is the content added. According to the Russian Orthodox Church's Patriarch Pimen, "I must say with a full sense of responsibility that there has not been a single instance of anyone having been tried or detained for his religious beliefs in the Soviet Union. Moreover, Soviet laws do not provide for punishment for "religious beliefs". Believe it or not - religion is a personal matter in the Soviet Union. This comment appears to be posted on an unreliable and unverifiable source. Diffs Since this IP continues to post this comment even after it has been repeatedly removed. I request that the page be locked out from anonymous editing for a duration of time set by administrations discretion. LoveMonkey (talk) 01:21, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 1.
 * 2.
 * 3.
 * 4.
 * Due to the IP edit warring the article has been semiprotected for one month. If you can find any reliable source to establish that Patriarch Pimen I actually made this statement about religious persecution why not offer it here for discussion. EdJohnston (talk) 15:49, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Pimen's statement is found in several Russian sources: p.51 of this book and p.129 here. Unless you have something proving that the statement is not authentic, then there are no grounds for removing it. LoveMonkey's recent edits are problematic, as he only posts those sources that support his views; some of the sources have nothing to do with the historical setting, but are about the 19th and 21st centuries rather than the USSR. There's also this comprehensive book about the Russian Orthodox Church proving that there wasn't persecution of that institution, but that in the early years of the Soviet period elements of the church waged war against the country by joining with the Denikin and Kolchak regimes.
 * I doubt that those editing the article have any personal experience with Russia. Concerning myself, my cousin is a bishop in that part of the world, and he entered seminary around 1980 and is also a veteran of the Soviet Army. So these allegations of "persecution" are not appreciated by Russians and their neighbors.
 * Much of what's on this article consist of outright fabrications and should be removed. Citing the unreliable source Yakovlev, this article claims that 100k priests were executed. But this source here proves that Yakovlev fabricated the claims as part of his anti-Soviet campaign.
 * It's because of articles like this why Wikipedia is such a joke: it is written by amateurs with no social life and who have zero qualifications. In articles throughout this site, I find dubious research methods and unreliable sources. This is to be expected, as it would be unlikely that an academic would waste his time with something he wouldn't get paid for.

---
 * Pimen's statement is undue weight it contradicts the veneration of the new-martyrs under atheism by the Russian Orthodox church.
 * Is this an attempt to start saying Pimen was KGB by way of the Furov report? Pimen's statement does not over ride nor counter Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev's since as far as I can tell Hilarion was never accused of being KGB.
 * "I come from a country where for many decades church buildings were used for ungodly purposes. Many houses of worship were completely destroyed, others were converted into ‘museums of atheism’, and still others were redesigned and given over to secular institutions. This was one of the features of so-called ‘militant atheism’, which reigned in my country for seven decades and was dethroned only relatively recently."
 * If no one was persecuted then there would be no one to venerate.
 * ,, The Pravoslav website has nothing to do with the Russian Orthodox church IN RUSSIA. Its lying and this anonymous person here, well thank God, they are standing up and speaking for all of Russia and the Russian Orthodox church..Someone should stop the Russian Orthodox church  and the New York Times , and Time Magazine  for spreading lies..


 * 1. personal experience isn't considered valid sourcing.
 * 2. Here are films showing churches being destroyed ,
 * so lets address these. LoveMonkey (talk) 22:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Your use of KGB as a slur is not acceptable for a civil discussion on this subject. Even if this characterizations about Pimen were true, it wouldn't serve to compromise his already good reputation. He was the leader of his church, and his words provide overwhelming evidence that there was not persecution of Christians of the USSR, but that there was extensive tolerance of them and also cooperation between state and church. Here's President Brezhnev meeting with Pimen and other church leaders
 * You cite Christopher Andrew's book about the discredited Mitrokhin archive for pushing your points, but this cannot be accepted as a reliable source. Andrew's book has been extensively criticized and the authenticity of its contents have been disproven.
 * What exactly is your point by citing Bishop Hilarion? It's interesting to note that he is a Soviet Army veteran and that attended seminary during the 1980s. So how exactly was he persecuted for his religious beliefs? And what makes him more of an authority about religious life in Russia than Pimen?
 * You refer to the Christ the Savior Cathedral. But the construction projects done where the church had been placed had were not motivated by religious reasons, but by economic ones. The structure of the church contained tons of gold, and funds were needed to help develop the country. It's explained in this book here 75.51.167.249 (talk) 00:06, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I did not create the Furov report nor write the book I used as a source.
 * If Pimen spoke as a pro-KGB person in the 80s he would have covered for any brutality the KGB were accused of. But you can't see that. That's called being pro or for, stop claiming insult, your comments on your feelings do nothing to refute the sources given. And you are really into hyperbole here saying things like "his words provide overwhelming evidence that there was not persecution of Christians of the USSR, but that there was extensive tolerance of them and also cooperation between state and church".. WHAT? Words do what? As if Pimen in the 80s had access to the current evidence provided here? Pimen's words don't undo the pictures and letters and video as evidence to contrary that's been posted. Pimen's words are also not policy here at wiki.
 * An administrator has already posted the complaint [|undue weight]. Your calling all of these contrary sources liars that's not an effective way of contributing here to wiki. Holocaust denies opinions are not treated as equal to, the evidence given to support the holocaust. I can see however that you won't address say the New York Times article or the other sources though, to you they're made up. On Bishop Hilarion how is what you said about him, refute what he said? You know it doesn't, as he was speaking of somethings that happened in Russia's past not his own. But you keep commenting here like that. As for your comment "And what makes him more of an authority about religious life in Russia than Pimen?"
 * I will state the obvious since you are unable to see it. Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev)'s job is speaking for the Orthodox church in the here and now on behave of the whole church including Kirill. Hilarion (Alfeyev) is doing that while not under Soviet rule and threat of the KGB. And the KGB as a force is supposed to be at an end in Russia (as of 1991) so thats the difference, as far as I can tell 1) Hilarion (Alfeyev) speaks for the church and says that a persecution happened (I provided that, you ignore it), 2) Hilarion (Alfeyev) is not someone said to have been compromised by the KGB (unlike Pimen which again I provided a source).
 * And your comment on the rebuilding of Christ the Savoir also contradicts what the reason that the church was destroyed by Stalin and his purpose the Palace of the Soviets that would have taken lots and lots of that tons of gold, and funds to create as what you say is revisionist in hindsight and not what was said at the time of demolition, your POV is not considered a valid enough of a source to try and deny the mass graves and documents I have provided here that tell a different story. You are here edit warring and exhibiting [|battleground mentality], [|assuming bad faith]. [|Wikipedia is not a soapbox] for you to come here and post subjective and obscure one offs and claim they refute all of the up to date scholarly and current data, sources already given in the article (and actually more than what is required). Tell me where these additional 2 sources get it wrong for example; 21,626,000 people perished during the Soviet and this one here says 12,000,000 . AND THESE ARE DESCRIBED AS ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS NOT SIMPLY RUSSIAN CITIZENS. But then with people going around claiming they speak for Russia as Russians and that these sources ALL OF THEM are liars doesn't really help to get out the truth so people can understand for themselves. LoveMonkey (talk) 02:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Pimen was not a KGB official, and there would be nothing wrong with that even if he were. The Russian Orthodox Church, as you know, was not banned in the Soviet period. In fact, the Church openly cooperated with many political campaigns during the Soviet period. This is described in this book (p.320):
 * "The Church takes an active part in the activities of the Soviet Peace Fund, to which it renders financial assistance. Its hierarchs, the clergy and laity are members of commissions for assistance to the Soviet Peace Fund...Many prominent hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church earned high government awards for their patriotic activities in defense of peace: Patriarch Aleksiy (Simansky) received four Orders of the Red Banner of Labour; Patriarch Pimen, two orders of the Red Banner of Labour and one Order of Friendship between peoples..."

75.51.167.249 (talk) 04:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * So your entire argument boils down to.. All of the sources (they are peer reviewed by the way) are lies and only you know the truth. Is this how you get people to agree with you? You also are misrepresenting what I have posted. I never said that Pimen was a KGB agent I said he was pro-KGB or compromised by the KGB. Since the KGB is no more that whole paradigm no longer relates to things in the here and now. Do tell wasn't Putin in the KGB? LoveMonkey (talk) 13:32, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Pospielovsky's book was NOT peer-reviewed, it was published by a non-academic publisher He bypassed the process of peer review because there would be no way that his book would have been published the way it is by an academic press. I showed below that the scholarly community received his work with strong criticism. 75.51.167.249 (talk) 04:43, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Which book or books are you speaking of by Pospielovsky? LoveMonkey (talk) 12:47, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Pospielovsky
The article is almost entirely based on the work of Pospielovsky, who is not a reliable source and not reflective of a consensus on the topic. He takes a firmly pro-church approach, uses dubious sources, and gets many facts wrong.


 * Russian Review, Vol. 49, No. 3, (Jul., 1990), pp. 371-373
 * Pospielovsky is a traditionalist historian with a strong commitment to his Orthodox faith...the lack of an objective tone frequently detracts from the book's persuasiveness.His single-minded focus on Orthodoxy also leads him to exaggerate the relative difficulties of his church. For example, speaking of restrictions on the churches, he says, "Even in such a basically Russian and historically Orthodox region as Rostov-on-Don, the Orthodox are one of the most disadvantaged groups... in the religious sector of the population" (p. 205). By contrast, Christel Lane, whose fine sociological examination of many of Pospielovsky's issues is mysteriously omitted from Pospielovsky's bibliographyc, laims that the Orthodox Church "receive[s] distinctly more favorable treatment than other religious organizations" (Christian Religion in the Soviet Union [Albany, NY, 1978], p. 33; also relevant is her The Rites of Rulers... The Soviet Case [Cambridge, England, 1981]). The statement about Rostov-on-Don is based on an erroneous interpretation of the statistics in his tables, as well.


 * Slavic Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), p. 753
 * He then takes up the issue of Soviet antireligious practice from the 1920s to the 1980s. Here he relies mainly upon samizdat documents and some often overlooked eye-witness accounts from Russian emigres.


 * International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring,1988), pp. 303-304
 * He does not make any pretence of neutrality; he is on the side of the believers. Anti-religious struggle, Pospielovsky emphasizes, is central to communist thought from Marx to the present Soviet leaders. He sometimes seems to exaggerate the priority which the rulers have given to anti-religious policy when this conflicts with other objectives. It is misleading, for example, to say that Lenin made atheism 'the immediate political task of the party' (p. 18); he was much more concerned with winning and holding power, and appealed for support to religious minorities such as the Muslims


 * The American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Jun., 1990), pp. 874-875
 * The work is permeated with an attitude of suffused indignation. Sources he likes he uses uncritically (for example, in volume 1, pages 34-36, he draws on a most suspicious "secret report" of Lenin), and seldom if ever does he question a samizdat claim. When it suits his purposes he will use figures that he knows are inflated (for example, he cites the state's absurd claim that in 1959 there were twenty-two thousand Russian Orthodox churches, so that he can say that by 1964 the state had closed fifteen thousand). And, although I have no evidence to support me, I get very uncomfortable with the Furov document (volume 1).

75.51.167.249 (talk) 19:27, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Again and you are? As Dimitry Pospielovsky (born 1935) (Russian: Дмитрий Поспеловский, Dmitry Pospelovsky) is a historian, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Western Ontario. Everyone has critics his works are peer reviewed. What you posted does not mean his work is invalidated. ::::Wikipedia IS NOT THE PLACE to attack and attempt to dis-credit academia. Is there a book or books that say Pospielovsky is wrong and this right about any of this? By your standard anything with a critical remark made toward it is now not credible. I am not here posting my opinion I am posting information with acceptable and credible sources. To the best of my ability. LoveMonkey (talk) 01:46, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * You're not engaged in any kind of serious discussion about the quality of the article, but are instead hurling nasty insults at me, which is unacceptable. You're treating Pospielovsky as some kind of oracle, but the books cited in this article by him were NOT peer-reviewed or published by an academic press.


 * I showed above that Pospielovsky is far from representative of a consensus on the subject of this article. As I suspected, he uncritically treats "samizdat" and emigre sources as containing facts set in stone and omits a lot of material that do not fit his views. He himself identifies as Russian Orthodox and is considered in the scholarly literature above as not neutral. Pospielovsky can and should be used as a source in this article. However, the stuff he describes must be thoroughly attributed in the article rather than being presented as facts. 75.51.167.249 (talk) 02:18, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * No.. Here is one of his books here used in the article the publisher is Macmillan and the origin and or where it was peer reviewed was the University of Michigan. People don't have time for this kind of things. Wikipedia is not a place for people with an axe to grind nor is it a soapbox. LoveMonkey (talk) 13:13, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Pospielovsky is a scholar writing for a reputable publisher and therefore the book meets rs. Note that rs means we can rely on the facts, not necessarily that the interpretation is definitive.  However we are supposed to use the best sources available and this book fails for several reasons.  First, it was not published by an academic publisher, and therefore would not have undergone extensive review and fact-checking before publication.  It is from a general publisher, St. Martin's Press.  While St. Martin Press' textbook division was merged into the academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan in 2000, it does not mean that it was published by the academic division.  The University of Michigan was not involved in the publication.  They have an extensive library of all kinds of books which Google books then scans.
 * The other issue is that he did not have access to material that became available after the end of Communism.
 * Scholars of course frequently refer to this book, which involved extensive research. But they are able to weigh the various claims and determine what is still worthy.  In particular, it references many samizdat publications.
 * However, complaining about the source is not helpful, because Wikipedia policy accepts it as a source. The way forward is to identify more recently, scholarly writing.
 * TFD (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright so clarification. One the Pospielovsky can stay or not? Since on one hand your saying he meets the criteria but then say "However we are supposed to use the best sources available and this book fails for several reasons." I have included recent books in the bibliography I contributed to the article. Those newer sources also use Pospielovsky. As far as I know they don't refute him per se. LoveMonkey (talk) 17:56, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The source can stay, unless more recent scholarship refutes it. The IP made good points about the limitations of the source, but it is up to him to find better sources.  TFD (talk) 07:04, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The IP did not make good points, he is merely attacking sources that don't conform to his bizarre view that there was no significant religious oppression in the Soviet Union, which is a laughable assertion to any serious observer, whether they are "peer-reviewed" or not, and Wikipedia should not simply cleanse Pospielovsky whether or not scholarly sources disagree with him in whole or in part. Attributing claims to Pospielovsky is appropriate; scrubbing him from the article completely is not. InformedContent (talk) 12:43, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Atheism as the "official doctrine"?
The very first sentence of this piece asserts that atheism was made the "official doctrine" of the Soviet Union. This must be semantically wrong. Official doctrines may be about religious teachings or even political ideologies, but it is not correct to describe atheism as a doctrine.

Furthermore, it also contradicts the later statement "The holding of a religion was never officially outlawed and the Soviet Constitutions always guaranteed the right to believe." Atheism could not have been an "official doctrine" with the right to religious belief being upheld. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.225.168.53 (talk) 03:41, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Also - the citation for this assertion is extremely weak. A single reference to "Country Studies Series by Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress"; http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-12521.html. According to the About section of the source: "The books represent the analysis of the authors and should not be construed as an expression of an official United States Government position, policy, or decision. The authors have sought to adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity." http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/about.html. No specific authorship is provided for the original source of this. It could been written by renowned scholar in Soviet history, or a biased clerk from a family of McCarthyists... we don't know.
 * OK how about this source? And this one Or these, , , or these  How about this comment here "state that advocates atheism and officially prevents religious believers from joining the ruling Communist Party."  Or "Marxist-Leninism is the official state philosophy, and atheism of the militant Leninist kind, not the more agnostic atheism that is common to the West, is an integral part of Soviet official doctrine.. LoveMonkey (talk) 05:13, 3 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Fantastic. (Except for no.5, which seems more an opinion piece rather than an original scholarly study. No. 7 shouldn't be used because it is a source by inference.) Why were these statements and citations not provided for the original piece? Or qualify the original statement with the quote used from source #8.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.225.168.53 (talk) 22:59, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Your comments are disruptive. Nothing is stopping you from finding and or adding the sources yourself. Nor is anyone but you requesting them. You appear to not know about the subject and are here because you don't like what the article says. If you were informed you would not have made the comments above that appear at the least, very uninformed. And that are wrong from the sources I provided. If you are here to pick a fight with an axe to grind or to troll. Please go away and or stop wasting people's contribution time. LoveMonkey (talk) 17:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit Warring
Anonymous IP 75.51.171.124 you appear to be engaged in edit warring you have been reported here. LoveMonkey (talk) 23:04, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Editor is engaging in WP:OR and is picking and choosing by some sort of ambiguity which sources they like or dislike. LoveMonkey (talk) 00:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Editor after ban is now engaging in stonewalling
 * ":Hochsild, Heidenrich, Rosenberg are not reliable sources - they have zero expertise on Russian history, and don't even speak the Russian language. They didn't do P.hD research about any period of Russian history, nor have they done published anything about Russia in scholarly publications."
 * "Medvedev and Dyadkin are old, discredited anti-Soviet sources."
 * "Encyclopedia Britannica is not a scholarly source, and is superseded by scholarly sources that I cited."
 * brow beating
 * "It is clear that the edits made by you and your friends amount to pushing a certain POV based on flawed and inappropriate sources."
 * and personal attacks.
 * "Your response to my having cited Mozokhin is that he doesn't have a Wiki page, which I found to be absurd."
 * "This is just pathetic. What you are doing is trying to divert and needlessly prolong this phony debate that you have imposed on the talk page"
 * "You're trying to push the whacky POV that "20 million Christians were killed as a result of atheist policies"
 * All of which are hallmarks of editwarring. LoveMonkey (talk) 03:30, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

AI Barmenkov
Someone has contributed to the piece and added information referenced to AI Barmenkov, one of the deputy CRA chairmen under Brezhnev. I thank whoever has made the effort to do this, but there is an important question in that: why is this source being treated as credible enough to stand on its own? I'm only loosely familiar with him, but I am under the impression he was a soviet propagandist and several things that have been referenced (not all though) are directly contradicted by academic sources. God Bless, Reesorville (talk) 19:15, 16 May 2010 (UTC) After fifteen days there was no response to this, and so I've now adjusted Barmenkov's information as I thought fit. God Bless, Reesorville (talk) 01:58, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sentences like "Barmenkov even misconstrued (a common tactic by atheist propagandists in the USSR" are ridiculously POV. The changes will be reverted. Attempts to portray the Orthodox Church as a victim amount to post-1990 revisionism. This is ironic given the warm relations between Pimen and other leaders of the church with the Russian Soviet Government. The portrayal of the church as an innocent bystander during the Russian Revolution is a falsification of history, as the Church's treasonous activity against the Russian government is well-documented. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.191.230.178 (talk) 21:14, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * @Resorville. Oh yes. I also noticed this while reading this page. Barmenkov belongs to article Soviet propaganda. My very best wishes (talk) 16:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Todd M. Johnson
Johnson, who is responsible for this, is not an appropriate source for this article. He is the author of works like Our Globe and How to Reach It: See the World Evangelized by AD 2000 and Beyond (New Hope, 1990), which does not display any kind of expertise about Russian history. His web page alleges that 15,000,000 Christians "die in Soviet prison camps", but we have this scholarly article by leading historians about Russia showing that such estimates are untenable in light of archival data that puts the death toll in prisons at about 1 million, most of which occurred during the hard years of World War II. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 20:02, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Todd M. Johnson's article represents a reliable source, since “Todd M. Johnson is Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA. He is co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2001) and co-editor of the Atlas of Global Christianity (Edinburgh University Press, 2009)“, and as the page mentioned by you also states, "Dr. Johnson is widely accomplished in the demographic study of Christianity and world religions. His Ph.D. work in developing quantitative tools to analyze the past, present and future of global Christianity has been put to fruitful use throughout his career". So even if he might not be an expert on Russian history, he has expertise on issues dealing with persecutions of Christians. It also appears on “Google Scholar”, which includes only scholarly works. And actually, that statement does not even claim that over 20 million were killed, it merely says that the number of Christians killed has been estimated at over 20 million, and this statement is verifiable. Cody7777777 (talk) 20:08, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You prove my point that Johnson is not an expert on Russian history, so his work is not useful for the scope of this article. He doesn't cite any source for his allegation of "20 million killed in Soviet labor camps", which has been discredited by scholarly works from established Russian history experts. See this source by Zemskov. And see this by professor Getty and others. Johnson is a good source for certain Christian-related themes, but his work is not on the authoritative level of the sources I just cited. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 20:23, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * And actually, that statement does not even claim that over 20 million were killed, it merely says that the number of Christians killed has been estimated at over 20 million, and this statement is verifiable. -- those estimates have been made, but as Getty and others note, they are based on "guesses, rumors, or extrapolations from isolated local observations." which have been discredited by recent scholarly sources.
 * Dyukov explains it really well:
 * “The Soviet Story” ends with the following caption: “The Soviet Union killed more than 20,000,000 men, women and children.” We don’t know where the fi lm’s authors got the numbers, but they do not correspond to reality in any way. Who can be considered to have been “killed by the Soviet Union”? Apparently, the fi lm’s authors consider as “killed” those who were sentenced to be executed, who died in camps and in exile, as well as during the famine of 1932-1933. However, they can be considered as “killed” only if it is proven that the Kremlin deliberately created conditions that led to their deaths. No such proof exists at present. During the past twenty years Soviet repressive policies have been exhaustively studied by both Russian and foreign researchers. It is well known that 862,983 people were sentenced to death in 1918 -1953.83 The total number of those convicted (including those sentenced to minimal prison terms or deportation) reached approximately 5.66 million,84 the vast majority of whom subsequently completed their sentences and were released. The total number of those deported or exiled during the same period was approximately 6 million.85 After Stalin’s death the scale of repressions is well known to have rapidly declined to an “average world level”. As we can see, the total number of those who were repressed by the Soviet government does not reach 20 million. Statements that “the Soviet Union killed 20 million” on top of that are a complete fabrication.75.51.171.124 (talk) 20:26, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Again with Alexander Dyukov (historian). Are we or are we not to use him? Also you are continuing to edit war please discuss here on the article talkpage first.  LoveMonkey (talk) 21:09, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I did not propose using Dyukov in the article because he does not deal with the history of religious sects in Russia. I only cited him to demonstrate that the figure of 20 million dead Christians claimed by Johnson are untenable based on the views of the scholarly consensus that Dyukov cites. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 21:20, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Nope. Then you can add that Dyukov disputes this to the end of the section you can not keep blanket deleting it, doing so is not how things go here at wiki. Your edit is also deleting other sources. LoveMonkey (talk) 23:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The removed sources were removed in accordance with RS policies. The source for 100,000 executed priests is an anti-Communist politician Yakovlev whose work is highly controversial. The spruce for 20 million dead Christians is contradicted by scholars like Getty who have debunked these unrealistic estimates. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 23:58, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * , LoveMonkey (talk) 00:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * James N. Nelson works in a university's department of psychology. His job has absolutely nothing to do with Russian history. Mozokhin, described as "PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences...Author of over 40 articles on the history of Russian intelligence services in the Soviet period." cited archival data showing that in 33,382 members of religious organizations in 1937 and 13,438 were arrested, some of which were executed, while others were released. Your response to my having cited Mozokhin is that he doesn't have a Wiki page, which I found to be absurd.75.51.174.240 (talk) 00:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * So its all about what you find acceptable? Also you ignore I asked you to create an English page for Mozokhin but you are here with an axe to grind as your insults and personal attacks on me reflect. I'll tell you now you'll only get banned and ignored by continuing to do this. I am at least trying to communicate with you while you keep saying unfounded things about me. This is tired and old and will just again get you banned. LoveMonkey (talk) 03:14, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The only sources that are acceptable to me are those authored by expert scholars in Russian history or published by a university press or a scholarly journal such as Pospielovsky. Although Yakovlev was knowledgeable about Russian politics, he was not a scholar and did not have his work peer-reviewed by a scholarly community. Todd Johnson is an expert about Christian-related subjects, but he has absolutely no expertise about Russia: he didn't do his PHD thesis about Russia and has not done academic research bout the country. Both Yakovlev and Johnson have had their work contradicted by established experts about Russia such as Getty, Zemskov, and Mozokhin. 75.51.174.240 (talk) 03:57, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "The only sources that are acceptable to me"
 * There it is, wikipedia has its criteria. I will work to adhere to that as you exhibit that you are here to have wikipedia reflect what is acceptable to you. You also have ignored my mention twice and now a third, of this source. LoveMonkey (talk) 04:19, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Now I have no problem with including what either Viktor Zemskov or Getty says as long as it is attributed to them (as anyone whom reads the link will see Zemskov has already come under fire for some of the things he has said). However I have no way to confirm anything about your source Mozokhin. And I dare say none of these sources invalidate Yakovlev as I have already pointed out that his books are published by Yale and the library of Congress calls him an historian. You have already made a long list of attacks on here of sources that Wikipedia considers valid and you say you don't. As for your comment about James N. Nelson the source says..
 * "For instance, millions of Orthodox believers perished in purges by atheists in the former Soviet Union. In the anti-Christian campaign by Stalin and Soviet communism, many churches were closed, and monks were arrested and deported to labor camps. As many as 40,000 Orthodox priests were killed or died from abuse during the first half of 1936 alone, and it is believed that the total number of priest, monks, and nuns killed during the purges of the 1930s are in excess of 200,000 (author then used Jennifer Wynot). Estimates of the total number all Christians Martyrs in the former Soviet Union are about 12 millions."
 * You appear to keep missing that there is a source for the supposed 100,000 priests being killed. LoveMonkey (talk) 16:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * James M. Nelson is a psychologist, not a historian and not an expert on Russian history, and is in absolutely no position to contradict specialists on Russian history like Zemskov. I specifically presented scholarly works by experts in Russian history who debunked such obviously inflated estimates, specifically Viktor Zemskov, "Russian historian, doctor of historical sciences (2005), scientific worker of the Institute of Russian History", who wrote this: 'There was a great public reaction on article of R.A. Medvedev in “Moskovskie Novosti” (November 1988) with statistics of Stalinism victims. According to his calculations, about 40 million were repressed in the period of 1927-1953, including dispossessed, departed, died of starvation in 1933 etc. In 1989-1991 this number was one of the most popular in propaganda of Stalin crimes and became one of the most-mentioned. Actually it is impossible to get such a number (40 million) even if you interpret “repression victim” term in the broadest way. According to R.A. Medvedev, these 40 million included 10 million dispossessed in 1929-1933 (really there were about 4 million), almost 2 million Poles, departed in 1939-1940 (really - about 380 000) - and so on about almost all components of this incredible number. According to R.A. Medvedev, there were 5-7 million repressed in 1937-1938 (really - 1.5 million), and 10 million in 1941-1946 - that is absolutely fantastical...There were 1 883 000 politically convicted in the period of 1921-1938; and in the period of 1921-1953 it results with not 4,060,000 but with less than 3 million. And we suppose here that there were no criminals among convicted “counter-revolutionists” in 1939-1953, which is doubtful. However, there were cases when political prisoners were convicted by criminal articles.''
 * You've quoted: as many as 40,000 Orthodox priests were killed or died from abuse during the first half of 1936 alone, and it is believed that the total number of priest, monks, and nuns killed during the purges of the 1930s are in excess of 200,000 -- There is no need to repeat yourself. Your sources have not specifically done research about the subject, but just cite a bunch of unsubstantiated claims. Nelson's book was not published by a university press, and therefore was not subjected to rigorous fact-checking Mozokhin has devoted much of his career to this issue, and his research found that 33,382 religious sectarian people in 1937 and 13,438 religious sectarian people in 1938 were arrested. Unless you can present someone with Mozokhin's qualifications who says something differently, it is Mozokhin who has the final word about the subject. 75.51.174.240 (talk) 22:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You appear to keep missing that there is a source for the supposed 100,000 priests being killed. - the sources is the aforementioned anti-Communist, fanatical revisionist Yakovlev, who was exposed for distortion of the facts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.51.174.240 (talk) 22:29, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Still not listening. The source I posted in this section, is not Yakovlev. Wynot is not Yakovlev nor James M. Nelson  . Rather than me stop repeating, that would be unnecessary, if you would start paying attention. LoveMonkey (talk) 14:24, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Why can this anon editor not post here a criticism section?
Why is this editor not creating and posting here a criticism section with valid sources? That is instead of blanket deleting content. I would hope that the editor would create a section with actual verifiable scholars specifically addressing what they find incorrect. I hope they do this without engaging in original research. LoveMonkey (talk) 04:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Right. His edits here or in other articles (such as this) are obvious NPOV violations). My very best wishes (talk) 05:34, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Exactly Best Wishes. The ANON IP's outright rejection of valid and verifiable sources is indicative of them not here to collaborate but rather they are here to editwar. The sources they have provided so far are "trust me" sources as I have no way to either verify who the source is in English, to validate that Western academia acknowledge them and or what the source is actually saying. I will not play the translator game. I will as much as possible provide English sources for what is substantive as if it is not common and widely verifiable it should not be posted on Wiki. This editor is playing a game in not allowing verifiable English sources and then saying that Russian sources are more conformed to Wiki policy when they simply are not. LoveMonkey (talk) 14:55, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The reliability of sources is based not on its language, but on the qualifications of the author and the identity of the publisher. I cited two expert scholars who specialize in Russian history in Zemskov and Mozokhin. The quality of the sources you insist on maintaining on the article, however, are horrendous: Todd M Johnson is not an expert on Russian history, Yakovlev was a highly controversial political activist i.e. propagandist, and Nelson is a psychologist. You're trying to prevent the removal of Johnson's dubious material by citing Nove and Kuromiya, but NOWHERE in their works do they say such absurd things like "atheist Soviets killed 20 million Christians". The ONLY source you have provided about this is Johnson and two pro-Christian propaganda sources, and none of them are reliable or in agreement with the scholarly consensus.
 * that Western academia acknowledge them - Excuse me? Since when does western academia legitimize Russian historians when it comes to Russian history? You are setting totally arbitrary standards here. You should know that Russian history & politics are not widely covered in the English language, and in many cases the only published material about a subject exists in Russian.
 * Mozokhin is cited all over western academic sources, by the way. 75.51.174.240 (talk) 02:11, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * What you posted does not absolve you from following the policies and rules as outlined here on Wikipedia. LoveMonkey (talk) 15:48, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Good work
I think several people made a very impressive work with developing these subjects. But here is something to improve.
 * 1) Pages like USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) only describe persecution of Orthodox Christians, but tell very little or nothing about persecution of Muslims, Judaists, and Protestants.
 * 2) More wikilinks should be included (poor wikification).
 * 3) Some portions of text should be summarized more briefly.

Maybe I will try to fix some of this later to show what I mean. My very best wishes (talk) 15:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * This might not be much, but if it helps you, I saw some statistical information regarding muslim victims, in the following book, claiming that “More than two million were martyred in 1926 when the communists confiscated their livestock” (the book seems to have more information about these issues, but regrettably Google offers only a snippet view of it). Cody7777777 (talk) 19:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I just restored some materials about Muslims, but where to put it? Do we have Religious persecution in the Soviet Union? We have two options here: (a) to rename this article as "Religious persecution in the Soviet Union", make this article redirect and include information about all religions here, and (b) create separate sub-articles about each religion. I think (a) would be easier and correct, because that was one campaign against all religions. My very best wishes (talk) 00:34, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * For now, I think information about the persecution of Muslims, should be added on articles such as USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) (and other similar articles), State atheism, Soviet anti-religious legislation and Islam in the Soviet Union. I think there should also be a general article about Religious persecution in the Soviet Union, but I believe this article needs to remain as a sub-article for it, since the Soviet persecution of Christians has been detailed enough, to have its own article. Cody7777777 (talk) 11:53, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Now, about sources used on this page:
 * 1) Links to slovari.yandex.ru . Remove. This is simply not a source
 * 2) Barmenkov, A, Freedom of Conscience in the USSR, Progress Publishers, 1983. This is a Soviet propaganda source. It should be not be used at all or used very carefully. It usually uses more or less correct factual information, but at the same time, provides an ideological spin completely inconsistent with WP:NPOV. My very best wishes (talk) 16:09, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * These have been removed per talkpage discussion. LoveMonkey (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Most excellent and I agree on all points. It seems however that these articles are almost always under attack and those episodes drive the article creation and update process. As what is under dispute seems to be what gets addressed. LoveMonkey (talk) 16:44, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The article cannot be censored simply because you dismiss a source as "Soviet propaganda".75.51.174.240 (talk) 22:31, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * So the anon IP calls all of the sources they don't like lies and propaganda..
 * ""20 million dead Christians from atheist rule" are a non-expert in Russian history Todd Johnson and two pro-Christian propaganda sources."
 * but claim their sources are not propaganda yet they have not posted to the reliability board here to confirm their sources. Here's just one more example of edit warring. LoveMonkey (talk) 00:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * A PHD disseration establishes Barmenkov as a reliable source: an objective assessment of the role of religion in Russia, relations between the believers and the power was reflected in the works of A.I. Barmenkov... 75.51.174.240 (talk) 01:55, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * No these are not commonly known people. You are not making any valid case by attack people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and whom is very well known and others like Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev whom in 2002, acting as head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, he was present at the announcement of the release of a CD detailing names and short biographies of the victims of Soviet purges. Yakovlev was this under the Russian government. None of your sources are known or common they appear to be obscure and also partisan (if they indeed reflect what you are saying they do). You are providing sources that do not hold up to your own standards that you dismiss the ones being used in this article with. You are not complying to Wiki policies as you will not submit them for verification on the WP:VS board here. You also will not collaborate and you are saying things that the common held academia do not propose nor support. Again how is it that these sources say due to the Communist take over of Russia and it's political repression these amounts of deaths are attributed to them.


 * Encyclopedia Britannica citing Roy Medvedev -20M died
 * Adam Hochschild -20 million+
 * Iosif G. Dyadkin -34 to 49 million under Stalin
 * Alexander Nove - 9,500,000 killed during the 1930s. 10 million + over all
 * Oskar Kurganov -66 million
 * William C Cockerham -50 million deaths under the Soviet
 * John Gold -50 to 60 million+ deaths by the Soviet.
 * Robert S. Erikson
 * Daniel Chirot -20 million
 * Tina Rosenberg -25 milion
 * Zbigniew Brzezinski -20-25 million
 * Orlando Figes - 10 million
 * Richard Pipes -10 million
 * Benjamin A. Valentino 20 to 30 million pg 75
 * Alex J. Kay -30 million pg 163
 * Norman M. Naimark 20 million pg 77
 * There are more still. However..Anyone whom would make a statement like..
 * "There wasn't any "atheist Soviet rule" and Russia did not conduct repressive policies that killed millions of people. Zemmskov, Getty, etc debunked their estimates in numerous scholarly works."
 * Can not be taken as someone here to contribute an article that reflects a common held consensus. No one should have any misconceptions about you. You are not here to do anything but push a POV. And a POV that is not supported by mainstream scholarly or valid sources. I am also willing to say that you are also distorting and misrepresenting the sources you are posting here. You are doing nothing more that edit warring. LoveMonkey (talk) 14:48, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * So a declared member of the Orthodox Church editing an obvious POV-laden article like "persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union" is accusing others of pushing a POV?--75.51.174.240 (talk) 19:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Post the no POV policy here and where it says that Canadians can't post to Canadian articles and Russians to Russian articles. LoveMonkey (talk) 20:02, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Post the no POV policy here and where it says that Canadians can't post to Canadian articles and Russians to Russian articles. LoveMonkey (talk) 20:02, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

What is Original Research?
Just to clarify let me post what I interpret the term original research to mean. If I post a statement I should be able to find common sources to repeat back and or reflect the general essence of that statement. However if one of my sources has a number and another source has a different number it is not up to me to put words in the mouth of either source and claim that one debunks or refutes the other. Let them say that in their own works. All I can do according to Wikipedia policy is post the most credible of sources and what they say in essence without on one hand plagiarizing them and then on the other misusing them and re-interpreting what they say to say something they have never say per se in their own works. LoveMonkey (talk) 21:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

"The total number of Christians killed, as a result of Soviet state atheist policies, has been estimated at over 20 million"
The claim is spurious, and the sources provided are garbage. See for example this source by leading scholars debunking the allegations of millions of deaths [sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf] See also this brief discussion and this comprehensive one

The historian A. Dyukov states,

[http://www.historyfoundation.ru/dl.php?file=73 ''“The Soviet Story” ends with the following caption: “The Soviet Union killed more than 20,000,000 men, women and children.” We don’t know where the fi lm’s authors got the numbers, but they do not correspond to reality in any way. Who can be considered to have been “killed by the Soviet Union”? Apparently, the fi lm’s authors consider as “killed” those who were sentenced to be executed, who died in camps and in exile, as well as during the famine of 1932-1933. However, they can be considered as “killed” only if it is proven that the Kremlin deliberately created conditions that led to their deaths. No such proof exists at present. During the past twenty years Soviet repressive policies have been exhaustively studied by both Russian and foreign researchers. It is well known that 862,983 people were sentenced to death in 1918 -1953.83 The total number of those convicted (including those sentenced to minimal prison terms or deportation) reached approximately 5.66 million,84 the vast majority of whom subsequently completed their sentences and were released. The total number of those deported or exiled during the same period was approximately 6 million.85 After Stalin’s death the scale of repressions is well known to have rapidly declined to an “average world level”. As we can see, the total number of those who were repressed by the Soviet government does not reach 20 million. Statements that “the Soviet Union killed 20 million” on top of that are a complete fabrication.'' ] ]

Whoever is responsible for this source is not an expert on Russian history. He just lists stuff without providing sources to back them up. This source is clerical propaganda, not a work of scholarship. And this source is by a partisan Christian organization. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 23:01, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Your source post their name and their credentialing. Also is Alexander Dyukov (historian) ok to use? How about this source?LoveMonkey (talk) 23:06, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Would Arseny Roginsky be ok to use? LoveMonkey (talk) 04:18, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're not okay with Dyukov, then there's dozens of other sources that cite the same data he does. Here's what Viktor Zemskov, the world's leading expert about the Soviet prison data, had to say. There is absolutely no way that Johnson's claim of 20 million dead Christians in prison camps corresponds to reality:

There was a great public reaction on article of R.A. Medvedev in “Moskovskie Novosti” (November 1988) with statistics of Stalinism victims [7. According to his calculations, about 40 million were repressed in the period of 1927-1953, including dispossessed, departed, died of starvation in 1933 etc. In 1989-1991 this number was one of the most popular in propaganda of Stalin crimes and became one of the most-mentioned. Actually it is impossible to get such a number (40 million) even if you interpret “repression victim” term in the broadest way. According to R.A. Medvedev, these 40 million included 10 million dispossessed in 1929-1933 (really there were about 4 million), almost 2 million Poles, departed in 1939-1940 (really - about 380 000) - and so on about almost all components of this incredible number. According to R.A. Medvedev, there were 5-7 million repressed in 1937-1938 (really - 1.5 million), and 10 million in 1941-1946 - that is absolutely fantastical...There were 1 883 000 politically convicted in the period of 1921-1938; and in the period of 1921-1953 it results with not 4,060,000 but with less than 3 million. And we suppose here that there were no criminals among convicted “counter-revolutionists” in 1939-1953, which is doubtful. However, there were cases when political prisoners were convicted by criminal articles.] 75.51.171.124 (talk) 00:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * When Arseny Roginsky says..
 * " Books of memory are one reference point about the memory of Stalinism. These books, published in the majority of Russian regions, form a library of almost 300 volumes. They contain a total of over one and a half million names of people who were executed, sentenced to imprisonment in camps, or deported. This is a serious achievement, especially if we recall the difficulties in accessing many of our archives which contain materials about the terror.


 * However, these books do almost nothing for the formation of national memory. Firstly, they are regional books, and the contents of each one individually do not form the image of a national catastrophe, but rather a picture of a "local" disaster. The regional compartmentalization is matched by methodological discrepancies: each book of memory has its own sources, its own principles of selection, its own size and format for presentation of biographical information. This is because there is no common state program for publishing books of memory. The federal government also balks from its duty here.


 * Secondly, these memories are hardly a public matter: only a small number of copies are printed, and they are not even always received by regional libraries.


 * Memorial has posted a database on the Internet which unites the data base of the books of memory, supplemented by data from the Russian Interior Ministry, and also from Memorial itself. Here there are over 2,700,000 names. In comparison with the scale of the Soviet terror, this is a very small figure, and if work continues at this rate it will take several decades to compile a complete list if work."
 * Is Arseny Roginsky and Memorial then all of the things you've called Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev on here? LoveMonkey (talk) 00:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The books of memory do not support the spurious allegation supported by you that 20 million Christians were killed by atheist policies. 75.51.174.240 (talk) 00:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * So Arseny Roginsky is an acceptable source? Also where have I made any claim? Please post where I did. LoveMonkey (talk) 03:08, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Because if so it appears that Memorial puts the Soviet death by repression around 50 to 60 million. LoveMonkey (talk) 14:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Your above link is not Memorial, it is some random American non-specialist on Russia named John Gold, who is apparently citing the same claims from people like Medvedev that Zemskov discredits in his research.75.51.174.240 (talk) 03:27, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The link is to the book entitled "Victims of Soviet Terror:The Story of the Memorial Movement" which is a book about the group. LoveMonkey (talk) 13:07, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

100,000 shot priests in the 1930s
''During the purges of 1937 and 1938, church documents record that 168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were arrested. Of these, over 100,000 were shot.''

This is based on a distortion of sources by the political activist Alexander Yakovlev, who is unrelaible. The number of religious personnel of all faiths in the USSR was nowhere near 165,000.

'' According to the "Russian Calendar", in 1915, the Russian Empire had 112,629 clerical members, including 51,105 priests, 15,035 decons, and 46,489 acolytes. Some of them remained in territories that did not become part of the Soviet Union, some emigrated abroad, and some just died of old age an disease. So, where was the NKVD able to find, in 1937, 165,000 priests to arrest?... In 1937, it was reported that 33,3382 members of religious organizations and in 1938 13,438 people "clerical-sectarian counter-revolution" were arrested. The number of [Christian] priests of that number is unknown, but it is clear that the figures of Yakovlev are inflated.''   75.51.171.124 (talk) 06:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * So Ambassador Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev was a political activist? Says who? Is Michael Ellman an activist? For saying "...the 1937–38 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of other religions (Binner & Junge 2004) might also qualify as genocide." Can you provide sources that say Yale University Press published Yakovlev is unreliable? LoveMonkey (talk) 18:04, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yakovlev is absolutely not a reliable source - he was Yeltsin's ally when he wrote the book that has been discredited by the sources named above. Yakovlev was without a doubt a political activist, not a scholar: "Alexander Yakovlev, an adviser to Mr. Yeltsin and a former Soviet propagandist turned extreme anti-Communist." An extreme anti-Communist politician is not someone who should be cited as an authority for a sensitive, scholarly subject like this.
 * I really can't expect someone who identifies himself as "a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church" to edit this article in an objective and dispassionate manner. Because of the facts that you reveal on your profile, one can conclude that your purpose on this article is to smear the Russian government and portray Christians and specifically the Orthodox Church as martyrs.
 * You said: "Can you provide sources that say Yale University Press published Yakovlev is unreliable?", falsely implying that Yakovlev's is a scholarly work. However, Yakovlev's original Russian edition was NOT published by an academic publisher. It was published by вагриус, which is only a commercial publisher. As my sources showed above, Yakovlev's facts are wrong, and therefore cannot be included in this article.
 * And this article basically calls Yakovlev a traitor for what he and his policies did to Russia. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 20:53, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I can not speak to your motivations. Just as you should not assume mine are arrived at by anything other than reason. Here is the reliability board on wiki here, post there if these sources you have shared here are considered more reliable than [Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev]. What you have posted as far as I can see is not peer-reviewed nor from a peer in itself as people like James H. Billington AND THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS consider Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev to be.
 * As the Library of Congress refers to Yakovlev like this.
 * "Aleksandr Nikolaevich Yakovlev [Istra] is a politician, historian, and diplomat. He was Soviet ambassador to Canada, 1973-1983, and a member of the Politburo; and, as Gorbachev's chief ideologist, he was known as the "godfather of glasnost." Yakovlev chairs the Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, heads the International Democracy Foundation, and is founder and chairman of the Russian Party of Social Democracy. Yakovlev is the author of over twenty-five books, including: From Truman to Reagan (1985), The Fate of Marxism in Russia (1993), Gor'kaia chasha (Bitter Cup, 1994), and A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (2002) as well as hundreds of articles and pamphlets." LoveMonkey (talk) 23:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You just proved that Yakovlev was a political activist, not a scholar. Thus, he should not be used in this article. Even Russian media views the guy as a traitor
 * One of the sources I provided above, Oleg Mozokhin, is an academic and his work contradicts Yakovlev's book. And Mozokhin shows that 33,3382 members of religious organizations in 1937 and 13,438 in 1938 were arrested, not 150,000 Christian leaders. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 23:10, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Nope. "Aleksandr Nikolaevich Yakovlev [Istra] is a politician, historian, and diplomat." The only Oleg Mozokhin I know of is a foot-baller. Oh wait thats Oleg Blokhin. Oh well has Oleg Mozokhin been published by Yale? Is Oleg Mozokhin acknowledged as a Russian historian by the Library of Congress? Yale? What does Oleg Mozokhin do? Is he still alive? Hey maybe you could create a wiki page for him in English. LoveMonkey (talk) 23:12, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey would this be an acceptable source ? This valid source says that Professor Jennifer Wynot gives the figure in excess of 200,000. LoveMonkey (talk) 03:46, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Mozokhin is a premier authority about the history of Russian intelligence services in the 20th century. He is described as "PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences...Author of over 40 articles on the history of Russian intelligence services in the Soviet period." The anti-Communist hack Yakovlev, described as a traitor by many Russians, has his work contradicted by Mozokhin. Yakovlev claimed that 160,000 priests were arrested, but Mozokhin's data shows that in 1937 33,382 religious sectarian people and in 1938 13,438 religious sectarian people were arrested. Some of these people were executed, some were imprisoned, and some were released, and they consisted of not only Christians, but also Muslims and Jews. Far more many Communist Party and Soviet state officials were repressed during this period, so you cannot portray the events as "persecution of Christians". 75.51.171.124 (talk) 20:11, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Your verbal attack on Yakovlev will not remove his status here in the West that is including the library of Congress.
 * "so you cannot portray the events as "persecution of Christians".
 * Not me the sources also the sources met WP:SOURCES. Yours don't. Again lets create a bio article here on Oleg Mozokhin. LoveMonkey (talk) 23:26, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Library of Congress is not a scholarly source, and Yakovlev is not provided with special authority simply by having been cited by Library of Congress.
 * I didn't make a verbal attack on Yakovlev. Rather, I was citing the opinions that many Russian scholars and authors hold about him.
 * What is your point about Oleg Mozokhin having had a Wiki article or not??? Most professors are virtually unknown outside of the small academic community. None of the professors I had in college have Wiki pages, but they have still published numerous scholarly works, and they can be cited in Wikipedia. The author of this book was my professor at university, but he certainly doesn't have his own Wiki page. 75.51.171.124 (talk) 00:03, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "Library of Congress is not a scholarly source."
 * It's a defacto scholarly source as James H. Billington is a peer reviewer and it's the library of the U.S. congress where people source policy domestic and international. I wonder is Oleg Mozokhin on the Russian wiki? You can cross link from there you know. LoveMonkey (talk) 00:37, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Will you knock it off? Stop trying to change the subject. Whether or not Mozokhin has a Wikipedia is absolutely irrelevant, as I already presented his qualifications.75.51.174.240 (talk) 00:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's Time Magazine putting the number of Clergy executed a 50,000. LoveMonkey (talk) 17:02, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Time Magazine does not supersede a world-class scholar like Mozokhin whose work contradicts such estimates. The Time article you've shown does not cite any source for its claim of 50,000, so it is difficult to verify the contents of the article. Since we have numerous academic works by specialists on the subject, there is no place for Time Magazine in this article. 75.51.174.240 (talk) 03:26, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I am going to start to post these sources and have them confirmed. Time magazine has been a source in the past here on wiki and will probably be so in the future. You can post and confirm your sources as well nothing is stopping you. LoveMonkey (talk) 13:10, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 21:53, 3 May 2016 (UTC)