Talk:Sisson Documents

Forgeries?
Does anyone seriously contend that these were not forgeries? If so, they need to be cited. If not, we can add the categories for "Political forgery" and "False documents". Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 20:53, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Joel Carhmichael, in his introduction to the 1984 edition Sukhanov's Russian Revolution states: "But with the publication in 1958 of German foreign Office memoranda and with a life of Helphand (Parvus) that appeared in 1965, the story of this subterranean alliance-for compelling reason never admitted by either side-has been substantiated beyond doubt*." *(footnote)"see my "Trotsky", London and New York, 1975, and Z.A.B. Zeman and W.B. Scharlau, "The Merchant or Revolution: The life of Alexander Isreal Helphand (Parvus), London and New York, 1965." Dr. Carmichael would argue (in my limited understanding) that such documents were if forgeries for political purposes, they were truthful to the extent that they were based on real occurences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.87.21.101 (talk) 17:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Calling them "truthful" because "they were based on real occurrences" makes no sense. If I forged a note by Lee Harvey Oswald to the effect that tomorrow he is going to assassinate JFK and that no one else but him was involved in this decision, it would still be a fictitious document whether one supports that he was a lone gunman or not, simply because he never wrote that note. Similarly, if there never was a January 8, 1918 payment of 50,000,000 gold roubles to the Soviet government by a representative of the Imperial Bank named G. von Schanz (to give just one example of the Sisson Documents), then the only logical conclusion is that such a document is fake. It remains as fake now as it did over 100 years ago. --Ismail (talk) 14:21, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Keenan
While these articles were a forgery in a technical sense, Trotsky and Lenin were not German agents, Germany did play a very real role in the Bolshevik Revolution... not least helping Lenin get back from Switzerland; see Alexander Parvus, Yakov Ganetsky, Karl Radek and Arthur Zimmermann. We need to put more context the purpose of Sisson's Documents and Kennan's statements. Both of these were US government sources and at the time Sisson exaggerating the German role would have been useful propaganda for the Americans/British... but by the time of Keenan this was no longer useful because of the Cold War, Marshall Plan and use of West Germany as an Anglo-American proxy. The way the article is currently written you don't get this context, that it was essentially American propaganda, based on a kernel of truth, which later became surplus to requirements. Claíomh Solais (talk) 16:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

The context you think should be included seems out of this article’s purview, and would likely be better served in the post-article “related” sections. 2601:87:4400:BEC0:2877:4CDF:6DFE:B588 (talk) 15:19, 14 March 2021 (UTC)