User:Simonekjo/sandbox

= The Tehran Conference = I was able to find one peer reviewed article with some interesting information. But I've had a hard time finding peer reviewed articles. Now I searching for books instead.

Peer Reviewed Article - A. H. Hamzavi. "Iran and the Tehran Conference." International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 20, no. 2 (1944): 192-203. doi:10.2307/3018096. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3018096

The 1944 International Affairs article is not particularly useful because it seems to dismiss the story and attributes this rumor to confusion over Germans who had been dropped in by parachute several months prior to the Tehran Conference. But this article claims that they had all been removed from Iran prior to the Tehran Conference.

Books I am trying to track down:

Eubank, K. (1985). Summit at Teheran (1st ed.). New York: W. Morrow.

Eureka Summit seems to be a really good source. However, the preview available for free online doesn't make it clear whether the author addresses the story of the assassination plot. I have requested the book from the ASU Library to scan it and see if I can find anything.

Mayle, P. (1987). Eureka summit : Agreement in principle and the Big Three at Tehran, 1943. Newark : London: University of Delaware Press ; Associated University Presses.

Yenne, Bill. Operation Long Jump: Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Greatest Assassination Plot in History (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2015)

Draft of Alleged Assassination Plot
U.S. State Department Diplomatic Papers on the Tehran Conference

President Roosevelt's log dated Sunday November 28th (At Tehran):

Stalin sent a message to Roosevelt through an Ambassador. He reminded Roosevelt that city was controlled by Germans a few months earlier and there were still people in the city who would take advantage of an opportunity to assassinate Stalin or Churchill if they had to drive to visits Roosevelt. Stalin expressed concern over the distance between Roosevelts hotel and where Stalin and Churchill were located.. Stalin suggested that it would be less risky if all three of them were staying in accommodations close together thereby minimizing the need for driving between locations. Roosevelt agreed to move his location to the Russian Embassy.

From Roosevelt's Post Conference Papers:

The papers include a message from Roosevelt to Pat Hurley explaining that the Foreign Minister of Iran was angry about media stories in the American press regarding an attempted assassination plot. Roosevelt asked Hurley to contact the Foreign Minister of Iran and help to clear up the misunderstanding. Roosevelt wanted to make sure that the Foreign Minister understood that no one ever suspected Iran of attempting and assassination. The report of a possible assassination plot was against Germans who had entered Iran illegally. Roosevelt went on to tell Hurley that he didn't want to say anything about it to the press because he didn’t want to attract any attention to the story.

The State Department response asked Roosevelt to please make available the sections of his report where the Soviet accusations of an assassination plot are made. The response claimed that the State Department was aware that the Soviets made claims that polish resistance groups cooperating with German troops were fighting the Russians who had been dropped into Iran with parachutes.

United States. Department of State. Conferences At Cairo And Tehran, 1943. Washington: U. S. Govt. Print. Off., 1961. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015005349694

= Article evaluation = This is an evaluation of the Wikipedia article titled First five-year plan.

'Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?'

The intro summary describes the first five-year plan as a list of economic goals and generally does a very poor job of summarizing the topic and the sections of the article. The section titled “Success of the Soviet first five-year plan” is very biased and really only uses Stalin's own claims that the plan was successful. I was expecting this section to tell me specifically which successes were attributable to the first five-year plan. But it really only makes a very vague statement about the first five-year plan being the beginning of the Soviet Union’s journey as a “superpower through industrialization”. Other than that the only specifics given are that Stalin declared it a success and it helped Russia build weapons for WWII. Also, I found it sort of distracting that the author randomly threw in some facts about a journalist named Walter Duranty who won an award for his journalistic coverage and it leading to Roosevelt recognizing the Soviet Union. While these might be interesting facts, I don’t see why they belong in a section supposedly about the successes of the  first five-year plan.

'Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?'

The article seems very biased and just general not very high quality. Also, the author uses some language that could be considered overly emotional in it’s wording. In the section on Collectivization, the author says “the party behavior became uncontrolled and manic when the party began to acquisition food from the countryside”. This statement strikes me as biased and the author should use more fact based information, instead of “uncontrolled and manic”.

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

The “Legacy” section is only one sentence explaining where there are few streets named after this plan. Additional information about the legacy of the first five-year plan would improve that section. The viewpoints about the successes and failures of the plan are also underrepresented. All three of these sections lack details and need additional explanation.

'Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?'

The author uses a short abstract as a source to cite a couple of his facts in the section titled “Reasoning for the first five-year plan”. However, the text does not seem to support some of his statements. For example, the author writes that the dissatisfaction of the peasantry in 1927 was a result of the 1921-1922 famine and general mistreatment. However, the source does not actually say anything about the reasons for the peasants dissatisfaction. It only says that the party leaders were worried about a peasant uprising.

'Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?'

Most of the citations have no links and do not even reference a page number. There are also many statements that are not cited at all. For example, the authors concluding sentence in the section titles “Reasoning for the first five-year plan” states,  “All these tensions had the potential to destroy the young Soviet Union and forced Joseph Stalin to introduce rapid industrialization of heavy industry so that the Soviet Union could address external and internal threats if needed.” This conclusion is not cited at all. Also, the author does not mention anything about ideological socialism as a motivation for industrialization. There is no mention of a socialist desire to strengthen the bond between the cities and country.

Some of the statements that are cited, use heavily biased sources. For example, citation 21 and 22 are evidence of the “success of the five-year plan and the source of this evidence is Joseph Stalin! Seriously right? Obviously Stalin’s own claims that the first five-year plan was successful are just about the most biased possible source.

'Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?'

Nothing specifically is out of date. Every single section of this article is lacking in complete and accurate details of this economic policy. The entire article is missing a deeper foundational explanation of the communist and social principles of this policy.

'Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?'

There a couple comments on the talk page about it being very biased.

'How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?'

It is rated as Start-Class and part of WikiProjects Soviet Union and WikiProject Socialism.

How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

This article lacks all of the detailed information to explain the origins of the first five-year plan. It does not give much accurate information about the motivations for industrialization or collectivization. The article does not explain anything about the political conditions driving the changes from NEP to the first five-year plan.