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Article: Shakhty Trial

This short article aims to outline the events of the Shakhty Trial in 1928. One of the major problems of the article is that additional information and explanation is often needed to provide further clarity. For instance it is not evident why the three engineers "Peter Palchinsky, Nikolai von Meck and A. F. Velichko" were specifically mentioned. Further information on these individuals and their importance would be useful, otherwise this is superfluous information that should be removed. Furthermore the organization of information could use improvement for clarity. The article is rather vague about the number of people accused in the trial until the end of the article. The organization of the article could be improved by expanding the initial summery of the article with important facts and adding subsections beyond the general "history" to subdivide the information into relevant topics. This would better integrate the information presented in the article into proper contexts and improve the articles overall flow. At two points in the article, large direct quotations are used to present information that is not otherwise mentioned or explained in the article. In these instances a paraphrase of the two sources and relevant corroborating sources would be more effective. Several other problems with citations are present. There are several points where additional citations are needed for the claims that are made, including a paragraph that contains no citations at all. Upon inspection of the citations provided some appear to be incomplete, such as with " b Solzhenitsyn & p.285-286" which is hyperlinked back to this article. Another source, "Nikolai von Meck http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Nikolay_von_Meck" may not be a reliable source. The site appears to have been created with Wikipedia's software and provides no information as to its own sources for its claims. There is one post from un anonymous commenter asking a two word question in Russian with no context for the question. The fact that there is very little activity on the article's talk page indicates that practically nothing has been done with the article since its analysis for the WikiProject Soviet Union. The article was rated as low-importance and as such has not had any discussions from contributors about its content or how to improve the article.

I'm in agreement with Zachary about how bland this article is and I will use "The German involvement in the Shakhty Trial" by Kurt Rosenbaum. I want to shed more light, stray away from large direct quotations, and go into details about some important facts concerning the trials.

Link to Shakhty Trial Sandbox

(Kristin) I really want to add this source to the page: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi2d7/timetable/week4/fitzpatrick_1974a.pdf

It dives more into the history and definitely adds more context into why the trials began in the first place. I was going to see if I could find any more sources on the people involved in the trials and see if I could expand on that more as well.

(Zach) I have begun work adding information from the source Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1974). "Cultural Revolution in Russia 1928-32". Journal of Contemporary History. 9 (1): 33–52. doi:10.1177/002200947400900103. ISSN 0022-0094. This source discusses the impact of the trial on soviet culture and the use of the concept of class warfare by Stalin to change soviet culture. I have also rearranged some of the paragraphs to improve flow and clarity. These edits can be found in the Shakhty Trial Sandbox linked above.

(Andy) 3 sources that I have found: "The Modern Inquisition" by Hugo Dewar, "Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers" by Matthew Lenoe, and "Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1934" by Sheila Fitzpatrick. The 1st source, The Modern Inquisition, talks about the build up and background of the trial. The 2nd source, Closer to the Masses, details the reactions to the trial. The 3rd source, Education and Social Mobility..., talks about the trial itself and the surrounding events.

(Andy) I added a suggestion for an edit to the Shakhty Trial Sandbox. I underlined the sentence that needs to be edited. It appears to be a direct quote although the person quoted is not mentioned. Also, it appears to be conjecture. It needs to be deleted or rephrased.

"The proper way to deal with the matter would have been for the Soviet government to have given some indication of their suspicion. Then those suspected could have been reprimanded or removed from the U.S.S.R. The indecent haste of arrests was, indeed, a piece of "lamentable foolishness."(Suggested Edit: This appears to be conjecture and a direct quote. This needs to be rephrased or completely removed.)"

(Zach) I copied over more from the original article in order to help with placing our edits in with original content. I then moved the last paragraph of the original article and integrated it into the first paragraph of the main body. Both dealt with the events of the trial and immediate aftermath of the trial and I felt that these two pieces of information made more sense together rather than separated at either ends of the article. I also copied the two quote boxes from the original article. The first is from what appears to be a primary source. The second from an undetermined secondary source that is linked back to the original article. I will attempted to find these sources and see if there is a way to paraphrase the content of the quotes to better integrate them into the article. Otherwise I feel that they should be deleted. (Andy) The original article said that 5 of the engineers were sentenced to death but it was actually 11. 6 death sentences were commuted. I made changes to reflect that. The changes I made are underlined. I also cited the source that I used to get that info. The source I added is "Espresso Stalinist".

(Andy) Added a sentence that talked about specific crimes that the 53 were accused of.

(Andy) Added the section "General Population Response to the Trial" and 2 sources; "Closer to the Masses" and "American Mercury".

(Daryl) Erased the quote and changed it into my own words. Also added a reference. Rosenbaum, Kurt. “The German Involvement in the Shakhty Trial.” The Russian Review, vol. 21, no. 3, 1962, pp. 238–260. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/126716.

(Kristin) I've added and revised a few sentences throughout the article. The quote "The proper way to deal with the matter would have been for the Soviet government to have given some indication of their suspicion. Then those suspected could have been reprimanded or removed from the U.S.S.R. The indecent haste of arrests was, indeed, a piece of "lamentable foolishness." has been removed completely because I couldn't find a source of where this quote came from and couldn't completely rewords it to where it made sense.