User talk:Puuuk

September 2022
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Estonian SSR
I see you've been removing references to the Estonian SSR on several articles. Now you don't have to like the USSR (I wouldn't say I like it, and clearly you like it even less than I do) to acknowledge that it existed. That is a fact. Erasing it from Wikipedia articles about Estonia doesn't make it go away and, in fact, distorts history. Similarly, a person born in 2000 in Lviv, Ukraine, to a family that lived in the city for generations, could have a great-grandfather born in 1910 in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary, a grandfather born in 1935 in Lwow, Poland, and a father born in in 1970 in Lviv in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (and the birthplace may appear as Lvov in some documents due to the predominance of Russian!). This may seem trivial to you, but it's historically accurate, and the way to go about these things. What you call a "massive attack", for whatever reason, is merely an attempt to preserve some historical rigour. I hope you can understand that. Ostalgia (talk) 18:11, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I saw your edits. They went against the long held edit consensus, so I boldly reverted them, so that if you have questions we can discuss it.

You talk about "historical accuracy" but then interpret it through your POV. The reality is more complicated than this. The period was a 50 year long occupation in Baltic states – the change of power was made under military occupation using fake elections. So there was no legal transfer of power and the international community did not recognize the annexation. You can read about it here State continuity of the Baltic states. So we have the Soviet installed puppet SSRs which held the territory illegally and Republics that held the right by international law, with their working (and recognized) diplomatic missions and governments in exile. They both existed at the same time. WHat one likes is not the question. You can't also ignore that Republics did exist at the time.

Per MOS:GEO and WP:NCGN for modern subjects common English names should be used. The Republic of Estonia and Estonian SSR were both commonly called Estonia. Only rare cases such as Czech Republic use the Republic as part of a common name. For example Xi Jinping "Born 15 June 1953 (age 69) Beijing, China" Just China (vs People's Republic of China). Also for other countries that have been under occupation the whatever set up name isn't used France, Norway etc. Gudmund Hernes Born 25 March 1941 (age 81) Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway. (not noted as Reichskommissariat Norwegen).

Then your examples Lviv–Lemberg etc. This is historical names vs modern names. In historical context names at the time are used. Modern times in Estonia start in 1918. Formerly Estonia was only the northern areas while Southern Estonia was part of Livonia. Estonian parallel names became official. Reval became Tallinn, Dorpat Tartu, Fellin Viljandi etc. Puuuk (talk) 21:02, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Comparing the annexation of the Baltic states with the German occupation is comparing apples to oranges - Nazi occupation happened during wartime over 5-6 years at most, was largely a military affair, and in some cases was not even intended to be permanent (and even then, there are several examples in this Wiki of people's birthplaces indicating, even stressing, the facting that they were under Nazi control, which I do not mind and would even encourage). The Baltics were part of the USSR for half a decade, most of it during peacetime, and while some Western nations maintained de jure recognition of the Baltic republics for some or all of this period, in practice they accepted it. The rest of the world did the West one better and accepted it both de jure and de facto. There's no PoV interpretation - people born in these territories were given Soviet passports indicating that they had been born in the USSR, they represented the USSR in international events and competitions, and they represented their regions in national competitions within the USSR (even if some resented it). This is factual. The Baltic states did not exist at the time except within the confine of a handful of scattered embassies around the world and in the hearts and minds of the people who staffed them. This is commendable, but it also has no bearing on reality, and to pretend otherwise is a well trodden revisionist trope in the nationalist historiographies and émigré communities of various nations.

The second point you raise is, in my opinion, moot. It is normal to use the common name, or a short name, for entities at the state level. After the end of the Chinese Civil War (and in spite of Taiwan being officially called the Republic of China) it is obvious that references to China allude to the PRC, although I would not oppose further clarification in that regard, either. During the period in question, Baltic SSRs were a sub-division of the Soviet Union, not independent states. You cannot pretend that by stating "Estonia" and removing references to the Soviet Union for a person's birthplace you are using the common name, because it quite simply is not the case.

Finally, I believe you unfortunately focused too much on the names of the cities while I was actually trying to stress the fact that four generations of a family could be born in the same place but in four different countries and we should reflect all four countries, not the one we like the most, or the last one. My apologies if that was not clear enough, I stressed the different names to try and convey the feeling of rupture or break with the previous period and clearly overdid the stressing. Ostalgia (talk) 09:16, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Occupation, is the effective military control by a ruling power over a territory that is outside of that power's sovereign territory Occupation lasts until legally supplanted. Occupation can end with loss of effective control, through the genuine consent or by transferring authority to an indigenous government endorsed by the occupied population through referendum and which has received international recognition.

Occupation has no time limit. Occupation is not only in war time, it does not matter if there is peace somewhere else in the world. The Occupation Of Baltic states was a military affair. Without the red army presence it would have collapsed immediately. There was armed resistance Guerrilla war in the Baltic states etc.

Occupation of Baltic states ended with the pro-independence parties winning the first free elections held under the occupation (1990 Estonian Supreme Soviet election, 1990 Latvian Supreme Soviet election and 1990 Lithuanian Supreme Soviet election) and declaring the Soviet occupation and annexation of the countries terminated, and proclaimed the full restoration of their independence. Estonian Restoration of Independence, On the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia, Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania.

Also referendums were held. 1991 Estonian independence referendum 78.4% voting for, 1991 Latvian independence and democracy referendum 74.9% voting for and 1991 Lithuanian independence referendum 93.2% voting for.

Some nations were only eastern bloc and four countries from the rest of the world: New Zealand, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands. Not saying anything is not recognition. People of Baltic states were given Soviet passports by the occupation authority. While the pre-war laws of each state were still in force and embassies and consulates issued legal passports, which were recognized by most of the world except eastern bloc, the four countries named before, pluss Argentina and Austria.

Baltic states existed. The whole point of the story is that you can not deny that fact. Baltic states continued to exist under international law while under Soviet occupation 1940–41, 1945–1991 and German occupation in 1941–1945. Significant part of the international community refused to approve the 1940 Soviet conquest, the resistance by the Baltic peoples to the Soviet regime, and the uninterrupted functioning of state organs in exile supports that sovereign title never passed to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union never had sovereignty over Baltic states. Baltic states were never legally part of the Soviet Union. Which set them apart from other Soviet Republics that had been part of The Soviet Union since the 1920s.

Name calling is not the way to go (revisionist nationalist etc). Consider that the only country that denies the facts presented above is Russia. Russian state mandated historical narrative is that Baltic states joined Soviet Union on free will (ignoring the fact that the joining was done by governments set up after illegal elections run under Red Army and NKVD armed control where only communist candidates were allowed) Coming from that Russia claims that Baltic states did not exist during the occupation and all three Baltic states are new entities created only in 1991. While all the rest of the countries RE-established diplomatic relations and membership in international organizations was restored.

Finally, You focused too much on the city names I listed, and missed the point of differentiation of modern and historical subjects. Per Template:Infobox person ''for modern subjects, the country should generally be a sovereign state. For historical subjects, use the place name most appropriate for the context and our readership. What the place may correspond to on a modern map is a matter for an article's main text.'' Puuuk (talk) 21:55, 21 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I will start from the second to last paragraph. There is no name calling involved, but a description of your position from a historiographic point of view. What you repeat are the positions maintained by the nationalist historiographies of these countries (similarly, I don't give a hoot about the "Russian historical narrative", as you call it). You are not "presenting facts", at best you are presenting myths. I'm not "denying the fact" of the Baltic States' existence - I'm confronting you with the fact of their actual non-existence from the moment they were forcibly absorbed by the Soviet Union to the moment they regained independence with its dissolution. The 1991 referendums have no relation to your argument. They're the basis for the existence of the Baltic states today, which nobody denies (I hope).
 * You argue that only the Eastern bloc and a handful of other nations recognised the USSR's annexation of the Baltics, but you conveniently neglect to mention the fact that on independence African and Asian states recognised the Soviet Union's post-war borders. At this point we're talking about a majority of the world's population, and of UN members. This is not to mention the fact that every time a Mikhail Tal, for instance, crossed a border on a Soviet загранпаспорт the country receiving it was proferring de facto recognition to them, regardless of whether it paid lip service to the de jure existence of the Baltic states.
 * Lastly, you are misrepresenting the template - by "sovereign state" it means that you don't put the Duchy of X as a person's birthplace in modern subjects, while this might be appropriate for a historical subject even if the Duchy of X was nominally a subject of the Kingdom of Y (addition for clarity: in our present day and age the most fitting equivalent situation to "Duchy of X" would probably be "Scotland", "Tatarstan" or "Catalonia" instead of UK, Russian Federation/Russia, and Spain, respectively). For the people we are discussing now, the X Baltic SSR of the USSR is the place name most appropriate in the historical context (remember it also states "[u]se the name of the birthplace at the time of birth") and particularly for non-specialist readers. Ostalgia (talk) 07:49, 23 October 2022 (UTC)