Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Soviet occupations (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. Black Kite (t) (c) 23:57, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Soviet occupations
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log ) •

Delete as POV-fork and original synthesis.

Most of the content of the article refers to the liberation of Europe from Nazi German occupation by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War. None of the events listed – apart from the Allied occupations of Germany and Austria – is universally recognized as an "occupation". The article twists its source material to present an extremist fringe POV. The title precludes the creation of a neutral article.

There is no unifying factor in these events, none of sources used discuss the topic of "Soviet occupations" in general. Searching for "Soviet occupations" in Google Search, Google Books, and Google Scholar I am unable to find any sources that discus the supposed topic of this article. As such, the article is an unpublished synthesis of published sources. The article is a POV-fork of Allied occupation of Europe, that was deleted earlier. The original synthesis presented in the article is equal to the claim, that Western Europe is currently under US military occupation. (We do not even have an article named United States occupations, although there are several articles with United States occupation of... in their name.) Other articles that present the same material from a different POV include Eastern Bloc, Iron Curtain, Warsaw Pact, Military history of the Soviet Union, and Evil empire

This article was nominated for deletion in October 2007. The WP:EEML arbitration case raises the possibility, that the previous discussion was affected by improper coordination. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:53, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  —Petri Krohn (talk) 01:09, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep While there seems to be a case for splitting this into several articles as the current topic is a bit too broad, the content seems OK to me (though I'm not all that familiar with eastern European history) and references a large number of reliable sources which call these events 'occupations'. Something doesn't need to be 'universally accepted' to be covered by Wikipedia - when there's different views on something the rule is to cover all the notable views rather than delete the article. Nick-D (talk) 01:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I note that there hasn't been any discussion on the article's talk page since 2008. Nick-D (talk) 01:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither has the article seen any improvement, a strong indication that it is unneeded or useless. The article was created to present a fringe POV. After its creator was banned from Wikipedia, the article has received little interest. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:00, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions.  —Nick-D (talk) 01:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Merge content to Military history of the Soviet Union. A useful list could potentially be formed out of some of this content at a less POV-ish location such as List of Soviet military campaigns if there is consensus that such a list is desirable. VQuakr (talk) 03:16, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed that the article's subject is somewhat artificial: the content of the Occupation of the Baltic states is combined with other poorly related topics to reach a conclusion not explicitly stated in none of the sources cited in the article (exactly how the policy defines synthesis). However, I am not sure if the article content can be merged to the Military history of the Soviet Union article, because it mostly belongs to the history of corresponding countries. For instance, occupation of Korea tells a story which is quite different from that in the article  Division of Korea, and therefore, is a POV fork of the later. The Occupation of Bulgaria section tells almost nothing about the USSR, and is a short version of the Military history of Bulgaria during World War II article (so it is simply redundant). My conclusion:
 * Delete.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep, same as before. Well sourced overview article about various Soviet military occupations. As there is no whatsoever conclusion reached, WP:SYNTH accusations are simply ridiculous. However, I would support moving the article to List of Soviet occupations, as it would describe the content of the article better.
 * The "unifying factor" is Soviet Union, perhaps the nominator missed this? As for WP:POVFORK accusations, as far as my memory serves me, Allied occupation of Europe was a POINT-y nonsense, that was created as a response to the Soviet occupations...
 * United States occupations? WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Who stops you from creating the article if you think it is needed?
 * Finally, I need to point out that the nominator has been twice banned for a year for harassing the creator of the article, last time for making death threats.
 * -- Sander Säde 08:22, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That can not be considered a neutral overview of WP articles. Major articles that this article relies upon are marked as pov-title or pov to reflect that their presentation is mainly one-sided. Here we just have a culmination of the biased presentation in a synthesized article.(Igny (talk) 13:13, 31 October 2010 (UTC))


 * Move to Soviet military presence abroad or something similar. Keep as per Edward321. Very convincing. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 18:30, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

The argument of original synthesis was disproved in the last AfD, where it showed reliable sources have grouped the occupations. Grouping together multiple nations that Russia occupied in the same article is no more original synthesis than the creation of the German-occupied Europe article. It is not the same subject as the other articles mentioned by the nominator and so is not a fork, let alone a POV fork of any of them. Edward321 (talk) 18:14, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:POV-ridden WP:SYNTH. (Igny (talk) 12:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC))
 * Keep I am mystified the nominator was unable to find any sources that discuss the topic as the first GBooks hit is a work with this title that clearly discusses this subject. The term is used in a number of sources as GBooks shows even after you remove the false hits about Soviet job employment and the Books LLC Wikipedia mirrors. There are also lots of hits under the singular term "Soviet Occupation"
 * Umm, no. The only thing the previous AfD demonstrated was the desire of the WP:EEML members to keep this article. I have yet to see the source which neutrally defines this unified concept of "Soviet occupations". Most of the sources at the Google search are authored (surprise, surprise) by the Baltic authors, so to say the least, this topic was covered using biased sources. I could write the article on Soviet liberation covering pretty much the same events and using the sources from the other side. Keep in mind that "occupation" is inherently POV, and currently WP is being used as a propaganda tool by one of the sides (guess which one) of the conflicts which stemmed from Cold war. (Igny (talk) 21:29, 31 October 2010 (UTC))
 * Ummm, the previous AfD took place in 2007. There was no EEML in 2007. You can't blame everything on EEML. This whole argument that "I don't like something so I'll just invoke the EEML boogeyman to get my way" has been specious for awhile and by now it's simply become tiresome. Discuss content, not editors, as discussing editors can be taken as an effort to poison the well. (Before anyone says anything about me specifically, please note that I haven't voted here - I'm still going through the article and its sources and atm have no set opinion about the AfD proposal itself).radek (talk) 23:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Afghanistan-related deletion discussions.
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 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions.  — Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 18:18, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep - How would you name it other than occupation? Military forces stationed permanently in a foreign country to support a pro-occupier government and to oppress insurrections fits "occupation" for me. And it does so for the references as well (books, governmental sites, etc). Article isn't anti-sovietist or anti-Russian at all but facts are facts. Lajbi  Holla @ me  •  CP  23:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The neutral term for Baltic states in this context for example is annexation. Other words include liberation (for Eastern Europe), rejoining for Bessarabia, etc. (Igny (talk) 01:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC))
 * The word liberation used in the context of implementing dictatorships is not WP:NPOV, it clearly favors the regime. The word liberation used in the context of the act of getting rid of an oppressor is very much NPOV. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 10:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it`s not, use of annexation in this context is considered biased in favour of Russia`s politics by many, excluding myself Xil  (talk) 18:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. POV-fork with WP:SYNTH. --DonaldDuck (talk) 01:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A comment on Edward321's google books results. Firstly, google books lists all books, not only reliable sources, so google scholar is more informative. Secondly, google scholar gives 13,700 results for "Soviet occupation" and 16,700 results for "American occupation" . Does it mean that the article American occupations should also be created? IMO, it doesn't. (BTW, similar search in google books also gives more results for "American occupation"). The fact that the term "Soviet occupation" is abundant in literature does not mean that this term refers to some single phenomenon.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep reasonable summary article. This is not OR, but straightforward history.    DGG ( talk ) 03:03, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep decent summary article, probably just dosen`t match nominators POV Xil  (talk) 18:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - Terrible title, "Soviet Occupations" brings to mind Plumber, Painter, Mechanic, Retail Clerk, and so forth. This is more or less a POV-driven content fork, attempting to link together disparate phenomena as the partition of Poland and the invasion of Afghanistan under one handy rubric. Carrite (talk) 12:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Whatever we decide to do with the content, the one thing we shouldn't do is delete it entirely. "Soviet occupations" is a plausible search term so it certainly should not be a redlink.— S Marshall  T/C 01:43, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.