Talk:Ion Buzdugan

Congratulations

My dear Dahn, you succeeded in finding what 70 years of Soviet historical research was unable to: a Bessarabian Bolshevik during the spring of 1917. Those poor historians strove to push the Bolshevik presence among soldiers on the Romanian Front to mid-June, and they didn't even dare to speak of a separate far-left (Bolshevik-Left & Left Internationalists) organisation in Bessarabia before 11/24 October. You should really be proud of yourself. Anonimu (talk) 12:13, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Firstly, dear Anonimu, you can check the source saying it and stop making it about how "I succeeded in finding...". Secondly, if we're speculating here, one would assume that a likely reason why your sources don't mention Bolsheviks active in Bessarbia (which sources, btw?) could have to do with the fact that they they tended to become virulently anti-Bolshevik within a few months of that fact, and that some of them (case in point, Buzdugan) were also, how should I put it, deranged. Should I remind you that the URRS had this habit of sending entire people into non-existence? Lastly, I don't see how you aim to prove that the existence an independent and minor organization calling itself Bolshevik would be disproved by party records saying that they didn't "organize" one -- so they didn't; so what? Dahn (talk) 13:01, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, just to be pedantic: saying that Buzdugan and Pântea were Bessarabian Bolsheviks in no way implies that the Bolsheviks necessarily had chapters in Bessarabia. These men moved between Iași and Odessa (and beyond, in Pântea's case). They could have affiliated with a bona fide Bolshevik organization in any point on that map.

Are we done here? Dahn (talk) 13:14, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Suveica appears to be a low quality source. Not only it gets Adevarul date wrong (the article cited is from August 20, not August 18), but it takes Cazacu's claims at its face value, assigning his obviously political opinions to the newspaper's editors: link (for others reading this, Cazacu was the leader of one of the few parties running against Buzdugan's party in the 1919 elections, at a time when "Bolshevik" was the straightest way for character assassination).

As for my sources, there are several Soviet books and articles discussing the Bolshevik movement in Bessarabia, including the local edition of the BSE. As none of them mention Buzdugan in the context, I don't really see how would they help here (they do mention Pantea submitting to the Bolshevik-led Chisinau Soviet in January 1918, yet they don't consider him a Bolshevik per se). But rest assured that they are all from the post-Secret Speech area, when Soviet historiography had no problem acknowledging Bolsheviks could err or that "opportunists" had joined the party at various time. Establishing legitimacy through early Bolshevik presence was however an important objective, yet they couldn't find much in the lands of Kotovsky and Yakir, who, while Bessarabian and Bolshevik, were not active near the region (guys like Lazo or Badeev were at the time left-wing SRs or Bundist rather than Bolsheviks).Anonimu (talk) 14:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your many self-referential assurances of what is and isn't reliable within sources with credentials, as well as for your acknowledgment that mention of Buzdugan's Bolshevism is found in the cited secondary and primary source, and for your blanket opinions about the reliability of the (still unnamed) Soviet sources in the post-Stalin era. Anything concrete? Like, a source saying that Buzdugan was not a Bolshevik? No? Good, we move on. Dahn (talk) 14:26, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

We have an extraordinary claim only supported by a source with proven careless referencing. Moreover, such claim is implicitly refuted by another source you used: Iorga 1934b, p. 272: "[Buzdugan informed Iorga that] the Russians - there were no Bolsheviks at the time, the Red Russians [want to imprison the Romanian King]". Not to mention we have the pinnacle of Soviet POV, the BSE, unable to push the existence of Bolsheviks in Bessarabia past June. All of Buzdugan's activities point to him being an anti-Bolshevik, and there's no other source making such a claim about him. But for whatever reason you chose to ignore all this and give full support to a misattributed parenthetical comment in a footnote. In my opinion this utterly fails WP:REDFLAG.Anonimu (talk) 20:04, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

1. Iorga's comment refers to Iași, not to Bessarabia, not to Odessa, and makes no claim to explore Buzdugan's precise affiliations, and doesn't even mention the exact time frame he has in mind. It's funny that you would cite him to back you on this: just there, on that very page, he gives us a theory about the attempted Russian putsch that you were denying ever happened, on another page. If he's expected to know the affiliations of Russian soldiers that he says (also in that context) he rarely met face to face, let alone conversed with, then surely you should disseminate him as a source wherever you write about that part of history: here, Iorga says there was an attempted putsch.

2. Your theory formed from reading the Soviet Encyclopedia, according he which it should be mentioned there or else it didn't happen is entirely concocted on thin air, entirely self-sourced, and easily contradicted by many other examples of obscure or uncomfortable facts not presumably mentioned there. And with a huge backlog of plainly verifiable facts bluntly falsified or omitted in that source and others like it.

Feel free to write and publish a study on why it is unlikely that people like Buzdugan were Bolsheviks in any definition of that term, and I'll go and add the doubt myself to the article, using your study as a source. Or feel free to find a source saying exactly who Buzdugan affiliated before March, during, and after 1917. Or show me Buzdugan saying: "No sir, a Bolshevik? Not me, never". If I myself will ever come across such a source, I will make it my mission to change the text I wrote and reflect that new information.

In the meantime, we have this scenario: you asking me to remove a sourced and rather important fact from the narrative, because it seems unlikely to you, the self-appointed expert. When, as I am sure you were told before, wikipedia cares about verifiability, not "truth". Is the claim verified? Is the source for the claim (yes, even the primary source, though not just the primary source) reliable? Yes and yes. Dahn (talk) 20:30, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh and I forgot your secondary claim: namely, that if one primary source, cited by an academic source, informs he was a Bolshevik those murky months (before being his rival, Cazacu was his party colleague -- something else you chose to omit from your summary), we must surely compare it to other sources that tell us he was not a Bolshevik later in 1917, or in 1934, or in 1967, and conclude from such that he couldn't have been a Bolshevik at any moment in his life. Tell me, could you make that claim for Victor Serge? Or Yevgeny Zamyatin? Or Arthur Koestler? Conversion from Bolshevism is by definition unlikely, right? Dahn (talk) 20:52, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Iorga's fits perfectly in the mainstream account: there was no organized Bolshevik movement anywhere near the Romanian Front, while the local soviet was dominated by Mensheviks and SRs into the late 1917. On May Day 1917, at the urge of Romanian socialists, the Russian soldiers freed Rakovsky (without authorisation from the soviet) and, under the impression of the February Revolution, were ready to help Romanians overthrow their "tsar"; Rakovsky, however, realised that he would be unable to lead a revolution and calmed down the Russian soldiers and the Romanians who had joined them. The only other time Russian soldiers threatened the Romanian monarchy was in early December, and by then the Soviet had became openly Bolshevik. Iorga was a major intellectual figure near the centre of the political life during that period: let's not pretend he was unable to identify a Bolshevik or was not aware of the mood among the Russian troops on the Romanian Front.

Again, this is not about Buzdugan, who probably isn't even mentioned in the Soviet Encyclopedia. Unless he was the one and only Bolshevik in Bessarabia before June, case in which the Soviet editors could have chosen to ignore him, there was no reason whatsoever for the Soviets not to date Bolshevik presence as far back as possible, especially at a time when the Ceausescu regime had reopened the question of Bessarabia. A comparable position in Romanian historiography would have been acknowledging there is no mention of Romanians in Transylvania before the 11th century.

When he made the claim, Cazacu was an adversary of Buzdugan. And his intention is obviously rhetoric, as shown by the way he mixes Russian parties (SRs, Bolsheviks) with Moldovan (Nationals and Pesants) and Romanian ones ("averescans") when describing the ideological inconsistency of the Bessarabian Peasantists. Pantea's mention is clearly related to his collaboration with the Chisinau Soviet before the Romanian invasion. As Cazacu doesn't mention when his Buzdugan was a Bolshevik (the terminus ante quem is August 1918), this article is further misrepresenting the sources by claiming that the article's subject was Bolshevik before joining the Nationals. Assuming the mentioned Buzdugan is the subject of this article (you have no guarantee of that, the name is rather common in Moldavia), he could have equally been in some form of agreement with the Bolsheviks during the autumn of 1917 (when they are confirmed in Bessarabia), attracting the ire of Cazacu.

Unlike Koestler et all, whose adherence to communism is well documented, Buzdugan is not generally mentioned as a Bolshevik (i.e. nowhere else except that comment by Cazacu during the campaign).

Considering the above, I ask you to bring a proof that the Buzdugan mentioned by Cazacu is Ion Buzdugan, and that his association with the Bolsheviks took place before he joined the Nationals or met Iorga, and not afterwards, such as during the autumn of 1917. Thank you.Anonimu (talk) 22:21, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Preposterous. It is evident from the context that this is the Buzdugan referred to: a member of the Bessarabian Peasants' Party who was so notorious as to be mentioned by surname only. And if you're still in limbo over the issue, go to page 353 in Suveică, read the entry for Buzdugan, Ion, notice how the number "68" is in that string of numbers there, then go to page 68 -- hosanna, "Buzdugan" is the one and only "Buzdugan, Ion". This goes to show exactly the type of obstructionist sophistry that passes for informed opinion in your replies here, and the debate is going nowhere at this stage. We'll talk some more immediately after you bring a proof saying either what his affiliations were throughout the interval, or explicitly saying that he was not a Bolshevik. The rest is chaff. Dahn (talk) 22:52, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

The two Buzdugans may indeed be one of the same person, if it weren't for the detail about him being a Bolshevik, not found anywhere else. The index proves little, as it was likely created by a technician at the publishing house without specific knowledge on the subject matter; he could have mistakenly conflated the two. Regarding the timing, as you don't want to accept the Soviet word that there were no Bolsheviks in the region between the start of WWI and June 1917, it could mean any time between 1902 and August 1918 (considering he wasn't killed, imprisoned or exiled by the Romanian army, I concede that he couldn't have been a Bolshevik after February 1918).Anonimu (talk) 19:47, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

The book was edited by a collective and signed by Suveică. That is of course if the context doesn't establish already that your objection is frivolous. If you have proof that he was not a Bolshevik, or that he was not the same as a different Buzdugan who was a Bolshevik, the burden is on you to present it. I insist: the moment we have such proof is the moment when I'll change the text myself, if no one else will. Dahn (talk) 07:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

If the two of you are gonna start an argument, I'm gonna start an argument with Anittas. --Cei Trei (talk) 16:59, 5 October 2015 (UTC)