Talk:Oleg Khlevniuk

Regarding recent cleanup

@My very best wishes I am not sure of the reason for your removal of content, although I have a sneaky feeling it's connected with the Kirov article, but I do not want to step on your toes, either. The expert.ru source is archived, if you want to re-add it [1], and a reference for his Nove prize can be found here: [2]. Cheers. Ostalgia (talk) 19:38, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, it were different links on the page. Ref 2 - yes, supports the statement (I will fix the page). Ref 1 - the article is about another person and mentions the subject only in passing; it hardly justifies describing him as a "leading Russian historian" based on that, even his page on ruwiki does not describe him as such. My very best wishes (talk) 19:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The expert.ru link is the same one - I just ran it through archive.org to see if it had been archived in the past. The other claim was unsourced IIRC but it was just one google search away. Regarding the claim of being a leading historian of Stalinism, it is not a particularly controversial claim. Looking through jstor you can find "Oleg V. Khlevniuk is probably the foremost historian of Stalin's Soviet Union" [3]; "No historian is more responsible for the resurgence of political history, or is more familiar with the Stalinist archives, than Oleg Khlevniuk" [4]; "Oleg Khlevniuk is perhaps the most prolific and productive Russian historian of the Stalin era" [5]; "the leading Russian expert on the terror" [6]; "No one knows the story that the Soviet archives tell of Stalins rise better than Khlevniuk" [7]. There's more of course but you get the idea. I do not plan on re-adding it, but I don't think we gained anything by removing it. Cheers. Ostalgia (talk) 05:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like an advertisement. Did anyone criticize him for anything? There is a large Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union, and he is not a "leading" author out there, just one of many. But you are welcome to fix the page as you wish. My very best wishes (talk) 18:40, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure I get your point. Are you calling scholarly reviews of his work and peer-reviewed articles advertisements? And are you implying that a list that someone compiled for Wikipedia is more relevant than the opinion of his peers? There is, for sure, criticism of Khlevniuk that one could mention, but it does permeate his work in such a way that you could point to an obvious blind spot, nor would this criticism, in any way, diminish his prominence - I can criticise some of Sheila Fitzpatrick's views, for instance, but she is still one of the most influential scholars of her generation.

As said, I am not planning on readding that, or on editing the article at all. As a general rule I try to abstain from editing articles about people I have met in person, even if (as is the case here) I do not have any sort of affiliation (or relationship of any sort) with them. I just found your edits to be... odd, given that Khlevniuk would very literally be one of the first names to come up if you were to discuss the Stalin era in an academic environment. Cheers. Ostalgia (talk) 21:29, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I am not an expert in this area, just a reader. To be honest, I never heard about Khlevniuk and his books. Quickly looking at his article, what can I say? Focusing on the former Soviet archives, where he is presumably a top expert, he said: "всегда существовало и продолжает существовать подозрение, что какие-то самые секретные ключевые документы остаются недоступными или уничтожены. Однако пока такие подозрения не имеют оснований.". Well, this is an obvious lie obviously incorrect statement, as one could easily show using numerous RS (here are just a few examples: [8],[9],[10]). Moreover, they continued doing the same in occupied Ukraine [11]. Khlevnuk even contradicts himself by saying in the end "ограниченность доступа к части архивов" (well, this is true, but such an understatement!). So why he is lying saying this while knowing (as an expert) that a lot of documents were systematically destroyed and a lot of relevant archives are inaccessible to researchers? I would not trust anything he wrote based on this example. My very best wishes (talk) 22:44, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Speaking on the main subject of his article (Stalin), he says: "Сталин был выдающимся теоретиком и практиком концепции классовой борьбы. ("Stalin was extraordinary theoretician and practitioner of the theory of class struggle") What? This is like a modern day historian seriously saying: "Hitler was an extraordinary theoretician and practitioner of the superiority of master race". Yes, Stalin did invent the ridiculous slogan of intensification of the class struggle under socialism, but only for the purpose of propaganda, to "scientifically" justify his terror. Stalin was never a "theoretician". The concept of class struggle in Leninist-Stalinist version was a pseudoscience, slogan, propaganda, pretty much like master race. It was never a struggle of peasants, workers and "capitalists/"kulaks" in the USSR, only a dictatorship of CPSU, NKVD and their Great Leader (especially during the Stalinist times), pretty much like in the modern day North Korea. Please read books by other historians. My very best wishes (talk) 03:37, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Is that really your argument? A handful of cherrypicked, decontextualised, twisted quotes (if you have not done so on purpose you are welcome to re-read what you're citing) and OR vs the [sourced] opinion of the academic mainstream on his work? And you expect me, or anybody else, to go with the former?

You mention that you had never heard of him or his books before (yet you feel confident enough to edit the article!), and I have no trouble believing that, seeing as you appear to think he is some sort of Stalin apologist or thereabouts, and claim that he is taking Soviet slogans at face value. To that all I would say is that you have some reading to do. Cheers.

Ostalgia (talk) 05:09, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I simply borrowed an approach frequently used on RSNB. If source X makes provably false statements, this is not a good source. This is not to say that all his books are not RS. Some of them were written in co-authorship with others and must be judged individually. Yes, he is trying to position himself as a neutral observer, but someone seriously saying that "Stalin was an extraordinary theoretician and practitioner of the theory of class struggle" is an obvious Stalinist apology. This phrase came straight from old Soviet textbooks and sounds like a joke or an irony. Did he really mean it? It seems that he did, and he did not use scare quotes. I made a couple of searches prior to editing, but did not find sources supporting many statements on the page. You are welcome to restore any content if you can find any RS supporting it. My very best wishes (talk) 13:13, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The fact that you continue to double down on the Stalin apologist claim, in spite of not having even read his work, is shocking, but it's also fundamentally a BLPVIO, especially when coupled with the claim that he is lying (!). The fact that all of this comes from someone who insists on defending the dignity and honour of conspiracy theorist Valery Solovei, and who toned down the criticism of the crackpot pamphlet that is Icebreaker, makes it all the more bizarre. As for reliable sources, I literally posted about half a dozen academic sources for a claim you removed and you called them an advertisement. Forgive my exasperation, but you have to understand that this is akin to discussing with a Lysenkoist on the talk page of an article on a contemporary biologist. Ostalgia (talk) 20:16, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

If you believe that something was a BLPVIO, you are very welcome to remove or fix it per policy. I do not mind. I do not think it was. I was just commenting on a Russian language source [12] written by the subject of this page. In my view, it includes at least one provably false claim as follows from several references I provided (NYT, etc.) and at least one statement that sounded like undue praise of Stalin ("Stalin was extraordinary theoretician and practitioner of the theory of class struggle"). I might be wrong, but that is what the cited source says. Evaluating the sources and their authors (if they are reliable and biased or not) is something we suppose to do. I might be out of project for a while. So, happy editing! My very best wishes (talk) 00:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

As about your another question: yes, sure, I treat all BLP pages equally because that is what our policy requires. For example, here is what I did on this page. Speaking on advertisements, yes, many book reviews advertise the book, but we should not. My very best wishes (talk) 13:29, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Wow, just... wow. The BLP violation is on this talk page, not the main article, I believed this was clear. You are accusing an individual of being a Stalin apologist and of lying in his professional activity.

I also would have expected an academic to be familiar with the concept of a book review, and to realise that not all of the mentioned sources are reviews, either (there's no shortage of other articles you can find). Ostalgia (talk) 19:34, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Some RS may be found by making searches in Russian, e.g. [13], but I am leaving this to others like you who might be interested in editing this page. Now included. There are no many publications about him. His own writings (like [14]) seem to be pretty much "mainstream", nothing new, unusual or interesting. My very best wishes (talk) 15:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

As a proof of him being a mainstream historian, he frequently criticizes outright Stalinist writers - see for example, lenta.ru/articles/2015/08/29/bioleader/. My very best wishes (talk) 19:59, 2 May 2024 (UTC)