Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 March 1

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March 1

What did/would communist parties do about gemstones and precious metals?

Did they have jewelry stores? Was it legal to keep certain amounts of jewelry and/or coins from before the revolution? What did they do with confiscated precious substances? What was the plan for when the Third International (or whoever they supported) runs every country and later when the state withers away into post-scarcity utopia? Would most or all the limited world supply just be used for utilitarian purposes like lenses, scratchers and conductors? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:06, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

During the 1930s, Stalin tried to extract all gold and hard currency from the Soviet populace to use for international trading purposes. The carrot was Torgsin and the stick was the NKVD (as seen in one notorious scene in "The Master and Margarita" novel). You can also look at Moscow gold and Moscow gold (Spain)... AnonMoos (talk) 10:19, 1 March 2022 (UTC) 10:14, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Oops, I guess "Moscow gold" just redirects to "Moscow gold (Spain)", but there should be an article on Soviet funding of international Communist parties (sometimes with gold), and myths and legends about Soviet funding of international Communist parties with gold... AnonMoos (talk) 10:19, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

The United States also outlawed private ownership & possession of gold in the 1930s and tried to collect all of it from the populace... I'm not sure what Stalin did had anything to do with communism per se. Anyway, to the OP, know that communism doesn't prohibit personal property or wealth. Wealth may be heavily taxed so as to be redistributed, but Marx and Engels only recommended total confiscation of personal wealth as a condition for emigration. When communists talk about "private property", they mean industrial production, natural resources, corporations owned by billionaire shareholders, etc; NOT individual personal property. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:9577:CEC2:EEDD:5F29 (talk) 18:43, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

That's nice -- the United States outlawed private investments in gold bullion as part of an internal demonetization of gold which accompanied the U.S. going off the gold standard. The U.S. government did not remotely use brutal secret police to extract every last ounce of precious metal or unit of foreign currency from citizens, the way Stalin did. And the original question asked about what Communist regimes did, not just theoretical Marxism. AnonMoos (talk) 03:39, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

There is also the Romanian Treasure. --Error (talk) 15:01, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Jewelry stores did exist in Communist countries, but they were mostly state-owned. -- Kpalion^(talk) 19:33, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Mystery admiral

Over at WikiProject Military history, an editor has asked about this portrait which is stated to be "Admiral Sir Charles Everard", but no other mention of him can be found. We think the uniform might be that of a Royal Navy captain between 1748 and 1767, but are otherwise none the wiser. Any ideas? Alansplodge (talk) 11:18, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

The painting came from Delapré Abbey, so perhaps worth investigating some of the owners of that? The Abbey was for a time owned by Charles Hardy. He sold it to the Bouveries. DuncanHill (talk) 12:30, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe he's related to the Everard baronets? --Jayron32 13:48, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both. I did look at the Everard Baronets but there weren't any obvious matches.

Duncan has wisely The discussion [has continued] at the MilHist page linked above, so any further contributions should go there. Alansplodge (talk) 15:58, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Duncan who? DuncanHill (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, mistaken identity :-) Alansplodge (talk) 22:07, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

copyright infringement and fair use of a resources

I have edited and added citation on the Bio data for Mathias Walukaga and even acknowledged the source of the information How best was this to be done without infringing on the rights of the owner thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Halinature2016 (talk • contribs) 15:27, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

You have to write the text yourself (as in, create the words and sentences all on your own, not merely copy the letters and words from another source). At Wikipedia, we must both 1) cite our sources of information and 2) write completely new text which contains those ideas (but not the exact words) of the source material. Citing the source is good, but you must now go and create your own narrative using new words and sentences that are not merely copies of the source text. --Jayron32 15:43, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

There typically is no copyright on information itself, only on the way it is expressed (there may be some exceptions like database rights, but they only apply to the database as a whole, not, in general, individual records). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:06, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

There is also the matter of quotations, which are frequently used here. Typically no more than a short paragraph, and prominently displayed as being quotes. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:04, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I need some help on getting something more in depth

Recently, I read the Wikipedia article on the Guatemalan Civil War, and I could not find anything that went more in depth on the different weapons used in the war. I was wondering if someone could find a link that could help me with that? Palmtreegames (talk) 21:07, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Great question, something I always do on google searches is add the ".pdf" so type in: Guatemalan Civil War .pdf on the Google search bar, right off the top I have scholarly results from Columbia and Vanderbilt Universities as well as something from the Carter Center and on and on. Best of luck!2600:1702:690:F7A0:E5F0:7410:5C7C:7765 (talk) 01:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

A good way to find scholarly results is to search with Google Scholar.  --Lambiam 07:44, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

thank you very much! Palmtreegames (talk) 17:17, 2 March 2022 (UTC)