Talk:Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

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Wiki Education assignment: Debating the Holodomor

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2025 and 30 April 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): FootnoteObserver (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by FootnoteObserver (talk) 02:03, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why remove the death toll?

Makes no sense LentiaCity (talk) 21:54, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The death toll makes no sense. The sources cited did not satisfy Wokipedia policy about reliable sources. Killing people that happen to be Christians does not mean "persecution of christians". For example, in World War II 75 million were killed of which I am sure 40 million were christians, but this does not make World War II to be "Persecution of Christians". --Altenmann >talk 21:59, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am sure all 75 million were Christians because honestly said it was kinda Christians vs Christians LentiaCity (talk) 22:00, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And this opinion shows our level of understanding of history. --Altenmann >talk 22:09, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great Purge does still count because Christians were also targeted --> religious activists LentiaCity (talk) 22:01, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing. Adding "Category: Massacres of Christians" is vandalism how? It fits as Christians were massacred, INTENTIONALLY LentiaCity (talk) 22:06, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

YOu seemed to ignore what I wrote in your talk page. Let me spell it for you again: all edits must be supported by citations from reliable sources. Opinions of wikipedians do not count and will not be discussed here. Wikipedia talk pages are not discussion forums. --Altenmann >talk 22:08, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't answer my Question. IN THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS, CHRISTIANS WERE MASSACRED LentiaCity (talk) 22:09, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to continue ignoring my instruction. --Altenmann >talk 22:17, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union fit to Massacres of Christians? LentiaCity (talk) 22:23, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to continue ignoring my instruction. --Altenmann >talk 22:17, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See previous discussion on this. The figures are dubious and the infobox should be removed since this was recently added. Mellk (talk) 02:32, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TL;DR: Ultimate source of the figure was an estimate by the Eastern Orthodox Church. May as well cite the Soviet government as well and write the figure as 0 to 25 million. Yue🌙 05:54, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No reliable sources even from EOC. --Altenmann >talk 06:14, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And I mean, extraordinary claims require extraordinarily good sources. The idea that like 15 million Christians were killed mainly or even partly because of the religion is a very very extraordinary claim. Somthing like 4-5 million Soviets died in the Holodomor famine and this is a huge famous deal with tons of sources showing that it happened. Six million Jews in the Holocaust and this is a huge famous deal with tons of sources showing that it happened. Maybe one million in the Armenian genocide and this is huge famous deal with tons of sources showing that it happened, even tho it was in an obscure place and time and was covered up. Oh here is a paragraph from Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin that seems to be well ref'd:

Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.[5][6][7] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8][9][10][11][12] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[13][14][15] some 390,000[16] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[17] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[18] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[2] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[19] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][20]

So, total under Stalin, one million straight-out murdered (mostly for political reasons or actual crimes or saying the wrong thing to the wrong person or having the wrong sibling or just generally getting caught up at random). 2+ million died from starvation, privation, inept government, and what have you, plus add in the great famine with say six million, basically all thru starvation.

See, you can't disappear 15 million people or ten or five or even one million without leaving plenty of traces. There would be tons of scholarly papers and books and documentaries and curricula and so forth if even one million Soviets were executed because they were Christians.

It's at least believable that some scores of thousands of people or whatever were executed for being performativly Christian, or being church officials and not being sufficiently cooperative, or like that. (If the Soviets were executing people just for being Christian, they would have had to kill most of the Russian population as most by far were at least nominally Christian in 1918.) Those numbers a reasonable person could believe, providing that there are good references for it. Simply throwing around ridiculously huge numbers because some ideologue said them or because you want to believe it is true or even if you personally have convinced yourself that it is true, that has nothing to do with anything that we are trying to do here. Herostratus (talk) 01:16, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]