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The introduction states "The Great Purge... was Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to solidify his power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the state; the purges were also designed to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky as well as other prominent political rivals within the party." This is contradicted by the more recent work of James Harris, Stephen Wheatcroft, and others cited later in the article that the purges were not motivated by Stalin's hunger for power but a fear of counterrevolution fueled by misleading intelligence reports, the rise of anticommunist right-wing dictatorships along Soviet borders led by the aggressive, expansionist Nazi regime, intensified fears of invasion, particularly after the emergence of the Anti-Comintern Pact and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. STPatrick1982 (talk) 15:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The works of Arch Getty also provide another outlook, focusing on the nature of how the purges spread out and ended up infecting the intelligentsia at large which caused it to accelerate in scope rather than some grand orchestrated terror campaign to secure Stalin's position 144.124.136.48 (talk) 10:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The Kremlin Case or what is more commonly known as the Kremlin Affair/Kremlin Plot was a distinct event in 1935 that occurred before the Great Purge. No special attention is paid to the specific affair within the article, so if there's a good reason for it let me know. Padlocks (talk) 06:48, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• If it was a lead-up event, then it would be worth mentioning, and properly sourced of course, even if it isn't a part of the Great Purge itself. More than likely, the reason it isn't included is simply because no one has taken the time to research, source and write it. Alternatively, if it truly is completely unrelated, you can always start an article using WP:AFC and ask for the sourced article (even if incomplete) to be published over the redirect. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 06:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

comment that ‘americans who went to the embassy of the united states were rounded up and shot by ‘lurking nkvd agents’ links to a third hand report piece which provides no citations. given a lack of citations this section should be shortened to discuss more general issues 82.14.96.126 (talk) 04:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The statement is also almost copied word for word from the cited article:

Article:

At the height of the Terror, the American emigrants had besieged their embassy, begging for passports so they could leave Russia.

Wikipedia:

At the height of the Terror, American immigrants besieged the US embassy, begging for passports so they could leave the Soviet Union.

Article:

They were turned away only to be arrested on the pavement outside by lurking NKVD agents.

Wikipedia:

They were turned away by embassy officials, only to be arrested on the pavement outside by lurking NKVD agents.

The cited article is also an advertisement / summary of a book (The Foresaken) that Tim Tzouliadis wrote (the same Tim Tzouliadis also happens to be the author of the cited article). As for this author's credentials, Amazon states: "Tim Tzouliadis is a writer and filmmaker. Born in 1968, he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University, and went on to pursue a career in television current affairs and documentary-making for Channel 4, BBC2, NBC Television and National Geographic Television." If I'm reading that correctly, he doesn't have an academic background in history or Eastern European studies that would make him an obvious expert on the topic at hand. Though, the synopsis on Amazon on the book also claims that, the author looked into potentially reliable sources: "Through official records, memoirs, newspaper reports and interviews [Tim Tzouliadis] searches the most closely guarded archive in modern history to reconstruct their story - one of honesty, vitality and idealism brought up against the brutal machinery of repression." However, from the synopsis, it's not clear how he got access to "the most closely guarded archive in modern history", and it's also not clear how much of his book is based on actual reliable sources and how much on "memoirs [...] and interviews". I don't have a copy to fact-check. There are some reviews that say that notes and bibliography take up half the book and that he relies "mostly on secondary literature", while others say that it's mostly based on the memoirs of two Americans, "thin documentary record[s]", that the author "failed to capture the overall historical significance beyond the obvious suffering of select individuals", and that "the book is pretty thin in terms of historical interpretation and significance".

Either way, it's definitely not a classical academic source. Nakonana (talk) 17:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I reverted [1] recent changes by @FictiousLibrarian because no source saying that - User talk:FictiousLibrarian#February 2024 . ManyAreasExpert (talk) 18:45, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]