Former good article nomineeRussians was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
November 20, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed

Russians are not Slavs.[edit]

Greetings ! I am not russian but russian speaking person. Contrasting their language with other Slavic languages I found that some words look different and and even Ukrainian share same lexicon with Czech. 2.133.211.65 (talk) 07:55, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting hypothesis, but you are definitely wrong. There are no any doubts between linguists that Russian language is Indo-European language, that belongs to the Slavic language family. The 'lexicon' is not criteria to make such conclusions, especially taking in account the fact that many words in Ukrainian and Czech language have Germanic origin not Slavic (e.g. 'Thank you' - German 'Danke' - Ukrainian 'djákovati'). Also, some words in Russian have Greek origin. So you cannot assume the language family by just comparing the words. In that case you could take Ukrainian 'djákovati' (Germanic origin) and compare with Russian 'spasibo' (Slavic origin) and make a conclusion that Ukrainian is not Slavic language. It is silly, but it makes as much sense as your comment.Interesting hypothesis, but you are definitely wrong. There is no any doubts for between lindquist that Russian language is Indo-European language, that belongs to the Slavic language family. The 'lexicon' is not criteria to make such conclusions, especially taking in account the fact that many words in Ukrainian and Czech language have germanic origin, neither slavic (e.g. 'Thank you' - German 'Danke' - Ukrainian 'djákovati'). Also some words in Russian have greek origin. So you cannot assume the language family by just comparing the words. In that case you could take Ukrainian 'djákovati' (germanic origin) and compare with Russian 'spasibo' (slavic origin) and make a conclusion that Ukrainian is not slavic language. It is silly, but it makes as much sense as your comment. 91.123.65.221 (talk) 23:15, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Essentially a WP:FORUM thread that should have been reverted. - LouisAragon (talk) 17:56, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a person from Ukraine I'd question if Russians are really Slavic. This can be completely wrong so please no hate. But I clearly remember from History lessons that Russia is originally named Moscowia and came from Golden Horde. It got renamed as Russia only in October 22, 1721.
"The tsars of Moscow and, later, Russia understood that without an imposing past it was impossible to create a great nation and empire. Therefore it was necessary to glorify their historical roots and even to hijack the history of other nations. So, starting with Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584) the tsars of Moscow applied all their efforts to appropriate the history of Kyivan Rus, its glorious past, and to create an official mythology for the Russian Empire." 185.94.219.13 (talk) 17:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ultimate original research fail 2603:6011:9600:52C0:645E:6895:7583:F219 (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting hypothesis, but Wikipedia isn't the place for spreading original research and fringe theories. Summer talk 14:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious content - Genetics[edit]

The genetic section includes some dubious statements with unclear verification, such as "genetic purity", "East Slavs identical to West Slavs", "unusual homogeneity", etc., all cited by rather old references (from 2002 and 2012).

This stands in contrast to newer studies which highlight at least some heterogeneity and admixture events.[1][2]

Caution should be raised when someone speaks about "genetic purity", especially when these claims stand in contrast to:

Therefore, Siberian admixtures into Northeastern Europe likely began prior to 6.6 kya, coinciding with the expansion of Y-Chromosome haplogroup N1c1 among Siberians and Northeastern Europeans (7.1–4.9 kya). Since haplogroup N likely originated in Asia (Shi et al. 2013) and currently achieves its highest frequency among Siberian populations, its presence among Eastern Europeans likely reflects ancient gene flows from Siberia into Northeastern Europe.

Wang et al. 2015:

Orange172212 (talk) 08:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here is more recent study from 2017 that contradicts your claims.
https://bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-017-0578-3
According to geneticists, "Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians have almost identical proportions of Caucasus and Northern European components and have virtually no Asian influence". However, many ethnic minority groups from Russia were found to be characterized by the presence of significant higher amounts of Asian components, yet European ancestry also makes up the majority of their respective gene pool: "European components account for 50% - 90% of admixture vectors in both Turkic and Uralic speakers of the Volga-Ural region". Other ethnic minorities, such as from the Caucasus region, harbored predominantly "Caucasus and Iranian" components. Telleroftruth2000 (talk) 14:43, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Studies are primary sources. If different primary sources seem to contradict each other, we need to base the article on secondary sources (which are preferable, anyway). Given that human genetic diversity normally corresponds to the distance between populations, the claim that Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians are genetically very close to each other and removed from their neighbours seems to be a WP:REDFLAG. Rsk6400 (talk) 06:26, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Telleroftruth2000 (talk) 03:46, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is not some sort of a "flag" that east slavs share genetic similarities with each other. They are people with geographic proximity with each other, and have similar origins as a people. Furthermore, even if it was a "flag", my source, and another source ALREADY within this wiki article back up the claim that east slavs are similar so the "extraordinary evidence" requirement is met.
Anyway you misunderstood my point. I was refuting the other guy's claim that Russians have detectable/ considerable asaitic influences. My source and a source also ALREADY within the article refute this claim.
I have a consensus of sources on my side, some which are already within the article. Telleroftruth2000 (talk) 14:17, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Telleroftruth2000 (talk) 14:14, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure whether you got my point about primary and secondary sources. Of course, e.g. Ukrainians are gentically close to Russians, but I'd bet they are also close to Poles and Russians from northern Russia are probably close to Finns. Rsk6400 (talk) 15:54, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0888754318307419
  2. ^ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5204334/

Images[edit]

My edit was reverted with the following edit summary: " good faith, but adding pictures of arbitrarily chosen "national heroes" is against WP:NOETHNICGALLERIES".

It's a flawed reasoning done in good faith because the pictures weren't in a gallery, it wasn't a photomontage, and it's not against Wikipedia rules to have a few pictures of famous people in an article about a nation or ethnic group, as long as the people are well-known or important in that nation's history, just look at the articles Ukrainians, Polish people or African Americans for comparison. -- Tobby72 (talk) 18:08, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that the use of the "gallery" tag is the problem. As I understand NOETHNICGALLERIES, the problem is the arbitrariness of the selection. If Tolstoy (I personally think that "War and Peace" is one of the best books ever written), then why not Dostoevsky ? Why, among the multitude of Russian athletes, Sharapova ? Why only the "good guys" ? Why not Lavrentiy Beria, Lenin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Nikolay Yezhov ? Rsk6400 (talk) 18:31, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Rsk6400:, I disagree with your suggestion to replace the images of Leo Tolstoy or Pyotr Tchaikovsky with the images of "bad guys" Lavrentiy Beria or Nikolay Yezhov, not to mention that the images you deleted were in the "Culture" section. I wonder why you have only focused on one select ethnic group and don't try to push for the same changes in articles about other nations and ethnicities? I'm still assuming good faith, so I believe you've misunderstood the guidelines or you want a general change in the guidelines that would apply to all nations and ethnic groups, but I don't think readers and editors would support your changes if, taking the "Ukrainians" article as an example, you replaced the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko with "bad guys" such as Vlas Chubar, Stepan Bandera, John Demjanjuk or Roman Shukhevych, or if you delete the pictures of all famous and publicly known Ukrainians from the article, because Shevchenko is there and Lesya Ukrainka is missing. I would not support such changes either, because pictures of great national poets and writers like Shevchenko or Ivan Franko are more suitable for an article about the nation than pictures of "bad guys" like Shukhevych or Demjanjuk.
Per WP:NOETHNICGALLERIES — "Articles about ethnic groups or similarly large human populations should not be illustrated by a photomontage or gallery of images of group members". Plain and simple. Wikipedia guidelines don't see a problem with a few pictures of famous people unless it is a photomontage or gallery. -- Tobby72 (talk) 09:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't suggest to replace some of the images with Beria or such people. I asked that question only to demonstrate that selecting images is often arbitrary. The problems of other articles (like Ukrainians) are not relevant here. We should look at good articles like Icelanders: Two pictures of real prominent people plus one picture of a monument, all of them mentioned in the text. British people has four pictures plus the stamp of the late Queen. One article where I was involved (not a good article), Germans, has none. If you doubt the neutrality of my editing, see e.g. my comment at Talk:Portuguese_people#Ethnic_galleries. NOETHNICGALLERIES links to two discussions. The concerns voiced there are arbitrary selection and contentiousness of the selection. Rsk6400 (talk) 13:15, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality of section on Religions[edit]

Jews are not mentioned in that section, seemingly because they are not "ethnic Russians". Defining ethnic Russians in a way that excludes Jews seems to be original research based on an idea of ethnicity being determined primarily by a person's "blood" (or genetics). Rsk6400 (talk) 06:59, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 20 March 2024[edit]

Remove total population. It's misleading and unsourced. 193.187.88.197 (talk) 00:16, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. It looks like all the population numbers are sourced. Please be specific about what you want changed. RudolfRed (talk) 00:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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