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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Grafikm fr (talk | contribs) at 09:03, 6 February 2007 (→Use of sources and the term "occupation": minor corrections). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Evidence presented by Constanz

The Soviet rule is (most probably always) referred to as occupation in reputable sources

Variety of sources, as was cited on Talk:Occupation of Latvia 1940-1945 (diff):

- '"Ultimatums of June 15, 16, 1940, charged hostile activities; Russia had occupied the Baltics militarily and had arranged for pro-Soviet administrations to request admittance to the Soviet Union."' --Encyclopedia of World History

- '"Nazi-Soviet Pact of Aug., 1939, placed the Baltic countries under Soviet control, and the following month the USSR secured military bases in Estonia. Complete Soviet military occupation came in June, 1940."' Estonia, The Columbia Encyclopedia

- '"Soviet troops occupied Latvia in 1940, and subsequent elections held under Soviet auspices resulted in the absorption of Latvia into the USSR as a constituent republic."' --Latvia, The Columbia Encyclopedia

- Encarta uses it.

- multitude of results on google book search just for for "Soviet occupation" Estonia OR Latvia OR Lithuania

-Also Britannica:

Thus, as I've already claimed with my request, the 3 users - Irpen, Grafikm fr, User:Petri Krohn who dispute the fact of occupation, have engage in promoting MINORITY POV, and rigidly reject the Misplaced Pages:Verifiability principles. Constanz - Talk 10:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Disputing occupation term relies on WP:OR or straw man arguments

Irpen, Grafikm fr, User:Petri Krohn merely use WP:OR or straw man arguments instead of sources. Just some of their 'thesis':

1. “Baltic states joined USSR in 1940” - this here is one's own invention (doesn't satisfy WP:V)
2. Baltic states “were SSRs on their own rights, their representants sieged in the Supreme Soviet” and “All this hardly qualifies as "occupation"” - we can't base a dispute on one's sentiments
3. Calling the events Soviet occupation is called a modern form of Holocaust denial” - Are Western mainstream sources also holocaust-denying? The argument used by P.Krohn and others is esp. malicious (but is often repeated: )
4. The term 'occupation' is said to be “crafted during the Cold War” - again no sources, but own argumentation
5. To support (!) the thesis that Baltic states were not occupied by the USSR it is claimed that Baltic states collaborated quite willingly with Nazi Germany” (more willingly than the USSR 1939-1941?)
6. Another argument why 'occupation didn't take place': “Well, because Baltic people (in average, again) gladly collaborated with Nazis. Something they quite willingly "forget", I wonder why.”

From statements for Request for arbitration, there are following 'arguments' found, which should prove that 'Latvia was not occupied by the USSR':

1. “Anyone who follows political news from this region closely (or even remotely) knows that there is currently a heavy return to nationalism in these three countries, bordering sometimes on Nazism and Holocaust denial”
2. “The heart of the matter here is the Nuremberg style denaturalization laws and the right of the newly independent Baltic States to deprive citizenship from their ex-soviet citizens. The view expressed in this article is the one promoted by the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, a propaganda tool of the Latvian government”. (diff) - Most probably, P.Krohn also find Britannica and Encarta “propaganda tools” of Western imperialism.
3. About the present article it is said: ”In its present form it only serves as a tool for ethnic POV-pushing and associated hate speech.”
4. “Until 1991 most of the worlds governments saw the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union as legal.” - which is obviously false: compare intro of Occupation of Latvia 1940-1945
5. And there are said to be “also sources that show that Latvia and Latvians voluntarily joined the Soviet Union in 1940.” -- Curiously, none have been cited so far! Constanz - Talk 10:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Thus, if User:Grafikm fr says that (diff) “while some sort of consensus is not reached, the tag has to stay as a warning for a casual reader” I'm afraid that the tag will remain forever, since how can we achieve a consensus which would include opinions based on original research, straw man arguments or propaganda ideas of And you are lynching Negroes type? How is it possible to reconcile Flat Earth Society members with a modern viewpoint? Constanz - Talk 10:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Thus, the result of the dispute carried on by 3 users is disruption. Constanz - Talk 07:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Martintg (to be completed soon)

POV Tag Initially placed by Ilja

POV tag initially placed by Ilja on November 9th on basis that he personally believed it would affect his residency status in Latvia .

After discussion on talk page with Ilja and addition of section to substantiate correctness of title and no further issue raised by Ilja to reasons to remove tag , consensus assumed and tag removed.

Article tagged non-compliant by Irpen

Irpen initially tags the article non-compliant on Nov 10th along with corresponding discussion as to reasons in "General Criticisms" section in talk . Discussions on this matter continue until Nov 19th, with no further input from Irpen since Nov 14th

While the discussion on the talk page is focused the non-compliant tag, Irpen adds an additional POV-title tag on Nov 13th without any reason given in talk page.

By Dec 5th, after 20 days with no further rebuttal by Irpen of points by Peteris Cedrins on Nov 14 or by Doc15071969 on Nov 19 implying Irpen's dispute is unsustainable, POV-title tag removed by Constanz giving justification on talk, to underline "General Criticisms" section

POV tagging by Grafikm

Grafikm applies the POV-title tag for the first time on Dec 5, immediately after Constanz removed it (see above) , claiming there is no consensus. Ensuing discussion on talk page. Constanz provides verfiable evidence of published sources , while Grafikm offers only conjecture and opinion as to why title is POV.

A third opinion by Grouse on January 6 states that Grafikm ought to provide citations to reliable sources and POV tags cannot be applied without question . And yet Grafikm continues to sustain the dispute up till January 25 without offering any cites to reliable sources, only to claim his uncited, unverifiable opinion that "occupation" is a term crafted during the Cold War as fact .

POV tagging by Ghirlandajo

Ghirlandajo applies the POV-title tag for the first time on Dec 6 , with no justification on talk page, apart from his contribution in regard to Heroization of Fascism:

POV tagging by Petri Krohn

Petri Krohn applies the POV-title tag for the first time on January 15 , on the basis of his personal opinion the article is a form of Holocaust Denial . Yet he offers no cites to reliable sources to sustain his dispute.

Evidence presented by User:Grafikm_fr

Content disputes are not vandalism

It is clear that, according to WP:VAND, POV and content disputes are in no way vandalism. Consequently, calling your opponents vandals during a content dispute is a heavy personal attack and should be punished as such.

Despite being warned several times, Constanz and Martintg refered to his opponents edits as "vandalism" (see examples):

One has to notice that reasons for this tagging were explained several times and in detail on talk (see Talk:Occupation_of_Latvia_1940-1945 ), but when one decided to dismiss all arguments as propaganda (see next section), it does not help much.

Personal attacks by User:Constanz and User:Martintg

Calling their opponents "gang":

Referring to his opponents' edits as "trolling", which is considered a heavy insult:

Calling his opponents' point of view "propaganda", which is also insulting:

Obviously, such kind of aggressive attitude must be stopped. You will notice that, on the other hand, Irpen, me and others conducted the debate in a civil way, without relying on terms such as "trolling" or others.

User:Vecrumba's inflammatory comments

While he did not took part in Constanz edit warrying, User:Vecrumba's attitude is extremely inflammatory.

• He has an inflammatory userbox on his user page ("This user refutes post-Soviet Stalinist propaganda") Such a userbox is divisive and inflammatory.
• These inflammatory comments even make it into the article ("most persistent fabrication of Soviet propaganda." and so on). Misplaced Pages is not a blog and such political rants are totally out of place, and even more so on WP articles. In particular, such inflammatory statements should not be held on user pages.

Even more so, this inflammatory attitude sometimes degenerates into Holocaust denial such as "Unless you were Jewish, the Soviets were the worse of the two evils in Eastern Europe." . Do I really need to comment on that? This is a clear minimizing of Nazi crimes and should be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. (You will notice that given the trend in Baltic countries to plant memorials to SS troops and stuff, such things hardly surprise me, but that does not mean they shouldn't be dealt with).

Use of sources and the term "occupation"

Every piece of evidence presented by Constanz and to lesser extent by Martintg and Vecrumba neglects the notion of systemic bias, because:

1) Political sources (resolutions and declarations) may not count as reliable, as it is clear that the goals of politicians are not verifiability and neutrality. (Iraq 2003, everyone?)

2) Obviously, most history books and other sources regarding the 1940-1941 and especially 1944-1991 period of Baltic history were written during Cold War (it does not take a scientist to know that it's kinda hard to write a book on a 1944-1991 period before 1944). During that period, both USA and USSR spent most of their time happily criticizing each other and classifying each other's policy as "occupation", "exploitation", "racism" and similar nonsensical namecalling. Our case is not an exception, even if, curiously enough, Churchill and Roosevelt recognized (and created together with Stalin) USSR's borders right after the war. Consequently, every piece of evidence (from both sides) must be taken with a (very heavy) pinch of salt.

Furthermore, let's turn to other historical examples. We don't have an article called Occupation of Brittany (1532-2007), while this region was forcibly annexed by France. We don't have Occupation of Corsica or Occupation of Basque country, despite some people calling for independence in both cases, sometimes using weapons. Heck, we don't even have Occupation of Scotland, despite some guys making films about how English were evil and how independent Scots were good. Why? Well, among other reasons, because it is too loaded a word. After an initial phase of war (which, btw, was almost inexistent in the case of Latvia since the article itself mentions only a handful of border guards killed) a state gets integrated with the other and a new historical period starts.

Constanz and others are also trying to make everyone believe that the term "occupation" can be used because of massive deportations performed in Baltic states. However, millions of Russians, for instance, were deported during 1930s to Siberia. Is this also occupation? Of whom and by who? Of Russians by E.T. perhaps...

In summary, what we have here is a dangerous systemic bias that should be avoided at all costs. In the same way that no one (thankfully) calls past historical events "occupations", the word should be employed only in cases where there is an obvious historical consensus about it, for instance in order to speak about Nazi wars of aggression.

As for Britannica and Encarta, it is not the first time we do not follow them (naming conventions are a prime example, see Talk:Sukhumi for instance) since paper encyclopedias merely collect the existing terms without any reflexion. That's the advantage WP gets over paper encyclopedias.

Consequently, it would be highly advisable to use a common neutral naming convention in order to avoid naming two identical events differently because such and such fancies it.

User:Martintg's meatpuppetry

As of 31 Jan 2006, User:Martintg is a single purpose account with almost no contributions outside the given article and its talk page (and outside this ArbCom case). . He creates the account and almost at once starts edit warrying on the page or making attacks on talk. Single-purpose accounting is strongly discouraged.

While he is obviously not Constanz's sockpuppet, his behaviour and his help for Constanz revert warrying on the article qualifies as meatpuppetry and should be dealt with accordingly.

Grafikm 08:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

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