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Talk:Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

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Former good articleJulius and Ethel Rosenberg was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. 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.
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Template:Vital article

Age at death / limitations of sidebar

The right-hand information block suggested that, having died the same day, they died at the same age in spite of having different birth years. Reviewing the code, it appears this was an auto-calculated field which does not allow the flexibility of reporting two death ages at a unique time for non-unique birthdates. To clarify for other readers, I changed the code from 

| date_of_death  = June 19, 1953(1953-06-19) (aged 35) (both)

to 

| date_of_death  = June 19, 1953(1953-06-19) (aged 35) (Julius), and aged 37 (Ethel)

which I believe removes the ambiguity. There is still some minor formatting inconsistency as the sidebar places the initial age in parenthesis, but this was the best I could do with the automated process. At least now they are not reported dead at the same age.


Motives?

The current article is good at explaining the intel lost, and some of the impacts, but lacks a motive as to why the Rosenberg's did what they did. I'm sure early cold-war propaganda is untrustworthy, but time and evidence should present an answer to "why" they did it. 2600:6C48:7006:200:D84D:5A80:173:901D (talk) 03:28, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Money. 50.111.57.100 (talk) 08:50, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
They were Communists and supporters of the Soviet Union.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
The records, Soviet as well as FBI's and Harry Gold's own recollections, give a picture of the Rosenbergs as committed Communists who wanted to aid the Soviet Union by helping the Soviets gain the secrets of nuclear weapons (including Klaus Fuchs's and Edward Teller's early thermonuclear weapon concepts - which helped Sakharov conceive designs for Soviet thermonuclear weapons later). loupgarous (talk) 01:30, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Bias and unrelated information in this article?

It seems to me that this article has a very strange non-independent tone that isn't in line with the Misplaced Pages guidelines. Also, I'm concerned that this article contains an immense amount of unrelated information about other people, but does not accurately represent the historical debate and ongoing discussion about the Rosenbergs. I feel this page should be marked for major review. TheStranger616 (talk) 05:08, 27 October 2018 (UTC)


This is a strangely biased article, certainly in its introductory paragraph, where there's nothing resembling a neutral POV. A far more reasonable description would begin with stating that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried, convicted, and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. The rest of the article has sections that hew far more closely to a balanced assessment, alternating with tabloidy sections (for example, how to justify this? "The Rosenbergs' two sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, spent years trying to prove the innocence of their parents. They were orphaned by the executions and were not adopted by any relatives."). Crimes stated as factual are well beyond what the evidence can be shown to support, and the writing does not reach a level that is even vaguely befitting an encyclopedia article. 

There is further, a whiff of anti-semitism in the deployment of the word Jewish (and although it was removed from the opening description of the Rosenbergs as Jewish Americans, that lives on in google). Why, for example does it say this: "Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were buried at Wellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York"? or this: "the charges of antisemitism were widely believed abroad, but not among the vast majority in the United States." One might write paragraphs about that, but I'd like to see some evidence of the beliefs of a "vast majority"--and majority of whom?)

The only section relating to Korean war seems to be in quotation from the trial judge, but there should surely be some reference to the fraught state of US politics as a result of the US's fighting that grueling war during this time, with Communist China engaged in the fighting — all of which clearly provided a backdrop for the execution of people convicted of conspiracy to provide secrets to a wartime ally , secrets which had already been provide by Klaus Fuchs. 

 The Venona intercepts are valuable and important evidence; books written by political critics of the Rosenbergs are far less so.  I won't go on, as I am sadly short of time, but I would like to support the request for major review to which I am appending this comment.

Actio (talk) 23:18, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

As you say, they were convicted of a crime, and the article reflects that. The article also indicates that there has been an ongoing campaign to exonerate them (or at least Ethel). I think there is nothing anti-semitic about describing them as Jews. They were ethnic Jews and identified as such, as shown by the fact they were buried in a Jewish cemetery. I think you will have trouble finding a source discussing the Rosenbergs that doesn't describe them as Jewish.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:07, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Help! Vandalism in color print and formatting

Someone has vandalized this article, putting many sections in bold color font and messing up standard format. I can't figure out how to undo it.Parkwells (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

"Grassroots campaign" for clemency?

Not according to this 2012 paper by Ronald Radosh, which describes it as orchestrated by the Communist party (astroturfing would be more accurate). National Guardian is described as a "fellow-traveling weekly" one of whose editors was a KGB agent (pp. 82–83). Radosh also notes that:

The small group put together by the Almans struggled on its own with little support, until suddenly, in November and December of 1952 - almost overnight, it seemed - their committee was flooded with eager vol- unteers. Donations began pouring in. It became clear that suddenly the American Communist Party had reversed course and ordered its cadre to join the campaign and put all its efforts into the work. (83)

It was on December 3, 1952 - the same day that the French Rosenberg Defense Committee was founded - that Rudolf Slansky and his co-defendants were executed in Prague. Clearly, the Stalinist apparatus in Moscow desperately needed something to deflect the world's attention from the sordid execution of the innocent in Prague. The Rosenberg case fit the bill perfectly. (84)

Not until this past year, when the former KGB librarian Alexander Vassiliev released his "Notebooks" (verbatim renditions of documents he meticulously copied from the KGB archives, and eventually smuggled into London, where he now lives), was there corroboration that the American and Western European campaigns to gain clemency for the Rosenbergs had been created directly in Moscow from the very start. (85)

And then goes on to discuss the evidence... buidhe 01:39, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I've removed "grassroots". There is no doubt the worldwide Communist movement pushed the campaign. Equally, there is no doubt that many non-Communists like the Pope supported clemency. By the way, I think the section should be rewritten because it puts forward a biased false distinction between non-Communists and Communists and leftists.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
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