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Why does the article use "Bloodlands: Europe Between Stalin and Hitler" but the cover image have "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" (with Stalin and Hitler reversed)? Which is the correct title, or have they both been used on different editions of the book? Calathan ( talk) 16:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I made a series of corrections to the statistical information in the article based on on my copy of Bloodlands and a hard copy of the article in the Ottawa Citizen, Pages 411-412 of Bloodlands can be verified on amazon.com. We may not agree with Snyder's numbers but we must make sure that we post what he actually wrote. -- Woogie10w ( talk) 16:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
In the section Number of Victims, the description most of whom were non-combatants is not correct . The word most implies that some were combatants, in fact Synder does not include combatants in his figure of 14 million. We need make sure that this article is correct, we cannot misrepresent the position of Snyder since he is a living person. I believe that Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Reliable sources is relevant in this situation. Controversial, poorly-sourced claims in biographies of living people should be deleted immediately.-- Woogie10w ( talk) 11:27, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
From the book: "not a single one of the fourteen million murdered was a soldier on active duty ... none were bearing weapons" [1]. Editing page to reflect Snyder's actual words. Wallnot ( talk) 21:15, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
References
The Jacobin is not RS. It is, as is blatantly obvious from its own description, WP:FRINGE. For it to be WP:RS it would have to have "a reputation for fact checking and accuracy". It doesn't. In particular, the review under question is a prime example of that.
Additionally, the quote being included is inaccurate (Lazare is confused - Antyk didn't exist until November 1943, whereas the quote is from 1942, so Antyk could not have made it) and off topic (what's it got to do with Snyder?), not to mention the wording is highly POV. The text was, unsurprisingly, inserted into the article by some fly-by-night IP.
Stop reinserting it. It's WP:FRINGE, non- WP:RS, WP:UNDUE and WP:POV.
And oh yeah, if you're going start attributing views to people based solely on their ethnicities, you might want to take that "[ I am a fascist. I am openly fascist, both here and in real life.]" stuff off your user page. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 21:40, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Anyhow, let's begin…
I repeat my best guess: you don't like Lazare's article because he portrays the Home Army in a bad light.
As for my user page: no, Marek! Fascism is life! -- YeOldeGentleman ( talk) 01:00, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Anyway, I'm not impressed with Lazare for other reasons, and I'm heartily sick of conversing with such an insufferably arrogant individual. Let's leave it here. I'm sure we'd both rather be editing articles rather than back-and-forthing here. Feel free, if you want, to have the last word, which I promise to read. -- YeOldeGentleman ( talk) 10:33, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
The page gives too much weight to uncritical praise from popular writers, hardly mentioning major criticisms from professionals. My attempts to fix this imbalance were reverted by IPs and recently registered editors. ( t · c) buidhe 23:14, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
I thank Davide King and others for their work on this article in recent months. However I have restored some of my edits from a few months back when I substantially expanded the "Academic reviews" section, and also cut some of what I saw as undue emphasis on critical voices. I believe that this section should reflect not only the balance of scholarly reception but also the nuance of that reception, and that organizing it into opposing "positive" and "negative" subsections distorts this nuance. I also think that more can and should be done to restore due balance to the section, in particular cutting those remarks which come from scholars not considered notable enough to have their own WP articles –– as I did before, though this was partially reverted at some point over the summer. I have not gone so far as to cut these passages again, and would like to invite further comment about how best to present a balanced account of this book's scholarly reception before making more substantial changes. (In the interest of full disclosure, this is the area of my professional focus as a historian, but I do not have a personal relationship with Snyder.) Generalrelative ( talk) 05:13, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
"... makes for a very balanced end to the section in my opinion." I respect your opinion but what criteria should we follow for which one goes first, or last? The only neutral criteria is chronological order. I think the second paragraph should be merged with the third, as it provides a good summary for both support and criticism. This is how it would look like:
Bloodlands stirred up a great deal of debate among historians, [1] with reviews ranging from highly critical to "rapturous". [2] In assessing these reviews, Jacques Sémelin wrote: "While observers on the whole all join in paying tribute to Snyder's tour de force, they nevertheless don't hold back from subjecting him to several incisive criticisms." [1] Sémelin stated that several historians have criticized the chronological construction of events, the arbitrary geographical delimitation, Snyder's numbers on victims and violence, and a lack of focus on interactions between different actors. [1] Despite these points, Sémelin stated that Bloodlands is one of those books that "change the way we look at a period in history." [1]
The book received praise from an array of experts in the field. Tony Judt called Bloodlands "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." [2] Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", [3] John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", [4] and Christopher Browning, who described it as "stunning", [2] while Dennis Showalter stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And Bloodlands takes his work to a new level." [5] Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see." [4] Bloodlands also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on Nazism and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. [6] In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the London Review of Books, [7] Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." [8] Evans wrote that "[i]t seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." [9] Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' The Third Reich at War, published the year before in The New York Review of Books, was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross." [10] [11]
In a Summer 2011 article for the Slavic Review, Omer Bartov wrote that while Bloodlands presents an "admirable synthesis", it nonetheless "presents no new evidence and makes no new arguments". Bartov stated that the book is "permeated by a consistent pro-Polish bias", eliding darker aspects of Polish–Jewish relations, and that Snyder's emphasis on German and Soviet occupation policies glosses over interethnic violence: "By equating partisans and occupiers, Soviet and Nazi occupation, Wehrmacht and Red Army criminality, and evading interethnic violence, Snyder drains the war of much of its moral content and inadvertently adopts the apologists' argument that where everyone is a criminal no one can be blamed." [12] Dovid Katz commented that "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin. ... None of these incidents besides the Holocaust involved the willful massacre of a whole race. There is something very different going on, beyond politics, when people try to murder all the babies of a race." [7]
In a January 2012 review in the Sarmatian Review, Raymond Gawronski described Bloodlands as "a book that must be read and digested, a very significant book that knits together what otherwise are discordant chunks of history, many of which are totally unknown in our culture", adding that "Snyder's sensitivity to the various peoples involved, their own motivations, situations, histories, relations, is remarkable and highly praiseworthy. His reflections on subsequent inflation of numbers by nationalist groups is sober and needed." For Gawronski, "Snyder walks a tightrope of deepening concern for the Jewish Holocaust and a most moving presentation while situating it within the suffering of other surrounding communities: I believe he accomplishes this very difficult task well." [13]
Contemporary European History published a special forum on the book in May 2012, featuring reviews by Jörg Baberowski, Dan Diner, Thomas Kühne, and Mark Mazower as well as an introduction and response by Snyder. [14] Kühne stated that "Snyder is not the first to think about what Hitler and Stalin had in common and how their murderous politics related to each other. The more provocative historians were in doing so and the more they thereby questioned the uniqueness, or the peculiarity, of the Holocaust, the more their work was met with resistance or even disgust, most prominently and controversially the German Ernst Nolte in the 1980s. Snyder's move to link Soviet and Nazi crimes is as politically tricky today as it was then." Kühne added that "[a]s it seems to reduce the responsibility of the Nazis and their collaborators, supporters and claqueurs, it is welcomed in rightist circles of various types: German conservatives in the 1980s, who wanted to 'normalise' the German past, and East European ultranationalists today, who downplay Nazi crimes and up-play Communist crimes in order to promote a common European memory that merges Nazism and Stalinism into a 'double-genocide' theory that prioritises East European suffering over Jewish suffering, obfuscates the distinction between perpetrators and victims, and provides relief from the bitter legacy of East Europeans' collaboration in the Nazi genocide." [15]
In the same special issue, Mazower rejected the idea of reducing Snyder's argument to that of Nolte, stating that "Nolte courted controversy by claiming (and failing to prove) that Nazi crimes emerged as echos of Bolshevik ones and for many years this exercise in historical apologetics gave the interlinked history of Nazism and Stalinism a bad name. ... But among historians at least in the Anglo-American academy, times have changed and, as Bloodlands shows, the question of comparison can now be dealt with in a professional and less tendentious manner. ... The rise of social and cultural history turned Germanists and Soviet historians into introverts, capable of analysing the internal dynamics of their chosen objects of study but loath to place them in their international setting. Snyder's approach is thus fresh and needed and draws on the recent turn to geopolitics in both fields." [16] Baberowski, a leading contemporary proponent of Nolte's views on the Holocaust, criticized Snyder for not going far enough to connect the genocide of European Jews to "the excesses of Stalin's dictatorship." [17] Diner expressed regret that Snyder did not discuss the legacy of Polish–Russian hostility and of the Polish–Soviet War, which would have given context for Soviet crimes in Katyn and Stalin's decision not to intervene during the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupier in 1944. [1]
A June 2012 review in The Journal of Modern History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius stated that "[b]y examining the conjuncture, clashes, and perverse interrelations of extreme ideological regimes in these 'bloodlands', Snyder presents a clearly argued, eloquently crafted and unflinching reckoning up of the human tragedy, on a scale vast beyond imagining", and posited that the book "deserves a large and engaged audience." [18] A December 2016 review in Reviews in History by Tom Lawson evaluated Snyder's scholarly success in hindsight, positing that, on its own terms, "Bloodlands was at best partially successful" but its substantive influence can be seen in the more recent "steady stream of scholars attempting to assert the wider contexts for Nazi violence – in terms of the history of imperialism; the wider history of genocide or of inter-ethnic tensions beyond simply a history of German antisemitism. As such while Snyder did not provide many of the answers in Bloodlands, he did begin to ask the questions." [19]
In a December 2012 review for Cahiers du Monde russe, Amir Weiner stated that Snyder is not an expert either on Soviet or Nazi history, and wrote: "Long on promises and short on delivery, replete with equations that are often baseless and at times tasteless, Bloodlands ends up as a bloody nose to history." [20] A November 2012 review by Christian Ingrao [21] expressed dissatisfaction with the book's "chronological starting point", positing that Snyder could have started his analysis in 1914 by integrating into it the violence committed during World War I and even to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, when peasants revolted in ways which shook both Russian and Ukraine. [1] In a April 2017 review in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Jean Solchany wrote that the proposed concept of the Bloodlands "does not lead to a productive spatial decentering but, on the contrary, offers a dated and simplified reading of German and Soviet history based on a comparative stance that exaggerates similarities and a hypothetical interactionist paradigm." [22]References
Sémelin 2013
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Mikanowski 2019
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Michman 2018
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Lawson 2016
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).{{
cite magazine}}
: CS1 maint: postscript (
link)
I think that the last two paragraphs make for, to quote your own words, a balanced end to the section of both views (the first more positive, the second more critical).
Davide King ( talk) 10:34, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
The only neutral criteria is chronological order.I disagree. A better criterion is logical flow, and the section as currently written has much more of it than would be the case were we to rely on chronological order exclusively. E.g. the 2013 summary of the critical reception by Jacques Sémelin makes an excellent intro to the section. By the same token, Lawson's balanced evaluation strikes a good middle ground between the criticism and the praise, and for that reason makes for a neutral end point. Generalrelative ( talk) 14:42, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
The book received praise from an array of experts in the field. Tony Judt called Bloodlands "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", and Christopher Browning, who described it as "stunning", while Dennis Showalter stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And Bloodlands takes his work to a new level." Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see."
Bloodlands also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on Nazism and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the London Review of Books, Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." Evans wrote that "[i]t seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' The Third Reich at War, published the year before in The New York Review of Books, was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross."
The book received praise from an array of experts in the field. Tony Judt called Bloodlands "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", and Christopher Browning, who described it as "stunning", while Dennis Showalter stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And Bloodlands takes his work to a new level." Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see." Bloodlands also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on Nazism and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the London Review of Books, Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." Evans wrote that "[i]t seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' The Third Reich at War, published the year before in The New York Review of Books, was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross."
A June 2012 review in The Journal of Modern History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius stated that "[b]y examining the conjuncture, clashes, and perverse interrelations of extreme ideological regimes in these 'bloodlands', Snyder presents a clearly argued, eloquently crafted and unflinching reckoning up of the human tragedy, on a scale vast beyond imagining", and posited that the book "deserves a large and engaged audience."
A November 2012 review by Christian Ingrao expressed dissatisfaction with the book's "chronological starting point", positing that Snyder could have started his analysis in 1914 by integrating into it the violence committed during World War I and even to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, when peasants revolted in ways which shook both Russia and Ukraine. In a December 2012 review for Cahiers du Monde russe, Amir Weiner stated that Snyder is not an expert either on Soviet or Nazi history, and wrote: "Long on promises and short on delivery, replete with equations that are often baseless and at times tasteless, Bloodlands ends up as a bloody nose to history."
A December 2016 review in Reviews in History by Tom Lawson evaluated Snyder's scholarly success in hindsight, positing that, on its own terms, "Bloodlands was at best partially successful" but its substantive influence can be seen in the more recent "steady stream of scholars attempting to assert the wider contexts for Nazi violence – in terms of the history of imperialism; the wider history of genocide or of inter-ethnic tensions beyond simply a history of German antisemitism. As such while Snyder did not provide many of the answers in Bloodlands, he did begin to ask the questions."
In a April 2017 review in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Jean Solchany wrote that the proposed concept of the Bloodlands "does not lead to a productive spatial decentering but, on the contrary, offers a dated and simplified reading of German and Soviet history based on a comparative stance that exaggerates similarities and a hypothetical interactionist paradigm."
A June 2012 review in The Journal of Modern History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius stated that "[b]y examining the conjuncture, clashes, and perverse interrelations of extreme ideological regimes in these 'bloodlands', Snyder presents a clearly argued, eloquently crafted and unflinching reckoning up of the human tragedy, on a scale vast beyond imagining", and posited that the book "deserves a large and engaged audience." A December 2016 review in Reviews in History by Tom Lawson evaluated Snyder's scholarly success in hindsight, positing that, on its own terms, "Bloodlands was at best partially successful" but its substantive influence can be seen in the more recent "steady stream of scholars attempting to assert the wider contexts for Nazi violence – in terms of the history of imperialism; the wider history of genocide or of inter-ethnic tensions beyond simply a history of German antisemitism. As such while Snyder did not provide many of the answers in Bloodlands, he did begin to ask the questions."
In a December 2012 review for Cahiers du Monde russe, Amir Weiner stated that Snyder is not an expert either on Soviet or Nazi history, and wrote: "Long on promises and short on delivery, replete with equations that are often baseless and at times tasteless, Bloodlands ends up as a bloody nose to history." A November 2012 review by Christian Ingrao expressed dissatisfaction with the book's "chronological starting point", positing that Snyder could have started his analysis in 1914 by integrating into it the violence committed during World War I and even to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, when peasants revolted in ways which shook both Russian and Ukraine. In a April 2017 review in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Jean Solchany wrote that the proposed concept of the Bloodlands "does not lead to a productive spatial decentering but, on the contrary, offers a dated and simplified reading of German and Soviet history based on a comparative stance that exaggerates similarities and a hypothetical interactionist paradigm."
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This sentence seems ungrammatical: “Snyder's thesis is that the "bloodlands", a region that now comprises Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), northeastern Romania, and the westernmost fringes of Russia, is the area that Stalin and Hitler's regimes, despite their conflicting goals, interacted to increase suffering and bloodshed many times worse than had they acted independently.[1]”
I would correct the part that reads “…is the area that Stalin and Hitler's regimes…” to “…is the area where Stalin and Hitler's regimes…” 94.229.76.206 ( talk) 17:35, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
In my paperback copy, the copyright notice attributes the publisher as Vintage (an imprint of Penguin Random House) with the original hardback attributed to The Bodley Head, in 2010. There's no mention of Basic Books.
On the Basic Books page, Timothy Snyder is listed as an author published by Basic Books, citing this article. On the page for The Bodley Head, there is a list of books published under that imprint, and it doesn't include Bloodlands. That list is apparently made from the category "The Bodley Head books".
Amazon lists a hardback edition published by Basic Books in 2010. So was it published simultaneously in New York by Basic Books, and in London by The Bodley Head? How can we show that the book was originally published under both imprints?
Incidentally, my copy shows a new cover price of £10.99; Amazon has no copies for less than £11.90, offers paperback copies for as much as £98, and a hardback edition for an eye-watering £164! I don't buy books from Amazon, but it sure looks scammy to me. MrDemeanour ( talk) 12:12, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I recently made a change to the "Reception" section that was reverted, along with a couple other edits I made, by @ Generalrelative. The reason I made the change is because the present wording fundamentally mischaracterizes Evans' remark regarding why he was so "cross" with Snyder's book, to the point of being a grotesque misrepresentation of his views.
Presently (and prior to my change), the article claims Evans conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]... was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross"
(emphasis mine).
In reality, however, Evans as is making no such "concession"; quite the opposite. First, we have to look at the comment that Evans is immediately replying to, that of one "Charles Coutinho". It is in fact Coutinho, not Evans, that makes the claim the article is presently attributing to Evans himself: that Richard Evans’s less than entirely positive review of Timothy Snyder’s book may or may not have been influenced by Snyder’s own less than positive review of Evans’s latest book
.
The fact that Evans responds to it as he does clearly suggests that he is refuting such a characterization, not "conceding" it. (As for Coutinho, given he is, as far as I can tell, just some random dude on the Internet—correct me if I am wrong—I don't see any reason why the article should be amplifying his criticism on Wikipedia.)
What Evans is actually doing is simply arguing that another historian's ( Davies') criticism of his review (as constituting gatekeeping of his academic "parish" from "interlopers") is a better description of Snyder himself, as evinced by certain (false, according to Evans) claims Snyder makes in his review of Evans' work.
To summarize, this is basically what this exchange amounts to:
erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about [Evans'] supposed ignorance of Russian and East European historythat Snyder makes in the review Coutinho mentions.
In other words, Evans is drawing attention to the commonalities between (what he feels to be) the poor scholarship underlying both Snyder's review and book. It is reductive and inaccurate to condense this to a simple vendetta narrative, as both Coutinho and this Wikipedia article presently do, and it is even worse to attribute such a narrative to Evans himself. Fundamentally, at no point does Evans ever say something like Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]... was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross"
. And yet this is, verbatim, the wording on the page.
I am open to alternate suggestions as to how to modify this section, but for the above reasons, I do not believe the present wording is accurate or honest.
As for the revert,
Generalrelative, you pointed me to
the previous discussion about the "Academic Reviews" section. However, I'm not seeing any discussion there about this particular bit, so I don't really see the relevance. I also disagree that the "Reception" section has already been hashed out extensively
in the Talk discussion above; there's really not much there relevant to my edits, it's far from "extensive", and the discussion petered out rather than reaching any sort of consensus about much of anything—but I will likely follow up with another post about the other edits by me that you challenged, so let's keep this section to discussing this edit specifically.
Brusquedandelion (
talk)
06:30, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I think that speaks for itself. Happy to hear what others have to say. If no one happens by to weigh in, a neutral posting at WP:NPOVN would be the way to go. Generalrelative ( talk) 14:57, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Finally, Charles Coutinho does indeed put his finger on one of the many reasons Snyder’s book made me so cross, which is that Snyder devoted almost all of what was meant to be a review of The Third Reich at War in the New York Review of Books to making erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about my supposed ignorance of Russian and East European history. At the time I wondered what made a supposedly serious historian fall into such egregious error. After reading his book, I now know: it’s Snyder, not me, who has an incorrigible desire to drive out fellow historians he sees as ‘interlopers’ from what he considers to be his own ‘parish’.
But that is precisely what Evans is saying here, at least as I read the paragraph. If no one else comes by to support your alternative reading, the thing to do would be to bring the matter to WP:NPOVN, as I said above. Generalrelative ( talk) 15:47, 26 March 2024 (UTC)at no point does Evans ever say something like "Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]... was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross""
But that is precisely what Evans is saying here, at least as I read the paragraph.
erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about [his] supposed ignorance of Russian and East European history, to the extent they speak to his
incorrigible desire to drive out fellow historians he sees as ‘interlopers’ from what he considers to be his own ‘parish’. Brusquedandelion ( talk) 16:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]is a reasonable and encyclopedic summary of that rather flowery bit of WP:MANDY. (Evans would be expected to downplay the validity of criticism that made him angry, wouldn't he?) I should note that I know and like and massively respect Evans, but he has here admitted that there is a bit of personal animus behind his critique of Bloodlands, which is relevant to the article. Generalrelative ( talk) 16:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I am arguing that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book] is a reasonable and encyclopedic summary of that rather flowery bit of WP:MANDY.
Evans would be expected to downplay the validity of criticism that made him angry, wouldn't he?
I know and like and massively respect Evans, but he has here admitted that there is a bit of personal animus behind his critique of Bloodlands, which is relevant to the article.
erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about [Evans'] supposed ignorance of Russian and East European historynot worth mentioning here too? As it is, the article is a biased characterization of the dispute, whether or not you view it through a personalized lens: it insinuates Evans responded in a personal manner to what was previously a scholarly dispute.
Also, by invoking WP:MANDY, you seem to be agreeing with me that he is denying the allegation, not confirming it.Not in the slightest. Evans is quite clearly admitting to having been motivated, at least in part, by personal animus –– and no reasonable reading of either Evans' comment or my own could be taken to imply otherwise. Since we are now going round in circles, this will be my final reply to you until such time as the discussion becomes reinvigorated by new voices and/or new arguments. I am not required to engage point-by-point with your walls of text until you are WP:SATISFIED. Rather, I have tried to keep this discussion focused on the crucial point in question. I have also advised you to take this to WP:NPOVN if you disagree. Please do so, or wait for others to chime in, or simply drop it. Best wishes, Generalrelative ( talk) 18:50, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Charles Coutinho does indeed put his finger on one of the many reasons Snyder’s book made me so cross. Last I checked, if you "put your finger on something", you
identify something exactly[10], so I don't see how this can be read as Evans "refuting" Coutinho's characterization of his comments. More importantly, these letters are primary sources—as WP:PRIMARY states,
[d]o not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so.Rather than dissecting Evans's exact words, we should see what secondary sources say about these letters. (This article also cites a letter from Guido Franzinetti [11], but I don't think this really counts as a secondary source.) I was able to find a source from the New Statesman discussing the exchange [12] that supports Generalrelative's view:
In my opinion, this source should be added to the article. I wasn't able to find a secondary source that supported Brusquedandelion's reading of Evans's response. Malerisch ( talk) 09:42, 27 March 2024 (UTC)In another of the letters in this week's LRB, Charles Coutinho points out that the particularly caustic criticism given by Evans in his review, may in part be due to a similarly disparaging critique of Evans's most recent book, The Third Reich at War, written by Snyder and published in the New York Review of Books in December 2009. Evans admits as much in his response to the letters (published alongside them), though is far from being apologetic[.]
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Why does the article use "Bloodlands: Europe Between Stalin and Hitler" but the cover image have "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" (with Stalin and Hitler reversed)? Which is the correct title, or have they both been used on different editions of the book? Calathan ( talk) 16:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I made a series of corrections to the statistical information in the article based on on my copy of Bloodlands and a hard copy of the article in the Ottawa Citizen, Pages 411-412 of Bloodlands can be verified on amazon.com. We may not agree with Snyder's numbers but we must make sure that we post what he actually wrote. -- Woogie10w ( talk) 16:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
In the section Number of Victims, the description most of whom were non-combatants is not correct . The word most implies that some were combatants, in fact Synder does not include combatants in his figure of 14 million. We need make sure that this article is correct, we cannot misrepresent the position of Snyder since he is a living person. I believe that Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Reliable sources is relevant in this situation. Controversial, poorly-sourced claims in biographies of living people should be deleted immediately.-- Woogie10w ( talk) 11:27, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
From the book: "not a single one of the fourteen million murdered was a soldier on active duty ... none were bearing weapons" [1]. Editing page to reflect Snyder's actual words. Wallnot ( talk) 21:15, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
References
The Jacobin is not RS. It is, as is blatantly obvious from its own description, WP:FRINGE. For it to be WP:RS it would have to have "a reputation for fact checking and accuracy". It doesn't. In particular, the review under question is a prime example of that.
Additionally, the quote being included is inaccurate (Lazare is confused - Antyk didn't exist until November 1943, whereas the quote is from 1942, so Antyk could not have made it) and off topic (what's it got to do with Snyder?), not to mention the wording is highly POV. The text was, unsurprisingly, inserted into the article by some fly-by-night IP.
Stop reinserting it. It's WP:FRINGE, non- WP:RS, WP:UNDUE and WP:POV.
And oh yeah, if you're going start attributing views to people based solely on their ethnicities, you might want to take that "[ I am a fascist. I am openly fascist, both here and in real life.]" stuff off your user page. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 21:40, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Anyhow, let's begin…
I repeat my best guess: you don't like Lazare's article because he portrays the Home Army in a bad light.
As for my user page: no, Marek! Fascism is life! -- YeOldeGentleman ( talk) 01:00, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Anyway, I'm not impressed with Lazare for other reasons, and I'm heartily sick of conversing with such an insufferably arrogant individual. Let's leave it here. I'm sure we'd both rather be editing articles rather than back-and-forthing here. Feel free, if you want, to have the last word, which I promise to read. -- YeOldeGentleman ( talk) 10:33, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
The page gives too much weight to uncritical praise from popular writers, hardly mentioning major criticisms from professionals. My attempts to fix this imbalance were reverted by IPs and recently registered editors. ( t · c) buidhe 23:14, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
I thank Davide King and others for their work on this article in recent months. However I have restored some of my edits from a few months back when I substantially expanded the "Academic reviews" section, and also cut some of what I saw as undue emphasis on critical voices. I believe that this section should reflect not only the balance of scholarly reception but also the nuance of that reception, and that organizing it into opposing "positive" and "negative" subsections distorts this nuance. I also think that more can and should be done to restore due balance to the section, in particular cutting those remarks which come from scholars not considered notable enough to have their own WP articles –– as I did before, though this was partially reverted at some point over the summer. I have not gone so far as to cut these passages again, and would like to invite further comment about how best to present a balanced account of this book's scholarly reception before making more substantial changes. (In the interest of full disclosure, this is the area of my professional focus as a historian, but I do not have a personal relationship with Snyder.) Generalrelative ( talk) 05:13, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
"... makes for a very balanced end to the section in my opinion." I respect your opinion but what criteria should we follow for which one goes first, or last? The only neutral criteria is chronological order. I think the second paragraph should be merged with the third, as it provides a good summary for both support and criticism. This is how it would look like:
Bloodlands stirred up a great deal of debate among historians, [1] with reviews ranging from highly critical to "rapturous". [2] In assessing these reviews, Jacques Sémelin wrote: "While observers on the whole all join in paying tribute to Snyder's tour de force, they nevertheless don't hold back from subjecting him to several incisive criticisms." [1] Sémelin stated that several historians have criticized the chronological construction of events, the arbitrary geographical delimitation, Snyder's numbers on victims and violence, and a lack of focus on interactions between different actors. [1] Despite these points, Sémelin stated that Bloodlands is one of those books that "change the way we look at a period in history." [1]
The book received praise from an array of experts in the field. Tony Judt called Bloodlands "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." [2] Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", [3] John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", [4] and Christopher Browning, who described it as "stunning", [2] while Dennis Showalter stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And Bloodlands takes his work to a new level." [5] Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see." [4] Bloodlands also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on Nazism and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. [6] In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the London Review of Books, [7] Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." [8] Evans wrote that "[i]t seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." [9] Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' The Third Reich at War, published the year before in The New York Review of Books, was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross." [10] [11]
In a Summer 2011 article for the Slavic Review, Omer Bartov wrote that while Bloodlands presents an "admirable synthesis", it nonetheless "presents no new evidence and makes no new arguments". Bartov stated that the book is "permeated by a consistent pro-Polish bias", eliding darker aspects of Polish–Jewish relations, and that Snyder's emphasis on German and Soviet occupation policies glosses over interethnic violence: "By equating partisans and occupiers, Soviet and Nazi occupation, Wehrmacht and Red Army criminality, and evading interethnic violence, Snyder drains the war of much of its moral content and inadvertently adopts the apologists' argument that where everyone is a criminal no one can be blamed." [12] Dovid Katz commented that "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin. ... None of these incidents besides the Holocaust involved the willful massacre of a whole race. There is something very different going on, beyond politics, when people try to murder all the babies of a race." [7]
In a January 2012 review in the Sarmatian Review, Raymond Gawronski described Bloodlands as "a book that must be read and digested, a very significant book that knits together what otherwise are discordant chunks of history, many of which are totally unknown in our culture", adding that "Snyder's sensitivity to the various peoples involved, their own motivations, situations, histories, relations, is remarkable and highly praiseworthy. His reflections on subsequent inflation of numbers by nationalist groups is sober and needed." For Gawronski, "Snyder walks a tightrope of deepening concern for the Jewish Holocaust and a most moving presentation while situating it within the suffering of other surrounding communities: I believe he accomplishes this very difficult task well." [13]
Contemporary European History published a special forum on the book in May 2012, featuring reviews by Jörg Baberowski, Dan Diner, Thomas Kühne, and Mark Mazower as well as an introduction and response by Snyder. [14] Kühne stated that "Snyder is not the first to think about what Hitler and Stalin had in common and how their murderous politics related to each other. The more provocative historians were in doing so and the more they thereby questioned the uniqueness, or the peculiarity, of the Holocaust, the more their work was met with resistance or even disgust, most prominently and controversially the German Ernst Nolte in the 1980s. Snyder's move to link Soviet and Nazi crimes is as politically tricky today as it was then." Kühne added that "[a]s it seems to reduce the responsibility of the Nazis and their collaborators, supporters and claqueurs, it is welcomed in rightist circles of various types: German conservatives in the 1980s, who wanted to 'normalise' the German past, and East European ultranationalists today, who downplay Nazi crimes and up-play Communist crimes in order to promote a common European memory that merges Nazism and Stalinism into a 'double-genocide' theory that prioritises East European suffering over Jewish suffering, obfuscates the distinction between perpetrators and victims, and provides relief from the bitter legacy of East Europeans' collaboration in the Nazi genocide." [15]
In the same special issue, Mazower rejected the idea of reducing Snyder's argument to that of Nolte, stating that "Nolte courted controversy by claiming (and failing to prove) that Nazi crimes emerged as echos of Bolshevik ones and for many years this exercise in historical apologetics gave the interlinked history of Nazism and Stalinism a bad name. ... But among historians at least in the Anglo-American academy, times have changed and, as Bloodlands shows, the question of comparison can now be dealt with in a professional and less tendentious manner. ... The rise of social and cultural history turned Germanists and Soviet historians into introverts, capable of analysing the internal dynamics of their chosen objects of study but loath to place them in their international setting. Snyder's approach is thus fresh and needed and draws on the recent turn to geopolitics in both fields." [16] Baberowski, a leading contemporary proponent of Nolte's views on the Holocaust, criticized Snyder for not going far enough to connect the genocide of European Jews to "the excesses of Stalin's dictatorship." [17] Diner expressed regret that Snyder did not discuss the legacy of Polish–Russian hostility and of the Polish–Soviet War, which would have given context for Soviet crimes in Katyn and Stalin's decision not to intervene during the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupier in 1944. [1]
A June 2012 review in The Journal of Modern History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius stated that "[b]y examining the conjuncture, clashes, and perverse interrelations of extreme ideological regimes in these 'bloodlands', Snyder presents a clearly argued, eloquently crafted and unflinching reckoning up of the human tragedy, on a scale vast beyond imagining", and posited that the book "deserves a large and engaged audience." [18] A December 2016 review in Reviews in History by Tom Lawson evaluated Snyder's scholarly success in hindsight, positing that, on its own terms, "Bloodlands was at best partially successful" but its substantive influence can be seen in the more recent "steady stream of scholars attempting to assert the wider contexts for Nazi violence – in terms of the history of imperialism; the wider history of genocide or of inter-ethnic tensions beyond simply a history of German antisemitism. As such while Snyder did not provide many of the answers in Bloodlands, he did begin to ask the questions." [19]
In a December 2012 review for Cahiers du Monde russe, Amir Weiner stated that Snyder is not an expert either on Soviet or Nazi history, and wrote: "Long on promises and short on delivery, replete with equations that are often baseless and at times tasteless, Bloodlands ends up as a bloody nose to history." [20] A November 2012 review by Christian Ingrao [21] expressed dissatisfaction with the book's "chronological starting point", positing that Snyder could have started his analysis in 1914 by integrating into it the violence committed during World War I and even to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, when peasants revolted in ways which shook both Russian and Ukraine. [1] In a April 2017 review in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Jean Solchany wrote that the proposed concept of the Bloodlands "does not lead to a productive spatial decentering but, on the contrary, offers a dated and simplified reading of German and Soviet history based on a comparative stance that exaggerates similarities and a hypothetical interactionist paradigm." [22]References
Sémelin 2013
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Mikanowski 2019
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Michman 2018
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Lawson 2016
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).{{
cite magazine}}
: CS1 maint: postscript (
link)
I think that the last two paragraphs make for, to quote your own words, a balanced end to the section of both views (the first more positive, the second more critical).
Davide King ( talk) 10:34, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
The only neutral criteria is chronological order.I disagree. A better criterion is logical flow, and the section as currently written has much more of it than would be the case were we to rely on chronological order exclusively. E.g. the 2013 summary of the critical reception by Jacques Sémelin makes an excellent intro to the section. By the same token, Lawson's balanced evaluation strikes a good middle ground between the criticism and the praise, and for that reason makes for a neutral end point. Generalrelative ( talk) 14:42, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
The book received praise from an array of experts in the field. Tony Judt called Bloodlands "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", and Christopher Browning, who described it as "stunning", while Dennis Showalter stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And Bloodlands takes his work to a new level." Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see."
Bloodlands also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on Nazism and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the London Review of Books, Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." Evans wrote that "[i]t seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' The Third Reich at War, published the year before in The New York Review of Books, was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross."
The book received praise from an array of experts in the field. Tony Judt called Bloodlands "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", and Christopher Browning, who described it as "stunning", while Dennis Showalter stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And Bloodlands takes his work to a new level." Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see." Bloodlands also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on Nazism and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the London Review of Books, Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." Evans wrote that "[i]t seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' The Third Reich at War, published the year before in The New York Review of Books, was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross."
A June 2012 review in The Journal of Modern History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius stated that "[b]y examining the conjuncture, clashes, and perverse interrelations of extreme ideological regimes in these 'bloodlands', Snyder presents a clearly argued, eloquently crafted and unflinching reckoning up of the human tragedy, on a scale vast beyond imagining", and posited that the book "deserves a large and engaged audience."
A November 2012 review by Christian Ingrao expressed dissatisfaction with the book's "chronological starting point", positing that Snyder could have started his analysis in 1914 by integrating into it the violence committed during World War I and even to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, when peasants revolted in ways which shook both Russia and Ukraine. In a December 2012 review for Cahiers du Monde russe, Amir Weiner stated that Snyder is not an expert either on Soviet or Nazi history, and wrote: "Long on promises and short on delivery, replete with equations that are often baseless and at times tasteless, Bloodlands ends up as a bloody nose to history."
A December 2016 review in Reviews in History by Tom Lawson evaluated Snyder's scholarly success in hindsight, positing that, on its own terms, "Bloodlands was at best partially successful" but its substantive influence can be seen in the more recent "steady stream of scholars attempting to assert the wider contexts for Nazi violence – in terms of the history of imperialism; the wider history of genocide or of inter-ethnic tensions beyond simply a history of German antisemitism. As such while Snyder did not provide many of the answers in Bloodlands, he did begin to ask the questions."
In a April 2017 review in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Jean Solchany wrote that the proposed concept of the Bloodlands "does not lead to a productive spatial decentering but, on the contrary, offers a dated and simplified reading of German and Soviet history based on a comparative stance that exaggerates similarities and a hypothetical interactionist paradigm."
A June 2012 review in The Journal of Modern History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius stated that "[b]y examining the conjuncture, clashes, and perverse interrelations of extreme ideological regimes in these 'bloodlands', Snyder presents a clearly argued, eloquently crafted and unflinching reckoning up of the human tragedy, on a scale vast beyond imagining", and posited that the book "deserves a large and engaged audience." A December 2016 review in Reviews in History by Tom Lawson evaluated Snyder's scholarly success in hindsight, positing that, on its own terms, "Bloodlands was at best partially successful" but its substantive influence can be seen in the more recent "steady stream of scholars attempting to assert the wider contexts for Nazi violence – in terms of the history of imperialism; the wider history of genocide or of inter-ethnic tensions beyond simply a history of German antisemitism. As such while Snyder did not provide many of the answers in Bloodlands, he did begin to ask the questions."
In a December 2012 review for Cahiers du Monde russe, Amir Weiner stated that Snyder is not an expert either on Soviet or Nazi history, and wrote: "Long on promises and short on delivery, replete with equations that are often baseless and at times tasteless, Bloodlands ends up as a bloody nose to history." A November 2012 review by Christian Ingrao expressed dissatisfaction with the book's "chronological starting point", positing that Snyder could have started his analysis in 1914 by integrating into it the violence committed during World War I and even to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, when peasants revolted in ways which shook both Russian and Ukraine. In a April 2017 review in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Jean Solchany wrote that the proposed concept of the Bloodlands "does not lead to a productive spatial decentering but, on the contrary, offers a dated and simplified reading of German and Soviet history based on a comparative stance that exaggerates similarities and a hypothetical interactionist paradigm."
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This sentence seems ungrammatical: “Snyder's thesis is that the "bloodlands", a region that now comprises Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), northeastern Romania, and the westernmost fringes of Russia, is the area that Stalin and Hitler's regimes, despite their conflicting goals, interacted to increase suffering and bloodshed many times worse than had they acted independently.[1]”
I would correct the part that reads “…is the area that Stalin and Hitler's regimes…” to “…is the area where Stalin and Hitler's regimes…” 94.229.76.206 ( talk) 17:35, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
In my paperback copy, the copyright notice attributes the publisher as Vintage (an imprint of Penguin Random House) with the original hardback attributed to The Bodley Head, in 2010. There's no mention of Basic Books.
On the Basic Books page, Timothy Snyder is listed as an author published by Basic Books, citing this article. On the page for The Bodley Head, there is a list of books published under that imprint, and it doesn't include Bloodlands. That list is apparently made from the category "The Bodley Head books".
Amazon lists a hardback edition published by Basic Books in 2010. So was it published simultaneously in New York by Basic Books, and in London by The Bodley Head? How can we show that the book was originally published under both imprints?
Incidentally, my copy shows a new cover price of £10.99; Amazon has no copies for less than £11.90, offers paperback copies for as much as £98, and a hardback edition for an eye-watering £164! I don't buy books from Amazon, but it sure looks scammy to me. MrDemeanour ( talk) 12:12, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I recently made a change to the "Reception" section that was reverted, along with a couple other edits I made, by @ Generalrelative. The reason I made the change is because the present wording fundamentally mischaracterizes Evans' remark regarding why he was so "cross" with Snyder's book, to the point of being a grotesque misrepresentation of his views.
Presently (and prior to my change), the article claims Evans conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]... was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross"
(emphasis mine).
In reality, however, Evans as is making no such "concession"; quite the opposite. First, we have to look at the comment that Evans is immediately replying to, that of one "Charles Coutinho". It is in fact Coutinho, not Evans, that makes the claim the article is presently attributing to Evans himself: that Richard Evans’s less than entirely positive review of Timothy Snyder’s book may or may not have been influenced by Snyder’s own less than positive review of Evans’s latest book
.
The fact that Evans responds to it as he does clearly suggests that he is refuting such a characterization, not "conceding" it. (As for Coutinho, given he is, as far as I can tell, just some random dude on the Internet—correct me if I am wrong—I don't see any reason why the article should be amplifying his criticism on Wikipedia.)
What Evans is actually doing is simply arguing that another historian's ( Davies') criticism of his review (as constituting gatekeeping of his academic "parish" from "interlopers") is a better description of Snyder himself, as evinced by certain (false, according to Evans) claims Snyder makes in his review of Evans' work.
To summarize, this is basically what this exchange amounts to:
erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about [Evans'] supposed ignorance of Russian and East European historythat Snyder makes in the review Coutinho mentions.
In other words, Evans is drawing attention to the commonalities between (what he feels to be) the poor scholarship underlying both Snyder's review and book. It is reductive and inaccurate to condense this to a simple vendetta narrative, as both Coutinho and this Wikipedia article presently do, and it is even worse to attribute such a narrative to Evans himself. Fundamentally, at no point does Evans ever say something like Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]... was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross"
. And yet this is, verbatim, the wording on the page.
I am open to alternate suggestions as to how to modify this section, but for the above reasons, I do not believe the present wording is accurate or honest.
As for the revert,
Generalrelative, you pointed me to
the previous discussion about the "Academic Reviews" section. However, I'm not seeing any discussion there about this particular bit, so I don't really see the relevance. I also disagree that the "Reception" section has already been hashed out extensively
in the Talk discussion above; there's really not much there relevant to my edits, it's far from "extensive", and the discussion petered out rather than reaching any sort of consensus about much of anything—but I will likely follow up with another post about the other edits by me that you challenged, so let's keep this section to discussing this edit specifically.
Brusquedandelion (
talk)
06:30, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I think that speaks for itself. Happy to hear what others have to say. If no one happens by to weigh in, a neutral posting at WP:NPOVN would be the way to go. Generalrelative ( talk) 14:57, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Finally, Charles Coutinho does indeed put his finger on one of the many reasons Snyder’s book made me so cross, which is that Snyder devoted almost all of what was meant to be a review of The Third Reich at War in the New York Review of Books to making erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about my supposed ignorance of Russian and East European history. At the time I wondered what made a supposedly serious historian fall into such egregious error. After reading his book, I now know: it’s Snyder, not me, who has an incorrigible desire to drive out fellow historians he sees as ‘interlopers’ from what he considers to be his own ‘parish’.
But that is precisely what Evans is saying here, at least as I read the paragraph. If no one else comes by to support your alternative reading, the thing to do would be to bring the matter to WP:NPOVN, as I said above. Generalrelative ( talk) 15:47, 26 March 2024 (UTC)at no point does Evans ever say something like "Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]... was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made [him] so cross""
But that is precisely what Evans is saying here, at least as I read the paragraph.
erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about [his] supposed ignorance of Russian and East European history, to the extent they speak to his
incorrigible desire to drive out fellow historians he sees as ‘interlopers’ from what he considers to be his own ‘parish’. Brusquedandelion ( talk) 16:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book]is a reasonable and encyclopedic summary of that rather flowery bit of WP:MANDY. (Evans would be expected to downplay the validity of criticism that made him angry, wouldn't he?) I should note that I know and like and massively respect Evans, but he has here admitted that there is a bit of personal animus behind his critique of Bloodlands, which is relevant to the article. Generalrelative ( talk) 16:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I am arguing that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' [book] is a reasonable and encyclopedic summary of that rather flowery bit of WP:MANDY.
Evans would be expected to downplay the validity of criticism that made him angry, wouldn't he?
I know and like and massively respect Evans, but he has here admitted that there is a bit of personal animus behind his critique of Bloodlands, which is relevant to the article.
erroneous and unsubstantiated claims about [Evans'] supposed ignorance of Russian and East European historynot worth mentioning here too? As it is, the article is a biased characterization of the dispute, whether or not you view it through a personalized lens: it insinuates Evans responded in a personal manner to what was previously a scholarly dispute.
Also, by invoking WP:MANDY, you seem to be agreeing with me that he is denying the allegation, not confirming it.Not in the slightest. Evans is quite clearly admitting to having been motivated, at least in part, by personal animus –– and no reasonable reading of either Evans' comment or my own could be taken to imply otherwise. Since we are now going round in circles, this will be my final reply to you until such time as the discussion becomes reinvigorated by new voices and/or new arguments. I am not required to engage point-by-point with your walls of text until you are WP:SATISFIED. Rather, I have tried to keep this discussion focused on the crucial point in question. I have also advised you to take this to WP:NPOVN if you disagree. Please do so, or wait for others to chime in, or simply drop it. Best wishes, Generalrelative ( talk) 18:50, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Charles Coutinho does indeed put his finger on one of the many reasons Snyder’s book made me so cross. Last I checked, if you "put your finger on something", you
identify something exactly[10], so I don't see how this can be read as Evans "refuting" Coutinho's characterization of his comments. More importantly, these letters are primary sources—as WP:PRIMARY states,
[d]o not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so.Rather than dissecting Evans's exact words, we should see what secondary sources say about these letters. (This article also cites a letter from Guido Franzinetti [11], but I don't think this really counts as a secondary source.) I was able to find a source from the New Statesman discussing the exchange [12] that supports Generalrelative's view:
In my opinion, this source should be added to the article. I wasn't able to find a secondary source that supported Brusquedandelion's reading of Evans's response. Malerisch ( talk) 09:42, 27 March 2024 (UTC)In another of the letters in this week's LRB, Charles Coutinho points out that the particularly caustic criticism given by Evans in his review, may in part be due to a similarly disparaging critique of Evans's most recent book, The Third Reich at War, written by Snyder and published in the New York Review of Books in December 2009. Evans admits as much in his response to the letters (published alongside them), though is far from being apologetic[.]