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User talk:John K/Archive 2

Well done on the Dukes of Devonshire thing. :) Do we need to worry about the copyright status of those images, though? It seems that Isis took them from some publication, and she had somewhat, erm, unconventional views on copyrights on photographs... -- Oliver P. 19:49 25 May 2003 (UTC)

No idea. They've been here this long, though, so I don't see any need to remove them unless we know that they're copyrighted. And I have no idea how to even go about trying to find out if they're copyrighted. Some of the earlier pictures, at least, could very plausibly be from sources that are no longer copyrighted. Of course, I'm perhaps not the best person to ask. My own now defunct website on the Habsburgs was full of what I imagine now, in retrospect, to have likely been copyrighted images. I never got into any trouble for it, but wikipedia is probably more noticeable than some tiny website on the University of Virginia server. In general, what are the rules on copyrights of photographs of old paintings? The idea that such things are creative works that have copyright protection is somewhat rankling. john 21:59 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Excellent work on the Members of the French Royal Families. You have turned a stub with potential into a truly excellent piece that when finished will be a credit to wiki. Well done. FearÉÍREANN 01:43 26 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks. Sadly, I got sick of it, and quit for a while, but I'll return to it soon.  Something like this, I think, would be useful for other royal families, as well, but it is rather a pain. john 01:55 26 May 2003 (UTC)

I too like your work on Members of the French Royal Families. Assume you are also into genealogy. However, when creating new articles it would seem like a good idea to somehow create several links so they can be found. Don't ask me how, though. How about a page for the "Bastard offspring of European Royalty?" They have their own organization and last time I looked (several years ago) were very active. Triton

 * I didn't create the article, it was present, but lame. A link from "List of French Monarchs" would be good, except that our dispute over there is likely to get it locked... john 19:11 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Your addition of the list of Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order is appreciated, but perhaps it needs its own page, if we are going to have a list of all their holdings as well!!! (when I get round to it). Also one of those rare topics which I want to spend some time on somewhen is matrilineal analysis of European aristocracy. Harry Potter

 * Feel free to move it to its own page, if you'd like. john 00:09 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi John, I've noticed a problem that is arising over the opening paragraphs of many royal and papal pages. We use numerous styles, many of them illogical and a throwback to when wiki named royal pages by personal name not royal nomenclature. I've proposed a solution on the Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) page. Take a look and let me know what you think. FearÉIREANN 00:51 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Mr John, sir, sorry to bother you but I wanted to help you all I can. You said: “In any event, I'm coming towards the thought that perhaps including the Merovingian kings in a list, so long as we're careful to indicate that they weren't really kings of France, but precursors to the Kings of France (and Germany!), wouldn't be awful.”
 * http://courses.washington.edu/hist112/French%20Monarchs.htm

Sorry Mr. John, sir, -- here is some of what Ms. JHK said about the University of Washington list:
 * Please note that, although the title of the page is France's Kings and Rulers, the page itself is clear that there are older Frankish kingdoms (as there are on the wikipedia, but they have a page devoted to them) and starts the Kingdom of France proper with the Capetians.

Thank you. Triton

But that is what the list says explicitly. It is becoming increasingly difficult to follow the logic behind Triton's argument. He doesn't seem to grasp the difference between King in France and King of France, or to put it another way, those who ruled in France and those who were French. That seems to be at the heart of the problem. FearÉIREANN 01:50 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Although I'd say it's always been difficult to follow the logic behind his argument. (I'd also say that being "French" wouldn't be a prerequisite to being a King of France. France managed to avoid having any kings who were overtly not French, but surely George I isn't any less a "British King" for not having been British.  But this is all semantics...) john 02:13 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Ah but there you see you are talking about someone accepted by the political elite and citizenry of a state to be their monarch. That would contrast, say, with British monarchs in Ireland who even if accepted by the political elite were not accepted by the citizenry. So they were seen as outsiders who took over Ireland, in a way George I wasn't seen as an outsider who took over England but an ousider who was by law the king and had to govern following english laws and customs, not treat it as some province of his extra-British empire. He was if not British by birth at least British by acceptance. Oh the complexities. :-) FearÉIREANN 03:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Hey, I'm just trying to get along -- I appreciate that I haven't had to prove myself to everybody. I haven't been around in a long time, and only a few oldtimers are still here -- not bad, but this is not the way I'd planned to make my comeback! JHK

Hi John. I saw your note last night, but since it was late, local time, for me, & because I had to work on a lot of non-Wikipedia real life stuff (like gardening), I've been delayed from answering you until now. Sorry.

Now for my response: I am aware that Ancient Egyptian chronology is a very debateable topic. The book I'm pulling a lot of the dates from -- Nicolas Grimal's A History of Ancient Egypt (Blackwell, 1995) -- even notes that by attempting to base the beginning of the reign of Amenophis I on a recorded astronomical observation, the resulting date could be either 1546 BC or 1526 BC, depending on the location of the observation. There is admittedly a lot of uncertainty with Egyptian history.

However, that is the reason why I'm focussing on adding the dates from the 21st dynasty forward. From my research, it appears that there is enough synchonicities between the chronology of Ancient Egypt & other civilizations with recorded histories to make the dates from that point forward reliable. In other words, I'm testing this hypothesis by putting it into the Wikipedia, seeing if it breaks & where, & then going to the next step. If this works, I will then attempt to add various dates before the beginning of the 21st dynasty until I run into trouble -- & then stopping. (Frankly, I doubt I will manage to get much before 1200 BC, if that far.)

I know we're not supposed to do original research on the 'pedia, but I would like to know just how back we can trust the dates we find in the reference books (as well as prove to Egil that we should have individual year entries far earlier than 500 BC). If the dates that I am using start showing problems, I'll be happy to roll my changes back to preserve the accuracy of our 'pedia. But I would like some first-hand experience to draw on in order to say, "we can't rely on dates before this point." -- llywrch 00:45 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Well, one thing I do know is that for most of these dynasties there are various dating schemes theorized. And for the 22nd through 24th Dynasties, there are actually various different orders of reigns suggested - nobody's precisely sure of the chronology.  From what I understand, the most precisely dated dynasty is the 12th - there's an astronomical convergence of some sort that means that the whole dynasty can be fairly precisely dated.  The 18th and 19th are more tenuous - I've seen dates of 1290 BC, 1279 BC, and 1265 BC for the accession of Ramses II.  The first dynasty where we're really fairly clear on it is the 25th, I believe (aside from the 12th, that is).  There's a forum somewhere that I once discovered in which people post very detailed technical discussions of the possible dating schemes.  I browsed it for a little while, and then got tired of it, but it convinced me that the whole thing is pretty complicated.  The Mesopotamian dates, I believe, are a lot cleaner (although even there it's weird - the Old Babylonian Dynasty, for instance, has recently been redated to be a century later than we used to think.  So, as I said, be careful, and try to look at multiple sources.  Some other possible sources are "Chronicle of the Pharaohs", a big glossy pop book, but it has lists; Gardiners's "History of Ancient Egypt" (or some such), an older book; er... hmm... can't remember what other good sources there are, but check out [the Ancient Chronology Forum] (the forum I mentioned earlier), for some very detailed discussions of chronology.  One might add that this is all disagreement within the parameters of the accepted basic chronology.  There's also wild revisionists like Immanuel Velikovsky (whose wikipedia article is in serious need of NPOVing) or David Rohl, who mash about the chronology pretty wildly. john 06:55 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. I'll admit that most of my work on chronology deals with events on this side of the BC/AD divide, & I've seen examples there where trained historians attempt to work in a field they are not familiar with, misunderstand the materials, & make fools of themselves (e.g. John Morris on Dark Ages Britain/"The Age of Arthur"). So with that danger in mind, I'm responding to your concerns.

(As a note, there are dangers with many famous dates practically up to AD 1700 -- & if you can cite a few later than that, it's only because I'm not as interested in modern history. As I understand the problem, it lies in attempting to figure out how the source came up with the date in question: was the source a witness, or used reliable sources in turn? Did the source record the information accurately? Etc.)

To be honest, I haven't seen much of the secondary literature that discusses Egyptian Chronology. I was pleasantly surprised to find my copy of Ancient Near Eastern Texts gave the exact same dates for Shoshenq I as in Grimal's book cited above. And I have read the Wikipedia articles about this issue. (No, not the Velikovsky one. ;-) As I said, this is a learning exercise for me, & either it will work, or I'll end up with hands-on experience that we should NOT do this.

As I write this response, I wonder if it would be best to identify an authoritative chronology -- say the Cambridge Ancient History -- & cite (with permission) those dates, a la "1109 BC - Pharoah Example died (CAH date)". That way we avoid dumping tons of arguments into Wikipedia, & only report the fact that someone has that opinion. Sigh. That will mean that I have to do more off-line work before I can submit changes.

BTW, thanks for the heads up on the link. I'll have to examine it more carefully. -- llywrch 18:09 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Just to note, the problem with ancient chronology is not simply "trying to figure out how the source came up with the date." The problem is that they didn't even use a calendar the same way we do, and there's no continuous list of Egyptian monarchs with their lengths of reigns (as there is for Mesopotamia), so a list has to be reconstructed based on some astronomical markers and convergences with Mesopotamian history.  Which can be difficult.  That's why the 25th dynasty is the first one that can be dated with relative certainty - it was in the period of the Assyrian invasions of Egypt, so the kings can be dated based on the much more solid Assyrian chronology.  Shoshenq I's dates do seem fairly solid - I always see him as reigning 945-924 BC.  But I don't know that anybody agrees on his successors.  I would agree that citing the source and specifically saying that it is the chronology according to that source is a good idea.  And again, I think this is a more serious issue for the year pages than it is for the Pharaoh page.  On the list of pharaohs, I think it's fine to give conjectural dates (although I think that, even there, a source or sources ought to be cited).  I'm not convinced that this is the case for the year pages.  I'd also note that Mesopotamian monarchs' dates are much more solid, so that might be a better place to begin with this stuff. john 18:52 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

John, I read you response here soon after you posted it. I hadn't posted a follow-up because I couldn't think of anything further to say on the matter. Consider this an "acknowledgement" -- nothing more. -- llywrch 18:00 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

We discussed it at great length on the mailing list, John, and arrived at a negotiated settlement with broad consensus support. He has gone on a unilaterial war of destruction on the work that I and others have put in. It is verging on outright vandalism. The sooner he stops this stupidity the better. I have real work to do. You could help by reverting some of the changes yourself, if you have time. Tannin 04:33 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Yes, I thought there was something like that on the mailing list, but wasn't sure. You'll note that my comment to you was probably more civil than my comment to him, because he seems to be starting it.  And I bear little love for the man who screwed up all the numbering of all the Holy Roman Emperor Henrys.  I'll try to revert if I see something.  It's really pretty ridiculous. john 04:42 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks John. Appreciate any help. This was settled long ago and has broad support, so I don't think the one-man reversions will last for long. Tannin

 * The Style Manual for Biological Journals as "Prepared by the Committee on Form and Style of the Conference of Biological Editors of the American Institute of Biological Sciences" states at page 68, "Generic names used as vernacular names are neither italicized nor capitalized"
 * Since an other authoritative source has indicated that capitalization is usually done among ornithologists (though it is not a rule) I will leave birds alone ... for now.

What exactly does that mean. "Generic names" - doesn't that mean "names of a genus". So, for instance, if you use the generic name Gorilla as the common name, "gorilla", you don't have to capitalize it. It seems to me that while in a normal sentence, the word "gorilla" should not be capitalized, it ought to be capitalized when it is referring to the species as a whole. And that your reference doesn't seem to be referring to what you think it is referring to. john 05:39 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I thank you for putting a reply on my talk page. When you answer me on my talk page, I am notified that there is a message for me; when you answer me on your own talk page I receive no such notice.  I have already commented twice on Tannin's talk page, but he has not replied.

 * A rereading of the item that I quoted does give some support for your interpretation. The sentence is repeated on the next page with the single change of "vernacular" to "common".(I've since won another much thicker book about writing style in biology, but it might not get to me for another couple weeks.)  The Latin species name is never capitalized anyway. Capitals and single quotes are used, however, for cultivars.  This may give support for a similar practice for dog breeds, but I'm not yet ready to take a stand on that.  A little later the book gives examples and particular rules relating to insects, plants and bacteria.  For birds it refers us to the American Ornithologists Union's check-list of North American birds, but gives no examples.  It is silent about mammals and other vertebrates.

 * The Globe and Mail Style Book directs lower case for all animals, including birds, except when what would otherwise be a common name is involved. It is more direct than most general style manuals when dealing with this, and that gives some weight when we are concerned with a work of general knowledge such as Wikipedia.

 * The other point that favors lower case is the general rule in Wikipedia titles to lower case all words unless there is a good reason to the contrary.

 * The next source is an online one at http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/courses.hp/biol335/Lecture8-9.html
 * I quote

 * capitalization:
 * unless the common name includes a proper name (e.g., person's name or place name), most common names are not capitalized
 * however, there are exceptions for certain groups of organisms. One obvious exception is that the common names of birds are now usually capitalized
 * e.g. white-tailed deer vs Atlantic salmon vs Richardson's ground squirrel vs Great Horned Owl vs Englemann spruce vs balsam poplar vs Rocky Mountain juniper
 * for vertebrates and probably other groups of organisms, there are international committees that recommend on common names in each language
 * e.g. the sparrow hawk is now the American Kestrel
 * Note the word "usually" in regards to birds. The practice follows the American Ornithologists Union but is by no means universal.  I am at least prepared to concede the matter in regards to capitalizing bird names, in the absence of further evidence.

 * There is no such list for mammals, and apparently none for other vertebrates where I have not explored the matter.

 * The Alaska Department of Fish and Game Writer's Guide at http://www.cf.adfg.state.ak.us/geninfo/download/adfguide/wrtrguid.pdf supports lower case for all species, including birds where it does note that its view is contrary to that of the Ornithological Union.

 * From the publication The Prairie Naturalist at http://www.fhsu.edu/biology/pn/pnstylerules.htm we have "Common names of organisms are not capitalized except for proper nouns or adjectives that are part of the name, e.g., green-winged teal, American coot, Cooper's hawk."

 * The Newsletter of the Baltimore Bird Club at http://baltimorebirdclub.org/cn/cn0010.html states, "Many birding publications follow an unofficial convention for capitalization of bird names. I have chosen to follow this convention in Chip Notes because it makes the name stand out and it honors the objects of our devotion. If you would follow these "rules" in your submissions it would save a lot of time. The "rules" run something like this:

 * All non-hyphenated parts of a bird's name are capitalized.
 * The hyphenated parts that are a type of bird are also capitalized.
 * The hyphenated parts that are NOT themselves a type of bird, such as "-bellied" or "-tailed," are not capitalized.

A good illustration of all these principles is "Yellow-crowned Night-Heron."

 * Based on all of the above I reach the conclusion that all common names of life forms should be lower cased, with the possible exception of birds.  ☮ Eclecticology 07:56 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

A brief reply: I've basically quoted what I said above on the mailing list. Capitalizing in article titles is the usual English practice (though not in many other languages). Wikipedia links are case sensitive; this is why the rule for lower case, unless there is some other grammatical reason. no great difference about lists; in the changes that I made I was not changing the capital when it was the first letter in a list entry. There was no magic in my starting with bears; it was as good a place as any other for starting.

As the cries of the Anti-Stratfordians screech forth, "Foul! Foul!" my only defence shall be "Jlk7e made me do it! -- Someone else 09:57 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I swear you won't get an edit-conflict if you go for Shakespeare authorship now. I won't touch it till you're done, and it could do with another editorial hand. -- Someone else 22:39 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Okay. I'll go over it shortly. I feel kind of bad that we seem to have driven away the poor new contributor... I tried to send some conciliatory, but firm words, both on the Shakespeare authorship talk page and his/her user talk page. john 22:42 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * OK, you're right, I'll do my best at conciliatory on the talk page as well (fair warning - but will leave the article at your complete disposal!) -- Someone else 22:47 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia's treatment of whacko viewpoints is always tense... I certainly think the "alternate" viewpoint has little to complain about as it now stands, and I hope that the article gives some sense of how baseless it is without resorting to ridicule. I'm going to make a few minor changes (hyphens, links) but substantively I don't think it's too bad as is. (well, one substantive change: everyone agree's Shakespeare's father was illiterate, it's just that the anti-Stratfordians have a problem with that). -- Someone else 00:51 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I saw your insectivore comment on Tannin's talk page. I've tried to clarify it, but I'm not a mammal expert.

On the capitalisation issue, you have to capitalise species in the text as well as the article. The crested lark could refer to several species of larks with crests, such as Skylark, Thekla Lark etc. The Crested Lark is Galerida cristata. Groups of birds, such as the treecreepers, do not need capitalisation. The Treecreeper, certhia familiaris, does.

Hmm...perhaps this is true with birds. It does not seem to be true of other animals. And for many animals, what you're saying doesn't apply. There's only one kind of gorilla, for instance. Anyway, I'm not an expert on this at all (my interest in taxonomy has greatly waned from its peak when I was about ten, thirteen years ago), so I don't want to get into this too much. But might this not be a case of ornithocentrism? john 21:16 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

John -- are YOU editting the List of Battles, ante 1400 pages? If so, do you have a connection faster than dial-up? Respond stat on my Talk page, so we aren't stepping on each other's toes. -- llywrch 05:28 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

John, since you have a much faster connection than I -- I'm still in the dark ages with dial-up -- go ahead & move the pages around. I'll stand back. (Especially since I'm getting a bit frustrated because when I edit the other battle pages, I'm not seeing the updated status of the links.) -- llywrch 05:42 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Actually, John, all that needs doing is updating the relevant links. If you can't get to this administrivia, I'll do it tomorrow when I have access to a faster connection.

And good work on updating the list of battles in the period before AD 1. That is something I've been meaning to do, but I never seem to have both the time & a round tuit. -- llywrch 05:53 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I just had a look at the List of Battles pages. Thanks for finishing the job. -- llywrch 15:36 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I can't claim to have read any, but W.E.B. claimed to have written some. -- Someone else 05:44 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

re: my edit of Clovis I -- you make a very fair point. As you know my main concerns were better flow, and more specificity. I trust you have already made the appropriate changes, if not I hope you will, Slrubenstein

John, doing some miscellaneous edits on the List of battles 1400 BC-600 AD page, I noticed you renamed the Battle of Abrittus to the Battle of Forum Terebronii. I've seen it referred to more often by the first name -- is your version the more comon name? It would be nice to get more information about this important, but poorly documented battle.-- llywrch 00:24 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the details on the Battle of Abrittus: while I reverted the name, I also include the materials you quoted via paraphrase. Much thanks. -- llywrch 04:42 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John, I was in the middle of changing Lord Lucan when you redirected the old text to Earls of Lucan. I removed the redirect to save my text change, then redirected the new text to Earl of Lucan. I also redirected Earls of Lucan to Earl of Lucan, as I think under wiki conventions it probably should be in as singular, given that it isn't a list but an article with a list attached. FearÉIREANN 00:11 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

BTW, what do you think of History of China. There seems strong agreement that the article is a mess, largely it seems due to one person's additions. We are suggesting reverting to an earlier version to undo the rewrite, which apart from anything else has poor english. FearÉIREANN 00:33 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I was going to move Lord Lucan to Earl of Lucan, but the disambiguation was the last thing I did before I went to bed. I think the convention is to have the pages listed in the singular as the articles are about the title as well as the title holders. I've just noticed that you've been doing a similar thing with other peers. I hope I'm not treading on your toes. I was going to write an article about the Earl of Lucan who was in the crimea (4th I think) but realised that the Lucan page needed disambiguation, then I decided to do the same with Earl Spencer and Duke of Westminster. You may notice that for the Duke of Westminster I have created Lord Grosvenor and Marquess of Westminster as redirect pages and briefly discuss, and list the holders of those titles. I think this is the correct way to handle these titles that have been subsumed by greater ones. What do you think? Mintguy 23:03 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Hmmm... well I expected that it would probably be more complicated than I first thought, so I guess some thought needs to go into individual cases. Do you have information about the 2nd Baronet Grosvenor (or however he should be correctly titled) I haven't been able to track him down to plug him into the Duke of Westminster page. Mintguy

Thanks for the fix-up on Duke of Westminster. I realised that a baronet is styled Sir, but was unsure of the rest of the styling. In Wikipedia knights of the realm are listed without the prefix Sir in the article title. I wonder whether baronets should be. Similarly, as the current Duke of Westminster is a baronet should he be listed as sir Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster instead of Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster? Of course I know that a proper listing of his name as per Burke's peerage would be a mile long. but is the appropriate short form without Sir correct?

-- Hi John, your help is needed on Republic of Ireland. Some months ago User:Scipius engaged in a ludicrous war to change the page because he wanted it called Ireland rather than Republic of Ireland. The row got rather nasty. Now he has returned and wants to screw up the page that has been agreed (it was rewritten most by me but also by others. I contacted a lot of users who had views on the matter to see what they thought (people like User:Derek Ross for example) and all were quite happy with the rewrite. Now Scipius has come back again and is starting his rewriting again. He basically wants to remove factually relevant material and install a template he wants, one littered with inaccuracies, eg, it talks about the RofI's languages being Irish and english, as if they were equal. In fact as the Irish constitution makes clear, Irish is the national language, english a secondary language, not even the secondary language. But Scipius has a problem stating that very simply in one sentence and keeps deleting it. He wants to refer to the state as Éire/Ireland not Eire/Ireland/Republic of Ireland which was the agreed version when various Northern Ireland users objected to the article presuming that the twenty-six county state could claim exclusive use of the word Ireland. To avoid offence and give clarity, we have tended to use Ireland to refer to the political entities before partition and to geographic and cultural references to the island after 1920. But Scipius has a 'problem' with this.

Every time there is a consensus agreed on the page, or changes made at someone's suggestion which everyone then agrees to, Scipius reappears with his own agenda, his own highly inaccurate understanding of Irish history and starts reverting agreed versions and putting in his own frequently ludicrously inaccurate stuff, or deleting accurate relevent stuff because he deems it irrelevant. Knowing your skill and knowledge of facts (and desire or accuracy rather than inaccurate simplicities) I would welcome your involvement. Irish users are becoming increasingly frustrated by the antics of Scipius and one or two other users, who don't know accurate facts but nevertheless bulldoze through Irish pages changing things to suit their own theories. In the past Scipius has been one of the worst offenders and I don't want to see him screwing around Irish pages yet again. FearÉIREANN 02:42 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Hi John, I've read your message and I now see that JTD has unfortunately felt it necessary to misrepresent my position. I originally applied the agreed upon country template to Ireland without any difficulty, but shortly afterwards objections were made to the name of "Ireland" for only the Republic. My preference for using just "Ireland" for the Republic came from the fact that this is what most people outside Ireland would conventionally use to refer to the country and indeed many sites and encyclopedias do so. It was also part of the template to use the conventional short name of country for the article. As it happened, my position was not supported and so the article was moved, after which I also withdrew the template.

 * People then went to work on the article and it diverged significantly from other country articles. Jeronimo then reapplied the template, but this met with protests from JTD. A /temp version was then written mostly by JTD and applied to the main article. Unfortunately, this version does not comply with the template and so I started work on trying to make it compliant. What I did was not a reversal (except for the overly long history section), but a reworking. I see that JTD here raises some points he might have better raised on the RoI talk page. The bit on the languages is hardly a problem (note that both are official languages), but such a note is better added separately, as mentioning it like JTD did clutters up the table. As for the title, the template prescribes we use the local official name there, and the Irish constitution obviously says its Eire. This was not what the previous debate was about, which was about the name of the article itself.

 * As for my supposed ineptitude, doubtless things I've added could be improved, but JTD's characterisation is a little off and note that he does not mention examples. Regrettably, JTD is not in a particularly cooperative mood at the moment, but the template is still valid and I hope we can work together on it. Could you please revert your change so that my proposed changes are visible? Thanks. -Scipius 21:58 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yeah. I added in one list of Lords Lieutenant of Ireland then found there was another (my work? I can't remember!). So I guess they should be merged. BTW I see Scipius has left a message. I could not help smiling. According to Scipius, "both (Irish and english) are official languages". How many times over how many months does it have to be repeated to Scipius that this is wrong? *sigh*. Oh the saga of Scipius and the Republic of Ireland goes on and on. . . and on and on. lol FearÉIREANN 23:15 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What is the correct convention for Capitalisation of titles. I just pulled John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich from EB11 and it had Duke of Bedford as opposed to duke of Beford and suchlike all over the place. Mintguy 09:51 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi John,

Someone left this message on specially created page. Before deleting the page I thought I'd better give you the message. Maybe you could help them. BTW - sorry for using here and not your talk page. Because wiki is so flippin' slow right now I can't use my good browser that times out before wiki opens a page but the crappy Internet Explorer that cuts the bottom off pages over 32K. As yours is over 32K I couldn't leave a message there without castrating the bottom of your page. (I can't open mine either. I keep getting messages saying 'please archive'. I'd love to but I can't get it to do it until I can get off IE and back to safari, and I cannot do that untl wiki gets beyond the internet equivalent of a model T.)

Anyway, here's the message from an anonymous punter.

iI am very interested in the life of Prince John. I fel he suffered from autism (sp). i WOULD LIKE TO KNOW 1. Where was York House in the Great Park AT wINDSOR 2. Where was he buried. Any info gratfully received. Annette SPRING.TERRACE.FARM @xtra.co.nz

FearÉIREANN 04:40 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I didn't notice, sorry. Koyaanis Qatsi 07:52 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:John K/Archive 2


text:
Court of appeal (disambiguation)

A court of appeal is an appellate court.

Court of Appeal may refer to:

In Australia:
 * Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal, name used by the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory exercising its appeal jurisdiction
 * New South Wales Court of Appeal
 * Supreme Court of Victoria, Court of Appeal
 * Court of Appeal of the Northern Territory of Australia
 * Supreme Court of Queensland, Court of Appeal
 * Supreme Court of Western Australia, Court of Appeal

In Belgium: In Brazil:
 * Court of appeal (Belgium)

 * Court of appeal of Rio Grande do Norte State

In Canada:

 * Federal Court of Appeal (Canada)
 * Alberta Court of Appeal
 * British Columbia Court of Appeal
 * Manitoba Court of Appeal
 * Court of Appeal of New Brunswick
 * Court of Appeal of Newfoundland and Labrador
 * Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories
 * Nova Scotia Court of Appeal
 * Nunavut Court of Appeal
 * Court of Appeal for Ontario
 * Court of Appeal of Prince Edward Island
 * Quebec Court of Appeal
 * Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan
 * Court of Appeal of Yukon

In Cameroon: In the Cook Islands:
 * Court of Appeal of Cameroon

 * Cook Islands Court of Appeal

In Fiji:
 * Court of Appeal of Fiji

In France: In Germany:
 * Court of Appeal of Paris
 * Court of appeal (France)

 * High Court of Appeal of the Four Free Cities

In Hong Kong: In Iceland:
 * Court of Appeal (Hong Kong)

 * Court of Appeal (Iceland)

In Ireland: In Kenya:
 * Court of Appeal (Ireland)
 * Court of Appeal in Ireland

 * Court of Appeal of Kenya

In Kiribati:

 * Kiribati Court of Appeal

In Malaysia: In Monaco:
 * Court of Appeal (Malaysia)

 * Court of Appeal of Monaco

In New Zealand: In Nigeria:
 * Court of Appeal of New Zealand

 * Nigerian Courts of Appeal

In Norway: In Singapore:
 * Court of appeal (Norway)
 * Agder Court of Appeal
 * Borgarting Court of Appeal
 * Eidsivating Court of Appeal
 * Frostating Court of Appeal
 * Gulating Court of Appeal
 * Hålogaland Court of Appeal

 * Court of Appeal of Singapore

In South Africa: In Sri Lanka:
 * Supreme Court of Appeal

 * Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka

In Sweden: In Tonga:
 * Courts of appeal in Sweden
 * Svea Court of Appeal
 * Göta Court of Appeal
 * Scania and Blekinge Court of Appeal
 * Court of Appeal for Western Sweden
 * Court of Appeal for Southern Norrland
 * Court of Appeal for Northern Norrland

 * Court of Appeal of Tonga

In Tuvalu:

 * Court of Appeal of Tuvalu

In Uganda:

 * Court of Appeal of Uganda

In Ukraine:

 * Vinnytsia Administrative Court of Appeal

In the United Kingdom:

 * Court of Appeal in Chancery (no longer in existence)
 * Court of Appeal (England and Wales)
 * Court of Appeal (Northern Ireland)
 * East African Court of Appeal
 * West African Court of Appeal
 * West Indian Court of Appeal

In the United States of America:
 * California Courts of Appeal
 * Florida District Courts of Appeal
 * Florida First District Court of Appeal
 * Florida Second District Court of Appeal
 * Florida Third District Court of Appeal
 * Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal
 * Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal
 * Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal
 * Oklahoma Courts of Appeal

Nongovernmental:
 * Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile International Court of Appeal

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Court of appeal (disambiguation)


text:
User:Wikid

Wikid is the ID of a new kid on Wikipedia.

... well, I'd like to think "young at heart", at least.

Well, I'm humbled. Thank you. It has all been part of a lifeling quest for the perfect grilled sausage. Wikid 16:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

title: User:Wikid


text:
History of the Soviet Union (1953–1964)

In the USSR, during the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin (1953) to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War, including the U.S.–USSR struggle for the global spread of their respective socio-economic systems and ideology, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism — a very powerful General Secretary of the CPSU—remained in place, albeit weakened.

Stalin's immediate legacy
After Stalin died in March 1953, he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Georgy Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. However the central figure in the immediate post-Stalin period was the former head of the state security apparatus, Lavrentiy Beria.

Stalin had left the Soviet Union in an unenviable state when he died. At least 2.5 million people languished in prison and in labor camps, science and the arts had been subjugated to socialist realism, and agriculture productivity on the whole was meager. The country had only one quarter of the livestock it had had in 1928 and in some areas, there were fewer animals than there had been at the start of World War I. Private plots accounted for at least one quarter of meat, dairy, and produce output. Living standards were low and consumer goods scarce. Moscow was also remarkably isolated and friendless on the international stage; Eastern Europe excluding Yugoslavia was held to the Soviet yoke by military occupation and soon after Stalin's death, protests and revolts would break out in some Eastern Bloc countries. China paid homage to the departed Soviet leader, but held a series of grudges that would soon boil over. The United States had military bases and nuclear-equipped bomber aircraft surrounding the Soviet Union on three sides, and American aircraft regularly overflew Soviet territory on reconnaissance missions and to parachute agents in. Although the Soviet authorities shot down many of these aircraft and captured most of the agents dropped onto their soil, the psychological effect was immense.

American fears of Soviet military and especially nuclear capabilities were strong and heavily exaggerated; Moscow's only heavy bomber, the Tu-4, was a direct clone of the B-29 and had no way to get to the United States except on a one way suicide mission and the Soviet nuclear arsenal contained only a handful of weapons.

Domestic policy
As Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, Lavrentiy Beria (notwithstanding his record as part of Stalin's terror state) initiated a period of relative liberalisation, including the release of some political prisoners. Almost as soon as Stalin was buried, Beria ordered Vyacheslav Molotov's wife freed from imprisonment and personally delivered her to the Soviet foreign minister. He also directed the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) to reexamine the Doctors' Plot and other "false" cases. Beria next proposed stripping the MVD of some of its economic assets and transferring control of them to other ministries, followed by the proposal to stop using forced labour on construction projects. He then announced that 1.1 million non-political prisoners were to be freed from captivity, that the Ministry of Justice should assume control of labour camps from the MVD, and that the Doctors' Plot was false. Finally, he ordered a halt to physical and psychological abuse of prisoners. Beria also declared a halt to forced Russification of the Soviet republics; Beria himself was a Georgian.

The leadership also began allowing some criticism of Stalin, saying that his one-man dictatorship went against the principles laid down by Vladimir Lenin. The war hysteria that characterized his last years was toned down, and government bureaucrats and factory managers were allowed to wear civilian clothing instead of military-style outfits. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were given serious prospects of national autonomy, possibly similarly to other Soviet satellite states in Europe.

Foreign policy
Beria also turned his attention to foreign policy. A secret letter found among his papers after his death, suggested restoring relations with Titoist Yugoslavia. He also criticized Soviet handling of Eastern Europe and the numerous "mini-Stalins" such as Hungary's Mátyás Rákosi. East Germany particularly was in a tenuous situation in 1953 as the attempt by its leader Walter Ulbricht to impose all-out Stalinism had cause a mass exodus of people to the West. Beria suggested that East Germany should just be forgotten about entirely and there was "no purpose" for its existence. He revived the proposal Stalin had made to the Allies in 1946 for the creation of a united, neutral Germany.

Opposition to Beria
Beria displayed a considerable degree of contempt for the rest of the Politburo, letting it be known that they were "complicit" in Stalin's crimes. However, it was not deep-rooted ideological disagreements that turned them against Beria. Khrushchev in particular was appalled at the idea of abandoning East Germany and allowing the restoration of capitalism there, but that alone was not enough to plot Beria's downfall and he even supported the new, more enlightened policy towards non-Russian nationalities. The Politburo soon began stonewalling Beria's reforms and trying to prevent them from passing. One proposal, to reduce sentences handed down by the MVD to 10 years max, was later claimed by Khrushchev to be a ruse. "He wants to be able to sentence people to ten years in the camps, and then when they're freed, sentence them to another ten years. This is his way of grinding them down." Molotov was the strongest opponent of abandoning East Germany, and found in Khrushchev an unexpected ally.

By late June, it was decided that Beria could not simply be ignored or sidelined, he had to be taken out. They had him arrested on 26 June with the support of the armed forces. At the end of the year, he was shot following a show trial where he was accused of spying for the West, committing sabotage, and plotting to restore capitalism. The secret police were disarmed and reorganized into the KGB, ensuring that they were completely under the control of the party and would never again be able to wage mass terror.

Collective leadership
For a time after Beria's deposition, Georgi Malenkov was generally considered the senior-most figure in the Politburo. Malenkov, an artistic-minded man who courted intellectuals and artists, had little use for bloodshed or state terror. He called for greater support of private agricultural plots and liberation of the arts from rigid socialist realism and he also criticized the pseudoscience of biologist Trofim Lysenko. In a November 1953 speech, Malenkov denounced corruption in various government agencies. He also reappraised Soviet views of the outside world and relations with the West, arguing that there were no disputes with the United States and her allies that could not be resolved peacefully, and that nuclear war with the West would simply bring about the destruction of all parties involved.

Within the same period, Nikita Khrushchev likewise emerged as a prominent figure in Soviet politics. Khrushchev proposed greater agricultural reforms, although he still refused to abandon the concept of collective farming and continued to support Lysenko's pseudoscience. In a 1955 speech, he argued that Soviet agriculture needed a shot in the arm and that it was silly to keep blaming low productivity and failed harvests on Tsar Nicholas II, dead for almost 40 years. He also began allowing ordinary people to stroll the grounds of the Kremlin, which had been closed off except to high ranking state officials for over 20 years.

The late Stalin's reputation meanwhile started diminishing. His 75th birthday in December 1954 had been marked by extensive eulogies and commemorations in the state media as was the second anniversary of his death in March 1955. However, his 76th birthday at the end of the year was hardly mentioned.

The new leadership declared a major amnesty for certain categories of convicts, announced price cuts, and relaxed the restrictions on private plots. De-Stalinisation would come to spell an end to the role of large-scale forced labour in the economy.

Conflict within the collective leadership
During the period of collective leadership, Khrushchev gradually rose to power while Malenkov's power waned. Malenkov was criticised for his economic reform proposals and desire to reduce the CPSU's direct involvement in the day-to-day running of the state. Molotov called his warning that nuclear war would end all of civilisation to be "nonsense" since according to Karl Marx, the collapse of capitalism was a historical inevitability. Khrushchev accused Malenkov of supporting Beria's plan to abandon East Germany, and of being a "capitulationist, social democrat, and a Menshevist".

Khrushchev was also headed for a showdown with Molotov, after having initially respected and left him alone in the immediate aftermath of Stalin's death. Molotov began criticizing some of Khrushchev's ideas and the latter accused him in turn of being an out-of-touch ideologue who never left his dacha or the Kremlin to visit farms or factories. Molotov attacked Khrushchev's suggestions for agricultural reform and also his plans to construct cheap, prefab apartments to alleviate Moscow's severe housing shortages. Khrushchev also endorsed restoring ties with Yugoslavia, the split with Belgrade having been heavily engineered by Molotov, who continued to denounce Tito as a fascist. A 1955 visit by Khrushchev to Yugoslavia patched up relations with that country, but Molotov refused to back down. The near-total isolation of the Soviet Union from the outside world was also blamed by Khrushchev on Molotov's handling of foreign policy and the former admitted in a speech to the Central Committee the obvious Soviet complicity in starting the Korean War.

20th Congress of the CPSU
At a closed session of the 20th Congress of the CPSU on 25 February 1956, Khrushchev shocked his listeners by denouncing Stalin's dictatorial rule and cult of personality in a speech entitled On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences. He also attacked the crimes committed by Stalin's closest associates. Furthermore, he stated that the orthodox view of war between the capitalist and communist worlds being inevitable was no longer true. He advocated competition with the West rather than outright hostility, stating that capitalism would decay from within and that world socialism would triumph peacefully. But, he added, if the capitalists did desire war, the Soviet Union would respond in kind.

De-Stalinisation
The impact of the 20th Congress on Soviet politics was immense. Khrushchev's speech stripped the legitimacy of his remaining Stalinist rivals, dramatically boosting his power domestically. Afterwards, Khrushchev eased restrictions and freed over a million prisoners from the Gulag, leaving an estimated 1.5 million prisoners living in a semi-reformed prison system (though a wave of counter-reform followed in the 1960s). Communists around the world were shocked and confused by his condemnation of Stalin, and the speech "...caused a veritable revolution (the word is not too strong) in peoples attitudes throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It was the single factor in breaking down the mixture of fear, fanaticism, naivety and 'doublethink' with which everyone...had reacted to Communist rule".

Among Soviet intellectuals
Many Soviet intellectuals groused that Khrushchev and the rest of the Central Committee had willingly aided and abetted Stalin's crimes and that the late tyrant could not possibly have done everything himself. Furthermore, they asked why it had taken three years to condemn him and noted that Khrushchev mostly criticised what had happened to fellow Party members while completely overlooking far greater atrocities such as the Holodomor and mass deportations from the Baltic States during and after World War II, none of which were allowed to be mentioned in the Soviet press until the end of the 1980s. During the Secret Speech, Khrushchev had tried in an awkward manner to explain why he and his colleagues had not raised their voices against Stalin by saying that they all feared their own destruction if they did not comply with his demands.

Pro-Stalin demonstrations
In Stalin's native Georgia, massive crowds of pro-Stalin demonstrators rioted in the streets of Tbilisi and even demanded that Georgia secede from the USSR. Army troops had to be called in to restore order, with 20 deaths, 60 injuries, and scores of arrests.

Response from Soviet youth
In April 1956, there were reports that Stalin busts and portraits around the country had been vandalized or pulled down and some student groups rioted and demanded that Stalin be posthumously expelled from the party and his body taken down from its spot next to Lenin. Party and student meetings called for proper rule of law in the country and even free elections. A 25 year old Mikhail Gorbachev, then a member of the Komsomol in Stavropol reported that reaction to the Secret Speech was explosive and there were strong reactions between people, particularly, young, educated people, who supported it and hated Stalin, others who denounced it and still held the late tyrant in awe, and others who thought it was irrelevant compared to grassroots issues such as food and housing availability. The Presidium responded by issuing a resolution condemning "anti-party" and "anti-Soviet" slanderers and the April 7 Pravda reprinted an editorial from China's People's Daily calling on party members to study Stalin's teachings and honour his memory. A Central Committee meeting on 30 June issued a resolution criticising Stalin merely for "serious errors" and "practicing a cult of personality" but holding the Soviet system itself blameless.

International reception
Some of the communist world, in particular China, North Korea, and Albania, stridently rejected de-Stalinisation. An editorial in the People's Daily argued that "Stalin made some mistakes, but on the whole he was a good, honest Marxist and his positives outweighed the negatives." Mao Zedong had many quarrels with Stalin, but thought that condemning him undermined the entire legitimacy of world socialism; "Stalin needed to be criticised, not killed" he said.

Rehabilitation during this period
By late 1955, thousands of political prisoners had been freed, but Soviet prisons and labour camps still held around 800,000 inmates and no attempt was made to investigate the Moscow Trials or rehabilitate their victims. Eventually several hundred thousand of Stalin's victims were rehabilitated, but the party officials purged in the Moscow Trials remained off the table. Khrushchev ordered an investigation into the trials of Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other army officers. The committee found that the charges leveled against them were baseless and their posthumous rehabilitation was announced in early 1957, but another investigation into the trials of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Nikolai Bukharin declared that all three had engaged in "anti-Soviet activity" and would not be rehabilitated. After Khrushchev defeated the "anti-party group" in 1957, he promised to re-open the cases, but ultimately never did so, in part because of the embarrassing fact that he himself had celebrated the elimination of the Old Bolsheviks during the purges.

Changing toponymy
As part of de-Stalinisation, Khrushchev set about renaming the numerous towns, cities, factories, natural features, and kolkhozes around the country named in honor of Stalin and his aides, most notably Stalingrad, site of the great WWII battle, was renamed to Volgograd in 1961.

Defeat of the Anti-Party Group
In 1957, Khrushchev had defeated a concerted Stalinist attempt to recapture power, decisively defeating the so-called "Anti-Party Group"; this event illustrated the new nature of Soviet politics. The most decisive attack on the Stalinists was delivered by defense minister Georgy Zhukov, who and the implied threat to the plotters was clear; however, none of the "anti-party group" were killed or even arrested, and Khrushchev disposed of them quite cleverly: Georgy Malenkov was sent to manage a power station in Kazakhstan, and Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the most die-hard Stalinists, was made ambassador to Mongolia.

Eventually however, Molotov was reassigned to be the Soviet representative of the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna after the Kremlin decided to put some safe distance between him and China since Molotov was becoming increasingly cozy with the anti-Khrushchev Chinese Communist Party leadership. Molotov continued to attack Khrushchev every opportunity he got, and in 1960, on the occasion of Lenin's 90th birthday, wrote a piece describing his personal memories of the Soviet founding father and thus implying that he was closer to the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. In 1961, just prior to the 22nd CPSU Congress, Molotov wrote a vociferous denunciation of Khrushchev's party platform and was rewarded for this action with expulsion from the party.

Khrushchev's attack on the "anti-party group" drew negative reactions from China; the People's Daily remarked "How can [Molotov], one of the founding fathers of the CPSU, be a member of an anti-party group?"

Like Molotov, Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov also met the chopping block when he was sent to manage the Kirghizia Institute of Economics. Later, when he was appointed as a delegate to the Communist Party of Kirghizia conference, Khrushchev deputy Leonid Brezhnev intervened and ordered Shepilov dropped from the conference. He and his wife were evicted from their Moscow apartment and then reassigned to a smaller one that lay exposed to the fumes from a nearby food processing plant, and he was dropped from membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences before being expelled from the party. Kliment Voroshilov held the ceremonial title of head of state despite his advancing age and declining health; he retired in 1960. Nikolai Bulganin ended up managing the Stavropol Economic Council. Also banished was Lazar Kaganovich, sent to manage a potash works in the Urals before being expelled from the party along with Molotov in 1962.

Despite his strong support for Khrushchev during the removal of Beria and the anti-party group, Zhukov was too popular and beloved of a figure for Khrushchev's comfort, so he was removed as well. In addition, while leading the attack against Molotov, Malenkov, and Kaganovich, he also insinuated that Khrushchev himself had been complicit in the 1930s purges, which in fact he had. While Zhukov was on a visit to Albania in October 1957, Khrushchev plotted his downfall. When Zhukov returned to Moscow, he was promptly accused of trying to remove the Soviet military from party control, creating a cult of personality around himself, and of plotting to seize power in a coup. Several Soviet generals went on to accuse Zhukov of "egomania", "shameless self-aggrandizement", and of tyrannical behaviour during WWII. Zhukov was expelled from his post as defense minister and forced into retirement from the military on the grounds of his "advanced age" (he was 62). Marshal Rodin Malinovsky took Zhukov's place as defense minister.

Election to Premiership
Khrushchev was elected Premier on 27 March 1958, consolidating his power—the tradition followed by all his predecessors and successors. This was the final stage in the transition from the earlier period of post-Stalin collective leadership. He was now the ultimate source of authority in the Soviet Union, but would never possess the absolute power Stalin had.

21st Congress of the CPSU
In 1959, between 27 January and 5 February, the 21st Congress of the CPSU took place; it was an "Extraordinary" Congress, timed so that Khrushchev could consolidate his power over rivals not long after the attempted coup of the "anti-party group" in 1957. It was during this congress that the unusual Seven-Year Plan was adopted, cutting short and replacing the Sixth Five-Year Plan that had been adopted in 1956. The Seven-Year Plan would itself be cut short two years before its completion, retroactively becoming the seventh five-year plan.

22nd Congress of the CPSU
The 22nd Congress of the CPSU, which convened from 17–21 October 1961, marked the apex of Khrushchev's power and prestige, despite there being already mounting doubts about his policies. However, the real opposition to him had yet to come and he glowed in the praise of the CPSU delegates as he read off the general report of the Central Committee and the party program, two monumental speeches that lasted a total of ten hours. Within a decade, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet people would have equal living standards and material comforts with the United States and Western Europe. In addition, the 22nd Congress saw a renewed attack on Stalin, which culminated in the expulsion of remaining Old Bolsheviks like Molotov and Kaganovich from the party. Stalin's embalmed body, which still lay in Red Square next to Lenin, was immediately removed and reburied in the Kremlin Wall.

Khrushchev voted out of office
In October 1964, while Khrushchev was on holiday in Crimea, the Presidium unanimously voted him out of office and refused to permit him to take his case to the Central Committee. He retired as a private citizen after an editorial in Pravda denounced him for "hare-brained schemes, half−baked conclusions, hasty decisions, and actions divorced from reality".

Reforms during Khrushchev's administration
Throughout his years of leadership, Khrushchev oversaw attempted reforms in a range of fields.

Khrushchev Thaw
Khrushchev initiated "The Thaw", a complex shift in political, cultural, and economic life in the Soviet Union. That included some openness and contact with other countries and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing living standards to rise dramatically while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Censorship was relaxed as well. Some subtle critiques of the Soviet society were tolerated, and artists were not expected to produce only works which had government-approved political context. Still, artists, most of whom were proud of both the country and the Party, were careful not to get into trouble. However, he reintroduced aggressive anti-religious campaigns, closing down many houses of worship.

Impact on the Eastern Bloc
Such loosening of controls also caused an enormous impact on other socialist countries in Central Europe, many of which were resentful of Soviet influence in their affairs. Riots broke out in Poland in the summer of 1956, which led to reprisals from national forces there. A political convulsion soon followed, leading to the rise of Władysław Gomułka to power in October. This almost triggered a Soviet invasion when Polish Communists elected him without consulting the Kremlin in advance, but in the end, Khrushchev backed down due to Gomułka's widespread popularity in the country. Poland would still remain a member of the Warsaw Pact (established a year earlier), and in return, the Soviet Union seldom intervened in its neighbors' domestic and external affairs. Khrushchev also began reaching out to newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, which was in sharp contrast to Stalin's Europe-centered foreign policy. And in September 1959, he became the first Soviet leader to visit the US.

In November 1956, the Hungarian Revolution was brutally suppressed by Soviet troops. About 2,500–3,000 Hungarian insurgents and 700 Soviet troops were killed, thousands more were wounded, and nearly a quarter million left the country as refugees. The Hungarian uprising was a blow to Western communists; many who had formerly supported the Soviet Union began to criticize it in the wake of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising.

Agriculture
Back in the early 1950s, Khrushchev had defended private plots as part of the collective leadership, which had introduced important innovations in the area of Soviet agriculture. It had encouraged peasants to grow more on their private plots, increased payments for crops grown on collective farms, and invested more heavily in agriculture.

However, beginning in the late 1950s, Khrushchev spoke of communal farming as inevitable. After Khrushchev had defeated his rivals and secured his position, he set his attention to economic reforms, particularly in the field of agriculture. "If a capitalist farmer required eight kilos of grain to produce one kilo of meat," he told a farmers' council, "he would lose his pants. Yet if a state farm director here does the same, he manages to keep his pants. Why? Because no one will hold him accountable for it".

Khrushchev's administration abolished the Machine Tractor Stations, which were rural agencies to provide farming equipment, and had them sell their inventory directly to the farmers, but the latter ended up incurring huge debts buying the farming equipment, which ended up being used less effectively than the MTS had done.

American farming techniques and maize
Khrushchev continued to believe in the theories of the biologist Trofim Lysenko, a carryover from the Stalin era, however, the Soviet leader looked to his country's greatest rival for inspiration. As far back as the 1940s, he had promoted the use of American farming techniques and even obtained seeds from the US, in particular from a cagey Iowa farmer named Roswell Garst, who believed positive trade and business relations with Moscow would ease superpower tensions. This led to Khrushchev's soon to be notorious fascination with growing maize, although most of the Soviet Union outside of Ukraine lacked a suitable climate and much of the infrastructure used by American farmers, including adequate mechanized equipment, knowledge of advanced farming techniques, and proper use of fertilizer and pesticides, was in short supply. Although Khrushchev's corn obsession was exaggerated by popular myth, he did nonetheless advocate any number of unrealistic ideas such as planting corn in Siberia.

Virgin Lands Campaign
During the Virgin Lands Campaign in the mid-1950s, many tracts of land were opened to farming in Kazakhstan and neighbouring areas of Russia. These new farmlands turned out to be susceptible to droughts, but in some years they produced excellent harvests. Later agricultural reforms by Khrushchev, however, proved counterproductive. His plans for growing corn and increasing meat and dairy production failed, and his reorganisation of collective farms into larger units produced confusion in the countryside.

Industry
In a politically motivated move to weaken the central state bureaucracy in 1957, Khrushchev did away with the industrial ministries in Moscow and replaced them with regional economic councils (sovnarkhozes).

Although he intended these economic councils to be more responsive to local needs, the decentralisation of industry led to disruption and inefficiency. Connected with this decentralisation was Khrushchev's decision in 1962 to recast party organisations along economic, rather than administrative, lines. The resulting bifurcation of the party apparatus into industrial and agricultural sectors at the oblast (province) level and below contributed to the disarray and alienated many party officials at all levels. Symptomatic of the country's economic difficulties was the abandonment in 1963 of Khrushchev's special seven-year economic plan (1959–65) two years short of its completion.

Military
Khrushchev significantly reduced Soviet defense spending and the size of conventional forces, accusing the army of being "metal eaters" and "If you let the army have their way, they will eat up the country's entire resources and still claim it's not enough." Several warships under construction were scrapped as Khrushchev considered them useless, as well as plans for long range bombers. Orders for fighter planes slowed and several military airfields were converted to civilian use. Although he alienated the Soviet military establishment, he insisted that the country could not match the United States for conventional military capabilities and that the nuclear arsenal was sufficient deterrence. There were also practical reasons for this stance as the low birth rate of the 1940s caused a shortage of military-aged men.

The size of the Soviet military was reduced by nearly 2 million men in 1955–57, and further cuts followed in 1958 and 1960. These cuts in troop strength were not well planned out and many soldiers and officers were left jobless and homeless. Discontent in the military started building up.

Despite Khrushchev's boasts about Soviet missile capabilities, they were mostly bluster. The R-7 ICBM used to launch Sputnik was almost useless as a workable ICBM and Soviet missiles were launched from above-ground surface pads which were completely exposed to enemy attack. When Khrushchev suggested putting them in underground silos, Soviet rocket engineers argued that it could not be done until he stumbled across an article in an American technical journal describing the use of silos to house missiles. He admonished the rocket engineers for failing to pay attention to American technical developments and when the first Soviet silo launch took place in September 1959, Khrushchev took it as a personal triumph.

Science and technology
Aid to developing countries and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry, maintained the Soviet Union as one of the world's two major world powers. The Soviet Union launched the first ever artificial Earth satellite in history, Sputnik 1, which orbited the Earth in 1957. The Soviets also sent the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961.

Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc
Khrushchev attempted to restore relations with Tito's Yugoslavia with a visit to Belgrade in May 1955, however the Yugoslavian leader was unmoved by an attempt by Khrushchev to blame Beria for the break with Yugoslavia. Khrushchev persisted and began urging the Eastern European bloc to restore ties with Yugoslavia. He also disbanded the Cominform, used as a club to beat Belgrade over the head with. The trip was reciprocated by a visit of Josip Broz Tito to Moscow in May 1956 where he was given a regal welcome and immense crowds dispatched to greet him. The Politburo members attempted to outdo each other in courting Tito and apologizing for Stalin, but the visit had no ultimate effect on Tito's foreign policy stance and he still refused to join the Soviet bloc, abandon his nonaligned stance, or cut off economic and military ties with the West. Worse than that, Tito began offering his nonaligned socialism to other countries, in particular Poland and Hungary.

After Hungarian leader Imre Nagy briefly took refuge in the Yugoslavian embassy in Budapest during the events of October 1956, Tito stayed aloof from the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt and Soviet-Yugoslav relations waned from that point onward. Tito declined to attend the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1957 and continued to actively promote his nonaligned stance at the Yugoslavian Communist Party's congress the following March. Khrushchev refused to send any delegates to the congress and authorized a lengthy denunciation of it in Pravda. Accusing Tito of being a traitor similar to Imre Nagy, Khrushchev ordered the execution of the Hungarian leader, who had been incarcerated for the last several months.

The uprisings in Poland and Hungary during 1956, which coincided with a softening of Khrushchev's anti-Stalin course (he told guests in a reception at the Chinese embassy in Moscow that "Stalinism is inseparable from Marxism") brought about renewed protests from various elements of Soviet society. Aside from the usual complaints from intellectuals, there were student demonstrations and reports of portraits of Soviet leaders in factories being vandalized or torn down. Despite the small scale of this public dissent, the Central Committee quickly approved harsh countermeasures and several hundred people were arrested during early 1957 and sentenced to several years in labour camps.

East Germany
East Germany continued to be a sticky situation. Khrushchev had initially hoped to obtain recognition for the GDR from the Western powers, but ended up making things worse. A mass exodus of GDR citizens to West Germany, mostly young, fit adults, continued unabated, which left the GDR's labour force drained of manpower. GDR leader Walter Ulbricht requested the use of Soviet guest workers to make up for labour shortages, a proposal that alarmed Khrushchev as it drew reminders of the use of Soviet slave labourers by Nazi Germany during WWII. On top of this, West German citizens were traveling to the East to buy low cost goods subsidized by Moscow, further increasing the amount of debt money the GDR owed to the USSR.

The problem of signing a peace treaty with West Germany loomed large and posed nearly insurmountable issues. Signing a peace treaty would likely result in an economic embargo of the GDR by West Germany which would require a twofold increase in Soviet assistance, something Moscow could ill afford.

China
Khrushchev ran afoul of China when he proposed a joint Sino-Soviet fleet in the Pacific to counter the US Seventh Fleet. Soviet ambassador to China Pavel Yudin was rebuffed by Mao Zedong in a July 1958 meeting. Mao demanded to talk to Khrushchev in person, so the latter obliged and flew to Beijing. The meeting proved no more successful than the previous one with Yudin and Mao continued to reject the idea of a joint fleet, allowing Soviet Navy warships to dock at Chinese ports in peacetime, and operating joint radar stations as an infringement on Chinese sovereignty. Shortly after Khrushchev went home, the Chinese People's Liberation Army shelled the islands of Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu in the Formosa Strait, provoking the US Seventh Fleet to the area in a major show of force. Moscow supported the Chinese shelling of the islands with reluctance and after American threats of force on China, Mao told an appalled Andrei Gromyko that he was more than willing to start a nuclear war with the imperialist powers.

After this, Sino-Soviet relations calmed during the next six months only to worsen again during the summer of 1959 when Khrushchev criticized the Great Leap Forward and remained noncommittal during a Chinese border clash with India. On 20 August, Moscow informed Beijing that they would not give them a proposed sample atomic bomb. When Khrushchev headed to Beijing in late September, just after his US trip, he was given an icy reception and further alienated the Chinese with his warm accounts of Americans and of Eisenhower. A suggestion by the Soviet premier to free American pilots captured by China during the Korean War was rejected as well as Beijing's recent actions in the Formosa Strait and the Indian border. The talks ended after only three days and Khrushchev went home despondent.

Khrushchev visits the US
In September 1959, Khrushchev became the first Russian head of state to visit the United States. This groundbreaking trip was made on the new Tu-114 long range airliner despite still being an experimental aircraft, since the Soviet Union did not have any other plane capable of nonstop trans-Atlantic travel. The 13 day trip included meetings with American businessmen and labour leaders, Hollywood actors, and Roswell Garst's farm in Iowa. Khrushchev became openly dismayed when he was told he could not visit Disneyland because it was too difficult to guarantee his security there.

1960 US presidential election
Khrushchev anxiously awaited the results of the 1960 United States presidential election, preferring Kennedy to Richard Nixon, whom he took as a hardline anti-communist cold warrior, and openly celebrated the former's victory on November 8. In truth however, Khrushchev's opinion of Kennedy was mixed. He knew that the new president was from a wealthy background and Harvard-educated. On the other, Kennedy was the youngest elected US president at 43 and gave off the impression of inexperience and "a boy wearing his father's pants" that Khrushchev assumed he could pounce on and dominate. If however Kennedy was that weak, there stood the possibility that he could merely be a puppet of "reactionary" forces and the US military-industrial complex. Almost immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, Khrushchev attempted to barrage the president-elect with proposals and the hope of improved US-Soviet relations, specifically turning the clock back to the accommodating diplomatic atmosphere of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's time. However, Khrushchev was informed that he was acting too quickly and it would not be possible to have a formal summit with Kennedy until he took office in January, and even then, arranging such a meeting would still take time.

Kennedy-era
Khrushchev was pleased by Kennedy's inaugural address on 20 January 1961 and immediately offered to release American pilots shot down over the Soviet Union as an olive branch. Kennedy in his turn ordered a halt to US Postal Service censorship of Soviet publications, lifted a ban on the importation of Soviet crab meat, and ordered military officials to tone down anti-Soviet rhetoric in speeches.

In a report on January 6 concerning a world conference of 81 communist parties in Moscow the previous fall, Khrushchev stated that the triumph of socialism over capitalism was inevitable, but at the same time, a major conflict between the great powers on the scale of the two world wars was now unthinkable in the age of nuclear weapons. He also stated that local wars must be avoided, for they could erupt into major ones as had been the case with World War I. The only acceptable conflicts as Khrushchev saw it were anti-colonial wars of national liberation along the lines of Algeria's war of independence against France.

Although Eisenhower would have likely dismissed this speech as so much Soviet bluster, the inexperienced Kennedy became nervous and took it as a call to arms by Moscow. In his first State of the Union address on 30 January, he cautioned that "No one should think that either the Soviet Union or China has given up their desire for world domination, ambitions they forcefully restated only a short time ago. On the contrary, our aim is to show that aggression and subversion on their part is not an acceptable means to achieve these aims." These remarks were followed two days later by the first test launch of a Minuteman ICBM.

Khrushchev's initial hopes for Kennedy gradually dimmed during the next few months. When Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, Khrushchev blamed it on Western colonialist forces. Khrushchev's boasts about Soviet missile forces provided John F. Kennedy with a key issue to use against Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election—the so-called 'missile gap'. But all Khrushchev's (probably sincere) attempts to build a strong personal relationship with the new president failed, as his typical combination of bluster, miscalculation and mishap resulted in the Cuban Missile Crises. After the Berlin and Cuba crises, tensions tapered off between the two superpowers.

Khrushchev openly wept at the news of Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 and feared that new US president Lyndon Johnson would pursue a more aggressive anti-Soviet stance. Johnson turned out to be more in favor of détente than Khrushchev had assumed, but would end up letting superpower relations take a backseat to his Great Society programs and the Vietnam War.

During 1953-1955
Since Stalin's death, Soviet agricultural output had improved measurably—gains in meat, dairy, and grain output were in the area of 130-150%, which led to Khrushchev making overconfident target dates for overtaking American farm production that eventually became a subject of derision.

During 1956-1958
Alexsei Larionov, local party leader in Ryazan, attempted to triple meat production in the province after overall Soviet meat output for 1958 had been lacking (the grain harvest for comparison had been a strong one). The scheme, which was similar in nature to China's contemporary Great Leap Forward, involved setting unrealistic quotas and frantically slaughtering every animal in the province, including dairy cows and breeding stock, in an attempt to meet them. When the quotas still could not be met, Ryazan farmers tried to steal livestock from neighboring provinces, which took measures to protect their own farms such as police roadblocks. The Ryazan farmers resorted to theft of cattle under cover of darkness and Larionov, growing ever more desperate, made taxes payable in meat. In the end, Ryazan produced just 30,000 tons of meat for 1959, when they had promised 180,000 tons. The disgraced Larionov committed suicide shortly thereafter.

During 1959-1964
The harvest for 1960 proved the worst since Stalin's death, and the Virgin Lands were especially disappointing. During the fall and winter of 1960–61, Khrushchev embarked on a furious campaign to improve agricultural shortcomings, most of which amounted to criticizing incompetent kolkhoz managers and promoting Lysenkoism and other quack scientific ideas while overlooking the real problem, which was the fundamental defects of collectivized agriculture.

The harvest for 1961 was disappointing, with agricultural output a mere 0.7% higher than 1960 and meat production actually less than the previous two years. Discontent began building, and in the face of it, Khrushchev continued to offer new proposals to improve farm output and condemnation of inefficient farming practices. Despite complaints from farmers that they lacked enough funding for tools and farm equipment, Khrushchev argued that he had no spare money to allot to agriculture. His only solution was to add yet more bureaucracy to the agricultural sector.

Price increases of meat and dairy in the spring of 1962, combined with attempts to convince industrial workers to work harder for the same or less pay, paved the way for a mounting disaster. The price increases went into effect on 1 June and were immediately greeted by strikes and demonstrations in several cities, the biggest and most cataclysmic in the city of Novocherkassk where workers went on strike to protest rising costs of living and poor workplace conditions. The following day, workers at the Budenny Electric Locomotive Factory marched to the central square of the city where army units fired on them, killing 23. Another 116 demonstrators were arrested, with 14 tried for "anti-Soviet agitation" and seven of them sentenced to death. The other seven received 10–15 years in prison. Smaller riots in other cities were also put down with several fatalities. Khrushchev made a speech the same day half-apologizing for the price increases, but insisted that he had no choice. He never fully came to terms with the Novocherkassk massacre and did not bring it up in his memoirs.

During 1963, Khrushchev increasingly despaired over his inability to cure the perennial ailments of Soviet agriculture. He accused farmers of needlessly wasting fertilizer, adding that a farmer in the United States would be out of business if he did the same and he also complained about aging kolkhoz managers who should have retired and made way for younger men, but continued to hold onto their jobs. Drought affected a large portion of the west-central USSR during the fall months and overall the 1963 harvest was an abject failure with a mere 107 million tons of grain produced and there was serious consideration given to rationing. Khrushchev could offer no solutions other than empty sloganeering and criticizing incompetent managers. After initially bristling at the idea of importing grain from overseas, he finally gave in after learning that Soviet grain stocks were almost depleted.

title: History of the Soviet Union (1953–1964)