Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Specialist-baiting

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) buff bills 7701 00:29, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Specialist-baiting[edit]

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Possible neologism (only 25 results in Google Scholar for "spetseedstvo" and 73 for "specialist-baiting"), no citations in article given. – Zumoarirodoka ^(talk) 22:10, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:20, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Several reliable sources in English for the general use of this term including Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1934 by Sheila Fitzpatrick which is mentioned as the source in this article but not cited properly, Factory and Community in Stalin’s Russia by Kenneth M. Straus, and Freedom and Terror in the Donbas by Hiroaki Kuromiya. I get 653 results searching for it in Russian language books [1]. There would likely be more results in Ukrainian, Polish, etc. The article needs improvement, but this was a notable phenomenon in Soviet society. I can see about cleaning up the article, or someone else can, but I don't think deletion is warranted. Rosario Berganza 19:11, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The topic is (at least nowadays) somewhat obscure and the article obviously needs improvement, but a look at the GScholar results that the nominator disparages seems to show quite a varied enough treatment of the term and its historical context to allow this improvement, and there seem to be some further good GBooks results. PWilkinson (talk) 10:28, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - This is definitely not a neologism, but rather a phenomenon of the Soviet 1920s and 1930s. The question here is whether the page can ever be expanded beyond a dictionary-type stub. I think it can. The citation above of Sheila Fitzpatrick and Hiroaki Kuromiya above in on the mark. Another historian whose work could probably be mined profitably is Lewis Siegelbaum. Specialist-baiting was part of the economic history of the late 1920s and early 1930s especially that saw thousands of engineers and factory experts brought in from Germany and the United States especially to aid in the First Five Year Plan. I suppose if there is a logical merge target for the phrase, it would be to a piece on this topic — but I don't think such a piece exists at this time nor am I exactly sure what the logical title for a piece on that topic would be. Even as a stub dictionary definition sort of piece, I think a case can be made for this article. Carrite (talk) 12:06, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - There doesn't seem to be a piece on Спецеедство (literally: "specialist eating") in Russian WP. I find WP's coverage of the First FYP to be really bad. There is probably in the long run a merge target for this term, but there needs to be a greatly expanded article on the first FYP with a specialized sub-article on the importation of Western spetsy written first. Western specialists in the First Five Year Plan would be the encyclopedic topic, I think, something like that — and spetseedstvo a few paragraphs inside of that. I think the current stub should be preserved until we get to that logical point, at which time a redirect would make good logical sense. I suppose if this had to end in a redirect now Shakhty affair might be a good target, although that piece is pretty terrible, too. We need to switch gears and start writing more on Soviet history, it would seem. Carrite (talk) 12:29, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.