In the spring of 2021, students of History 350 (Soviet Union), selected Wikipedia stub pages from a list I provided, expanding the pages based on sources they had used in the course and additional sources specific to the topic.
As experts in Soviet history, it is up to us to fill in some of the missing gaps in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is often the first among Google search results, so it is a useful public service to help ensure the accuracy of its articles, many of which are not accurate due to an absence of sources, or use of irreputable sources, and many of which are incomplete.
For this project, you can select any page related to the Soviet Union you like (in consultation with the TA) to edit or add to. Or, you may wish to create a new page based on a topic from the course readings, your book review, or your research paper.
The full list of pages related to Soviet history is here. Below is a selection of articles identified by Wikipedia users as ‘stubs.’ The full list is here.
After reviewing their drafts and suggesting edits, I asked students to publish their edits. Since that time, many pages have had their ‘stub’ status removed and other contributors have added content. Here are some of the impressive results:
- 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (original page)
- 13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (original page), Gorka Fraeters Irigoien
- Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union (original page), Gurneet Sidhu
- Ministry of Defense (Soviet Union) (original page)
- Ministry of Higher Education (Soviet Union) (original page)
- People’s Commissariat for Labour (original page), Ragini Sharma
- Tashkent Soviet (original page), Samir Mohammad
- United Opposition (original page), Mark Jones
- Dialectical and Historical Materialism (original page)
- Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (original page)
- Great Break (USSR) (original page), Janet Cho
- House-commune (original page)
- Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony (original page)
Sean James
May 12, 2022 — 6:53 pm
May 2022 update: I just discovered from a Twitter post by Heidi Tworek that Wikipedia has page view stats. Among 10 of the above pages (maximum viewable at once) there have been 118,805 views and 103 subsequent edits by 58 editors between Apr 2021-Apr 2022. Good work, Young Pioneers! See the graph on my Twitter post.