Talk:Timofej Florinskij

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Summary execution?[edit]

In his essay in support of holocaust denial, Ron Unz relates this very specific anecdote:

A notorious incident that occurred soon after the Bolshevik Revolution came to my mind. Eminent philologist Timofei Florinsky, one of Russia’s most internationally renowned academic scholars, was hauled before a revolutionary tribunal for a public interrogation about his ideas, and one of the judges, a drunken Jewish former prostitute, found his answers so irritating that she drew her revolver and shot him dead right there and then.

As they say — “big, if true”. Having it as the only content on the article may be WP:UNDUE, but it seems more relevant to this lay reader in the context of the English-language Wikipedia than his great-Russian/anti-Ukranian linguistic chauvinism, which seems to be the only context where he gets referenced (aside from Unz’s article).

Specifically, my cursory search turned up nothing about his execution — let alone that it was during the trial, at the hands of the judge, who was a woman, and Jewish, and was formerly a prostitute and (still?) drunken, with a revolver. However, there may be some other transliteration of his name that would turn up better results. 23.115.162.60 (talk) 03:29, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody found a source for this and added it to the article; given the author's interests this is presumably where Unz got the story too. Would be nice if there was a less-openly-racist source, but it's such a great detail, and at least this 1922 anticommunist pamphlet isn't an officially-deprecated source like Unz is. 2600:1702:6D1:28B0:A531:87BF:C01B:79A0 (talk) 18:50, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In "In the Midst of Civilized Europe" (Jeffrey Veidlinger, 2021, p.139) the author traces this report to a wildly-antisemitic article by a London Times correspondent (paywalled here). Another contemporaneous article referencing a (the same?) Times correspondent smears Schwar(t)z as a honeytrap, and notes her prompt execution by counterrevolutionaries. 2600:1702:6D1:28B0:A531:87BF:C01B:79A0 (talk) 21:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A sensible editor finally removed the anecdote, which is obviously for the better, but it was a great example of deranged anticommunist antisemitism that credulous cranks were repeating 100 years on; that's obviously too meta for an encyclopedia article, and there doesn't seem like there's enough credible info on Ms Schwar(t)z to warrant her own article -- so I hope at least this talk thread can serve as a record for posterity. 2600:1702:6D1:28B0:44CE:4BEF:5F9E:D509 (talk) 03:11, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]