Talk:State continuity of the Baltic states

China

China is listed as a state that did not recognize the de jure or de facto Soviet control, but according to this, China was reluctant to even recognize them in 1991 when they gained independence, and here, they did not support pro-independence forces, and that they backed Gorbachev & Moscow on it.--Львівське (говорити) 20:37, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

China is listed in the "De jure non-recognition, recognition of de facto control" section, I don't know why you claim otherwise. You cannot infer that China granted de jure recognition based upon the sources you supplied, they do not say so explicitly so therefore you conclusion is WP:SYNTH. Here are the quotes you requested:

Toomas Hiio (2006). "Legal continuation of the Republic of Estonia and the policies of non-recognition". Estonia 1940-1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity.

page 198:

"The second group includes those countries, which did not recognise occupation of the Baltic states de jure, but recognised Soviet rule in the Baltic states de facto. These countries are Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, …..."

Mälksoo, Lauri (2003). Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR.

page 119:

"The second and probably numerically the biggest group of Western Staes, never accorded de jure recognition to the Soviet annexation. However they did recognise Soviet rule de facto. This group of States included Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, …..."

As you can see, these scholarly sources do make the explicit claim. Therefore I am reverting your edit. --Nug (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The AP are a WP:RS, and it says that China "grappled with recognizing" their independence, which infers that they, like the USSR, de jure recognized them as part of the aforementioned. You still don't seem to understand what WP:SYNTH is.--Львівське (говорити) 07:27, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The question here is not whether it is a reliable source, but whether it is a quality source. Reliability is a fairly low bar to cross. Being a quality source within a field, however, is a different matter entirely. While an journalistic article may objectively cross that threshold of reliability, it is vastly inferior to scholarly literature as far as quality goes. As it stands, journalism frequently straddles the line between primary and secondary sourcing, due to the fact that it is often written as a direct account of events happening, rather than a comprehensive, after-the-fact review of a variety of accounts. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 16:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

another source

pg 88 "Even though Mao [in 1963] reportedly questioned Estonia's inclusion within the Soviet Union, Bijing did not support the pro-independence forces in the Baltic region. Tn the late 1980s […] the PRC's sympathy was firmly on the Soviet side. […] Chinese leadership backed Gorbachev's efforts to reestablish central rule."

and another

pg. 62: "The international environment in the post-Second World War period favored the preservation of Soviet rule in the Baltic states. no communist-controlled country – including […] China, Yugoslavia, [and] Albania – ever questioned Soviet control over Baltic territory" --Львівське (говорити) 07:48, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Your source does not differentiate between de facto or de jure rule, whereas the quoted sources do. --Nug (talk) 08:05, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there seems to be a confusion between "non recognition de jure" and "de-jure non-recognition". Thus, British position was explicitly stated: they did recognize annexation de facto, and did not recognize it de jure. Can that be said, for example, about Chile, which maintained no diplomatic relations with the USSR? Did they explicitly refuse to recognize annexation de jure, or they simply didn't bother to recognize it? I strongly suspect that the latter is more plausible: they did not express their position simply because noone asked them. Similarly, did China express this position, or it simply made no steps that could be interpreted as de jure recognition? I think we need clarify that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Well the two sources that I quoted were explicit in putting China in the same camp as Britain. How China expressed their position is not that easy to ascertain, however Lvivske's source does state "Mao [in 1963] reportedly questioned Estonia's inclusion within the Soviet Union", so it seems China did express a position in 1963 that questioned the legitimacy of the Soviet actions. --Nug (talk) 17:21, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I read it as Mao 'reportedly' didn't on a personal level, but Beijing (which is what matters) did not support the non-SSR side. Though...does non-support necessarily mean support for the Soviet legal position? It says their 'sympathy' was on the Soviet side, and that they backed Gorby...so...--Львівське (говорити) 17:58, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

You cannot infer de jure recognition from "favored the preservation of Soviet rule in the Baltic states", as it can also be interpreted as "favored the preservation of (de facto) Soviet rule in the Baltic states". That is why we leave it to secondary sources to do the inferring. --Nug (talk) 19:22, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

ECHR

On closer examination, the European Court of Human Rights section contained quite a lot of bad English, broken links and seemed to imply that Latvia was occupied until 1994, despite a cited ECHR ruling explicitly contradicting that. So I reworked it, restoring most of the links and removing both the 1994 and 1998 dates, as neither of them is relevant to the affirmation of the Soviet occupation by the ECHR. They should probably be added somewhere as an interesting historical reference, though.--illythr (talk) 22:39, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Italics.

Please refer to WP:Italics when editing. In particular, quotations are not italicized. Nor or lots of other things which have been italicized in this article. Thank you. GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)