RfC: Omission of Russian SFSR from biographical infoboxes

The following discussion is an archived record of arequest for comment.Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

As I discussed fromTemplate talk:Infobox person#Subordinate countries in infoboxes, should we propose not to include "Russian SFSR" (or otherSoviet republics) from biographical infoboxes whatMike Novikoff recommends perMOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. Most edits are made toVasily Utkin,Oleg Gazmanov,Valentina Tereshkova andYuri Gagarin.Absolutiva02:24, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: since this RFC is (or should be) not just about Russia but all Soviet republics, I think the WikiProjects for the other former Soviet republics should be notified as well.Helpful Cat {talk}09:59, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've notified WikiProjectsUkraine,Belarus andMoldova (the other former Soviet republics don't seem to have WikiProjects), plus WikiProjectsSoviet Union,Eastern Europe andEurope.Helpful Cat {talk}16:12, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• No unless we include|citizenship=, or the subject held Soviet citizenship throughout their life. SeeMOS:INFONAT.Thedarkknightli (talk)03:32, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• No bar to inclusion.(Summoned by bot) I honestly don't see the argument for excluding underWP:INFOBOXPURPOSE; this information that might be useful to the average reader at a glance. Complex cases might require extra care with the question of nuanced labels or even omitting the field in certain cases, but I don't see that there is any value to a blanket ban.
  That said, there's a more generalized procedural hurdle here that bears mentioning: perWP:Advice page, no result in this space is going to represent binding consensus on all of the involved articles. At best it will be a rule of thumb recommended by this WikiProject. You will still need to get local consensus on each involved article on which the issue arises, without being able to point back to this discussion as a valid reason to obviate further discussion. If you want a binding consensus for all affected articles, you will need to make aWP:PROPOSAL or host a discussion on a relevantWP:PAG orWP:MOS talk page to add verbiage to an existing guideline.
  And while I'm at it, I think it's worth noting that I'm not sure how bindingMOS:INFONAT is, considering that the relatively recent discussion in which it was created: 1) had a wide range of perspectives, 2) had no formal close, and 3) had all of a dozen participants (fairly weak consensus even if everyone in that discussion agreed on the best approach, which they very much didn't, as is evident from even a quick review). I think someone really went over-WP:BOLD in rendering their interpretation of that discussion into the MoS, and I expect it could easily be challenged (especially given how awkward, complicated, and idiosyncratic the added section is). I'd be careful about relying on it during even more complicated discussions in the area of nationality and infoboxes--at least for the immediate future.SnowRise ^{let's rap}04:13, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  See here fornon-consensus addition toTemplate:Infobox person/doc, beforeit was removed as explained:this is almost undiscussed, yet currently an IP user populates it all over the place citing this doc as a valid reason. In particular, Moscow is the worst of possible examples (much like NY City), and linking an SFSR is contrary toMOS:GEOLINK.Absolutiva06:22, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Exclude RSFSR at least for such obvious cases as Moscow and Leningrad (or their respectiveoblast). Everybody knows it's Russia, and it always has been. Diving into the purely formal details of the USSR's structure is unnecessary then, it gives no additional information in the context of a biography, and only distracts from the biography itself. Smaller and less well-known places may indeed require some extra care, but then again, remember that RSFSR alone is just too broad, it could be anywhere betweenKaliningrad andVladivostok, so the region such as Sverdlovsk Oblast should be specified for things likeButka, and that might be recognizable enough. Plus these smaller places (or their lesser-known regions) will usually be wikilinked.
  To summarize, RSFSR is either redundant (for major cities) or not enough anyway (for smaller ones). — Mike Novikoff20:50, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Agreed entirely with Snow Rise. With regard to "exclude" rationales, I would say that Soviet "republics" are potentially akin to US and Australian states, Canadian provinces, and UK traditional/ceremonial counties or current unitary council areas (depending on period): they may be useful to include sometimes (in an infobox or otherwise), but are insufficient on their own. That is, under no circumstances should "USSR" be omitted when applicable, because RSFSR, etc., are meaningless to about 99.9% of our readers. However, asadditional detail they may be useful to some, since they will link to a regional article that narrows down the location in a large and culturally diverse country or meta-country or however you like to think of the USSR and its CIS successor. I agree this is going to come down to consensus on a per-article basis. A Soviet statesman of national and international renown is apt to be thought of as Soviet/Russian by our readers, from an encyclopedic perspective, but a Kirghiz or Tajik or Modavian or whatever poet who was critical of the Soviet regime is more likely to be notable as Kirghiz or Tajik or Moldavian or whatever and may have even personally rejected a Soviet or Russian label. In short, avoid one-size-fits-all "solutions" because they generally solve nothing and create new problems; all are rarely actually fit one size. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:23, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Would recommend consistency, concerning all Soviet republics. But the treatment of the Baltics, makes that difficult.GoodDay (talk)08:14, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• No - Soviet republics are generally useful information because each Soviet republic corresponds to one of 15 modern countries. Including them in the infobox makes national origin clearer by indicating whether someone was born in today's Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, etc; in comparison, "born in the Soviet Union" is much less useful and applies to everyone from those 15 countries over 35.

Let's useMikhail Gorbachev as an example: if the infobox just saidPrivolnoye, North Caucasus Krai, Soviet Union, I would not know where that is, and would have to read the article text to answer the basic question "Was Gorbachev born in Russia?" But because the infobox saysPrivolnoye, North Caucasus Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, I can get that information quickly.

There may be individual articles where the consensus is to not include Soviet republics, but as several editors said above, I don't see the need for a blanket ban. Also, as Thedarkknightli pointed out above, birth countries can be used to imply citizenship perMOS:INFONAT, and reducing them to just "Soviet Union" prevents this.

Mike Novikoff commented above that"RSFSR is either redundant (for major cities) or not enough anyway (for smaller ones)". I think that for major cities, there is an element of systemic bias in assuming which cities are "obviously" in Russia or another Soviet republic (even for something like Leningrad, a reader who's not from Russia, Eastern Europe or the West could be forgiven for being confused by the historical name changes, and clarifying doesn't hurt). And as for the argument that Russia is so big that RSFSR is not specific enough for more obscure places: I think the reason to include Soviet republics is not that they identify geographic coordinates, but that they identifycountry of origin because they correspond to modern countries. Therefore, I don't think "which part of Russia is this?" is more important than "this is in Russia", which is the implication of this argument.

I also concur that there shouldn't be one rule for Russia and another for the other 14 Soviet republics.Helpful Cat {talk}13:56, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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