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Socialism and International Language

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Abstract

Marxist-Leninists always considered it important that their actions be rooted in theory. Convinced that historical evolution follows definite laws, they were careful to justify their policies theoretically and to demonstrate harmony between theory and practice. To understand the reasons why the Esperanto movement was extinguished in the Soviet Union, after two decades of official tolerance and even of goodwill, we will attempt to analyze the relationship between socialism and the idea of an international language. Three questions arise. First, can we explain the disappearance of Esperanto in the Soviet Union in terms of the tradition of socialism, particularly its Marxist variant? Second, do the ideas behind socialism provide theoretical justification for the existence of an Esperanto movement? And, third, what was the nature of the efforts taken by the Esperantists in the Soviet Union to formulate a theoretical basis for their activities?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An overview of the topic is provided by Duličenko (2003).

  2. 2.

    ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ (1848), in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Selected Works, vol. 1, Moscow: Progress, 1969, p. 25.

  3. 3.

    Marx, ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’, Marx & Engels, Selected Works, vol. 3, Moscow: Progress, 1970, p. 22.

  4. 4.

    Engels, ‘The Festival of Nations in London’, Marx & Engels, Selected Works, vol. 6, p. 6.

  5. 5.

    Cf. Walter Lipgens, ‘Staat und Internationalismus bei Marx und Engels’, Historische Zeitschrift 217 (1973): 529–83.

  6. 6.

    Engels, ‘The Congress of Sonvillier and the International’, Marx & Engels, Selected Works, vol. 23, p. 66.

  7. 7.

    Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie, Vienna: Brand, 1907, pp. 265 and following. On the topic in general, see Hans Mommsen, Arbeiterbewegung und nationale Frage, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979.

  8. 8.

    Kautsky (1887): 448. Shortly before Kautsky’s article was published, Die Neue Zeit commented on the same subject: ‘This [international communication] currently seems to cry out for an international language; for that, however, artificially invented “world languages” are probably in no degree suitable, but probably English will develop into that role’ (Guido Hammer, ‘Die Zersetzung der modernen Nationalitäten’, Die Neue Zeit 5 [1887]: 183).

  9. 9.

    Karl Kautsky, ‘Nationality and Internationality’, trans. Ben Lewis, Critique 37 (2009): 371–89 (quotation p. 388).

  10. 10.

    Karl Kautsky, Die Befreiung der Nationen, 4th edn., Stuttgart: Dietz, 1918, pp. 47, 51. In Die Vereinigten Staaten Mitteleuropas (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1916, p. 52) he shows understanding of the effort for a neutral artificial language. But once again he argues that one of the national languages should become world language; opposition to that will be less strong in a socialist society than ‘today’.

  11. 11.

    ‘Pri la homaranismo. Responde al P-ro Dombrovski’ (1906), PVZ VII 316.

  12. 12.

    Sächsisches Volksblatt (Zwickau), 12 February 1914; cited from Germana Esperantisto 11 (1914), issue A, p. 59. We should add that the German Social Democratic Party had a particularly severe position and that before the World War there were also socialists who declared themselves favorable to Esperanto. At the end of 1911 the congress of the Czech social democrats unanimously recommended recruitment for it (La Kulturo 1 [1912], 1: 5). British socialists signed a declaration of support for Esperanto (Das Esperanto ein Kulturfaktor, vol. 3, Stuttgart: Ader & Borel, 1913, p. 68), and in the Netherlands an outstanding supporter was the prominent socialist Domela Nieuwenhuis.

  13. 13.

    Josef Strasser, Der Arbeiter und die Nation, Reichenberg: Runge, 1912, p. 29 (new edition Vienna: Junius, 1982, p. 40). Although Strasser, whose work Lenin highly valued, opposed the forced assimilation of national minorities, he, like Kautsky, foresaw the emergence of a single language in socialist society. As for Esperanto, he called the basic idea of its pioneers ‘that conscious language development is possible’ correct, but criticized the Esperantists for lack of understanding that first the evolutionary laws of language had to be found.

  14. 14.

    ‘A Single Language and Esperanto’, Il Grido del Popolo, 16 February 1918, reprinted in Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs & Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985, pp. 26–31 (quotations pp. 27, 29–30).

  15. 15.

    Letter from Romain Rolland to E. Lanti, 14 April 1920, in La Vie ouvrière, 23 April 1920, p. 3; quoted in Esperantista Laboristo 1 1920), 4 (May): 2. Cf. Panchasi (2009), p. 151.

  16. 16.

    ‘The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination: Theses’ (1916), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 22, Moscow: Progress, 1964, pp. 143–56 (quotation p. 146).

  17. 17.

    ‘Resolutions of the Summer, 1913, Joint Conference [...]’, Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 19, 1963, p. 427.

  18. 18.

    ‘Telegram to J.V. Stalin’, Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 30, 1965, p. 373.

  19. 19.

    ‘The Working Class and the National Question’ (1913), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 19, 1963, p. 92.

  20. 20.

    ‘Resolutions of the Summer [...]’, p. 428.

  21. 21.

    ‘A Letter to S.G. Shahumyan’ (1913), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 19, 1963, p. 501. On the dispute between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg see particularly ‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’ (1914), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20, 1964, pp. 393–450.

  22. 22.

    ‘Corrupting the Workers with Refined Nationalism’ (1914), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20, p. 290.

  23. 23.

    ‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’ (1913), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20, p. 20.

  24. 24.

    ‘Theses for a Lecture on the National Question’, Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 41, 1969, p. 316. In his article ‘Nationality and Internationality’ of 1908 (trans. Ben Lewis, Critique 37 [2009]: 386), which Lenin used extensively for his theses, Kautsky named German, English and French as world languages; Russian, he suggested, might become a fourth.

  25. 25.

    Carl Lindhagen, I revolutionsland, Stockholm: Åhlén & Åkerlunds, 1918, p. 79.

  26. 26.

    ‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’ (1913), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20, p. 24–25.

  27. 27.

    Cf. Alfred D. Low, Lenin on the Question of Nationality, New York: Bookman Associates, 1958, p. 54.

  28. 28.

    In an article on foreign language teaching (1923); cited from Bernhard Schiff, Entwicklung und Reform des Fremdsprachenunterrichts in der Sowjetunion, Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut, 1966, p. 17. On the attitude of Krupskaia see also Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30), 253, 296–7.

  29. 29.

    See the present volume, p. 199 (note).

  30. 30.

    Letter to the Esperantist Okhitovich, former party member; cited in Drezen (1931a), p. 249.

  31. 31.

    Report to the 18th Petrograd region party conference; according to Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 2 (Nov. 1923): 2. Zinoviev was at that time also the president of Comintern.

  32. 32.

    Ė. Drezen, Problema mezhdunarodnogo iazyka. Opyt materialisticheskogo obosnovaniia voprosa, Moscow: SĖSR, 1922; partial translation: ‘Pri la problemo de lingvo internacia’, Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), nos. 4 (45) to 7/8 (48/49).

  33. 33.

    La Nova Epoko, 1922, col. 70–1. On the surrounding events see the present volume, p. 165–6, 176.

  34. 34.

    A. Jodko, ‘Esperanto de l’ marksisma vidpunkto’, La Nova Epoko, 1922, col. 161.

  35. 35.

    ‘The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East’, J.V. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954, p. 141.

  36. 36.

    They praised Stalin as the opponent of the theorist of proletarian culture Bogdanov, whose viewpoint on the development of languages was the same ‘great power chauvinism’ as Kautsky’s: A. Tom (Efim Spiridovich), ‘Antipody—I. Stalin i A. Bogdanov’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1926, 14 (40): 7–8.

  37. 37.

    On Marr’s theory, see L.L. Thomas, The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957; René L’Hermitte, Marr, marrisme, marristes: science et perversion idéologique. Une page de l’histoire de la linguistique soviétique, Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 1987; Slezkine (1996); Mika Lähteenmäki, ‘Nikolai Marr and the idea of a unified language’, Language and Communication 26 (2006): 285–95.

  38. 38.

    Quotations from Voldetero, ‘Pri kelkaj scienculaj deklaroj’, Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 10 (62): 6. See also G. Demidiuk, ‘Akademik N. Ia. Marr’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1925, no. 1 (27): 9–10.

  39. 39.

    Voldetero, ‘Pri kelkaj scienculaj deklaroj’, p. 6.

  40. 40.

    This was the situation in pre-revolutionary Russia, with the important exception of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay.

  41. 41.

    In his message of greetings to the Sixth SAT Congress in Leningrad: Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 46 (98/99): p. 4. Earlier, in 1912, Lunacharsky criticized ‘consistent cosmopolitans who believe that the future will bring complete unification to the human race, a single common language and a single common culture’: quoted in Ivan Dzyuba, Internationalism or Russification? A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968, p. 47.

  42. 42.

    Na putiakh k mezhdunarodnomu iazyku. Sbornik statei (On paths to the international language. Article Collection), Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1926.

  43. 43.

    The journal, appearing sometimes monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, was initially called Izvestiia Ts.K. SĖSS or SĖSR (Informilo de C.K. SEU), and as of January 1929 Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk (Internacia Lingvo). Contributions were almost exclusively in Russian.

  44. 44.

    E. Spiridovich, ‘Za novoe iazykoznanie’ (For the new linguistics), Izvestiia Ts.K. SĖSS 5 (1926/27): 1–5.

  45. 45.

    E. Spiridoviĉ, ‘La skemo de lingva evoluo’ [2], Sennacieca Revuo 4/8 (1926/27): 76–9 (quotation p. 79).

  46. 46.

    Spiridoviĉ, ‘La skemo de lingva evoluo’ [3], Sennacieca Revuo 4/8 (1926/27): 105–9.

  47. 47.

    E. Spiridoviĉ, ‘Esperanto kaj lingvoscienco’, Sennacieca Revuo 4/8 (1926/27): 150–4 (quotation p. 153).

  48. 48.

    On the contributions to the discussion by Drezen and Spiridovich see Aleksandr Dulichenko, ‘Ideia mezhdunarodnogo iskusstvennogo iazyka v debriakh rannei sovetskoi sotsiolingvistiki’ (The idea of an international artificial language at the dawn of early Soviet sociolinguistics), Interlinguistica Tartuensis 9 (2009): 9–36 (esp. pp. 23–33); also in Russian Linguistics 34 (2010): 143–57.

  49. 49.

    Ė. Drezen, Za vseobshchim iazykom. Tri veka iskanii, Moscow & Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1928; Esperanto translation: Drezen (1991). Cf. Kuznecov (2004), p. 154.

  50. 50.

    N. Marr, ‘K voprosu ob edinom iazyke’ (The question of a unifying language), in Drezen, Za vseobshchim iazykom, p. 9.

  51. 51.

    N.Ia. Marr, Iafeticheskaia teoriia, Baku 1927; German translation in Tasso Borbé, Kritik der marxistischen Sprachtheorie N. Ja. Marr’s, Kronberg: Scriptor, 1974, pp. 63–262 (quotation p. 87).

  52. 52.

    A.P. Andreev, Revolucio en la lingvoscienco. Jafetida lingvoteorio de akademiano N. Marr, Leipzig: Eldona Fako Kooperativa, 1929; Russian-language edition: Revoliutsiia iazykoznaniia. Iafeticheskaia teoriia akademika N. Ia. Marra, Moscow: SĖSR, 1929. This superficially written and in many ways misleading brochure formed the basis for the relevant section of Ivo Lapenna, Retoriko, third edition, Rotterdam, 1971, pp. 44–9.

  53. 53.

    Evgenii Alekseevich Bokarev (Bokaryov), specialist in Caucasian languages. After the war he played an important role in the revival of the Soviet Esperanto movement (see vol. 2, chap. 2). See also the book by his daughter: Bokarjova (2010).

  54. 54.

    Bokarev names, among others, Max Müller, Hugo Schuchardt, Antoine Meillet, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, Otto Jespersen and Edward Sapir.

  55. 55.

    E. Bokarev, ‘Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk i nauka o iazyke’ (International language and language science), Izvestiia Ts.K. SĖSR 6 (1928): 129–35; translation in Bokarjova (2010), pp. 51–63.

  56. 56.

    E. Spiridovich, ‘“A vse-taki vertitsia!” Po povodu stat’i tov. Bokareva’ (‘And yet it moves!’ On the occasion of an article by Comrade Bokarev), Izvestiia Ts.K. SĖSR 6 (1928): 136–9 (quotation p. 136).

  57. 57.

    Evgenii Bokarev, ‘Iazykoznanie i marksizm’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 7 (1929): 203–6.

  58. 58.

    Drezen (1929), pp. 39–40.

  59. 59.

    See Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘The “soft” line on culture and its enemies: Soviet cultural policy, 1922–1927’, Slavic Review 33 (1974): 267–87.

  60. 60.

    See the article collection Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931, Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1978.

  61. 61.

    According to an SEU publication, this problem would be solved during the cultural revolution ‘definitively and in line with the revolution’—‘not by some decision of an authoritative body, but on the basis of the creative verve of the working masses themselves’: Kiriushin (1930), p. 31.

  62. 62.

    ‘Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B.)’ (27 June 1930), Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 373–4, 380.

  63. 63.

    According to an article by Stalin in March 1929, he was earlier obliged to reply to critics who pointed to contradictions between his 1925 speech and Lenin’s concept. But this article was published only in 1949: ‘The National Question and Leninism’, Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 357.

  64. 64.

    ‘Reply to the Discussion on the Political Report [...]’ (22 July 1930), Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 5.

  65. 65.

    On this see Goodman (1970), p. 720. The article appeared earlier as a chapter in Elliot R. Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World State, New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.

  66. 66.

    At the time the information appeared that Stalin, in Bailov Prison in Baku, learned Esperanto. This was the assertion, in early 1928, of a Russian emigré who once shared a cell with Stalin: Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 244; Leon Trotsky, ‘Joseph Stalin’, Life 7 (1939), 14: 66–8, 70–3 (esp. p. 68); Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence, New York & London: Harper, 1941, pp. 118–19, 125. According to his cellmate, Stalin saw Esperanto as the future language of the International. See also Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, p. 174.

  67. 67.

    See the present volume, p. 215–6.

  68. 68.

    E. Drezen, ‘Antaŭparolo’, in Stalin (1930), p. 5.

  69. 69.

    Cf. Martin (2001), pp. 105–12, 345–56.

  70. 70.

    Dokumenty ukraïns’koho komunizmu, New York, 1962; translated extract in Hans-Joachim Lieber & Karl-Heinz Ruffmann (ed.), Der Sowjetkommunismus. Dokumente II, Cologne & Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1964, pp. 115–16.

  71. 71.

    As of 1926 an Esperanto-language summary was published: La Vojo de Klerigo, covering the most important contributions to the monthly journal Shliakh osvity (Russian: Put’ prosveshcheniia), published by the Office of the Ukrainian People’s Commissar for Education.

  72. 72.

    Quoted by Roman Rosdolsky, ‘Stalin und die Verschmelzung der Völker im Sozialismus’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 4 (1964): 268–76 (quotation p. 270). Three years later Postyshev led the campaign against Skrypnyk (see above, p. 274). He himself was killed in 1939.

  73. 73.

    Stalin (1930).

  74. 74.

    This clearly contradicts opinions that were popular among Soviet Esperantists at the time. For example, one of them emphasized in February 1930 that Esperanto ‘will become the only world language’ and that it ‘is not an auxiliary but a natural language, that is, of the coming socialism’: M. Krjukov, ‘Kulturtaskoj’, Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 226. While earlier, in connection with its conflict with SAT, SEU criticized the specific interpretation of sennaciismo articulated by Lanti, it now declared war on the whole concept.

  75. 75.

    Drezen, ‘Antaŭparolo’, in Stalin (1930), pp. 8, 10.

  76. 76.

    Spiridovich (1931).

  77. 77.

    Spiridovich (1931), p. 4.

  78. 78.

    Spiridovich, p. 9.

  79. 79.

    Spiridovich, p. 13.

  80. 80.

    Spiridovich, p. 43.

  81. 81.

    Spiridovich, pp. 53 and following.

  82. 82.

    Spiridovich, p. 57.

  83. 83.

    Spiridovich, pp. 3, 81.

  84. 84.

    See also E. Spiridoviĉ, ‘Genia lingvisto venkita de etburĝeco. Fundamentaj momentoj en la lingva teorio de Zamenhof’, La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 23–31; republished in brochure form: Kyoto: l’omnibuso, 1976.

  85. 85.

    Spiridovich (1931), pp. 67–8, 82.

  86. 86.

    Spiridovich, p. 81.

  87. 87.

    Spiridovich, pp. 95–6, 98.

  88. 88.

    Spiridovich, p. 96.

  89. 89.

    Spiridovich, p. 98.

  90. 90.

    Spiridovich, p. 99.

  91. 91.

    Also Loja, a Latvian like Drezen, was a longtime Esperantist. The significance of Iazykfront is summarized in Smith (1998), pp. 97–102.

  92. 92.

    ‘Obrashchenie gruppy “Iazykovednyi front”’ (Declaration of the group ‘Linguistics Front’), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 177–8.

  93. 93.

    Cf. Drezen’s clarifications of SEU’s theoretical work: Drezen (1931a); ‘SĖSR na iazykovednom fronte’ (SEU in the linguistics front), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 291–4.

  94. 94.

    Wolfgang Girke & Helmut Jachnow, Sowjetische Soziolinguistik. Probleme und Genese, Kronberg: Scriptor, 1974, p. 53.

  95. 95.

    F.P. Filin, ‘Der Kampf um eine marxistisch-leninistische Sprachwissenschaft und die Gruppe “Jazykfront”’ (translated from Protiv burzhuaznoi kontrabandy v iazykoznanii, Leningrad: GAIMK, 1932), in Girke & Jachnow (1975), p. 43.

  96. 96.

    Drezen (1931a), p. 250.

  97. 97.

    Drezen (1991), pp. 335–6.

  98. 98.

    Springer (1956), pp. 13, 31.

  99. 99.

    This tendency was particularly evident among convinced SAT members. Lanti, even after the schism, expressed support for Stalin’s Russification policy; see Lanti (1940), p. 44.

  100. 100.

    We lack detailed information on how the Esperantists in Ukraine related to their native language. We should note that in Ukraine Russian was widely spoken in the cities, while in the provinces use of Ukrainian dominated. Because the Esperantists were concentrated in the cities, they were probably not free of the customary prejudice that it was mostly the less educated people who preferred to speak Ukrainian. A Ukrainian Esperantist of this kind later attacked by Skrypnyk mentioned in a letter to Lanti (2 December 1927), that Krupskaia, Lenin’s widow, publicly attacked sennaciismo and Esperanto and that ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ halted a series of lectures on Esperanto on the Kharkov radio station after there was talk of the formation of a worldwide culture and the dying off of national languages: E. Lanti, ‘Manifesto de la sennaciistoj’, reprinted in Mickle (2013), pp. 62–83 (esp. p. 71).

  101. 101.

    ‘Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B.); June 27, 1930’, Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 376.

  102. 102.

    From the 1920s on, Sosiura’s poems were popular in Ukraine.

  103. 103.

    S. Sinitskii, ‘Ukrainskie pisateli ob ėsperanto’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 266–8 (quotation p. 267).

  104. 104.

    Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 267; cf. R. Nikolskij, ‘Ĉu Esperanto povas esti ŝtata lingvo’, Internaciisto, 1931, 27/28 (Nov.): 224.

  105. 105.

    Duc Goninaz (1993), p. 2.

  106. 106.

    EeP, p. 418–19. See also Michel Duc Goninaz, Lingvoj, gentoj kaj lingva politiko, Liège: Someraj Universitataj Kursoj, 1974, pp. 30–1.

  107. 107.

    S.P. Sinitskii, ‘Pis’mo v redaktsiiu’ (Letter to the editor), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 124–5.

  108. 108.

    ‘Priznat’, a ne uglubliat’ oshibku’ (To confess, but not make the error deeper), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 125–8.

  109. 109.

    S. Sinitskii & V. Sosiura, ‘Priznaem svoi oshibku’ (We confess our error), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 252–3.

  110. 110.

    In 1930 the linguist (and Esperantist) Lev Zhirkov made an unusually open judgement: ‘[… the] Russian language—the language of the revolution—can in no way become international, simply because its grammatical structure is too complicated and contains highly archaic characteristics’: Ĵirkov (1931), p. 37.

  111. 111.

    ‘Some Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism’, Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 99.

  112. 112.

    The brigade members were Grigorii Burliagov, A. Lobachev, Mikhail Pashchenko and Semyon Podkaminer.

  113. 113.

    ‘Per fajro de senindulga memkritiko ni kontrolu la tutan fronton de nia laboro’, Bulteno de CK SEU 11 (1932): 13–14 (quotations p. 13).

  114. 114.

    ‘Krupneishaia pobeda’ (A great victory), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 97–8; ‘Marksisma lingvoscienco turnas sin vizaĝe al la problemo pri lingvo internacia’, La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 115–16.

  115. 115.

    ‘Tezisy o mezhdunarodnom iazyke’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 99–102; Esperanto translation: ‘Tezoj pri internacia lingvo’, La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 116–18.

  116. 116.

    The institute director, Mark Bochacher, and a special representative of Iazykfront, A.M. Ivanov, greeted the SEU Congress at the end of November 1931: Bulteno de CK SEU 10 (1931): 131.

  117. 117.

    Ė. Drezen, ‘SĖSR na iazykovednom fronte’ (SEU in the linguistics front), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 291–4.

  118. 118.

    Spiridoviĉ (1932), pp. 157–60. Original: ‘“Istinnyi lozung bor’by” v markso-leninskom iazykoznanii’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 338–42.

  119. 119.

    The fact that Esperanto is easy to learn did not impress the authors, because, they claimed, ‘the question of the easiness of a language will not have decisive significance under the conditions of maximum cultural development in the communist society’.

  120. 120.

    G.I. Gorbachenko, N.P. Sinel’nikova, T.A. Shub, ‘Vylazka burzhuaznoi agentury v iazykoznanii’ (Attack of the bourgeois agency in linguistics), in Protiv burzhuaznoi kontrabandy v iazykoznanii (Against bourgeois contraband in linguistics), Leningrad: GAIMK, 1932, pp. 129–40.

  121. 121.

    A.P. Andreev, ‘Sovetskoe iazykoznanie za 15 1et’ (Soviet linguistics over 15 years), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 288–91 (quotation p. 290). Earlier, the same author (‘Lingvo internacia laŭ la marksisma vidpunkto’, La Nova Etapo 1 [1932]: 79) expressed the opinion that the Soviet Esperanto movement meanwhile could hardly expect official support: ‘A primary obstacle lies in the current political circumstances, which do not allow for free attention to our ideological “superstructures”.’

  122. 122.

    In 1933 SEU was still able to publish the collection of articles Novye problemy iazykoznaniia (New Problems in Linguistics), Moscow: SĖSR, 1933, with contributions by Drezen, Spiridovich, Loja, Zhirkov and others.

  123. 123.

    On 7 July 1933; see the obituary in Sennaciulo 9 (1932/33): 108. Cf. Gerhard Simon (1991), pp. 85–86; Martin (2001), p. 348. In 1962 Skrypnyk was rehabilitated.

  124. 124.

    See also ‘Tov. Skrypnik ob ėsperanto’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 216 (extract from an article in Bil’shovyk Ukraïny, 1931, no. 8). It was certainly no accident that after Skrypnyk’s dismissal the Esperanto summary sheets La Vojo de Klerigo ceased to appear.

  125. 125.

    Stalin declared: ‘The chief danger is the deviation against which we have ceased to fight, thereby allowing it to grow into a danger to the state.’ (‘Report of the Seventeenth Party Congress [...]’, Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 369.)

  126. 126.

    Cf. Gerhard Simon (1991), p. 150.

  127. 127.

    Cf. Moret (2010).

  128. 128.

    Cf. Kucera (1954), p. 27.

  129. 129.

    Marr, Iafeticheskaia teoriia (German translation: Borbé, Kritik, p. 89). Marr, whom Spiridovich criticized primarily for his inconsistent position, in 1933 confirmed the disillusionment of the Esperantists when he stated that Esperanto had been established ‘from above’, without consideration of its material base; quoted in Jindrich Kucera, Language Policy in the Soviet Union, doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1952, p. 334.

  130. 130.

    Duc Goninaz (1993), p. 2.

  131. 131.

    This is the title of a chapter in Stites (1989), pp. 225–41. The persecution of the Esperantists was, according to Stites, one characteristic of the ‘anti-utopian war’ (p. 293, note 22). Noteworthy is the observation of a contemporary: Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, London: Harrap, 1938, p. 151 (on ‘idealistic “dreamers”ʼ and ‘internationalists’).

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    Ulrich Lins

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Lins, U. (2016). Socialism and International Language. In: Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4_7

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