Abstract
In the years 1937–38, the years of most intense persecution of the Soviet Esperanto movement, Esperanto speakers in the Soviet Union went silent; for a twenty-year period thereafter, no information about Esperanto life in the Soviet Union emerged. Only in the post-Stalinist ‘thaw’ did details begin to surface. In 1965 the first witness to the persecutions succeeded in fleeing to the West: the Russian actor Nikolai Rytkov, known for his portrayal of the role of Lenin. From the country itself, up until 1987–88 there was not even official confirmation that Esperanto had been suppressed.
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Notes
- 1.
Jakov Vlasov, ‘Ĉe la luna lumo’, Bulgario 1 (1964) 7: p. vii.
- 2.
N. Ŝtejnberg, ‘Eugen Miĥalski’, Nuntempa Bulgario, 1968, 6: 45. He was shot on 14 October 1937. See esp. V.A. Kornilov & J.M. Lukaŝeviĉ, ‘Eŭgeno Miĥalskij. Novaj informoj’, Sennacieca Revuo, 1993, 121: 24–7; Krys Ungar, ‘La vivo kaj pereo de Eŭgeno Miĥalski’, in Eŭgeno Miĥalski, Plena poemaro 1917–1937, ed. William Auld, Antwerp: Flandra Esperanto-Ligo, 1994, pp. 9–27; Lucien Bourguignon, ‘Pri vivo kaj morto de E. Miĥalski’, Sennaciulo 72 (2001), Jan.: 14–15. On another poet, Vladimir Sutkovoi, see Aleksandro Logvin, Sur la vivovojo: Poemoj, La Laguna: J. Régulo, 1964, p. 56. Sutkovoi was shot, along with at least four other Esperantists, in Odessa on 24 November 1937.
- 3.
Lanti (1940), p. 129.
- 4.
‘Bulteno de I.E.L.’, Esperanto Internacia 5 (1941): 37.
- 5.
During a congress meeting in Berne: Esperanto 40 (1947): 133.
- 6.
Letter from Asen Grigorov to Kurisu Kei, 26 November 1948 (in Kurisu’s archive).
- 7.
Lavrentii Beriia was head of the secret police for 15 years. In 1953, after Stalin’s death, he was dismissed and shot.
- 8.
Erik Ekström, ‘Kiel esperantisto-turisto en Sovet-Unio’, La Espero 44 (1956): 115.
- 9.
‘Georgo Deŝkin’, Pola Esperantisto 38 (1958), 1 (Jan./Feb.): 5. See also B.V. Tokarev, ‘Georgo Deŝkin’, Impeto ‘91, Moscow: Progreso, 1991, 151–8.
- 10.
The interview was conducted at the author’s request by Eleanor Higginbottom in London in September/October 1968. The taped recording was later transcribed in Abolʼskaia (1999), pp. 6–33.
- 11.
The public prosecutor Nikolai Shinkarenko told Lev Vulfovich in February 1989 that in the documented charges Esperanto was never mentioned as a cause of the arrest (‘had it been, not one of the Esperantists would have remained alive’): personal communication from Vulfovich, 29 July 1997.
- 12.
G.M. Filippov, Metodika prepodavaniia ėsperanto (Methods of Teaching Esperanto), Moscow: SĖSR, 1935. Cf. Moret (2007), 55–7.
- 13.
Eugen Wüster, Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik, besonders in der Elektrotechnik. Die nationale Sprachnormung und ihre Verallgemeinerung, Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1931 (3rd edn., Bonn: Bouvier, 1970); E. Drezen, ‘Normigo de la teknika lingvo dum kapitalismo kaj socialismo’, La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 161–8 (review of Wüster’s book).
- 14.
Ė.K. Drezen, Standartizatsiia nauchno-tekhnicheskikh poniatii, oboznachenii i terminov (Standardization of scientific and technical concepts, symbols and terms), 2nd edn., Moscow & Leningrad: Standartizatsiia i ratsionalizatsiia, 1934.
- 15.
Esperanto translation of the report: E. Drezen, Pri problemo de internaciigo de science-teknika terminaro. Historio, nuna stato kaj perspektivoj, Moscow & Amsterdam: Standartgiz & Ekrelo, 1935 (reprinted Saarbrücken: Iltis, 1983); cf. Smith (1998), pp. 154–6.
- 16.
Eugen Wüster, Mezhdunarodnaia standartizatsiia iazyka v tekhnike, Moscow: Standartgiz, 1935. Wüster deals briefly with his relations with Drezen in the article ‘Benennungs- und Wörterbuch-Grundsätze. Ihre Anfänge in Deutschland’, Muttersprache 83 (1973): 434–40, esp. pp. 436, 439.
- 17.
Marcel Delcourt & Jean Amouroux, ‘Wüster kaj Drezen’, Esperanto 71 (1978): 197–8.
- 18.
Jean Amouroux kindly made available to the author, from a collection of General Bastien’s correspondence, copies of the correspondence between Drezen and Bastien. A typed copy of Drezen’s postcard of 8 May 1936 is in the UEA archive.
- 19.
No Soviet delegate attended. Drezen’s proposal for an international terminological code was finally rejected at a conference in Berlin in 1938.
- 20.
Wüster kindly gave the author details of his correspondence with Drezen. On his relations with Drezen, see Wera Blanke, ‘Terminological standardization—its roots and fruits in planned languages’, in W. Blanke, Esperanto—Terminologie und Terminologiearbeit, New York: Mondial, 2008, pp. 27–47.
- 21.
Borsboom (1976), p. 39.
- 22.
Letter from Roman Sakowicz to Hans Jakob, 2 July 1957. Sakowicz also wrote that Drezen ‘was just a careerist who pretended to be a Bolshevik’.
- 23.
Kuznecov (1991), p. 25; Nikolaj Stepanov, ‘Homo de kontrastoj en kruela epoko’, Esperanto 85 (1992): 184–5.
- 24.
Cf. Nikolaj Zubkov, ‘Nikolaj Incertov—respondeca sekretario de SEU’, Scienco kaj Kulturo, 1997, 5 (13): 2–4.
- 25.
R. Nikolskij, ‘Esperanta movado en la ruĝa armeo’, Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 29 (81): 6. He was executed on 4 October 1938.
- 26.
He was arrested in December 1937. His wife later learned from Demidiuk that he was condemned to death. She herself spent eight years in a concentration camp, until 1946: letter from Margit Batta, Budapest, 1 August 1982, in Internaciisto, n.s., 8 (1982), 9/10: 2.
- 27.
Batta and Robicsek were both killed in October 1938.
- 28.
Letters to Kurisu Kei, 29 September 1955 and 28 October 1955, published in Nia Korespondo, journal of Esperanto-Koresponda Studrondo (Tokyo), 1955, 4 (Oct.): 5–8, 12; 1956, 6 (Feb.): 9–12; letter from Köhncke to Semyon Podkaminer, 20 January 1963 (Kurisu’s archive). In 1932 Köhncke warned foreign comrades desirous of working in the Soviet Union that they should have understanding for the ‘difficult conditions’ and not come expecting ‘an already fully realized socialist paradise’: Bulteno de CK SEU 11 (1932): 40–1. In a letter of 21 June 1973 Köhncke wrote to the author: ‘When I learned Esperanto (1925), it was part of my communist worldview; in the meantime I have lost my political idealism so I can’t even give a reason to be an Esperantist.’ He died in Hamburg on 2 May 1974.
- 29.
Drezen was rehabilitated on 11 May 1957 but readmitted (posthumously) to the Party only at the time of Gorbachev (10 October 1989).
- 30.
Stepanov (1992), p. 55. Elena Sazonova was shot on 3 November 1937.
- 31.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Esperanto, so in 1937, Nekrasov looked forward ‘very optimistically’ to the coming five decades, during which, despite persecution by ‘reactionary forces’, Esperanto would finally aid the victory of the idea of ‘brotherhood among humankind’: V. Bleier & E. Cense (ed.), Ora Libro de la Esperanto-movado, 1887–1937, Warsaw: Loka Kongresa Komitato, 1937, pp. 213–14.
- 32.
On Varankin (arrested 8 February 1938, shot 3 October 1938) see Stepanov (1990c). In August 1937 the brilliant linguist Evgenii Polivanov was arrested—known as a critic of Marr’s theory. He was executed in January 1938 (rehabilitated 1963). Before the revolution he led a student Esperanto group in Petrograd: Kuznecov (1991), p. 26.
- 33.
He died in prison in Tashkent (9 October 1943): Cibulevskij (2001), p. 70.
- 34.
See his Russian-language article in Bulteno de Centra Komitato de Sovetrespublikara Esperantista Unio 11 (1932): 61–2.
- 35.
In 1940 he died in a concentration camp: Stepanov (1994), p. 22.
- 36.
Abolʼskaia (1999), p. 7. Nikolai Stepanov, who studied the NKVD papers (‘Li estis la unua’, Sennaciulo 63 [1992]: 25, 28–30), said Snezhko was arrested in February 1936 and freed only in 1955. He died in 1957.
- 37.
Muravkin was born in Berlin (in 1905), where he acquired a doctorate in physics. He was arrested on 26 November 1936. He brought many people down with him through forced confessions and was executed on 11 December 1937: Stepanov (1990a).
- 38.
Abolʼskaia (1999), p. 8.
- 39.
‘Sovetiaj k-doj pri SP’, Sur Posteno, 1938, 59 (Feb.): 6. Rytkov also expressed his admiration for a short story, ‘Fidela hundo’, published in the journal and said ‘Soon I will perform it’.
- 40.
Stepanov (1990b), p. 76.
- 41.
Until 1943 Rytkov worked as a gold miner. Later, mindful of his profession as an actor, the authorities gave him the task of participating in entertainment shows in various concentration camps in northern Kolyma. From 1946 on, he was no longer confined to a concentration camp, but instead received ‘permanent exile’ in Norilsk, a city within the Arctic circle; there, in 1949, he returned to acting ‘in the biggest northern theater in the world’. During more than 17 years of confinement, his ties with Esperanto were not entirely broken: in his place of exile, Rytkov on one occasion unearthed in an attic a copy of Zamenhof’s Fundamenta Krestomatio—among forbidden books by Trotsky and Bukharin. Cf. Abolʼskaia (1999), pp. 14–16. Varlam Shalamov, in one of his well-known tales from Kolyma, writes about a Moscow Esperantist condemned to 15 years in prison: Kolyma Tales, trans. John Glad, New York & London: W.W. Norton, 1980, pp. 189–196 (esp. p. 194).
- 42.
Smith (1998), p. 163; Mikaelo Bronŝtejn, ‘Rememoroj aperas…ʼ, REGo, 2009, 1 (50): 13–19 (esp. p. 14).
- 43.
American Esperanto Magazine 69 (1955): 52. It is not clear whether they were imprisoned in connection with Esperanto.
- 44.
Kuznecov (1991), p. 29.
- 45.
According to Kharkovsky (http://miresperanto.com), among them were the pioneers Aleksandr Sakharov and Sergei Obruchev.
- 46.
Letter to E. Mikhalsky, 5 December 1926, in Ungar (1994), p. 15.
- 47.
Viktor Gusev, ‘Kelkaj vojkrucoj survoje de la iranto’, in Samodaj (1999), pp. 106–25 (esp. pp. 112–13), on Konstantin Gusev, who refused to denounce his Esperantist friend Vladimir Glazunov. The telegraph operator Aleksandr Eriukhin, who often provided his local newspaper in Arkhangelsk with the fruits of his correspondence, was arrested in May 1937 and freed at the end of March 1939.
- 48.
Sergei Mastepanov, self-educated on account of his poverty, became a German teacher and director of a village school; he learned more than ten languages: see the biographical sketch by Anatolo Ivasenko, REGo, 2013, 1 (74): 18.
- 49.
- 50.
As of 1956, Rytkov resumed acting in the Lenin-Komsomol Theater and played in Soviet films, radio and television. In 1965, attending the European Esperanto Conference in Vienna, he decided to remain in the West. Later, as he had done earlier in Moscow, he played the role of Lenin in West German television and in a British play. During World Congresses of Esperanto he declaimed, among other pieces, the works of Solzhenitsyn. In his final years he worked for the Russian section of the BBC. He died in London on 1 September 1973 from stomach cancer.
- 51.
Ferenc Szilágyi, ‘Renkonto sur la vivovojo’, in Logvin, Sur la vivovojo, p. 11.
- 52.
Paco 8 (1961), 96: 22.
- 53.
Communication to the author from Kurisu Kei, who had corresponded with Köhncke (26 June 1973).
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Lins, U. (2017). The Events of 1937–38. In: Dangerous Language — Esperanto and the Decline of Stalinism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-352-00020-7_1
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