Abstract
Around 1932 the Esperantists ceased participation in what had become a vigorous theoretical discussion about the future of language under communism. They realized that they were getting drawn into the sensitive area of the so-called nationalities problem. The Russian language was raised to the rank of common language for all Soviet peoples. In the system of all-Soviet patriotism, which had banished even the ‘revolutionary’ Latin alphabet, there was no place for a neutral international language.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Martin (2001), p. 196.
- 3.
- 4.
R. Mencel, ‘Esperanta alfabeto kaj orientaj lingvoj’, Esperanto 18 (1922): 176–7 (on an article by Mamed Shakhakhtinsky in Izvestiia).
- 5.
The Armenian linguist Gurgen Sevak, member of the Esperanto Academy from 1971 until his death in 1981.
- 6.
The SAT member Aleksandr Potseluevsky was a member of the State Scientific Council of Turkmenistan: S. Bojev, ‘Latina alfabeto en Turkmenio’, Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 144: 5.
- 7.
The linguist Lev Zhirkov: Isayev (1977), p. 245.
- 8.
E. Chikhachev, ‘Latinskuiu azbuku ukrainskomu iazyku’ (Latin alphabet for the Ukrainian language), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 36. See also D. Sneĵko, ‘Ĉu esperanta alfabeto povas esti akceptata kiel internacia?’, Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 241; V. Kolchinsky, ‘Za issledovanie “iskusstvennosti” v iazykakh SSSR’ (For research on ‘artificiality’ in the languages of the Soviet Union), Izvestiia Ts.K. SĖSR 6 (1928): 328–30.
- 9.
- 10.
Yuri Slezkine, ‘The Soviet Union as a communal apartment, or How a socialist state promoted ethnic particularism’, Slavic Review 53 (1994): 415–52 (quotation p. 443).
- 11.
Isayev (1977), p. 250.
- 12.
Isayev, p. 268.
- 13.
Isayev, pp. 263–4.
- 14.
On Spiridovich, see our earlier volume, chapter 7.
- 15.
E.S., ‘Ėsperantizatsiia vytekaet iz ukrainizatsii’ (Esperantization derives from Ukrainization), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 217–22; trans. Spiridoviĉ (1932), p. 159.
- 16.
Kommunisticheskaia partiia Ukrainy, Kiev, 1958; quoted in Hans-Joachim Lieber & Karl-Heinz Ruffmann (ed.), Sowjetkommunismus. Dokumente II, Cologne & Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1964, p. 124.
- 17.
E. Drezen, ‘Al esperantistoj!’, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 271.
- 18.
Spiridovich was condemned to eight years in prison, then to permanent exile. He died in 1958 in a Siberian home for the aged. (Personal communication from Nikolai Stepanov, 10 August 2003.)
- 19.
- 20.
Pravda, 7 July 1938; quoted in Erwin Oberländer (ed.), Sowjetpatriotismus und Geschichte. Dokumentation, Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1967, pp. 26–7.
- 21.
Pravda, 31 August 1938; quoted in David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956, Cambridge, MA, & London: Harvard University Press, 2002, p. 92. In calling for the persecution of non-Russian nationalities, the party secretary for Krasnoiarsk believed he was following an order from Ezhov, to the effect that it was necessary ‘to end the game with internationalism’: Jansen and Petrov (2002), p. 98.
- 22.
Cf. Slezkine (2004), pp. 276, 279.
- 23.
Drezen (1991), p. 326.
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Lins, U. (2017). The Emergence of Soviet Patriotism. In: Dangerous Language — Esperanto and the Decline of Stalinism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-352-00020-7_3
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