Volume 1
Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin
Written by
Ulrich Lins
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-Ur
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Translated by Humphrey Tonkin
Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin
"This book gives a carefully supported account of a crucial aspect of the Esperanto movement's history, focusing on political repression by totalitarian regimes, especially those of Hitler and Stalin. It also sheds light on opposition elsewhere and is eye-opening for anyone interested in language policy and global communication."
—Ulrich Ammon, Emeritus Professor of Germanic Linguistics at Duisburg-Essen University, Germany
Ulrich Lins
Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin
palgrave
macmillan
Ulrich Lins Bonn, Germany
Translated by Humphrey Tonkin
ISBN 978-1-137-54916-7 ISBN 978-1-137-54917-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956885
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
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Editorial Note
Transliteration from Russian and Ukrainian is based on the Library of Congress system. To make it easier on the reader, in Russian family names the ending 'ii' has been changed to 'y', and soft signs and diacritics have been omitted. In the footnotes and bibliography, however, I have followed standard Library of Congress transliteration. In references, in general, a translation is added only if the original is not in Roman script; names appear in the form used in the publication in question.
For individuals from East Asian countries the family name appears first, and the given name follows.
In the notes the full title of a book is indicated only in the first refer- ence in the chapter in question; in subsequent notes it appears in abbrevi- ated form. For frequently cited works (among them EdE, EeP, PVZ), see the list of abbreviations and, of course, the bibliography. Only in excep- tional cases are electronic sources indicated (links were last checked on 28 September 2016) In the case of journal articles, the title of the periodi- cal is normally followed by the volume number and year of publication. Where pagination extends over the entire volume, I have not indicated the specific issue in which the article appears.
U.L.
Preface
Every book has its history, this one included. Its earliest draft was published in 1973 by the publisher l'omnibuso in Kyoto, Japan. This version, little more than a pamphlet, had a tiny print run, but a year later its contents were printed as a section in the volume Esperanto en perspektivo. In 1975 an expanded version of the first edition appeared in Japanese translation, the work of Kurisu Kei. It was published in Tokyo by Iwanami.
In 1988 a new, completely rewritten text was published—the result of several years of research in a vast array of source material.[1] It was my desire to make an original contribution to research on the 100-year his- tory of Esperanto, devoting particular attention to a specific aspect of that history—an aspect long neglected, indeed regarded as something of a taboo, even among Esperantists. The topic was the opposition and persecution that Esperanto encountered for political and ideological rea- sons. I wanted to describe the fate of the adepts of a language that, over the decades, police, censors, nationalist ideologues and assorted dictators had denounced as 'dangerous'.
So I did not deal with the 'internal' history of the Esperanto movement so much as with the hostile reactions that Esperanto and its speakers had endured from political regimes and ideologies, particularly Nazism and Stalinism. Likewise, it was not enough simply to limit the story to a description of the ways in which Esperanto had been attacked: it was important to present the arguments of its opponents and analyze the motives that prompted political regimes of very different character to harass the movement for Esperanto. Such motives could derive from fundamental ideological positions or from concrete political interests. In this same connection, I also tried to shed light on the attitudes of the movement itself, and of individual Esperantists: without an aware- ness of the origins of the language, the motives of Zamenhof, the modes of recruitment and the theory and structure of the movement, we can hardly hope to achieve an understanding of why Esperanto became such an object of persecution.
New information, particularly archival material, has come to light since the 1988 edition and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the follow- ing year. So the present version of the study is different again. For the English-language version, I have expanded the story into two volumes, the first dealing with the persecution of Esperanto speakers and the sup- pression of the language in Hitler's Germany and Stalins Russia, and the second describing the underlying causes of the demise of the language in the Soviet Union and its revival, first in Eastern Europe and then in Russia itself, after the death of Stalin and the gradual decline of the ideas we associate with Stalinism.
The extraordinary story ofEsperanto's encounter with twentieth-century dictatorship raises many questions—questions that I attempt to address in this study. What was it that was so provocative about Esperanto? Was it the very existence of Esperanto as an international language or primarily the way in which it was used in practice? What was the political and social milieu in which Esperanto canvassed for its goal of a second language for all people? What role was played by adaptability and self-confidence in dealing with governments from which the movement hoped for support but which it nevertheless had no wish to rely on? What was the relationship between a 'neutral' language on the one hand and 'idealistic' enthusiasts on the other? How did the Esperantists relate to supporters of other goals aimed at worldwide solidarity, like pacifists, socialists and communists? And how did the Esperantists react to the—often unexpected—conflicts with their opponents? What lessons did they carry away from the persecutions concerning their own definition of the Esperanto movement?
To explain the difficult position of Esperanto on the battlefield of i deologies and power interests, I have tried to clarify the political development of the countries in question, particularly Tsarist Russia, Germany, the Balkan countries, China and Japan, and the Soviet Union. I hope that in this way I can shed some light on the history of the decades since 1887—from a different perspective. My basic intention has been precisely that: to show how much suspicion, hatred and resis- tance has been generated by an effort to establish non-discriminatory interpersonal communication—an effort which was often identified with specific groups (Jews, communists, petty bourgeois) but in fact repre- sents a ielf-iufficient integrative internationalism and, as such, refuses to conform to the usual categories. Thus the history of the persecution of Esperanto might stimulate conclusions that go beyond the subject of Esperanto—conclusions that maintain their validity in the present time.
Thus, the revised Esperanto edition[2] on which this English transla- tion is based takes into account numbers of newly discovered docu- ments, among them materials from the Soviet NKVD to which Russian researchers had access as of 1990 for a (limited) time. I have also tried to take into consideration relevant studies that have appeared in various countries and languages over the past 25 years. At the same time, I have decided to reduce the length of some chapters, for example in the section on the Soviet Union, and also discussion of persecutions of Esperantists aimed primarily at their political activities, for example in parts of Eastern Europe, and in China and Japan.
My research has benefited greatly from material preserved in the German Federal Archive in Berlin, including papers newly available following German reunification. For several years my work has been assisted by con- sulting the Hector Hodler Library in Rotterdam, the Planned Language Collection and Esperanto Museum of the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the library of the Japanese Esperanto Institute in Tokyo. Also extremely helpful has been my easy access to the University Library and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library, both in Bonn. I remember with particular thanks the fact that Teo Jung, before his passing in 1986, presented me with collections of Esperanto periodicals from the 1920s and 1930s and that Kurisu Kei put at my disposal particularly valuable material on the Soviet and Japanese Esperanto movements. I am grateful to SAT and Eduard Borsboom who allowed me to consult unpublished letters to and from Eugene Lanti. In addition to those mentioned, I owe thanks to many people, among them former Soviet citizens, who provided me with information and clarifications that helped in the preparation of the present text. The names of many of these individuals are mentioned in the footnotes. Finally, I am grateful to all those who helped in the technical preparation of the book.
I cannot begin to measure the constant support provided by my wife Akie and from which the present study has greatly benefited. And I am very grateful to Professor Humphrey Tonkin, who has long taken an interest in publishing an English version of the book and who has devoted himself to the task of translating it with unmatchable care and enthusiasm. My thanks go also to Ulrich Becker, who has hunted down references to English-language translations of works cited.
October 2015 U.L.
Contents
Part I A Suspicious New Language 1
The Emergence of Esperanto 3
War and Its Aftermath 35
Part II 'Language of Jews and Communists' 85
The Rise of a New Enemy 87
An AUy of World Jewr/ 109
Part III 'Language of Petty Bourgeois and Cosmopolitans' 157
Finding a Place for Esperanto in the Soviet Union 159
Schism and Collapse 205
Socialism and International Language 237 Bibliography 279 AuthorIndex 287 Subject Index 295
Abbreviations
ASE Asocio de Sovetiaj Esperantistoj (Association of Soviet Esperantists)
BEA Bulgara Esperantista Asocio (Bulgarian Esperantist Association)
BIL P.E. Stojan, Bibliografio de internacia lingvo (Geneva: UEA, 1929;
reprint Hildesheim & New York: Georg Olms, 1973) BLEA Brita Laborista Esperanto-Asocio (British Workers' Esperanto Association)
CK Centra Komitato (Central Committee)
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
EACSR Esperanto-Asocio en Cehoslovaka Respubliko (Esperanto
Association in the Czechoslovakian Republic) EdE L. Kokeny & V. Bleier (ed.), Enciklopedio de Esperanto (Budapest:
Literatura Mondo, 1933-1934, reprints 1979 and 1986) EeP Ivo Lapenna and others, Esperanto en perspektivo. Faktoj kaj analizoj
pri la Internacia Lingvo (London & Rotterdam: UEA, 1974) EKRELO Eldon-Kooperativo por Revolucia Esperanto-Literaturo
(Publishing Cooperative for Revolutionary Esperanto Literature) GDR German Democratic Republic
GEA Germana Esperanto-Asocio (German Esperanto Association)
GLEA Laborista Esperanto-Asocio por la Germanlingvaj Regionoj;
Germana Laborista Esperanto-Asocio (German Workers' Esperanto Association) GPU Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (State Political
Directorate, i.e. the Soviet secret police 1922-23)
IAREV Internacia Asocio de Revoluciaj Esperanto-Verkistoj (International
Association of Revolutionary Esperanto Writers) ICK Internacia Centra Komitato de la Esperanto-Movado
(International Central Committee of the Esperanto Movement) IEL Internacia Esperanto-Ligo (International Esperanto League)
IPE Internacio de Proleta Esperantistaro (Proletarian Esperantist
International)
ISA International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations
ISE Internacio de Socialistaj Esperantistoj (Socialist Esperantist
International) IWA International Workingmen's Association
JEI Japana Esperanto-Instituto (Japanese Esperanto Institute)
JEL Jugoslavia Esperanto-Ligo (Yugoslav Esperanto League)
KP Komunista Partio (Communist Party)
LEA Laborista Esperanto-Asocio (Workers' Esperanto Association)
LKK Loka Kongresa Komitato (Local Congress Committee)
LPLP Language Problems and Language Planning (periodical) MEH L.L. Zamenhof, Mi estas homo, ed. Aleksander Korĵenkov
(Kaliningrad: Sezonoj, 2006) MEM Mondpaca Esperantista Movado (World Peace Esperantist Movement) n. note
NDEB Neue Deutsche Esperanto-Bewegung (New German Esperanto Movement)
NKVD Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennykh del (People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs) n.s. new series
NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist
German Workers' Party) OGPU Ob'edinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (Joint State Political Directorate, i.e. Soviet secret police 1923—1934) Orig Iom reviziitaplena verkaro de L.L. Zamenhof. Originalaro, ed.
Ludovikito (= Ito Kanzi), 3 volumes (Kyoto: Ludovikito, 1989-1991)
PEK Proleta Esperanto-Korespondanto (Proletarian Esperanto
Correspondent)
PIDE Policia Internacional e de Defensa do Estado (International Police
and State Defense, i.e. Portuguese secret police) PIV Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto (Paris: SAT, 1970)
PVZ Ludovikito (= Ito Kanzi, ed.), Plena verkaro de L.L. Zamenhof, 58
volumes (Kyoto: Ludovikito, 1973-2004) REGo Rusia Esperanto-Gazeto (Russian Esperanto Journal) RSDLP Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party RSHA Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) SA Sturmabteilung (the paramilitary wing of the NSDAP)
SAT Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (Worldwide Non-national Association)
SD Sicherheitsdienst, the Security (Intelligence) Service of the SS
SEJM Sovetia Esperantista Junulara Movado (Soviet Esperantist Youth Movement)
SEU Sovetlanda Esperantista Unio (Soviet Esperantist Union), as of
1927 Sovetrespublikara Esperantista Unio (Esperantist Union of the Soviet Republics), the main organization of Soviet Esperantists; in Russian: Soiuz Esperantistov Sovetskikh Stran (Soiuz Esperantistov Sovetskikh Respublik) SS Schutzstaffel, the central organization of the police and security
service in Nazi Germany SSOD Soiuz sovetskikh obshchestv druzhby i kul'turnoi sviazi s
zarubezhnymi stranami (Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) SSR Socialist Soviet Republic
UEA Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Universal Esperanto Association)
UK Universala Kongreso de Esperanto (World Congress of Esperanto)
USSR Union of Socialist Soviet Republics VOKS Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo kultur'noi sviazi s zagranitsei
(All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries)
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Lazar Zamenhof, by Robert Kastor c. 1905. Text:
'When the peoples can freely understand one another, then they will cease to hate one another.' 27
Fig. 3.1 On 1 August 1932, Heroldo de Esperanto, a weekly
newspaper published in Cologne, included a message of greeting from the lord mayor, Konrad Adenauer, to the future attendees at the 25th World Congress, planned to take place in Cologne a year hence. In March 1933 six weeks after Hitler's seizure of power, the Nazis removed Adenauer from office. The Congress did indeed take place, but with far fewer participants than originally anticipated 100
Fig. 4.1 Lazar Zamenhof's three children, murdered by the Nazis:
Lidia, Zofia and Adam 126
Fig. 4.2 With renewed hope after the war, on 14 April 1946 Polish Esperantists marked the 29th anniversary of Zamenhof's death by gathering among the ruins of the building where Zamenhof once lived. His grandson Ludovic holds the flag 154 Fig. 5.1 The Tauride Palace in Petrograd, in June 1921, was the site of the founding congress of the Soviet Esperantist Union (SEU). In front of the flag (no. 6) sits its longtime leader Ernest Drezen 166
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 5.2 Eugene Lanti, founder of SAT, the Sennacieca Asocio
Tutmonda, visited Moscow in August 1922. Here he met with the editors of the literary journal La Nova Epoko (New Era). L-R: Valentin Poliakov, Natan Futerfas, Lanti, Nikolai Nekrasov, Grigorii Demidiuk 174
Fig. 6.1 Members of the Lipetsk Esperanto group, Tambov
Governorate (1927-28) 208
Picture Credits
Hector Hodler Library (UEA), Rotterdam: 1.1, 4.1, 4.2, 6.1 Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, Paris: 5.1, 5,2 German Esperanto Library, Aalen: 3.1
Part I
A Suspicious New Language
1
The Emergence of Esperanto
Zamenhof and the Origins of Esperanto
The author of Esperanto belonged to a persecuted people. Lazar Zamenhof, who in 1887 published his project for an international language, was a Jew living in the Russian Empire, whose four million Jewish inhabitants made up about half of worldwide Jewry.^ This popula- tion continued to suffer discrimination to a degree that the majority of their fellows in Western Europe already regarded as a thing of the past. Zamenhof's birthplace was Bialystok, where Jews, living alongside Poles, Russians, Germans and Belarusians, constituted a majority.2 Each group had its own language and regarded the other groups with suspicion. It was in this environment that Esperanto came into being. As Zamenhof explained in a long letter to the Russian Esperantist Nikolai Borovko:
In a city like this, more than anywhere, a person of an impressionable nature feels the heavy misfortune of language difference and becomes convinced at every step that difference of language is the sole, or at least the principal, factor that divides the human family and separates it into hostile camps.
For this reason, wrote Zamenhof, he decided that 'when I was grown up, I had to eliminate this evil'.[3]
When this letter was published in 1896, the first Esperantists were 'deeply heart-stricken':[4] later, it was often publicly cited as a clear explana- tion of Zamenhof's motives and as a particularly convincing reason for the need of an international language. The letter presented the author of Esperanto as an altruistic advocate of understanding across all national antagonisms, as a person full of modesty and idealism, for whose goals it would be hard not to show respect.
Unknown for four decades, however, was another of Zamenhof's let- ters, written in 1905 to the Frenchman Alfred Michaux. In this letter, Zamenhof put particular emphasis on his Jewish origins and the connec- tion of all his ideals to his membership of 'that ancient, much suffering and struggling people whose entire historical mission consists [...] in the union of the nations and the goal of "one God". Zamenhof asserted that if he 'were not a Jew from the ghetto, the idea of the unification of humankind' would not have occupied him so insistently. No one, he asserted, could feel the need for a 'nationless language, neutrally human', as strongly as a Jew.[5]
We need not see a contradiction between the two letters. They reveal thoughts that came to Zamenhof in different stages of his life. When, as a young man, he worked on his project for an international lan- guage, it is unclear whether he considered the specific usefulness of the language to Jews. His family background did not immediately cause him to discuss the circumstances that drove him to such missionary zeal. The family, which, as of December 1873, was living in Warsaw, was assimilationist, confident in the further improvement of the legal situation of Jews. His father, a teacher of German,[6] identified with the intellectual movement known as Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and cultivated the hope that ideas of equality would finally prevail also in Russia. Lazar therefore grew up not in the traditionalist atmo- sphere and suffocating poverty of the Jewish ghetto, but in the circle of that minority of bourgeois and intellectual Jews who saw the way to emancipation as lying in maximum integration into the surround- ing society.
In truth, Marcus Zamenhof, Lazar's father, seems a typical representa- tive of the modern urban Jews of Russia. His goal was to be a loyal citizen of the Russian state; he regarded himself as a Russian whose Jewishness was confined to the practice of the Jewish religion, and who desired that his children be allowed to advance in society through access to all avail- able educational opportunities. Characteristic of his point of view is the surviving report on the inauguration of a new synagogue in Biaiystok in 1868. On that occasion Marcus delivered a Russian-language address in which, alluding to earlier persecutions, he expressed his thanks to Tsar Alexander II 'for his just laws and good decrees' and called on Jews to embrace the spirit of the new, liberal era: 'We should no longer distance ourselves from our brothers the Russians, among whom we live, but share with them, equally, all the rights of this country, for our happiness and well-being.'7
Lazar's childhood advanced under the influence of this desire for inte- gration. He himself later remembered that he 'had a passionate love for the Russian language and the whole Russian realm' and that he 'dreamed of one day becoming a great Russian poet'.[7] Languages in general became his hobby. For a while he hoped to revive one of the ancient languages9 and also thought about the reintroduction of Hebrew as a spoken language.[8]In the end, however, he 'began vaguely dreaming of a new, created lan- guage ["nova, arta lingvo"]'.[9] His imagination may well have been stimu- lated, early on, by the legend of the Tower of Babel, of the time when humans could still communicate with one another freely. How might the condition introduced by the fall of the tower be overcome? Characteristic is the comment of 1908 by the mature Zamenhof regarding the biblical story: 'The consequence of the Tower of Babel has now become the cause: once, confusion of languages was a punishment for sin; now the confu- sion of languages is the cause of the sin.'[10]
At the end of 1878, when Zamenhof was still in secondary school, the first project of a 'lingwe uniwersala' was ready. He and a group of friends happily recited, very much under the influence of the educated ideas of human brotherhood, the first poetic lines in the new language:
Malamikete de las nacjes kado, kado, jam temp' esta! La tot' homoze in familje konunigare so deba![11]
But at this time Zamenhof still hesitated to go public with his project: 'Anticipating only mockery and persecution, I decided to hide my work from everyone.'[12] He finished secondary school in the summer of 1879 and left for Moscow to study medicine. He was there when, in March 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by anarchists; it is no exag- geration to say that this event had vital consequences for Zamenhof's future activities. Following the assassination, the political atmosphere in Russia degenerated rapidly, particularly for Jews. In April pogroms began. They spread across large parts of Russia and lasted for over a year, finally resulting in the greatest sustained persecution hitherto suffered by the Jews in the modern era. What made these pogroms even more significant was the fact that they not only displayed the cruelties of the ignorant but were accompanied by the silent and even direct approval of the Tsarist authorities.
Among the Jews of Russia the disillusionment accompanying this new explosion of anti-Semitism was particularly profound. The policies of the murdered Tsar had brought a number of changes for the better—changes which, especially among the more assimilationist Jews, encouraged wide- spread hope for the gradual achievement of equality of rights. But now, in 1881, the Russian Jews were made painfully aware that anti-Semitism was by no means exterminated and that their efforts to assimilate had encountered insuperable barriers. Many were persuaded of the need for a collective Jewish renaissance—and the search for a solution to the Jewish problem not through adaptation to a hostile environment but through a national rebirth that would restore to the Jews a territory of their own. In many Russian cities, beginning in the winter of 1881-82, groups emerged which, calling themselves Hovevei Zion,15 spread the idea of reviving a Jewish state in Palestine. A stimulus to this new, pre-Zionist movement came primarily from the brochure Autoemancipation! of Leon Pinsker,[13]a Jewish physician in Odessa. Pinsker had formerly been an ardent sup- porter of Haskalah, but in 1881, his hopes of continuing progress toward harmonious coexistence between Jews and Russians definitively dashed, he changed his view radically, beginning to argue among his fellow Jews that their salvation could consist only in self-sufficiency, national solidar- ity and the reacquisition of a territorial base.[14]
Zamenhof, now experiencing the rise of anti-Jewish feelings in Moscow, was also raised, as we have seen, in the ethos of those intellectuals who were most shocked at the return of anti-Semitism. It is in this light that we read his bitter observation in the letter to Michaux: 'I grew convinced that my love [for the Russian language and the Russian realm] was repaid with hate.' He added that people who claim a monopoly on the proper definition of Russian-ness saw in him the Jew 'only a foreigner without rights. Thus, Zamenhof was pushed back into his Jewishness, and as a consequence felt himself moved to help first those whom people 'hate, look down on and oppress'—his Jewish brothers and sisters.[15] While he was still in Moscow he worked on a grammar of the Yiddish language,[16]and it was also in Moscow that he was caught up in the idea of founding a colony 'in some uninhabited part of the world', from which an inde- pendent Jewish state might in due course emerge.[17]
In August 1881 Zamenhof returned to Warsaw to continue his studies. Shortly thereafter, the unexpected occurred: at Christmas a pogrom was launched against the Warsaw Jews. This event had the definitive effect of causing Zamenhof to focus his attention on the Jewish problem.[18] The resurgence of anti-Jewish activity politicized the hitherto non-political student.[19] He joined the ranks of the pioneers of the colonizing move- ment and in February 1882 founded, along with other Jewish students, the first Zionist society in Warsaw.[20] In the following years, primarily up to 1884, Zamenhof actively participated in the debates about reconstruc- tion of the old Israel or creation of a new homeland for Jews, among other things contributing articles to the Russian-language Jewish weekly Razsvet (Dawn), published in Saint Petersburg.[21]
But Zamenhof's activities, intense though they may have been, did not last long. Little by little, even as he prepared himself for a career as an eye doctor, he began to doubt whether Zionism would ever bring a solu- tion to the Jewish question, and to wonder whether he had the right to devote so much energy to his own people while leaving aside concerns for humanity as a whole. As he wrote to Michaux, from his earliest childhood his thoughts had always been 'dominated by the "human', but because of the wretched state of my people, there often awoke in my heart the idea of the "patriof who struggled with the "human"'.[22] In the year 1887 this conflict was decided in favor of 'the human': Zamenhof completely discontinued his activities on behalf of a territory for Jews,[23] devoting himself instead to the language which he presented to the public in that year under the pseudonym 'Doktoro Esperanto'. In the two decades that followed, his thoughts were dominated by the idea of a worldwide, neu- tral language that might erase not only hatred and persecution against Jews but 'all national hatreds'.[24] It was not that Zamenhof stopped think- ing about the Jews: he maintained his efforts to help the oppressed Jewish people, and it is evident that these efforts helped drive the enthusiasm that he dedicated to Esperanto. But the desire to help the Jews was now firmly embedded in the broader desire to contribute to the pacification and unification of all humanity.
Yet Zamenhof's inner thoughts are barely reflected in the 'First Book' (Unua Libro), as his initial 1887 publication on the language came to be known. Its introduction expresses the idealism of its author only moder- ately, primarily emphasizing practical arguments. It draws attention to the waste of time and material goods caused by the need to learn several foreign languages, noting how useful it would be if all people needed to depend only on the knowledge of two languages—their own, and the newly pro- posed neutral, international language. Linked to this practical argument were more idealistic formulations: Zamenhof asserts that the 'differences among languages present the essence of the differences and recipro- cal enmity between nations',[25] and he speaks of the special utility that a neutral language would have in countries with multilingual populations, thereby revealing that he was inspired by and continued to think about the situation in Russia. His choice of the pseudonym 'Esperanto', soon to be adopted for the language itself, reinforced this idealism.
That the language project was able to come into being at all is due, however, primarily to the practical side of Zamenhof's thinking. In the First Book he declares, An international language, like all national lan- guages, is a social possession, and the author renounces forever his per- sonal rights to it.'[26] In his 'Second Book' (Dua Libro) of 1888 he specifies that 'I do not want to be the creator of the language; I only want to be its initiator.[27] He believed that Esperanto 'must live, grow and advance according to the same laws as those by which all living languages are elaborated';[28] he did not wish 'to create, for his personal pleasure, the entire language from head to toe'.[29] Expressing for the first time the idea of the development of an international language on the basis of collective use, independently of personal authority, Zamenhof assigned to human society and to everyday practice the task of judging, sustaining and devel- oping Esperanto.
Birth Pangs: The Tsarist Censor
However benign Zamenhof's idea of a language by which 'the peoples would come together as a single family'[30] might be, first he had to over- come the barrier of censorship. Ironically, his father was himself part of the bureaucracy whose task it was to shield the citizens from knowl- edge regarded as undesirable by the Tsarist regime. The teacher Marcus Zamenhof was also employed, beginning in 1883, as censor, with respon- sibility as of 1885 for Hebrew and Yiddish publications. He pursued this task with the unshakable rigor of an assimilationist Jew; the Jewish authors and editors of Warsaw feared his pedantic attention to detail.[31]
For the son, however, his father's position had its evident advantage when in 1887 he asked permission to publish a prospectus on his proj- ect for a new language. Marcus Zamenhof persuaded his colleagues responsible for Russian-language publications to approve his son's work, characterizing it as 'benign nonsense'.[32] Permission to print was given on 2 June 1887, and the additional permission needed for distribution on 26 July. Thus was born the 40-page Russian-language booklet by which the youthful dreams of Lazar Zamenhof had their first concrete result. Editions of the so-called First Book followed in Polish, French, German, English, Hebrew and Yiddish, to be followed by further teaching mate- rials in the language. By 1891 the numbers had reached 33 Esperanto textbooks in 12 languages.
The author asked the readers of the First Book to sign and return a slip of paper promising that the signer would learn the language if it turned out that ten million other people did the same. But, rather than merely promising, most interested readers started learning right away. By September 1889 Zamenhof was able to publish a first address list of 1000 people who had learned the language, the vast majority of them living in the Russian Empire. In this compilation we can see the beginning of efforts to organize the Esperantists, and, given that Russian society came late to defining a path to industrialization, also a political challenge— at least in the eyes of a regime habitually wary of spontaneous interest groups, even if their aims were entirely innocuous.[33]
The Russian State Historical Archive in Saint Petersburg contains 130 Tsarist administration dossiers concerning Esperanto publications from 1887 to 1917. As a study by the Leningrad Esperantist S.K. Khvorostin, based on these documents, reveals,[34] Zamenhof's earliest publications sailed smoothly through the censorship process, probably because the authorities still regarded the activities of this language creator as a neg- ligible and therefore not impermissible affair. But by the autumn of 1888 Zamenhof ran into the first significant setback when he unsuc- cessfully petitioned to publish a weekly journal for the growing numbers of learners of Esperanto.[35] The head of the Chief Administration for the Periodical Press, Evgenii Feoktistov, recommended to Viacheslav Pleve, at the time the deputy minister for internal affairs, that he rejects the peti- tion on the grounds that 'there is no one in the censorship office who can review publications in newly invented languages'. Pleve agreed.[36]
At the same moment Zamenhof found himself in something of a crisis. In September 1888 his father was dismissed from his position as censor and risked also losing his job as teacher. Marcus Zamenhof had already attracted the disapproval of his superior in Saint Petersburg, Nikandr Ziusmen, head censor of Yiddish and Hebrew publications, because he allowed the publication in a Yiddish periodical of a satirical poem pro- testing against the pogroms (1887). Shortly thereafter, when the Hebrew- language periodical Hazefirah (Red Dawn) in Warsaw published an article about the deleterious effects of too much wine on the intellectual capabilities of the individual, Ziusmen, known for his excessive drinking, declared the article 'an offense against the Tsar' and Marcus Zamenhof, forced to take the blame, lost his position.[37] Only by payment of a large sum of money did he succeed in avoiding more drastic consequences.
For the son, obliged to support the father financially, a period of bur- densome years ensued. As a young ophthalmologist, he tried to achieve professional stability in a number of locations. Because the ill fortune of his father also put an end to helpful contacts with the Warsaw censorship office, Zamenhof now found himself more frequently engaged in strug- gles with the bureaucrats. In a 6 June 1891 letter, Zamenhof wrote that the provincial censorship committees refused to engage with Esperanto- related publications and required that all such permissions be sent to Saint
Petersburg.[38] A strange ambivalence characterized the policies of the Saint Petersburg Chief Administration. In the period 1891-92, Zamenhof was unsuccessful in publishing a new book or republishing an old one, but at the same time, thanks to the favorable attitude of the censor for foreign affairs, Etienne Geispits, it proved possible to import Esperanto-language publications from other countries into Russia—among them the princi- pal publication of the emerging international movement, La Esperantisto, published in Nuremberg as of 1 September 1889.
In April 1892, the Russian ministry for internal affairs approved the first Esperanto society in Russia, Espero, in Saint Petersburg. In the fol- lowing two years the still tiny movement went through its first internal crisis. Wishing to move beyond personal responsibility for the language, in January 1893 Zamenhof proposed that the subscribers to Esperantisto^[39]form an International Esperantist League; to them he later presented a project for reforms in the language, partly under pressure from Esperantists who remained unhappy about the slow dissemination of Esperanto and blamed it on structural weaknesses in the language. A vote was taken, and a clear majority of subscribers declared themselves opposed to any lin- guistic changes. This in turn put an end to the plan for an international organization. Yet for the expansion of the movement the abandonment of reforms proved a stabilizing factor, and Zamenhof himself went out of his way to demonstrate that Esperanto was suitable just as it was, also for literary projects. His translation of Hamlet, published in 1894, 'enjoyed an incomparable influence and was more effective for the propagation of the language than even the cleverest theoretical exhortations'.[40]
From 1894 to 1899, Esperanto publications were allowed to enter Russia from abroad, and, on presentation of a petition to the office that censored foreign publications, that office also allowed the printing of a few items in Russia itself.[41] As Khvorostin summarizes the situation, the Tsarist censor had not formulated a clear position on Esperanto: 'Permission or refusal depended on the arbitrary decision of a given censor.'[42]
Even if sporadic, obstacles always existed for the Russian Esperanto movement. But suspicion, pettiness and denials could not prevent Esperanto from finding more and more support in Russia. The early pioneers were primarily urban intellectuals, among them many doctors, teachers and writers—people whom we might collectively characterize as the educated elite in a reactionary country. They sought in the lan- guage of Zamenhof—as Drezen explains—'a certain relief from the grey monotony of social life in the Tsarist dictatorship'. Drezen adds that 'all Esperantists in this oppressed land, devoid of all signs of political free- dom, were to some degree idealists, dreaming of high ideals quite dif- ferent from the crude reality around them'.[43] Although Zamenhof had put Esperanto at the service of everyone, regardless of national or social background, and did not explicitly work for the support of the power- less, it was precisely these people who felt themselves specially called. Nothing reveals more strikingly the fact that in Russia Esperanto was particularly attractive to members of minorities than the high percentage of Jews among the first Esperantists.[44]
I n their discontent at the conditions in Russia—a discontent that emerged particularly among intellectuals, after the assassination of 1881 put an end to the efforts for political and social reforms—and at the same time in their vague hope for a new order arising from a moral rebirth of humankind rather than from revolution, the Russian Esperantists bore a distinct resemblance to the disciples of Leo Tolstoy—that is, to people who advocated non-violent resistance to wrongdoing by creative indi- viduals equipped with a sense of religious responsibility but rejecting the external forms of religion. If radicals reproached Tolstoy for undermining young people's faith in revolution, they must surely have regarded most Esperantists as hopelessly naive in their belief that through a common language all people would become brothers and that all social evils would simply disappear. According to Vladimir Gernet,[45] there were even peo- ple who learned Esperanto because they considered it a gift that God had given to Christians so that, with its aid, they could spread Christianity among the multilingual pagans.[46]
Tolstoy himself, quite early on, in 1889, expressed his support for Zamenhof's work, later repeating these affirmations of support on vari- ous occasions and allowing the translation of his works into Esperanto without royalties. In 1894, two periodicals in Odessa published an exten- sive letter from Tolstoy, which concluded as follows:
I have many times seen that people maintained hostility towards one another simply because of mechanical obstacles to reciprocal understand- ing. Thus the learning of Esperanto and its propagation are undoubtedly a Christian endeavor, which will help in the creation of the Kingdom of God—that endeavor that is the principal and singular goal of human life.[47]
Perhaps because of this letter the relations between the Tolstoyans and the Esperantists grew close. On 15 January 1895, the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs communicated to the Chief Administration for Press Affairs that it had acquired information to the effect that some disciples of Tolstoy planned to transform the journal Esperantisto into an organ for the dissemination of the ideas of their master.3 [48] Indeed, in February the staff of the publisher Posrednik (The Intermediary), which, under the vigilant eyes of the censor, was trying to popularize Tolstoy's thought, had launched a column in Esperantisto. The column was dedicated 'primarily to the idea of peaceful spiritual development and the union of all people and of every living thing in a single worldwide fraternity based on the principles of Moderation and Love, which reject violence and superstition'.[49]
Posrednik began its cooperation with Esperantisto with a contribution by Tolstoy himself, 'Reason and Religion',[50] which contained unorthodox and anti-authoritarian ideas, even if presented in a quiet and unprovoca- tive manner:
But the will of God is known, not by some extraordinary miracle, the writ- ing of the law by the finger of the Deity on stone tablets, with the compila- tion by the aid of the Holy Ghost of an infallible book, or by the infallibility of any holy man or collection of men, but only by the use of reason by all men, transmitting both by deed and by word, one to another, the con- sciousness of truth that ever more and more elucidating itself to them.[51]
The same issue carried the news that an organization had been founded in Amsterdam 'whose members refuse to pay levies by the state';[52] and for the March issue Posrednik contributed a long article on the Sino- Japanese War, which, alluding to Buddhist religious leaders in Japan who 'are turning to the armed forces to encourage them to butchery', pointed out that governments need wars 'to distract and seduce the people'.[53]
But the cooperation with the Tolstoyans, barely begun, hit the Esperantists hard. In April 1895, the publication of Tolstoy's 'Reason and Religion' caused the censor to prohibit the further entry of the journal Esperantisto into Russia. As a result, the journal, suddenly losing three- quarters of its almost 600 subscribers, was forced to cease publication in August of the same year.2 7 Feeling that he shared responsibility for this mishap, Tolstoy at once intervened with the authorities and in fact succeeded in having the ban on importing the periodical canceled. But the action came too late to prevent the journal's demise.[54]
This incident was no routine matter. After the censorship administra- tion, tipped off by the political police, moved against Esperantisto, the police then sent instructions to the local gendarmes to investigate those persons secretly reading and circulating the forbidden issue.[55] Clearly, this object of state surveillance was no longer seen as some harmless curiosity, the hobby of impractical idealists who hardly merited the attentions of the censor, but as a movement which, while still small in numbers, seemed to have allied itself with advocates for social reform through religion.
From now on, the Esperantists were engaged in an uphill battle to prove their sociopolitical loyalty to the authorities and counter suspicions that the language served conspiratorial goals. Often, such self-defense was to no avail: the censor refused permission to publish an Esperanto journal even when the petitioners promised to publish a parallel text in Russian. Between June 1899 and October 1904, only on rare occasions were Esperanto publications printed in Russia or allowed entry from abroad; during these years the Tsarist government intensified its persecution of revolutionary movements, or movements it deemed revolutionary. Not until 1904, for example, were the Lithuanians allowed to publish books or other printed matter in their mother tongue, and they could encoun- ter Esperanto only by way of a textbook printed in Tilsit (Germany) in 1890 and smuggled into Lithuania.[56]
Westward Advance
While the Russians continued to work in extremely difficult conditions, in other countries the Esperantists had already laid the foundations for a movement whose strength was such that the maneuvers of the authori- ties in a single country, even one as big as Russia, could not decisively threaten its existence.
This foundation was laid in the politically and economically more developed countries of western Europe—by people who did not feel themselves observed at every step by an autocratic regime, and whose lives passed more tranquilly, without the prospect of bloody conflicts within their own country. In the mid-1890s a new period began in the history of Esperanto, the so-called French or promotional period. Its most notable representative was the somewhat mysterious Louis de Beaufront,[57] who founded the Society for the Dissemination of Esperanto (Societe pour la propagation de l'Esperanto) and, as of 1901, published, by way of the publishing house Hachette, the first textbooks easily accessible to the larger public. De Beaufront became the first conscious propagandist for the language: he introduced modern methods of systematic advertising and little by little succeeded in attracting to the movement people who saw in Esperanto a practical tool for international relations in a capital- ist era. They were not wrong to name him 'the ancestor of all French Esperantists and new Esperantists generally'.[58]
Thanks to the activities of De Beaufront, by the beginning of the twen- tieth century the practical applicability of Esperanto had so advanced that the young movement could soon calculate among its ranks several influ- ential figures in French scientific life. Among them were the mathemati- cian Carlo Bourlet (who won the support of the publisher Hachette and the influential Touring Club de France), the philosopher Emile Boirac, the linguist Theophile Cart, the military general and ballistics specialist Hippolyte Sebert and the aviation pioneer Ernest Archdeacon. These new recruits were attracted to Esperanto not to escape a suffocating intellectual atmosphere or to contribute to the calming of national conflicts: such rhetoric of fraternity, adopted by Russian Esperantists against the back- ground of interethnic hatred under the Tsar, was entirely foreign to them. The highly idealistic, almost sectarian characteristics of the early move- ment had now lost their dominance.
In fact, the French intellectuals were of an entirely different type from the quaintly idealistic Tolstoyan brethren. They had little in common with the physician Aleksandr Asnes, who in 1906 bitterly described him- self as one of the 'miserable Russian slaves', or with the Polish zoologist Benedykt Dybowski, once condemned to death for participating in the Russian rebellion of 1863-64,33 or the repeatedly arrested Jewish law- yer and writer Leo Belmont, a popular Esperanto orator,[59] or the young Czech worker and Esperanto pioneer Frantisek Vladimfr Lorenc, who in 1893 fled the persecution of the Austrian police by taking ship to Brazil,[60]or the Slovak Tolstoyan Albert Skarvan, against whose arrest for refus- ing military service in 1895 well-known personalities from all Europe protested.[61] Unlike the Slavs and Eastern European Jews, the French had no liking for sentimental speeches about human brotherhood, nor did they consider Esperanto an aid in the battle for national or social eman- cipation. They were people who recognized in Esperanto 'the legitimate fruit of their common faith in the progress of civilization and in the sovereignty of reason'.[62] On the basis of this conviction they succeeded in making the language respectable among members of the higher levels of West European society.
Historians of Esperanto have frequently emphasized the difference between the Russian and French points of view—between the idealistic pioneering spirit of the early days and the later emergence of more practical considerations. However accurate this may be as a general observation, it would be wrong to put too much emphasis on this contrast between east and west. We must remind ourselves that Zamenhof created not only a foundation for idealistic understanding but also a foundation for the prac- tical application of the language. He did not adhere only to the guiding principles he had formulated in 1887-88: in 1898, at the moment when Esperanto first began to attract the attention of the French and other west- ern Europeans, he wrote an essay which can only be described as an attempt at a theoretical justification for Esperanto's practical role.
In this document, entitled 'The Essence and Future of the Idea of an International Language', Zamenhof reassuringly points out that Esperanto should not be confused with a worldwide language: it neither negates nor seeks to destroy national languages. He seems to be distanc- ing himself from the most enthusiastic Esperantists by excluding the pos- sibility that humankind might somehow flow together to form a single people through Esperanto; on the contrary, such an outcome would occur only through 'changing people's convictions and opinions'. Stressing the important practical advantages of a neutral means of communication, Zamenhof even went so far as to declare that 'pursuit of an international language should not exclude even blind and hotheaded chauvinism'.[63]
In August 1900 de Beaufront read part of this treatise to the congress of the French Association for the Advancement of Science, held at the same time as the Universal Exhibition. At first people believed that de Beaufront had written it himself.2 9 In any event, we can consider this text, which was so influential on later learners of Esperanto, as expressing the shared opinion of Zamenhof and de Beaufront as to the most suitable way to advocate for Esperanto in France at the beginning of the twentieth century.
On the other hand, we should recognize that the opportunities for the practical use of Esperanto were for a long time so limited that even in western Europe the movement had to rely on the idealism of its mem- bers. Among the pioneers of Esperanto in the countries of western Europe there were many who would in no way subscribe to an all-encompassing concern for the practical profit to be derived from the language. Felix Moscheles, the first president of the London Esperanto Club, was a well- known figure in the pacifist movement, in his role as president of the International Arbitration and Peace Association. In Germany, the banker Georg Arnhold, one of the principal supporters of the German pacifist movement, also provided material help to Esperanto. And among the first Esperantists in France was Gaston Moch, who in 1894 retired from the army to devote himself to the cause of peace, democracy and human rights.
Even de Beaufront, generally regarded as a prototype of the purely practical Esperantist, declared himself 'a strong supporter of ideas of peace'. But all his activities were characterized by efforts to avoid, at all costs, the confusion of Esperanto with pacifism. To justify this point of view, he used the argument that Esperantists and pacifists are both gener- ally regarded 'as nai've utopians' and that if both marched hand-in-hand they would only 'double [...] the difficulties in the way of success'.[64]
If we look for reasons for the caution behind de Beaufront's warnings, we can find them in the still recent memory (to which he alluded) of the fate of the journal Esperantisto in 1895 and the tense political climate pre- vailing in France in the years when the Esperanto movement was taking its first steps. Beginning in 1894, the nation was sharply divided by the question of whether Alfred Dreyfus was a traitor or the innocent victim of anti-Jewish agitation. The Dreyfus affair split France into two camps: on the one hand the supporters of the army, the aristocracy and Catholicism, along with the conservative middle class, united in their opposition to the principles of the French Revolution and the claims of reason; and on the other hand the non-clericalists, the socialist workers and all who believed in democracy and human rights. Furthermore, the unjust condemnation of Dreyfus marked a turning point in the history of Jews living in western Europe: up to this point they had had faith in the idea of emancipation and integration within the larger society, but now they were forced to recognize that such assimilation was opposed by a newly ascendant anti- Semitism, which they had believed confined to Eastern Europe. Thus, for the journalist Theodor Herzl there could no longer be any other solution than the founding of a Jewish state, for whose establishment he called, under the direct impression of the Dreyfus affair, in 1896.[65]
De Beaufront launched his magazine LEsperantiste and founded the Society for the Dissemination of Esperanto in January 1898; in the same month, fanned by the well-known JAccuse of Emile Zola, the passions for Dreyfus grew stronger and stronger. Because the dispute over with- drawal of the verdict also polarized the French Esperantists,[66] they could find common ground only by an awareness that to advance Esperanto they needed to keep the language and the movement separate from politi- cal tensions. And de Beaufront was not alone in this belief. Also Moch, himself Jewish, who became active in the Drefusard Human Rights League, clearly argued in 1905 for the complete separation of pacifism and Esperanto, repeating arguments earlier used by de Beaufront.[67]
If, then, we wish to summarize the viewpoint of the French Esperantists, we must recognize not so much a lack of idealism[68] as a unifying conviction that the fragile movement would die if it did not maintain its 'complete neutrality on all questions on which people disagree'.[69] A good illustration of the degree to which this attitude contrasted with the more aggressive stance of the East European Esperantists was the debate in 1905 over the Worldwide Esperantist League. The League was Zamenhof's first effort to free himself from personal responsibility for Esperanto's future develop- ment. Two opposing views collided, one characterizing the French posi- tion and the other that of the Slavs. De Beaufront opposed the proposal to found an international organization, pointing to the wide differences in national traditions and the resulting risk of arousing the suspicion of governments, because the Esperantists had already been 'proclaimed a danger to our [national] languages and to popular patriotism'.[70] Kazimierz Bein,[71] of Poland, on the other hand, doubted 'that the governments of a few countries would persecute us', if an international league of Esperantists were founded. In his view, governments were capable of telling the dif- ference between green (the color of Esperanto) and red. 'Like the bull in the ring, they are frightened only by the color red.' Even if 'in a given country members of the league are persecuted', that should not detain the Esperantists from founding the league, said Bein, finally asking whether 'just because there are countries like prisons, we should all wear chains?'[72]In the summer of 1905, during the first congress of Esperantists, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, the project for a Worldwide League was voted down. Despite the enthusiasm among congress participants for the unique expe- rience of untrammeled communication of 'people with people', the idea of an international organization was still beyond reach—in part because of personal jealousies among the leading French Esperantists, but also because of their general preference for assigning the first responsibility for recruitment to activities within the individual countries, rather than unnecessarily provoking the authorities through a supranational organi- zation of Esperantists. On the other hand, to make a clear distinction between the language itself and anyone's personal ideals, and to guard it against the intrusion of outside ideologies, the congress approved the so- called Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism[73]—a document that for the most part remains valid for the organized Esperanto movement down to today. The Declaration described Esperantism as 'the effort to dis- seminate throughout the world the use of a neutral language' and firmly stated that 'All other ideas or hopes that a given Esperantist links with Esperantism are his purely private affair for which Esperantism is not responsible.' The Declaration said nothing about the service of Esperanto to world peace.[74]
An Esperanto of Ideas
The French effort to pursue a strategy strictly limited to the language itself was undoubtedly a wise position—to extricate the Esperantists from the condition of a powerless minority of idealistic dreamers, to avoid limit- ing the attractiveness of Esperanto to the downtrodden, to disseminate the language among the practical-minded middle class of Europe and to deprive the governments of any easy pretext for persecution. At the same time, the French rationalism in no way excluded the possibility that people of the most diverse world views might adopt Esperanto—people who did indeed connect it with their ideals or their more or less real- istic ideas. While the French leadership emphasized Esperantos utility for commerce, tourism and science and found a responsiveness in those circles, as of 1905 more and more of the people joining the movement saw Esperanto as a way of advancing their political struggle, namely paci- fists, socialists and anarchists.81
Such people found in Esperanto something that could support them in advancing their idealism: they had before them the model of Zamenhof himself.
We have seen how Zamenhof supported the movement's strategy of keeping Esperanto accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of their national origin or political or religious convictions. He did not want only minority groups to support it: he wanted to win over the majority. On the other hand, Zamenhof continued to ruminate on the problem of the Jews. Esperanto was offered to everyone, but it was impossible to for- get its origin as a means of protest against the discrimination of a minor- ity. In one of his explanations of the reasons for creating his language, Zamenhof said that he felt it necessary to have a language 'which on the one hand would not be the exclusive property of a given nation, but on the other might be freely used by oppressed people lacking a language'.[75]In other words, Esperanto should be entirely neutral, but at the same time it might have a special utility for the Jews.
From Zamenhof's letters we know how much he was preoccupied with the search for a solution to the Jewish problem. To his friend Abram Kofman he wrote: 'For as long as the Hebrews have no language they will be obliged in practice to play the role of "Russians", "Poles" and so on— they will be forever looked down on and the Jewish problem will never be solved.'[76] Equally upsetting was the religious isolation of the Jews,[77] and in his letters he confessed that in fact Esperanto represented only part of his ideals. In addition to the neutralization of conflicts by way of language, he also dreamed of the 'creation of a moral bridge by which all peoples and religions might be unified as brothers'. The realization of this plan through 'a neutrally human, philosophically pure religion' was for him a kind of ful- fillment of the historic mission of the Jews, 'which both Moses and Christ dreamed of'.[78] In 1901 Zamenhof tried to publish his contribution to the solution of the Jewish question, a Russian-language booklet under the title Hilelismo,[79] in which he proposed that, to 'neutralize' the divisive effect of religious difference (and to overcome the religious nationalism of the Jews) humanity should agree to accept the principles of 'Hillelist belief', namely an acknowledgment of the idea that, in listening to the voice of conscience, one could discover the laws of God.87
The booklet was not distributed,88 nor did Zamenhof ever speak in public about the special importance of Esperanto for the Jews. His comments were confined to personal letters that became known only after the Second World War.[80] He was always reluctant to put too much emphasis on his own ideals, aware that the movement was vulnerable simply by virtue of the fact that he was a Jew. He did not wish to put the dissemination of Esperanto in danger, and he also feared that the public would not believe that a Jew working for the unity of humankind could possibly be doing so out of altruism.[81] A wish to help his unfortunate fel- low Jews was a constant in Zamenhof's life, but he remained uncertain as to the best way of doing so, often feeling torn between solidarity with the Jews and an inclination toward humanity as a whole (Fig. 1.1).[82]
On the other hand, by the middle of the first decade of the new cen- tury it seemed that the movement was stable enough in several countries and no longer needed to depend on the person of Zamenhof. The suc- cessful first congress of 1905, which all Esperantists seemed to regard as the exhilarating culmination of their efforts up to that point, caused him to feel that one of his dreams was already realized and that, going forward, he could dedicate himself to uniting people across religions. At the opening of the congress he recited his 'Prayer under the Green Flag' (Prego sub la verda standardo), by which he sought to express the 'natural religion of the human heart' (naturan religion de la homa koro).[83] The ovation that he received after the presentation of the Prayer took the French leadership by surprise. They neither anticipated that Zamenhof
Fig. 1.1 Lazar Zamenhof, by Robert Kastor c. 1905. Text: 'When the peoples can freely understand one another, then they will cease to hate one another.'
would speak like 'a Jewish prophet'9 3 nor foresaw the almost religious atmosphere that reigned in the congress.
Even the Jewish Esperantists among the French tried to slow Zamenhof down; they felt little in common with the eastern Jews and, in any case, they were confident that, following the rehabilitation of Dreyfus in 1906, people would no longer dare to question their connection to the French nation. Emile Javal, Zamenhof's friend, pointed out to him that Hillelism had no chance of acceptance in France; if people felt that it was still necessary to hide Zamenhof's Jewish ancestry 'as long as the great struggle was still not won', it was all the more dangerous, not to say fatal, to talk about Hillelism.[84] Reacting to Javal's warning, Zamenhof assured him that he would 'act very cautiously' and would not publicly campaign for Hillelism until he was 'fully certain that such a step would not have a negative effect on Esperanto'.[85]
But a new wave of pogroms that shook many parts of Russia in October 1905 spurred Zamenhof to wait no longer. In January 1906 there appeared anonymously in Ruslanda Esperantisto, the article Dogmoj de Hilelismo;[86]a revised version followed in March in the form of a brochure entitled Homaranismo.97 If the name 'Hillelism' indicated how much Zamenhof was still inspired by a primary desire to eradicate discrimination against Jews, the newly adopted term 'Homaranismo' was more suitable to char- acterize the proposal that all peoples and religions, retaining their speci- ficities, might come together 'on a basis neutrally human, on principles of reciprocal fraternity, equality, and justice' (2ur fundamento neutrale-homa, surprincipoj de reciproka frateco, egaleco kaj justeco) .[87]
Although Zamenhof removed the conspicuously Jewish elements in his project, making it possible to see Homaranismo as essentially simi- lar to the 'religion of humanity' (religion de thumanite) envisioned by Auguste Comte,[88] for the most part the Esperantists reacted to it with skepticism, not to say disapproval, because they saw it as irreconcilable with their own religious beliefs or because they feared that their language movement would take on a mystical character.1 00 Zamenhof defended himself against his critics, but he soon admitted that his 'neutral religion' was not suitable for linguistically homogeneous countries like France but was 'destined [_] only for countries of diverse ethnicities'.1 01 He also conceded that Homaranismo, though based on Esperanto, could not be required of Esperantists and that the Esperanto movement could there- fore not be officially identified with such a doctrine.
In June 1906, Zamenhof was shaken by news of a savage pogrom in his birthplace Biaiystok. Even so, at the insistent requests of Sebert and Javal, he gave up on even mentioning Homaranismo in his address to the Second World Congress, in Geneva. But, as of that year, he publicly advo- cated for a minimal agreement among the Esperantists on what ought to constitute the ideological basis of Esperanto. In the Geneva address, he alluded, for the first time, to what was henceforth understood, if never clearly defined, as the 'internal idea' of Esperanto, namely that in the cur- rent militant phase of the movement, the Esperantists should be inspired to action 'not by the thought of practical utility, but by the thought of [.] fraternity and justice among all peoples' (frateco kajjusteco inter ciuj popoloj).102
Zamenhof refused to remain silent on the truth merely because speak- ing the truth might be interpreted by outsiders as provocation:
a colorless official speech would be a major sin on my part. I come to you from a country where at present millions of people are struggling for free- dom, for the most basic human freedom, for the rights of man.[89]°
Furthermore, he also insisted that Esperanto should not cater only to self-serving interests, since the ideas behind it were far more important:
If we, the first fighters for Esperanto, are forced to forgo all our ideas, we will indignantly tear up and burn everything we have written on behalf of Esperanto; we will painfully destroy the work and the sacrifice of a lifetime, we will cast aside the green star [the badge of Esperanto] that we wear on our breast, and we will cry in disgust: 'With such an Esperanto, devoted only to the goals of commerce and practical utility, we desire nothing in common!'[90]
Perhaps no other utterance of Zamenhof was later more often cited than this one. In fact, the speech in which it occurred was intended as a coun- terbalance to the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism, which rec- ognized the legitimacy of the use of Esperanto for any and every purpose. A similar modifying character can be attributed to the Declaration on the Neutrality of Esperanto Congresses,[91] which was voted and approved in Geneva. This new declaration, along with Zamenhof's speech,[92] defined neutrality in a way that did not call for silence on controversial issues, but encouraged the use of the congresses as a forum to discuss everything that would help bring the peoples of the world together.107
Zamenhof's insistence that Esperanto be more than an aid to com- mercial relations, and his overt condemnation of opportunism, served to stimulate many Esperantists—not to become adepts of Homaranism, but certainly to interpret their work for Esperanto as also a struggle for an idea. The forms of this idealism varied. Some people might anticipate that the internal idea would be disseminated all the more easily 'the less we talk about it' and recommend that Esperanto be disseminated only as a language—yet at the same time be aware that its success 'would be more than the victory of a language'.[93] Such may have been the feeling of the leaders of the Kovno Esperantist Society in Lithuania in 1910, among whom were 'high-ranking officers of the Tsarist army, Jewish business- people, a German factory-owner, a Catholic priest' all of whom 'despite the atmosphere of religious and national intolerance then prevailing, were linked by Esperanto'.[94]
Alternatively, people could emphasize a link to the internal idea, drawing strength from their role as disciples of Zamenhof and 'better Esperantists'. Still others saw themselves called on to put Esperanto at the service of some 'outside' ideology, particularly socialism. In Geneva in 1906 the first meeting of Esperantist 'Reds' was held, and in 1907 the revolution-minded Internacia Socia Revuo was launched, an interna- tional anarchist congress passed a resolution favoring Esperanto,[95] and in June young Chinese progressives in Paris began the weekly journal Xin shiji (New Century) with the Esperanto subtitle La Novaj Tempoj (New Times). This journal, along with anarchism, brought Esperanto to an underdeveloped China as yet another of the admirable acquisitions of western thought.[96] In another part of the world, in Chicago, in 1908, the first Esperanto translation of the Communist Manifesto appeared.[97]We could argue that the political expectations of many Esperantists were firmly and effectively reproduced in an article that appeared, some- what clandestinely, in the context of a linguistic discussion. These expec- tations were expressed by the Polish linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay:
The existence of such a world language linking all humanity will tear from the megalomania of nations and states its sharp and poisonous fang. The struggle for world dominance and the destruction of other nationalities will be neutralized and paralyzed by the world language. An international auxiliary language will contribute to the pacification of humanity far more than all the conferences organized by assorted exterminators and oppres- sors who hypocritically discuss questions of peace while at home they hunt people down with all the more fervor and persecute subject peoples and their languages.[98]
At around the same time, in the years 1907-08, Esperanto went through its biggest crisis to date. To gain international, authoritative support for Esperanto, Zamenhof allowed hislanguage to be assessed by a com- mittee. The committee consisted of 12 eminent linguists (among them the aforementioned Baudouin de Courtenay) and was convened by Louis Couturat in the name of the 'Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language', which Couturat initiated in 1900 during the Paris Exhibition. Louis de Beaufront attended the commit- tee's meetings as Zamenhof's representative. But, instead of defending Esperanto, de Beaufront quite unexpectedly called for changes in the structure of the language, recommending a project of reformed Esperanto known as 'Ido'. Later he claimed that he himself was the author of Ido. A wave of indignation at this 'treachery' swept across the Esperanto movement, causing Zamenhof to break off all relations with the com- mittee. A group of leading Esperantists switched to Ido, but most of the 'Esperantist people' remained faithful to Esperanto, so that within a few years Ido no longer presented a threat to Zamenhof's language. Consciousness of Esperanto's practical utility, along with the need for dis- cipline as a prerequisite for the progress of the movement, proved stron- ger than any inclination to accept the advice of theoreticians concerning linguistic reforms. The crisis proved that Esperanto was already so firmly rooted in society that 'from artificial language it had been transformed into a living language'.[99]
One product of the Ido crisis was the first worldwide organization of Esperantists, the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), founded in 1908 by a Swiss 21-year-old, Hector Hodler. Hodler's initiative was a reflection of the Esperantists' preference, in the wake of the Ido crisis, to abandon reforms in the language in favor of immediate action to insert it into practical life. Sidestepping discussion of an international organiza- tion based on national Esperanto societies, Hodler established an associa- tion consisting only of individual members and offering them various services assisted by a worldwide network of so-called Delegates.
By founding UEA, Hodler aimed to inaugurate a new period in the history of Esperanto, namely that of the actual use of the language. The time when the exclusive concern was propaganda for the language was, he declared, over. He labeled as anachronisms those 'who, imagining that Esperanto's success will come unexpectedly, through intervention by some outside authority, separate it from their everyday life and regard it simply as a hobby'.[100]
Equally significantly, Hodler defined for the movement an ideology— one more realistic than Zamenhof's Homaranismo yet less optional than the 'internal idea'. For him, Esperantism was, unlike a purely lin- guistic movement, 'principally a social, constructive, and progressive movement'.[101] He distinguished between an Esperantist in the sense of the Declaration of Boulogne-sur-Mer and a member of UEA—an esperantiano, a member of the Esperanto community, who sees in this community (Esperantio) a model for future humanity, linked internation- ally in solidarity and cooperation.[102] UEA's 'practical internationalism', Hodler explained, could bring more concrete results for the improve- ment of relations among peoples than 'those individuals who constantly talk about brotherhood among peoples but make no serious effort to real- ize their aspirations, even partly, in real life'.[103] In contrast to traditional internationalism and pacifism, which 'merely try to facilitate relations among the nations' but 'create nothing above them', Esperantism should form the vanguard of a new, positive phase of internationalism, bringing people together and ignoring nationhood, language and race.[104]
UEA's combination of idealistic impulses and practical services was a major force in the successful expansion of the Esperanto movement before and after the First World War. By 1914, UEA already had more than 7000 dues-paying members.
2
War and Its Aftermath
Obstacles Prior to the First World War
At first, the main obstacle to Esperanto's dissemination was simply doubt about its survival. What Zamenhof offered to the world was only one of the many proposals for a new language that appeared almost annu- ally, though generally they did not move much beyond the stage of a single small publication. We should also remember that at the end of the nineteenth century the idea of an international language, perhaps sup- ported in principle by a majority of informed people, was compromised by the sudden rise of the language project Volapuk in the 1880s and its equally sudden fall.[105] Consequently, public disillusionment, commercial and scientific skepticism and the indifference or mockery of the linguistic establishment were the principal obstacles confronting the first adepts of Esperanto.
But when the language began to emerge as a social reality, when it actu- ally penetrated wider circles of society, and, particularly, when its users revealed a tendency to connect with movements for emancipation and rev- olution, this largely passive attitude gave way in some circles to opposition and direct hostility. How many seeds of conflict with the external world were carried by Zamenhof's seemingly somewhat nai've and innocent vision soon became apparent—for example to the Esperantists of Russia.
Later, the concern of its French pioneers to avoid all connection between Esperanto and pacifism and to remain as silent as possible on the Jewishness of its author demonstrated how important it was to guard against provoking the nationalistic and anti-Semitic prejudices rampant in the French bourgeoisie following the Dreyfus scandal. On the other hand, and in contrast to Russia, the French Esperantists still had plenty of room in which to advance their arguments and expand their move- ment, such that Boirac felt able to note at the end of 1906 that the preju- dices against an artificial language were weakening and that 'in almost all civilized countries the name of Esperanto is well known and no longer provokes mockery'.[106] And in October 1905 Javal contentedly noted that out of 700 newspaper articles appearing after the Boulogne congress, only one mentioned that Zamenhof was a Jew.3
However, nationalist emotions hampered the Esperanto movement to a far greater extent in neighboring Germany. There, the language was accepted with greater hesitancy than in France. At the time, the German Reich was energetically engaged in trying to join the club of imperialist powers. Its rulers sought to neutralize the social disturbances brought on by rapid industrialization by accelerating the country's commercial expansion across the world. These efforts, along with a latent awareness that the Germans achieved their unification not by revolution from below but by pressure from above, produced a characteristic mixture of assured self-confidence in the new role of world power and not entirely repres- sible feelings of envy toward the established imperialist states, Britain and France. In particular, the widely held opinion that the Germans suffered from a deficit of national pride and therefore had to protect themselves particularly carefully against internationalist and anti-German machina- tions was not without influence on the development of the Esperanto movement in Germany.
Although the journal Esperantisto and the first important literary pub- lications in Esperanto were published in Nuremberg in the years before 1895, Esperanto expanded into Germany only slowly. An article in the popular magazine Die Woche,A published in mid-1902, helped to move Esperanto forward; its author was the well-known Austrian pacifist Alfred Hermann Fried, who in the following year published an Esperanto primer for German speakers.5 Not until 1906, when strong national societies were already operating in other countries of Europe, was the German Esperantist Society, as of 1909 the German Esperanto Association, estab- lished. However, as early as 1908 the Germans were able to host the fourth World Congress in Dresden, during which Goethe's Iphigenia was performed in Zamenhof's translation—an event that won over many skeptics in Germany because of the mellifluousness and powers of expres- sion revealed by the translation.
Memories of the Volapuk fiasco may well have been one of the rea- sons why the German public only hesitantly developed an interest in Esperanto. But it was not only doubts about the practical possibilities of the international language that explained Germany's tardiness. A few weeks after the founding of the Society, the editor of its journal Germana Esperantisto confessed that a certain resistance, more significant than mere ignorance or prejudice, hampered the cause of Esperanto. This resistance came not 'from the majority, not from the masses', but from 'a strong, powerful and influential' category of people, namely those 'who consider all international sympathy to be dangerous and opposed to national inter- ests', causing them to judge an international language 'more severely'.[107]As one of the leaders of the German movement observed at the end of 1912, the press 'has, until recently, and with rare unanimity, dismissed the Esperanto movement or remained completely silent about it'.[108]
German Esperantists were especially attacked by those newspapers that saw themselves as guardians of 'true' patriotism. The substance of these attacks showed three primary traits. First, they began with a pseudo- scientific biological approach to language. For example, the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who maintained that language was no more than a technical mode of communication and that national languages were too imperfect to serve the needs of international scientific exchange, was reproached by reference to the highly developed and richly nuanced German language and its unique spirit.[109] This attitude can also be assigned to the category of popular prejudices against artificial, unnatural lan- guages. Even the cry that Esperanto would be 'culturally destructive'9 if introduced into schools was a hardly surprising reaction among the German middle class, which clung to its sentimental devotion to German culture through this period of rapid social change.
Secondly, and indicative of downright hysteria, was the designation of Esperanto by a German newspaper, only a little over 20 years after the arrival of the language in the world, as 'an instrument for the eradication of the German language'.[110] Ostwald was severely admonished for campaigning for Esperanto in the USA instead of dedicating himself to the dissemination of the German language.[111] And, finally, a quarterly review in 1912 sounded a battle cry 'against Esperantism, that excrescence of exalted internationalism'.[112]These three principal forms of criticism—that Esperanto was not a real language; that it threatened the German language; that behind it lay the clandestine forces of internationalism—are compressed into a single short passage in the Berlin Deutsche Tageszeitung in 1907:
Even natural scientists lack the sense that our mother language is a distinct and natural growth; this renders understandable the incredible barbarity of Herr chemist-professor Ostwald, who is capable of enthusing over such a laughable fraud as the language Esperanto—something thought up by a half-caste and driven by hatred against the German language.[113]
This obsession with feelings of inferiority directed against the older world powers, the British and the French, was manifested by the nationalist press in, for example, the assertion that Germans were particularly vulnerable to the dangers of Esperanto because they did not possess the same national pride displayed by other peoples. 1 4 One magazine explained that other nations, when speaking Esperanto, maintain their esteem for their own language, but this was not so for Germans because they were always so easily impressed by anything foreign.[114] Esperanto was feared as a cunning instrument to oppress the Germans—as a great international danger possibly capable of reducing the German language to the level of a mere insignificant dialect.[115]
If the German Esperantists replied that Esperanto was a neutral means of communication offering no special privileges to any nation, the argu- ment had no effect, because the nationalists sought increased privileges for the German language, in line with the rising global status of German commerce and industry. So there was no way to expect understanding from that quarter for the idea of dismantling language discrimination through Esperanto. On the contrary, they demanded that the smaller states deal with the great powers in the languages of the great powers rather than their own less influential languages—and certainly not in Esperanto. The smaller nations grew enthusiastic about Esperanto because its victory would bring them equal bargaining rights with the representatives of the major languages of world trade—and for the Germans that would be 'economic suicide'.[116]
The more the language spread, the more it became evident that the antipathy of its opponents related less to Esperanto's structural weaknesses as a language than to its political and ideological agenda. An explicit dis- tinction was made between the creative achievement of Zamenhof, whose technical quality was not contested, and the goals of the Esperantists, which had to be fought against at all costs. Such a distinction, for exam- ple, was made by Albert Zimmermann, a member of the board of the influential German National Union of Commercial Employees, who began a multi-year campaign against Esperanto with a book published in 1915 that saw the language primarily as an obstacle to German com- mercial expansion across the world.[117]
Calling Esperanto the most dangerous to date of all projects for a 'global language' and considering it an idea in itself unhealthy and profoundly anti-nationalist, Zimmermann confesses that he 'assumes that Esperanto is as perfect as one has a right to expect', and that he is opposed only to Zamenhof's goal, which in his opinion merits as much condemnation as the efforts of 'latinizers', pacifists and campaigners for the emancipation of women.[118] Zimmermann bases his judgment of Esperanto exclusively on its usefulness or lack of usefulness to the German nation.
This 'great power' attitude among opponents of Esperanto was accom- panied even before the First World War by an element of anti-Semitism. Early in 1913, the pan-German Staatsbŭrger-Zeitung named 'all such efforts to invent a new international language [_] a madness and a crime against humanity, an intellectual chimera'; the newspaper maintained that Esperanto, as the work of a Jew, was not suitable for Christian Germans. It went on to refer to the language as 'this Jewish world language'.[119] Such attacks on Esperanto nonetheless remained limited to the pages of spe- cific newspapers and did not lead to official actions by the authorities against the Esperanto movement. They could also not prevent the orga- nized Esperantists from reaching an estimated 8000 in the year 1914.[120]
On the other hand, the adepts of Esperanto in Germany were obliged—far more than those of France—to take care to eliminate from their promotional efforts anything that might raise the suspicions of the nationalist press^2 This requirement explains their frequent protesta- tions that Esperanto was not directed against German interests, or that it was not Esperanto but the learning of foreign languages that threatened German identity.[121] A few German Esperantists protested at the implied antipathy to other nations manifested in these attacks, describing them- selves as people who found rational and not especially enthusiastic inter- nationalism fully reconcilable with love of the fatherland.^[122] But others maintained a curious neutrality, asserting that 'pacifists, chauvinists or socialists' should be equally welcome in the movement.^[123] Some even bowed to this nationalist fever, distancing themselves from those who used Esperanto for 'anti-German' goals.[124] The journal Germana Esperantisto in 1913 declared the Universal Esperanto Association on 'the wrong track' because it was concerned with politics—more precisely because its vice president called on Esperantists to take action against the lies and mis- representations about Esperanto in the chauvinist press in various coun- tries.[125] Such criticism of UEA not only illustrates the obstacles facing the German Esperantists in their work in Germany but also shows the degree to which the efforts of Hector Hodler and the other UEA leaders collided with the realities of a world on the brink of war.
However, the obstacles to their activities Esperantists in Germany faced pale by comparison with those existing in Russia. In 1904, the year before the first Russian revolution, the censorship showed signs of easing, making it possible to publish Esperanto journals. After the revolution, the conditions for recruitment improved, and thus the ability to increase the membership of Esperanto groups.
But the authorities continued to regard the Russian Esperantists with suspicion. Although they avoided social and political topics, of the kind that might give the censors a pretext for again slowing the movement, the publications of the Esperantists left no doubt about their position that 'Esperanto is not a goal but a tool', and that the movement had to be based on the struggle for democratization, attention to 'disseminating education among the masses' and the battle against 'national exclusion'.[126]Between the lines they took the opportunity, whenever it presented itself, to criticize the current conditions in Russia. In the autumn of 1905 the censor disallowed the publication in Ruslanda Esperantisto of the contri- bution 'Rachel and Leah' by the publicist Aleksandr Yablonovsky[127]; the article compared the biblical story of Jacob, who received Leah as his wife instead of Rachel whom he loved, with the national Duma (parliament) given to the people instead of a democratic constitution.[128]
At the time, the Esperanto movement had already made considerable progress in other countries where the strict thought control practiced by the Russian bureaucracy was unknown. As a consequence, the Saint Petersburg censor increasingly intervened to stop foreign publications in Esperanto from entering the country if their content was considered dan- gerous. The Esperanto novel Paŭlo Debenham 1 by the German-British writer Heinrich Luyken, was blocked in 1912 because of a reference to the 'unhappy country' Russia and its 'unhappy peoples'.[129] A similar fate befell several books of political or religious character.
I f censorship softened somewhat, on the other hand there was an increase in incidents that revealed that the ruling classes and their servants, the police, regarded activity for Esperanto strictly in terms of internal security. In 1906, a police officer appeared in a meeting of Esperantists in Vladivostok and ordered them not to speak publicly about Esperanto.[130]
We might note, though, that in the same city in 1909 there was an Esperanto circle in operation among political prisoners.[131] Particularly at the provincial level, occasional denunciations of Esperantists occurred. In 1911 the police chief in Petrokov ordered that street signs with Esperanto texts be removed because people did not understand them.[132] And also, apparently only because of Esperanto activity, the representative of UEA in Kronstadt was arrested; he was kept in jail for over a month and subse- quently was refused permission to continue living in the city.[133]
Despite these continued obstacles, new recruits, both intellectuals and working people, were attracted to Esperanto. With the growing strength of the revolutionary movement, the police turned increasing attention to radical elements among the Russian Esperantists. In 1912 a circular of the Tsarist Okhrana (secret police) warned of the activities of revo- lutionary Esperantists in Paris, whose Russian sympathizers were the subject of a recent report by a special agent.^[134] Less than 20 years after the authorities had first drawn attention to the use of Esperanto among the Tolstoyans, Zamenhof's language was increasingly feared as a vehicle for the most dangerous thought. When in 1913 an Esperantist from the Caucasus asked permission to publish an 'international language bulle- tin', the request was refused because 'Esperanto, having appeared among worldwide socialists, will become ... a means for spreading harmful ideas among the people'.[135]
Other than among the Russian Esperantists, police surveillance or direct harassment was directed at Esperantists only in a few economically less devel- oped countries. Among the earliest was an incident in 1907 on the Greek island of Samos, at that time an independent principality. Shortly after the founding of an Esperanto club in the capital, two lawyers, perhaps in jest, persuaded a local villager that Esperanto was a form of freemasonry and had anti-religious goals. The overwrought villager succeeded in convincing several neighbors in a nearby village that these impious Esperantists had to be pun- ished. Some 30 countryfolk, armed with sticks, pitchforks, clubs and axes, marched on the Esperanto society's meeting place, where, finding nobody present, they broke the frame of Zamenhof's portrait, ripped up books and broke the furniture. They clamored for the death of the Esperantists. In the end, yielding to the entreaties of the people, the ruling prince ordered the society's dissolution because 'public order was undermined'.[136]
More serious incidents were reported from China, where apparently the propaganda of Chinese anarchists in Paris marked Esperantists in several Chinese locations with the stigma of activities against the state. In December 1911 the leader of the Esperanto group in Mukden was threatened with arrest as a revolutionary guilty of adoring Tolstoy and Esperanto; he was able to escape punishment only by fleeing the city. Another leader in China was killed by an unknown assailant, after which the mayor declared that 'Esperanto will cause a revolution'.[137] In October 1913 several German-language newspapers reported that in the Hungarian town of Szekesfehervar the chief of police had forbidden a publicity meeting of Esperantists, apparently on the grounds that they were using a 'thieves' language'. Questions were raised in the Hungarian parliament. It was not clear whether the police chief had prevented the meeting because it had to do with Esperanto or because it was not announced in the proper fashion. But he himself later confessed that he had warned the Esperantists not to use Esperanto as a secret language that their employers could not understand.40
The impression that could be conveyed by these examples, namely that at the time Esperanto was irrevocably linked to or associated with 'left- ism', nonetheless requires some adjustment. Two facts weigh against the simplistic notion that in the years before the First World War there was a clear dividing line between progressive Esperantists on the one hand and reactionary opponents on the other. First, the people learning the language were for the most part apolitical, and the movement at that time was firmly in the hands of individuals whom a convinced socialist would have regarded as 'class enemies'. Secondly, the established workers' parties for the most part paid no attention to the Esperantists and only excep- tionally supported them or even opposed them. Efforts by the French socialists Jean Jaures and Edouard Vaillant to put on the agenda of the Socialist Congress in Stuttgart (1907) a proposal that Esperanto be used in official announcements of the Brussels-based International Socialist Office collapsed, primarily because of the opposition of the German social democrat Paul Singer.[138]
For a while the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party even prohibited any mention of Esperanto in their party newspapers, particu- larly the official organ Vorwarts, and when in 1914 the Ninth German Esperanto Congress took place in Leipzig, while the local middle- class press reported on it favorably, the Social Democratic Leipziger Volkszeitung ridiculed Esperanto.[139] A Russian worker complained in 1913 that his superiors considered Esperanto 'a superfluous affair' and that they feared that 'the workers will be distracted from their urgent pri- orities'.[140] Likewise, the Dutch socialist Willem van Ravesteijn called the Esperanto movement a 'bourgeois folly' and propaganda for the language among the workers 'a dangerous little game'.[141] But there were examples of an opposite kind. Thus, the Czech social democrats passed a highly favor- able resolution on Esperanto at their tenth congress in 1911.[142] On the occasion of the Eighth World Congress of Esperanto in Krakow in 1912, the local branch of the Polish Social Democratic Party organized a large demonstration of socialists from various countries/6 The Italian anar- chist Errico Malatesta himself learned the language;[143] the Japanese Osugi Sakae in 1907-08 led an Esperanto course in Tokyo for, among others, Chinese students,[144] and his Chinese comrade Liu Shifu, from 1913 until his physical exhaustion in 1915, published the important Chinese- and Esperanto-language journal La Vo^o de la Popolo, which also served as a propaganda tool for Esperanto.49 In truth, the beginnings of Esperanto in China were almost inseparably linked with the revolutionary struggle. Yet the fact remains that before the First World War left-wing elements in general were unable to make the Esperanto movement theirs.[145] Even the German chauvinist press, avidly searching for proof of Esperanto's danger, barely developed the argument that the language, in addition to undermining German culture and business, might be accompanied by the ideologies of class warfare.
If the authorities in the Tsarist territories and a few other countries attributed danger to the young language and accordingly erected barriers to its dissemination and slandered its devotees, for most people this probably came as a great surprise. They had difficulty understanding why interest in Esperanto would encounter such hostility, and why the poten- tial overthrow of governments could possibly be imputed to it. Those who learned Esperanto were simply following Zamenhof's call for peace among all humankind; they merely wanted to contribute to the idea that everyone, without taking away anything from anyone else, should make use of a neutral means of communication. It was the old dream of a united humanity in a new form—one not so far from reality, given the scientific and technological developments of the early years of the cen- tury, which seemed to increase awareness of the need for an international language. But, regardless of the modest gains so far in the realization of this dream, apparently Esperanto had already violated taboos.
Esperanto at the League of Nations
Zamenhof died in April 1917. Five years earlier, during the Eighth Congress in Krakow, he put aside his role as the 'official head' of the movement, announcing that he would regard himself from then on as an ordinary Esperantist.[146] He wanted freedom to continue developing his ideas for uniting humanity not only through language but in other ways as well.
In parallel with the Tenth Congress, set to take place in Paris in August 1914,[147] Zamenhof was planning 'a congress on a neutrally human religion'.[148] In 1913, in pursuit of this goal, he published (no longer anonymously) a new version of his 'political-religious faith', a pamphlet entitled Deklaracio pri Homaranismo,[149] in which he called for 'free faith' members of different religious groups to come together in 'a commu- nity free of ethnicity and doctrine'.9 [150] He explained that, to eliminate interreligious hatred 'we can leave everyone fully free to enjoy the faith or ethical system that they have had up to now, but we must unite them through a common externality .[151]
However, faced with strong opposition from the French leadership, Zamenhof had to abandon his plan. Between them, the French intel- lectuals, and him, the Eastern European Jew, lay an unbridgeable divide. Nor was this changed by the reality that in Zamenhof's final years the universalist element in his thought had almost completely subordinated the Zionist inheritance. In 1914 he refused membership in a planned Hebrew Esperanto Association on the grounds that he had no wish to align himself with nationalism, even if, on this occasion, it was the more than pardonable nationalism of an oppressed people.[152]
The hesitant response that greeted his religious ideas[153] may have con- tributed to Zamenhof's increasing warnings about the dangers of nation- alism and his emphasis on moral and political principles.[154] This tendency was already evident in a memorandum, 'Peoples and an International Language' (Gentoj kaj Lingvo Intemacia), submitted in 1911 to the Universal Races Congress.)0 Later, during the war, in a 'Call to the Diplomats' (Alvoko al la diplomatoj) 1915) Zamenhof insistently advo- cated the principle that every country 'morally and materially, and with fully equal rights, belongs to all its offspring'. He stressed that peace could not be expected to come from territorial changes but required the erasure of national chauvinism.[155] Zamenhof, who had long stressed the religious roots of anti-Jewish persecution,62 finally understood that 'the true barrier dividing contemporary humanity is not so much language or religion, as in the past, but blind devotion to nationhood'.[156]
Zamenhof's pleas, predictably, fell on deaf ears. At the end of his life he was not only obliged to listen to the admonitions of a Russophile newspaper in Warsaw to the effect that he was a 'dangerous interna- tionalist'[157] but also to endure the heart-rending realization that even the
Esperantists were infected by chauvinistic fever. The French, Germans and Italians all distributed leaflets in Esperanto defending the positions of their warring governments. Even the British Esperantists, until 1912 model internationalists, bowed to the trends of the moment, accusing the Germans of 'misusing' Esperanto for propaganda purposes—'that uni- versal auxiliary language, offered to us by our big ally Russia, cradled by our friend France'.[158] In Germany, Wilhelm Ostwald drastically redefined his position: instead of pleading for an international auxiliary language, in 1915 he publicly supported work on a simplified German language, 'Weltdeutsch', to be taught in countries occupied by German troops.[159]
Still, the Universal Esperanto Association succeeded in resisting the waves of nationalism. Exploiting the location of its headquarters in neu- tral Switzerland, UEA used its system of local representatives to organize extensive relief work during the war, conveying correspondence between citizens of hostile countries and delivering food, clothing and medicine.[160]In parallel with this practical demonstration of international solidarity, Hector Hodler, UEA's founder and director, continued his efforts to for- mulate a set of basic principles for the Esperanto movement. His idealism, based on knowledge and of developments in international politics, was, unlike Zamenhof's, entirely free of even the appearance of mysticism. From July 1915 to February 1917, Hodler published a series of articles in Esperanto, UEA's monthly journal, under the title 'The Problem of Peace: New Directions' ('La pacproblemo: Novaj vojoj'), in which he sketched out his ideas for the restructuring of the postwar world. Primarily because of these articles, directed against 'interstate anarchy', Esperanto was barred, as of 1916, from importation into France; the military censor- ship attributed to the journal 'an unfavorable influence on those fighting at the front'.[161]
Hodler anticipated a further growth in collectivist tendencies after the war, a sharpening of class warfare and a greater readiness of governments to consider proposals for supranational cooperation and arms control.[162]In this formation of the future international order Esperanto would have a new role. He labeled as an illusion the belief that governments would accept the language on any kind of moral grounds. He saw clearly that the language would have no chance of general application without cer- tain basic preconditions: not just an armistice, but a strong desire for internationalism. The Esperantists 'should be the embryo of these future elites' who could build on the ruins of nations a new, international dwell- ing.[163] 'National freedom, democratic rule, an international league among states'—these were the needs of the present/ [164] Thus Hodler in certain respects anticipated the principles that American president Woodrow Wilson would later present to a broader public.[165]
Hodler was not destined to live to see the realization of any of these ideas: he died, short of his 33rd birthday, in March 1920. But, thanks to him, UEA had established itself, in the eyes of the Esperantists, as the representative of the Esperanto movement—a role all the more important because, with the founding of the League of Nations, the movement for the first time had a respected partner on the international scene. Hodler provided the theoretical guidelines for the Esperantist position in the post- war period, when hope for an era of more secure peace grew on every side.
Hodler analyzed the importance of the founding of the League of Nations, particularly from the point of view of the Esperanto movement, in the following terms:
We all know that the League will prove viable only if it brings together not only governments, through legal means, but principally peoples, in a spirit of reciprocal understanding. Lacking an international neutral language, the peoples remain completely alienated from one another, even if they are theoretically linked by interstate conventions. So from the League of Nations the Esperantists hope for early recognition of the necessity of a common means of understanding.[166]
We should look, then, at how the Esperanto movement sought to pres- ent its wishes to the League of Nations and examine whether the League fulfilled the expectations that Hodler, and not only Hodler, defined as the precondition for its successful operation. The horrendous butchery of the war put an end to the belief, on the part of worldwide public opinion, in warfare as a means of solving international conflicts. As a result, much faith was placed in the League of Nations. UEA took this as a good opportunity to demand an intergovernmental agreement on the introduction of Esperanto in schools. The Association had an enthusias- tic advocate in the person of the publicist Edmond Privat, who worked for the League in the years 1920 and 1921 as an interpreter and from 1922 to 1927 served, first, as counselor to the Persian delegate, and later as his deputy.74 Privat went to the same school as Hodler; after Hodler's death he took over as editor of the journal Esperanto.
In December 1920, on Privat's initiative, 11 delegates (from Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Haiti, India, Italy, Persia and South Africa)^[167] presented a draft resolution to the First Assembly. Drawing attention to the language difficulties 'that hinder direct relations among the peoples' and expressing the hope that 'the children of all coun- tries should, henceforth, know two languages: their mother language and an easy means of international communication', the draft included a request to the League's secretary-general that he prepare a report on the results of the teaching of Esperanto in the public schools of member states.[168]
This proposal exemplifies the idealistic hopes placed on the League principally by the less powerful and non-European states. But at the same time it attests to the insufficient wariness of the proposers, who completely underestimated the degree of opposition that this near- revolutionary proposal would encounter—particularly from one of the great powers. Privat himself later confessed that it was a tactical error to present so early in the game the most controversial of possible proposals, namely the introduction of Esperanto into schools.[169]
The Second Commission, which took up the proposal on16 December, removed part of it, namely the expressions of hope already mentioned, and accepted the rest of the text by ten votes to one (France). Two days later, when the Belgian Senator Henri La Fontaine[170] reported the reso- lution to the Assembly, he was greeted by strong protests from Gabriel Hanotaux, the French delegate. Hanotaux, historian, member of the French Academy, former minister of foreign affairs, angrily denounced the recommendation. Encountering no objections from his intimidated fellow delegates, Hanotaux launched himself into an eloquent defense of the honor of the French language, 'which has a history behind it [...] and which has the right to defend its position against new creations'.[171] He succeeded in forcing a decision to table the matter without discussion.
To understand the context of Hanotaux's outburst, we should note that after the war, in which France was among the victors, there ensued what was called 'the battle of the languages'.[172] When, early in 1919, a decision was taken to introduce English as a second official language in the Paris Peace Conference, the language problem rapidly became an issue. In the League of Nations French continued to be used in the first instance, but France recognized such bilingualism as a break with tradition. Already on the defensive because of the growing prestige of English, France saw in the proposal to examine the current global condition of Esperanto a further threat to the position of the French language as the classic language of diplomacy, even though the draft resolution on Esperanto was not aimed at changing the arrangement of working languages in the League.[173] Before this reversal, Privat was apparently barely aware of France's position. Now, the Esperantists and the delegates sympathetic to their cause were obliged to recognize how the poorly prepared proposal had immediately fallen vic- tim to such vigorous opposition—because, as Maurice Rollet de l'Isle, pres- ident of the French Society for the Dissemination of Esperanto, explained in a December 1920 letter to Privat, 'I am astonished that you are surprised by this hostility, since here [in France] we have long encountered the most violent hostility from the Quai d'Orsay'.[174]
Indeed, Hanotaux's initiative should have come as no surprise; even before the war Esperanto was playing a role in discussion of Anglo-French bilingualism. In 1905 the French government began to increase its fund- ing for the dissemination of the French language in the world, driven to such action by the growing importance of English.[175] At the same time, the French intelligentsia were campaigning for recognition of the French language as a more suitable auxiliary language for Europe.[176] On the one hand, Esperanto was considered insufficiently strong to halt the progress of English; on the other, it was seen as a competing hindrance to French. The writer Marcel Boulenger in 1910 blamed the Esperantists for seek- ing, in agreement with Germans and internationalists, 'to deprive French of its role as a language perpetually universal'. He pronounced the pio- neer of automobiles and aviation, Ernest Archdeacon, who was an enthu- siastic publicist for Esperanto, disqualified to discuss linguistic issues and, in the same breath, 'a traitor to the fatherland'.[177] In the same year the anti-Semitic writer Emile Gautier specifically reproached Zamenhof for creating not only a language but also a 'super-nation' intent on dominat- ing the world.[178] It was therefore consistent with past practice that prime minister Rene Viviani refused in 1914 to provide government support for the planned (but ultimately abortive) World Congress in Paris.[179]
Both before and after the war the French found themselves facing a dilemma. When they argued for French as the official auxiliary language in international relations, they naturally incited the opposition of other nations.[180] At the same time, such pushback upset those French who claimed the natural worldwide superiority of their language and had no wish to see it reduced to the level of competing with other national lan- guages. This dilemma offered an opportunity for the Esperantists, who, often with protestations of strong emotional links to the French language, argued that the international auxiliary language should be artificially cre- ated and 'not be a language of national identity'.[181] While they were able to convince a few people, frequently they met with a wholly negative reaction; Esperanto presented a clear threat to the view that universal- ity could originate in a national language, namely French—and hence a threat to what constituted the very foundation of French identity. Thus, Esperanto risked trivializing the international vision of the French.[182]
On the other hand, France always had its share of strong supporters of Esperanto. Accordingly, after the war, and also because of the growing strength of the left, circumstances appeared favorable for Esperanto in the fight at the League of Nations. After Hanotaux's attack the friends of Esperanto did not give up but instead prepared themselves better. In September 1921, on the occasion of the Second Assembly, the pro- posal was again brought forward, on this occasion supported by the del- egates of Albania, Belgium, China, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Finland, India, Japan, Persia, Romania, South Africa and Venezuela.[183] This time there was a report from the deputy secretary-general Nitobe Inazo, of
Japan,[184] on his participation in the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague.[185] His impressions were favorable: he noted that 'the congress participants were typical seriously minded and intelligent members of the middle class'[186] and he also gave sympathetic emphasis to the 'internal idea' of Esperanto. In the published part of his report, Nitobe, somewhat against his will ('I personally dislike to speak of the working population as a separate class') drew attention to the enthusiastic participation of working people in the Esperanto movement:
While the rich and the cultured enjoy belles lettres and scientific treatises in the original, the poor and the humble make of Esperanto a lingua franca for their exchange of views. Esperanto is thus becoming an engine of inter- national democracy and of strong combination. This interest of the masses must be taken account of in a rational and sympathetic spirit when making a study of this question of a common language.[187]
This time the Assembly supported the proposal for a survey. In January 1922 the secretary-general distributed a circular to member states invit- ing them to report on the state of Esperanto instruction in the schools.
While the report was being compiled, France, whose newly formed government of January 1922 was dominated by the right, intensified its campaign against Esperanto. The use of Esperanto was forbidden in meetings attended by French officials.[188] The French ambassador in Berne, Henry Allize, who regularly reported on activity in support of Esperanto at the League of Nations, informed his superiors in March 1922 that an 'international conference on the teaching of Esperanto in schools' was to take place in the Palais des Nations in Geneva. He regarded its program as 'dangerous':
By teaching children an artificial and neutral language without traditional connections and without national evocations, the goal is, according to Dr. Zamenhof himself, ' to create separation between language and fatherland, in the same way as religion and the state are separated. Esperanto is becoming [...] a fundamental enemy of the national languages [...]. It represents a mystique of revolutionary destruction.[189]
Allize drew particular attention to Edmond Privat, the principal defender of Esperanto in Geneva. Privat was not popular among French diplomats. Until the end of 1921 he was prohibited from entering France, and after that date he received a visa only with difficulty.[190] The principal reason was probably because Privat made himself unpopular with his wartime articles in Le Temps and LHumanite, in which he argued for Polish inde- pendence, and hence against the interests of Russia, an ally of France. On the present subject, Allize presented Privat as a person who, in contrast to the customary propaganda about the commercial utility of Esperanto, at least 'has the merit of fully unmasking the true nature of Esperanto, namely its service of the interests of communism and anti-patriotism'.[191]The conference took place in April 1922 and was a great success. Teachers from 28 countries and official delegates of 16 governments were in attendance; the opening plenary was addressed by the League's secretary-general, Eric Drummond. Shortly afterwards, the government in Paris launched a direct counter-offensive. On 3 June 1922, Leon Berard, the minister of public education, issued a circular in which he ordered that classrooms in French public schools should no longer be provided for courses in Esperanto. Berard drew attention to the 'dangers' attendant on the teaching of Esperanto; he saw a threat to education in the Latin cultures 'in the development of an artificial language seductive in its facility'. He continued:
The French language will always be the language of civilization and at the same time the best means for disseminating an incomparable literature and serving the expansion of French thought.
International organizations with headquarters in other countries are try- ing to develop relations among groups of Esperantists in various countries. [...] the goal of such propaganda is not so much simplifying linguistic relations among the peoples as suppressing the reason for the existence of national culture in child and adult alike. These groups are aiming at the Latin spirit and, particularly, the French genius.[192]
This decree was particularly encouraging to the enemies of Esperanto on the extreme right. Their attacks repeated much of what was already circulating before the war, but in the meantime their conspiracy theo- ries had been updated. One such anti-Jewish and anti-German author, presenting Esperanto as an instrument for foreign subversion, discov- ered that it was particularly attractive to 'propagandizers of the Bolshevik revolution for the annihilation of civilization, as in Russia'.1 01 For the Esperantists, Archdeacon concluded that Berard 'had declared total war on Esperanto'[193]—all this because, in his view, Esperanto might somewhat reduce the inferiority of the working classes and mollify international hatred. In their support, the Human Rights League reproached Berard for inflicting damage to the left through his decree. Berard defended him- self by asserting that international Esperanto congresses displayed 'hostil- ity to the French language'. He denied any political intent, although his arguments and those of his supporters proved the opposite.[194]
A few weeks after publication of Berard's circular severely limiting the activities of the French Esperantists, the League of Nations secretariat completed its report Esperanto as an InternationalAuxiliary Language.wi The report offered an extensive overview of the worldwide spread of Esperanto. Its conclusion noted that:
Language is a great force, and the League of Nations has every reason to watch with particular interest the progress of the Esperanto movement which, should it become more widespread, may one day lead to great results from the point of view of the moral unity of the world.[195]
At the Third Assembly in the autumn of1922, the Fifth Commission stud- ied this favorable report. The British Hellenist, Gilbert Murray, represent- ing South Africa, was among those expressing sympathy for Esperanto. But the French delegate, Georges Reynald, declared that he had received instructions to oppose any world language other than French. While Reynaud's arguments were relatively moderate, the Brazilian delegate, Raul do Rio Branco, in an extended speech, which he afterwards had printed and distributed privately,[196] inserted into the discussion ideological accu- sations of the crudest kind. He condemned Esperanto as a 'language of derelicts and communists, without traditions, without literature, without intellectual value', and asserted that in Brazil Esperanto was taught only in Sergipe, 'the least civilized' state in his country.[197]
After three days of discussion a compromise solution was achieved. The report was officially approved as a League document, but with the fifth part, containing conclusions and recommendations, deleted. The question of teaching the language in schools was transferred to the Commission for International Intellectual Collaboration.
Lord Robert Cecil, a friend of Esperanto, warned the Commission to remember that a world language was needed not only by intellectu- als but above all by the people themselves.1 08 But in truth this forum was conceivably the least suitable place to deal with the question of Esperanto—a language which (as Nitobe emphasized favorably and Rio
Branco feared) was not primarily a means of communication for intel- lectuals. The Commission, established in May 1922, consisted initially of 12 members. Its stated goal was education for international solidarity and strengthening the League's influence in the service of peace. In fact, however, according to Privat, 'it was obliged to limit its activities by con- cerning itself only with university and library cooperation. More humane fields were too controversial'.[198]
Before such a Commission, the supporters of Esperanto accordingly found themselves in a hopeless position, facing political pressure from France and the prejudices of intellectuals. The chairman, the French phi- losopher Henri Bergson, privately assured Privat of his sympathy, but he was obliged to subordinate his personal opinion to the instructions that he received from Paris.[199] Esperanto's chief opponent turned out to be the Swiss member Gonzague de Reynold, professor of history and French literature at the Universities of Berne and Fribourg. Although he focused his public criticism on the linguistic inadequacy of Esperanto and argued for the Latin language 'familiar to Catholics and intellec- tuals', he was evidently more disturbed by the fact that—as he wrote privately—'behind Esperanto or Ido lurks an internationalist and revolu- tionary mysticism'.m
The degree to which the problem extended beyond the framework of linguistic discussion was alluded to—more elegantly than by Rio Branco—by the Frenchman, Julien Luchaire, who was (under Berard) general inspector of public instruction. He contested the assumption that there was even a need for an international means of communication among 'non-intellectuals', given that (as he put it) the mass of the people in the various countries came into contact with one another through their 'leaders' and through translation. By this logic, then, international con- tacts should remain a monopoly of a chosen few, and it was inadvisable to open the door to worldwide relations among the lower classes through the easily learned means of communication known as Esperanto.[200]
7n this atmosphere of francophone hegemony and disdain for the masses, Esperanto had no chance. On 1 August 1923, the Commission decided not to take up the question of teaching Esperanto in schools, defending the position that, above all, what was necessary was 'to aim to favor the study of living languages and foreign literatures'.[201] Nitobe commented that in 20 years' time this decision would be remembered as a sign that the League of Nations lacked good sense.
In September 1923, when the Fourth Assembly convened, the French delegate, furnished with instructions from his government 'to expel Esperanto definitively',[202] proposed that the League adopt a sharper version of the Commission's decision; in this new version, the League was to recommend explicitly the learning of foreign national languages in preference to an artificial auxiliary language. But with this proposal France pushed the acquiescence of the other delegates too far. Several delegates protested, explaining that, while they did not wish to insist on Esperanto, they also had no wish to accept wording that seemed directed against Esperanto, 'since this movement had many friends in their countries'.[203]
France was obliged to withdraw its proposal, leaving as the only valid decision the acceptance of the report of 1922 on Esperanto's positive achievements. This was hardly a negligible success on UEA's part, but it fell considerably short of its expectations. Somewhat con- soling was the fact that in September 1924 the new government of Edouard Herriot nullified Berard's decree—and also the fact that in the same month the Fifth Assembly accepted, without opposition from France, a recommendation to treat Esperanto as a 'clear' lan- guage for telegraphy.
As we know, the League of Nations steadily lost its early promise because no member state was ready to yield any part of its national sovereignty, the League's decisions were not carried out and the great powers, when needed, sabotaged its activities. Not only did the politi- cal influence of the League remain limited, but the moral authority expected of it remained unformed. An example in this regard was the Commission on International Intellectual Collaboration which 'failed completely to bring them [the intellectuals of the various countries] into a common front against the dangers of national hatreds and national ambitions'.[204]
The treatment of Esperanto helps explain the League's ultimate fiasco. Pressure from the great powers succeeded in sidelining an ini- tiative of China, Japan and several smaller nations whose aim was to use Esperanto to contribute to neutralizing conflicting national inter- ests and also to advance education for international solidarity as the League's spiritual foundation and unifying device. The idea that the states could advance the worldwide popularization of the League's ide- als by declaring their sympathy for the dissemination of Esperanto collided with France's timorous concern for the dominant position of the French language. In defending their position, the French did not even advance as a primary argument the possible linguistic unsuitabil- ity of Esperanto, though insistence on the inadequate expressiveness of an artificial language tended not to miss its mark. On the contrary, Esperanto's enemies found themselves in a kind of silent agreement with its friends in recognizing the fact that they were indeed dealing with a functioning language; indeed they were all too aware of its func- tionality, as Berard's decree and Luchaire's elitist arrogance implied, tor- mented as they were by the thought that international communication might escape the oversight of the 'leaders' and become the property of 'non-intellectuals' as well.
Given the ideas prevailing in the Commission on International Collaboration, we can readily understand why the Commission failed in its task of creating a sense of world solidarity that could advance the League and provide support for increasing its authority in the face of national egotism. The French campaign against Esperanto in the League of Nations[205] was clearly dictated by great power concern that the League might live up to its name by becoming not just an optional debating chamber but an international forum to which the nations would have to yield some of their privileges. While the Esperantists, still too naive, failed to envision the provocative nature of their demand that all the world's children should learn two languages, one national and the other international, their opponents, early on, foresaw the political conse- quences that would ensue if the League were to encourage the learning and use of a neutral means of international communication. Its oppo- nents were fully aware of the floodgates that such support for Esperanto would open. Raul do Rio Branco, in his speech, revealed his opposition to the idea of the League as 'super-State' 1 [206] and Gonzague de Reynold expressed a similar opinion: 'there is a constant battle to wage against all those who would make of the League of Nations, not only a super-state but a super-church as well, against all the utopist internationalists. ... I am referring to Esperanto.'[207]
Workers and 'Neutralists'
At the height of the French agitation against Esperanto, Edmond Privat pointed out that 'Even after Mr. Hanotaux's intervention at the League of Nations, not a word of anti-French feeling appeared in the Esperanto press—and quite rightly'.[208] Certainly it was tactically correct to avoid provoking France unnecessarily, but we must also recognize that UEA felt itself insufficiently strong as an international pressure group to mount a more energetic defense of its position in the face of the selfish interests of one nation. It not only indulged the French but also failed to reveal French linguistic imperialism, the French intellectuals' arrogant neglect of the need for international communication on the part of the lower levels of society and France's elitist way of thinking—all factors playing an essential role in the effort to drive Esperanto off the League of Nations agenda.
Equally regrettable, as we can now understand, was the fact that, when pressure on the League no longer promised immediate results, UEA pro- ceeded to turn its back on the League. Instead of using Esperanto to popularize the League's noble principles and thus prepare more fertile ground for future international agreements on Esperanto, the association little by little distanced itself from the guidelines laid down by Hodler. In the course of the 1920s, internationalism in general lost its attractiveness; nor did UEA work to resist this tendency. Indeed the Association became increasingly dependent on the national Esperanto societies, whose pref- erence was to direct their attention to their governments, often failing to demonstrate sufficient resistance to the nationalist currents in their own countries. Privat, social democrat and tireless campaigner against colonialism, was both predestined and sincerely committed to follow- ing the path shown him by his deceased friend Hodler; his erudition and charming personality won the sympathy of many delegates at the League—from the Czechoslovakian minister and later president Edvard Beneŝ, to Romain Rolland and Mahatma Gandhi.[209] But, assisted only by mediocre functionaries and surrounded by so many dreamers and politically uninformed Esperantists, he lacked the strength to inspire in the association the requisite confidence in its worldwide mission and the readiness to defend its internationalism against national jealousies.
UEA's deviation from its founder's ideals would make no sense, how- ever, without consideration of the fact that, after the war, and shortly after Hodler's death, a schism split the Esperanto movement along class lines. In August 1921, Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (SAT: 'The Worldwide Non-national Association') was founded. This international organization of worker Esperantists in fact inherited certain of Hodler's guiding prin- ciples (e.g. an organizational structure built on individual membership), but at the same time its battle cry 'Down with neutralism!' shattered all relations with the neutral movement. It identified that movement as bourgeois, claiming that Esperanto had value and was worth supporting only as long as it could effectively serve the international class battle.
We will address the activities and significance of SAT in Part III. Here it is primarily important to note that the split between workers and 'neu- tralists' changed the face of the Esperanto movement profoundly—which in turn inevitably had its influence on public judgments about the lan- guage itself.
Before the war, as we have seen, the Esperantists of Germany, par- ticularly, were attacked for their alleged unpatriotic goals. During the war, they distributed documents, in Esperanto translation, presenting the viewpoint of the German army.[210] They assumed that after the war these activities would be interpreted as proof of their patriotism. In March 1915 the industrialist Albert Steche expressed his conviction that the wartime propaganda using Esperanto made it clear 'that the German Esperantists are not cosmopolitan dreamers but fervent and practical patriots who [...] spare no pains nor hold back resources to serve the fatherland'.[211]
But such arguments did little to impress Esperanto's chauvinist oppo- nents. With mocking comments about how rapidly the war succeeded in dislodging 'rootless' internationalism, they refused to conclude that the international language had now become more acceptable for Germans. Albert Zimmermann, for example, whom we mentioned earlier, recog- nized that subjectively the German Esperantists were good patriots, but warned that to come to such a conclusion 'the international character, the de-nationalizing effect of Esperanto' had to be ignored.[212] The militant nationalists in Germany were more exercised by the fact that the other side, particularly the French, also utilized Esperanto for wartime pro- paganda. Thus, the German and French Esperantists gained little from their wartime activities, which failed to generate much sympathy among the nationalists. And the movement's point of departure following the war was further complicated by the unprecedented flow of working people attracted to Esperanto; thus, class warfare entered the Esperanto movement. In several countries these new recruits did not join the tradi- tional, neutral association but organized their own free-standing workers' Esperanto unions.
This development was symptomatic of working people's desire to broaden their horizons beyond national boundaries and to engage imme- diately with internationalism, now that the end of the war had brought them new opportunities. In a document produced by the Committee on International Auxiliary Language, created in 1919 by the International Research Council, 'the rapidly awakening international consciousness of the man on the street', manifested particularly by the popularity of Esperanto among workers, was described as 'one of the most important features of the whole subject of international language development' from a sociological perspective. The Committee noted: 'If this interest of the masses can be carefully studied and sympathetically grasped by competent sociologists, it may be given constructive guidance for the benefit of all; but if neglected and left entirely to be developed by radicals, it may serve to merely fan the flame of bolshevism.'[213] We find similar recognition of the problem in the writings of Albert Steche, who as early as 1914 warned against 'influences hostile to people and state' within the Esperanto movement and insisted that:
Governments and communities must consult with one another to assure that nationally conscious members of the public have available to them everywhere the opportunity to learn Esperanto without charge. If this option doesn't exist, the would-be learners, as is now apparent, will turn to social democratic Esperanto courses, where they will be educated not only as Esperantists but also as social democrats.116
The postwar establishment and growth of a separate workers' Esperanto movement rapidly rendered redundant Steche's proposal that govern- ments make instruction in the language official as a way of avoiding the radicalization of the Esperantists. In any event, the favorable response that Esperanto found among workers reduced rather than stimulated the inclination of governments to support the Esperanto movement. Warnings like that of Steche against the penetration of socialist ideas in the ranks of Esperantists only served to supply ammunition to con- servative and reactionary regimes. Instead of coming to the conclusion that such infiltration should be halted by their own efforts to promote Esperanto, these regimes tended to turn their suspicions on the move- ment as a whole—including its politically neutral elements.
The dilemma of the middle-class Esperantists, unsettled by the flower- ing of Esperanto among the workers on the one hand and confronting elite misunderstanding on the other, is well illustrated in the person of Steche, who was president of the German Esperanto Association from 1920 to 1925. A member of the National Liberal Party and active in industrialists' organizations, Steche was neither the sinister reactionary of anti-capitalist textbooks nor the Esperantist dedicated exclusively to commercial profit by way of Esperanto.[214] He sought to base his plea for the introduction of Esperanto as the sole foreign language in elementary schools on a remarkable combination of ideas for the creation of har- mony among classes and nations:
This would be a more benevolent way ofbridging the gap between rich and poor; through Esperanto, the less prosperous person can, like the educated person of means, advance progressively, drawing on the finest works of world literature to do so, in easy linguistic intercourse with people of all ranks in the entire world. Thus social harmony in one's own country will contribute to harmony among the peoples of the earth [...][215]
Steche's notions of peacemaking accorded in some sense with the tradi- tion of Esperanto, specifically Zamenhof's proposition that the practice of a neutral language helps to reduce conflicts. But Zamenhof's think- ing was always focused on the elimination of national antagonisms through Esperanto; he barely addressed the social roots of interethnic animosity. In any event, in the postwar situation, in the midst of infla- tion and unemployment, it was mere illusion to indulge in generalities about Esperanto's potential to overcome disharmony among the classes. Not surprisingly, Steche's theories on neutralizing class conflicts through Esperanto were condemned by worker Esperantists as capitalist snares. For them, the idealism of people like Privat, here discussing 'Esperantism', was an anachronism:
Esperantism is the least 'bourgeois' movement of all, yet it stands above and beyond all human conflicts, either ethnic or class-based.[216]
Now it was the worker Esperantists who saw themselves as the true guard- ians of the Esperanto tradition: using Esperanto to advance socialism, they claimed, put them on the right path:
What does 'socialism' mean? If we wanted to replace the word 'socialism' with some other term, we could best do so with a term like human libera- tion, human happiness. But isn't the idea of human happiness the very foundation of Esperanto? We didn't add that idea to Esperanto; we found it there. And it was put there ... by Zamenhof himself.[217]
For his part, Steche regretfully noted the 'unhappy situation' in which the lower strata of society enthused over the 'new Latin of democracy' while 'the more literate levels, educated and integrated into the worldview of the old Latin, fail to meet expectations now, when they ought to be taking the lead'.[218]
Matters developed differently than Steche imagined; inevitably the Esperanto movement, like everything else, reflected the social conflicts and political tensions characteristic of the 1920s; nor was that entirely Esperanto's loss. The separate path followed by the worker Esperantists increased their chances of injecting the language into the ranks of the workers' movement, while leaving a broad field in which the neutral movement could gather recruits from other social strata. Thus both could co-exist, particularly in the democratic states.
Indeed, in the years following the war, in many countries of Europe, in the USA, in Brazil, in Japan, and in various other places across the world, the ground was favorable for Esperanto. Most often, the study and use of Esperanto was an entirely private affair, pursued by people who, curi- ous about the world, aimed to overcome linguistic and national boundar- ies as rapidly as possible. In most countries with Esperanto organizations, their activities developed freely and without direct hindrance. Nor did they lack official support. In Germany, for example, the 'Esperanto Institute for the German Reich' received regular state funding; educational authorities declared their sympathetic support and permitted the teaching of Esperanto in schools outside the official instructional program. And all this came about, in the judgment of the Esperantists at the time 'from strong pressure from below, from circles of people who valued international relations, but had not themselves experienced foreign language instruction in school'.[219]
A method for teaching Esperanto rapidly and without a textbook, also for less educated people, was developed by Andras Cseh, a Catholic priest from Romania of Hungarian extraction. The courses taught by him all across Europe, in which the language was presented as an entertain- ing game, soon found many imitators. Elements of the so-called direct method also found their way into traditional instruction. In the inter-war years, thousands of people could thank Andras Cseh, his charm and his skillful teaching, for their knowledge of Esperanto.
Those who had learned the language practiced it in various ways, pre- dominantly for correspondence and for travel. Among the most interesting results of such connections were international marriages, in which Esperanto served as 'edzperanto' (spouse-purveyor) and from which 'denaskaj espe- rantistoj' (Esperantists from birth, i.e. native speakers) were produced. For the active Esperantist, the culmination of the Esperanto year was the World Congress, in which on average some 1500 or 2000 people participated. In addition, almost every year an international conference dedicated to the practical application of Esperanto was organized, attended by represen- tatives of governments, chambers of commerce, trade fairs and financial organizations. Conference topics included the use of Esperanto in busi- ness, broadcasting, science and tourism. Also particularly notable was the conference on 'Peace through the School' convened in Prague over Easter 1927 by the Geneva-based International Bureau of Education. Almost 500 delegates from 19 countries participated, accepting recommendations for pupil exchange and for the removal of chauvinistic elements in textbooks; Esperanto was used as the sole language of translation.
The number and quality of original literaryworks in Esperanto increased. Schools of writers began to emerge, the most famous being the Budapest school. Following the founding of the journal Literatura Mondo (1922) the Hungarian capital became a center of Esperanto culture. It was also the home of the most popular Esperanto writer Julio (Gyula) Baghy, a former actor, who, on the basis of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Siberia, found his voice in Esperanto. In numerous short stories and poems he described his philosophy of love, peace and humanity. His works, optimis- tic, highly idealistic, often coming across as sentimentally nai've, infused the ideals that underlay Esperanto with an emotional force that strongly appealed to the Esperantists. Baghy, nicknamed 'Pacjo' ('Papa'), expressed feelings that were dear to Esperantists from the beginning and also typified the inclinations of the moderately progressive middle class in the period between the wars. Baghy's success was all the greater because of his passion- ate protests against social injustice and the barriers of nationhood, though he seldom showed his readers concrete ways of overcoming these evils. He avoided identifying himself with political and ideological positions, thereby helping the average apolitical Esperantists to identify themselves with his ideal of human brotherhood.[220]
Other literary works in Esperanto displayed a similar idealism—such as those of the German Teo Jung, whose principal contribution, however, was his founding in 1920 of the newspaper Esperanto Triumfonta (Esperanto on the path to victory).[221] Of the hundreds of Esperanto-language periodicals, this was the most frequently published, appearing weekly. The newspaper, as of 1925 renamed Heroldo de Esperanto (Esperanto Herald), provided its readers with arguments they could use in promoting Esperanto and printed frequent reports of successes in the movement as a way of reminding the Esperantists not to grow weary in their efforts on behalf of the language and to maintain faith in its final victory.
Harassment in the 1920s
Esperantists became the object of police surveillance in Germany because of their political activities. After the Reich government overthrew the labor government in Saxony and Reich troops occupied the region in October 1923, the Police Presidium in Leipzig established its own 'Esperanto- language office' to collect information on the activities of the German Workers' Esperanto Association. An internal report described this associa- tion as 'a factor to be taken seriously among political movements' because it explicitly declared its desire to use Esperanto merely as a means of bring- ing about the worldwide union of the proletariat.[222] The police noted that between January and October 1924 communist Esperantists in Leipzig had published 16 issues of the broadsheet newspaper Volkerspiegel, taking their material from Esperanto periodicals and the letters of comrades in other countries. But the police did nothing to stop it, even though it served as a kind of substitute for the banned Sachsische Arbeiterzeitung.;[223]
Genuine persecutions were inflicted onworker Esperantists in other countries, primarily those where workers' parties were illegal. In Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, receipt of SAT publications was forbidden.[224] On occasion, a high percentage of work- ers in an Esperanto club was enough to attract the suspicions of a police chief, as happened in 1924 to the Esperantists in Split, Yugoslavia[225]; in that country, the police in several villages simply outlawed Esperanto.[226]In 1926 a SAT member from Yugoslavia complained bitterly that in his 'putrujo' (in Esperantopatrujo means fatherland, while putrujo translates as 'rotten place') the general discrimination against workers extended also to his own desire to learn Esperanto.[227] In Estonia, workers' Esperanto groups founded in 1925 were unable to begin operations—'because of the imprisonment of most of the members'.[228]
Such bans and embargoes were directed specifically at the political activities of worker Esperantists. At first they did not touch the affairs of the neutral movement, for whose leaders the wisest tactic seemed to be to maintain silence or to content themselves by declaring that Esperanto could be used by all and belonged to no one. In this way they could deny the responsibility of the movement as a whole when the language was used for some specific and questionable purpose.
Perhaps the least excitable were the Japanese Esperantists. In May 1921, the blind Russian-Ukrainian poet Vasili Eroshenko, who enjoyed great popularity among Japanese leftists, was expelled from Japan for his participation in a May 1 demonstration and his attendance at the Second Congress of the Japanese Socialist Union.[229] In late September 1922 a speech on 'Cosmopolitanism and Esperanto' was interrupted by a police officer who believed that it contained 'dangerous ideas'.[230] But the Japanese Esperanto Institute (JEI), which always avoided involvement in political and ideological conflicts, was unperturbed. On the contrary, it happily noted that the publicity surrounding Eroshenko's deportation had awakened popular curiosity about Esperanto. If not against popular prejudices ('Esperantists resemble watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside'), at least JEI succeeded in shielding itself against government harassment. Somewhat different was the situation in Taiwan and Korea, both under the rule of Japan at the time. For Japanese citizens resident in those ter- ritories there were no obstacles to learning Esperanto, as long as they steered clear of political activities. But if local residents were interested in learning it the authorities tended to judge such activities as the first step on a slippery slope to 'dangerous thinking'. A report that has come down to us, written by Yamaguchi Koshizu, a Japanese woman who publicized Esperanto among the Taiwanese, provides insight into the motives behind the denigration of Esperanto in Taiwan. She cites the following explanation from a high-ranking functionary in the Japanese police:
In general it is important to understand that the meaning is different when a Japanese does something from when a Taiwanese does it. [...] There is no doubt that Japanese people choose Esperanto only because they believe it to be a common international language for the world, a language symbol- izing future peace for humankind, or a way of respecting one's own national language. But the situation changes completely if it has to do with
Taiwanese. They are interested in this world language not simply as one people in the world: their learning Esperanto implies complete rejection of the Japanese language. Language and thought are intimately related, so rejection of the Japanese language signifies total repudiation of Japan. Japan's colonial policy is completely unable to tolerate such traitors.[231]
What makes this statement particularly notable is its lack of any attempt to hide the evident effort to treat non-Japanese as inferior and to apply different metrics even to the simple act of learning Esperanto.
In Eastern Europe, on more than one occasion the authorities declared that their actions against worker Esperantists were not directed at the Esperanto movement in general. In Poland, the minister of internal affairs announced in 1923 that the harassment of SAT members was occurring only because of their 'actions against the state', not because of Esperanto.[232]When in 1922 in the Romanian city of Cluj a group of young workers was arrested because over-enthusiastic police officers mistook the Esperantist green star for the communist insignia, the president of the military tri- bunal, before absolving the accused, declared that Esperanto was 'a very beautiful cultural movement' and that only the use of the language 'for unauthorized purposes' needed to be punished.[233] And when in 1926 the South Slav Esperantist League complained to the minister of education that district heads and gendarmes in various locations had forbidden the found- ing of Esperanto clubs or the organization of courses, the minister Stjepan Radic declared that he himself was an adept of Esperanto and had recently introduced the language into the curriculum of the University of Zagreb.[234]At the same time, this incident did not put an end to local obstacles in Yugoslavia. The situation was similar in Hungary. The neutral movement in semi-feudal Hungary had a generally more progressive character than that in the more developed countries of Western Europe. The president of the Esperanto Society of Hungary (Hungarlanda Esperanto-Societo, HES) from 1912 to 1923 was Sandor Giesswein, a Catholic prelate who before the war had been one of the leaders of the Christian Socialist Party.
During the war he secretly permitted the use of the archbishops palace, and even churches themselves, for pacifist meetings, and after the war as leader of the Reform Party he argued for democratization.i 48 As early as 1911 the HES constitution emphasized the interconnection of Esperanto, the peace movement, women's emancipation and the protection of children and workers—a vision statement that survived every regime change until 1950.[235]
During the Hungarian Republic of Councils of 1919, Esperantists were among those infected by revolutionary enthusiasm.[236] Following its fall, a few of them fled the country. The Esperanto poet, Rezso Rajczy, suspected of being a communist, died after being arrested and tortured; he was 'the only known martyr for Esperanto in Hungary'.i [237] Because the regime of Miklos Horthy remembered that Esperanto had been politically 'misused' in the 1920s, it was sometimes an act of courage for Hungarians living in the provinces even to wear the green star. In 1925 the founding of a group in Mezokovesd was not authorized because, among other grounds, it was alleged that the local inhabitants had such a primitive level of development that even elementary education had not or would not have the desired result, and that the hours devoted to learning Esperanto might be misused to disseminate activities against the state.[238]While the neutral society had plenty of room to operate, the workers' Esperanto movement in Hungary suffered from frequent embargoes by local authorities. To teach the language to workers without charge, spe- cial permission had to be sought from the police; it was often declined, sometimes because (allegedly) the neutralist Esperantists had already set up courses and the workers could study there, sometimes because Hungarian workers should first master their native language, sometimes because an Esperanto course in a city with so many illiterates was simply superfluous.[239] Worker Esperantists in Bulgaria had to deal with even greater obstacles: in 1924 the Bulgarian minister of internal affairs labeled Esperanto a Bolshevik language. As a result, non-Esperantist workers' journals, which had earlier considered Esperanto a 'bourgeois, purpose- less and useless affair', began to change their opinion.[240]
Workers could not be frightened away from learning Esperanto; in fact they tended to regard it as all the more attractive the more 'reactionaries' condemned it. Such enthusiasm, irrepressible through harassment and even stimulated by it, little by little caused the authorities to lessen their readiness or ability to make a clear distinction between the movement as a whole and the radical elements within it. As the 1920s drew to a close, the guardians of public order increasingly gave at least the impression that the Esperanto movement as a whole merited closer observation. In parallel with this view, the public tended more and more to impute ideo- logical goals to the language itself. The French minister Berard's circular, already mentioned, served as an occasion to warn against the widespread use of Esperanto to advance Bolshevism.[241] The German Romanist Karl Vossler even went so far as to suspect that through such use the character of the language itself had begun to change:
international Bolshevism, socialism, and communism have of late taken up residence in the grammar and vocabulary of Esperanto, with the intention not only of filling it with their ethos and ideas, their phonetic feelings and their semantic accents, their proletarian voices, but also having it make political propaganda for them.
[...] a language that is conscious of the fact that it was formed out of international word borrowing and that relies on international communica- tion has to present itself as goal-directed, sympathetic, and linguistically related to the beliefs and actions, the ideas and dissemination, of communism.[242]
The leaders of the neutral movement could hardly overlook such inten- tional or unintentional identification of Esperanto with particular political agendas (generally of the left). With increasing frequency these leaders felt the need to defend themselves against accusations that the Esperanto movement was serving as a training ground for revolutionar- ies. Such efforts at self-protection were not unsuccessful. Even Berard himself explicitly distinguished between 'suspicious groups' for whom Esperanto had become 'a device for systematic internationalism' and 'the sincerity of many French people, often eminent people', who con- sidered Esperanto merely a practical instrument for correspondence.[243](It may be useful here to quote the Japanese Nitobe Inazo, who, having just experienced the strong opposition of the French government to Esperanto, noted in 1924: 'However it may encounter prejudice and unfriendliness in Europe, Esperanto is accepted in the Far East with an open spirit.' Nitobe expressed one reservation—and immediately qualified it: 'People accuse it of serving as a channel for radical thought: but it is well known that more propaganda material expressing "dan- gerous ideas" exists in other languages.'[244]) Yet Berard's words remind us of the dilemma faced by the 'bourgeois' Esperantists, for they too were accustomed to talking not only about Esperanto's practical advan- tages but also, to varying degrees, about the significance of the language as an idea. However imprecisely defined it might be, they felt them- selves enduringly linked to Esperanto's 'internal idea', remembering Zamenhof's moving declaration in Geneva in 1906.
In consequence, to dispel the suspicions of governments about the political 'misuse' of Esperanto, the leaders of the neutral movement could no longer simply emphasize, as the French pioneers were still doing, the idea that Esperanto was just a language having nothing to do with an idea. An emphatic denial of its ideological content on the part of the leaders would have undoubtedly encountered incompre- hension among the many enthusiasts for Esperanto who made up the neutral organizations, given that the 'internal idea' was their emo- tional link to the movement. It was impossible to reject the idea of Esperanto as a cause, even if every Esperantist was entirely free to interpret the 'internal idea' as he or she chose. So there was no avoid- ing the vulnerability of Esperanto to attacks by opponents—all the less as Esperantist idealism evolved in directions that collided with rulers' ideology.
Under these circumstances, the leaders of the neutral movement could only keep repeating that the language was suitable for all purposes, that they should not be held responsible if socialists or communists made use of it, and that the focused activities of working people should encourage other social groups to avail themselves of Esperanto.
But no other social group knew how to use Esperanto as effectively as the workers—and this awareness was a constant source of embarrassment to the neutral movement. Steche's expectations—that, in the postwar period, increased commercial exchange would dictate to the upper levels of society the need to use Esperanto as a means of international commu- nication—went unrealized. Closer to reality, it seemed, was the prophecy of the French revolutionary writer Henri Barbusse, who early in 1921 wrote that there would soon come a time when Esperanto, which at first 'was mostly developed in bourgeois circles', would frighten this same bourgeoisie, who—because the revolutionaries had taken 'this amazing little key' into their hands—'will reject it because of the evident sense of fraternity that it has brought with it'.[245]
Furthermore, conservative Esperantists had to ask themselves whether it was wise to continue their interest in Esperanto if working people were suggesting that the 'neutralists' were themselves unconsciously hastening the move to world revolution, as was asserted in the 1928 action plan of SAT, the international organization of worker Esperantists:
Esperanto itself is a double-edged sword in the hands of the oppressors because, in the end, its use even by the bourgeoisie will strengthen the international anti-capitalist tendencies of the masses.[246]
By this time such a declaration could find support in the popularity of Esperanto in the Soviet Union. This new development merely reinforced the need for those active in the neutral associations to increase their emphasis on their distance from the labor movement. This inclination was expressed differently, depending on the degree of political freedom prevailing in the country in which the dissemination of Esperanto was taking place. The less democratic the regime, the more the neutral orga- nizations' efforts to distance themselves took on the character of direct opposition to the use of Esperanto in politically undesirable ways— which, ultimately, meant contestation of the right to use the language for any and every purpose. In 1923, Pola Esperantisto, for example, called on 'true Esperantists' to protest against the intrusion of non-nationalism (sennaciismo), communism or pacifism into the movement:
we, true lovers of Esperanto, will not allow anything to be smuggled [into the movement] in the folds of our flag; we will not allow anyone to under- mine the temple built with the toil and sweat of the First Pioneers.[247]
Consequently, attacks on worker Esperantists received in Pola Esperantisto the cold-blooded comment that 'they are themselves often responsible' for what happens to them.[248] Similarly, in Hungary the neutral societ- ies did not, as the workers complained, offer help when 'people offend Esperanto', even when, during the World Congress in Budapest in 1929, the police refused permission to recite the poems of Sandor Petofi.[249]
The effort to put limits on the use of Esperanto was certainly under- standable, even defensible, in the sense that a language movement should not create unnecessary obstacles for itself under a dictatorial regime by publicly allying itself with opposition movements or revolutionary forces. On the other hand, such a tactic also contained a fair degree of self- delusion on the part of the 'neutral' Esperantists. First, it ignored the fact that the enthusiasm with which workers acted for Esperanto had its beginning in an idealistic inheritance that they shared with non-workers and therefore could not be claimed as a simple outcome of the revolu- tionaries' strategy. Secondly, the non-workers' efforts to create distance could not hide the fact that by the end of the 1920s attacks on Esperanto could no longer be regarded as directed only against so-called political misuse. It would be more accurate to say that in many cases the rulers were inspired by other motives than simple efforts to prevent the use of the language for class war—as the following examples will illustrate.
When in 1928 the Bulgarian minister of popular education ordered the disbanding of all school Esperanto clubs and banned the circula- tion of Esperanto periodicals among schoolchildren, among the motives adduced for this action the issue of security was the last to be mentioned. The reasons were as follows:
Because Esperanto is an easy language, the students will grow accustomed to easy things and will lose the desire to learn more difficult matters; because Esperanto is international, the students will begin to favor interna- tionalism and dislike the national language and culture; finally, the Esperanto movement is suspect because hidden beneath it are Bolshevists and anarchists.[250]
The minister made no distinction between the neutral and the workers' Esperanto movement, but declared that merely learning Esperanto was itself an 'action against the fatherland'.
The worst surprises for aspiring learners of Esperanto were reserved primarily for people living outside the big cities and belonging to the lower classes. For example the banate (regional) administration in Zagreb motivated its refusal to recognize an Esperanto group founded in 1931 in the following terms:
there is neither a national-cultural nor a social need to form such a club among the peasants and craftsmen of Delekovec, because there are various national, cultural, economic and social aspirations that a simple person should be interested in. Such a person should be taught literacy and cul- ture, but not by means of a lifeless artificial language (Esperanto), which requires preparatory instruction and knowledge of at least one established living world language. Given that the club under no circumstances can achieve the goal for which it is founded and because there exists a demon- strated danger that the club could damage the national interest, denial of permission is seen to be advisable and lawful.[251]
This decision offers striking evidence of the tendency of reactionary authorities to restrain the emancipation of people from less privileged social strata, dictate their path to education and suppress everything that might on its own account lead to the broadening of their intellectual horizons and the establishment of international contacts. The same con- siderations lay behind prohibitions in Hungary, as is documented in the explanations of local authorities in that country:
instruction in the Hungarian language and in orthography is a greater
need.[252]
[...] the workers barely know the Hungarian language, so it cannot be supposed that they would seriously desire to learn a foreign language.[253]
In Oroshaza the founding of an Esperanto group was denied on the grounds that 'it can be expected that the Esperantists will establish rela- tions with foreigners'.[254]
To summarize: in the countries of Southeast Europe, ruled by dictato- rial regimes and lagging behind other European countries economically and socially, embargoes and persecutions directed against Esperantists' activities were dictated not only by fear of revolutionary elements in their ranks but also by two other hypothetical considerations: (1) that Esperanto impedes prescribed procedures for citizens' education, and (2) that Esperanto allows its users to acquire knowledge from outside the country, which could have an unmanageable influence on their relation- ship with their own society.
So it is difficult to make a clear distinction between reactions to par- ticular applications of Esperanto and hostility to the language for its own sake. Much as the position of a government or political move- ment on the subject of Esperanto not uncommonly provided a good measure of its degree of democracy, so the political conviction expos- ing an Esperantist to persecution could not be wholly separated from Esperanto itself and generally seemed to the persecuted Esperantist a logical extension of the idealism behind Esperanto. As a result, by emphasizing the political neutrality of Esperanto when some par- ticular use of the language threatened to negatively influence public opinion on Esperanto itself, the 'neutral' Esperantists ignored the root causes of many of these negative judgments and their resulting negative responses. Instead, they tended all too rapidly to attribute them to the activities of leftist Esperantists.
The movement failed to apprehend the degree to which political obsta- cles included both covert and overt attacks on ordinary people's desire for self-education and their spontaneous reaching for international con- tacts, both tendencies manifested in their desire to learn Esperanto. Such attacks in fact touched the entire Esperanto movement, since the desire for self-education and the wish to overcome national barriers were fun- damental characteristics of the Esperantists. Silence and passivity in reac- tion to repression on grounds like those cited for Yugoslavia and Hungary indicate that the neutral movement was insufficiently aware of certain essential considerations—considerations that influenced every form of Esperanto activity and were important for the future survival of the move- ment. Instead, in April 1929, a few months before the World Congress in Budapest, the Esperantists published the following 'Declaration of Neutrality':
For some time the enemies of Esperanto have been trying to identify gen- eral propaganda for the international auxiliary language Esperanto with activity for certain social goals.
The International Central Committee of the Esperanto Movement [...] firmly and formally declares that its program, aimed only at the introduc- tion of Esperanto, is entirely neutral concerning political, religious, racial or social affairs.
It insistently opposes such false assertions, whose effect is only to hinder the important progress resulting from the introduction of an easily learned neutral auxiliary language side by side with the mother tongue in question.[255]
The declaration aimed to remove suspicions of the Esperanto movement's social unreliability, but by emphasizing the obvious it had almost no effect on the people to whom it was clearly directed. Rightists, if they did not already disapprove of the idea of an international language, in any case ignored theories about Esperanto's rigorous neutrality, comparing them with the reality, namely the apparently ineluctable advance of Esperanto among the working class.
As the workers' Esperanto movement continued to grow, UEA and the neutral national societies saw a decline in their membership.i 70 Particularly serious was an internal crisis in UEA. The association was already intellectually impoverished by the migration of many progres- sive Esperantists to SAT, the Worldwide Non-national Association founded in 1921. The successors of Hodler, as we have noted, were unsuccessful in further developing his spiritual and intellectual heri- tage. Although UEA remained an association of individual members and was therefore theoretically independent of national trends, it had weakened its link with internationalist goals (if only to protect its borders from SAT, with its 'non-national' goals) and at the same time faced a growing demand from national organizations for a right to col- lective decision-making concerning the international movement. The concerns of these organizations were conditioned in the first instance by the circumstances in their own countries; as a consequence they were calling, in part, for greater accommodation of the Esperanto movement to nationalism.
In 1932, UEA was threatened with bankruptcy. It drastically reduced its financial support for the Central Committee, which as of 1922 had served as a common body for representatives of national associations and UEA. As a result, the national associations nullified the contract with UEA and began planning for a new international organization of Esperantists, based on national societies. This development, augur- ing a turning away from the ideals of Hodler, was a direct result of UEA's financial problems, but at the same time it signaled the degree to which the Esperanto movement was influenced by the public's rising lack of faith in internationalism and the extent to which UEA lacked the strength to fight the wave of nationalism following the world eco- nomic crisis.
At the beginning of the 1930s, then, internal problems were shaking the neutral movement—while externally the situation of Esperanto was worsening in numbers of countries. The language was still not faced with widespread persecution: pointing to the principle of neutrality or declar- ing their loyalty to the government, the leaders of the neutral movement trusted that the unfavorable atmosphere would pass, and that in any case the language would not fall victim to political changes. The Esperantist workers felt the same. In October 1932 La Socialisto, in Austria, expressed its conviction that, despite the ban on workers' Esperanto groups, there was no need to fear that the language itself was in danger: 'It would be inaccurate to conclude from [the ban] that fascist and semi-fascist gov- ernments want to suppress Esperanto. Nothing like this has happened so far. Such actions are aimed not at "Esperanto" organizations per se, but at the political tendencies of the organization concerned.'[256]
A few short months after the expression of such optimism, a regime was established in the center of Europe that would render this statement fundamentally inaccurate.
Part II
'Language of Jews and Communists'
3
The Rise of a New Enemy
Esperanto in the Weimar Republic
During the 1920s Germany held what was in many respects an envi- able position in the international Esperanto movement. After the First World War and the creation of the Weimar Republic, the idea of an inter- national neutral language was successful in attracting more and more adherents among Germans. The collapse of German military ambitions strengthened, particularly among the workers, a desire to overcome the barriers of self-isolation and great-power arrogance. Through Esperanto, Germans sought to bridge the gap in interpersonal contacts with a world skeptical of Germany's young democracy. In 1923, under the honorary patronage of Reichsprasident Friedrich Ebert, the 15th World Congress of Esperanto took place in Nuremberg, with almost 5000 attendees. The authorities were generous with their moral, and in some cases finan- cial, support, recognizing that Esperanto was 'an important means' to achieve 'ethical education in the spirit of popular reconciliation'.[257] The well-known publishers Ferdinand Hirt, in Leipzig, and Rudolf Mosse, in Berlin, released new publications in and on Esperanto. From Germany the message of the popular weekly newspaper Heroldo de Esperanto rang out across the world. Statistics for the year 1926 reveal that 30,868 Germans called themselves Esperantists, of whom 8490 were organized into local groups.[258]
The surge of Esperanto in interwar Germany, however, did not pri- marily benefit the neutral movement, as the membership figures for the German Esperanto Association (GEA) show: from 1921 to 1924 the asso- ciations membership actually declined from around 3000 to 2648, drop- ping by the end of 1930 to a mere 2371. At the same time, the German Workers' Esperanto Association (GLEA), operating independently of GEA, prospered, organizing courses for several thousand participants; its membership rose from 2900 in 1924 to some 4000 in 1930.[259]
The two associations' unequal organizational development was partly clarified by Albert Steche, GEA's president, in a review of the situa- tion of Esperanto in Germany at the end of 1923: 'The movement is hindered by political and economic decline. It is kept afloat essentially by the middle-class and working-class elements of the population. The upper classes, science, industry, commerce, and transportation still essen- tially maintain an attitude of rejection, or, at a minimum, indifference.'[260]Steche characterized the situation in precisely the same words in the fol- lowing two years,[261] while for 1926 he noted something of an improve- ment in the situation.[262] From then on, GEA's annual reports registered a steady increase in public favorability toward Esperanto in Germany[263]— an increase apparently unhindered by the economic crisis.[264] Nevertheless, GEA was unable to increase the number of its members.
The German division along class lines was therefore strongly evident in the organized Esperanto movement as well. In 1924 Steche realisti- cally pointed to an ideological chasm 'currently not even bridgeable by Esperanto' between members of the middle class who 'most often con- sider Esperanto simply a Jewish invention, serving anti-German interna- tionalism and pacifism and barring the way to the profit that might be derived from knowledge of foreign national languages', and working-class members, who were focused on the goal of using Esperanto to hasten the arrival of socialism.[265] Steche concluded that, given these circumstances, GEA had to remain a neutral language association where there was room for all German Esperantists 'with primarily patriotic feelings'. He rejected a proposal to transform GEA into a 'militant patriot brigade' because such an approach 'completely denies the basic idea' of Esperanto and 'would drive out the best middle-class representatives'.[266]
Throughout the 1920s GEA followed this strictly neutral line; indeed it seemed the only way to prevent an influential element of public opin- ion, observing the rapid spread of Esperanto among the working classes, from definitively identifying the language movement with political goals. Thus, the Association hoped that it would succeed little by little, through rational argument, not only in convincing middle-class Germans of the practical usefulness of Esperanto but also in blunting the resistance of the strongest opponents of the whole idea of an international auxiliary language.
It was a difficult task. As Eugen Wuster wrote in 1931, in no other country 'the opposition [to a planned language] was as strong as in Germany; until 1929 not a single sympathizer could be found among specialists in linguistics'.[267] A stronghold of opposition, for example, par- ticularly up to the end of the First World War, was the pure-language movement represented by the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein (General German Language Union). This association not only advocated the correct use of the German language but also tended to denounce users of foreign words as committing intellectual treason against the German people. Because the purists often worked into their attacks the occasional sideswipe at Esperanto as a further danger to the purity of the German language,[268] GEA members devoted considerable energy to efforts to win over the sympathy of the Sprachverein. They argued that learning Esperanto helped sharpen understanding and proper use of the mother tongue[269] and that Esperanto 'prevents the exhaustion and disinte- gration of the national languages and guarantees their free development, removing from them troublesome international terms'.1 4 Esperantists were encouraged to join the Sprachverein, because against it Esperanto hardly seemed capable of success in Germany.[270] In fact, a large number of German Esperantists, including Steche's successor as GEA president, Ernst Kliemke, were enthusiastic members of the Sprachverein.[271]
The point of view of the Sprachverein itself was not unified, indeed conflicted. An unnamed member and a friend of Esperanto asserted in May 1926 that the organization was 'in no sense hostile to our cause', and that in its journal Muttersprache no articles opposed to Esperanto had appeared in a long while.[272] Yet precisely in the same month the journal published an extensive article from the pen of its editor, Oskar Streicher, that was indeed hostile to Esperanto. Although he conceded that within the Sprachverein there were members who knew how to harmonize their enthusiasm for a 'world language' with love of their mother tongue, he criticized the insufficient representation of German-derived words in the Esperanto vocabulary, denied that Esperanto could ever be a living lan- guage, 'because through it there speaks the soul of no people', named the translation of Goethe's Iphigenia into an artificial language 'a sacri- lege against a sacred text' and ended by saying that 'Esperanto would construct a broad bridge over which thousands of destructive foreign words would migrate into German speech, and thousands of German speakers would migrate to what would be for them the ever seductive land of cosmopolitanism'.[273]
The article carried with it the assumption that it expressed if not the official point of view of the Sprachverein at least the opinion of the major- ity of its members. On the other hand the president of the Sprachverein, Richard Jahnke, was himself an adept of Esperanto and distanced him- self from the anti-Esperanto statements of Muttersprache.[274] Contributing to defusing the debate over foreign words was the Germanist Theodor Steche, whose scientific study of the subject[275] also included a plea for Esperanto. It was due in no small measure to the Esperanto-sympathizing members of the Sprachverein that the militant chauvinist side of the orga- nization lost its hold in the 1920s and the prejudice against Esperanto moderated.
However, the Esperantists were aware that within the Sprachverein there were also members who, simply because of their ideology, had no desire for communication among peoples. Such individuals could not be convinced by rational argument because they abominated everything 'smelling of internationalism'.[276] A widely circulating book on linguistics expressed the opinion that Esperanto would have a chance only if there were a move toward cosmopolitanism, to a general world culture; the author conceived of such a move in the following terms:
Only if the requirements of international socialism or communism were fulfilled or realized on a worldwide scale—requirements that would lead us directly to soulless equality, to a coldly rational politics of utility, to the erasure of human diversity, to the conquest of everything spiritually elevat- ing, to the elimination of nationhood, to denial of genius and talent—only
then would there be a hope of the general dissemination of this dehuman- izing, rationalizing and colorless international world language.[277]
This opinion, picked up by several German newspapers, undoubt- edly reflected the cultural pessimism current in middle-class circles. Accordingly, only as long as nationalist tendencies had not achieved dominance in such circles could the efforts to win people to Esperanto have any promise of success.
Up to the end of the 1920s GEA maintained a relatively stable posi- tion. In fact it seemed downright strong if we take into consideration the extent to which the enemies of Esperanto complained about the dis- proportionate importance Germans gave to such a language—instead of supporting efforts for the dissemination of German abroad. Franz Thierfelder, for ten years (until 1937) general secretary of the German Academy of Munich, an institution dedicated to 'the scholarly study and cultivation of German identity', steadily asserted that in Germany there were more organized Esperantists than in all other countries combined.[278]After the Nazi seizure of power he reflected on the time when, years ear- lier, he had protested against the use of public resources for Esperanto: the 'internationally inclined' press had jumped on this troublemaker, he said, and refused him access to their columns.1[279] Thierfelder, it should be added, belonged to the more respectable opponents of Esperanto in Germany. He did not hesitate to concede that the 'conquering advance' of Esperanto came about 'not only thanks to extremely skillful recruitment, but also because of its clever and practical internal structure'.[280] Instead of appealing—like the more primitive nationalists—to vague feelings in his attack on Esperanto, he explained quite clearly why he disapproved of the public advance of the language—namely that it endangered the worldwide importance of the German language.
Thierfelder's line of argument makes clear that Esperanto in the Weimar Republic was no longer something to be neglected; GEA was beginning to develop into an interest group recognized as such by its seri- ous opponents. Although GEA, given its neutrality, explicitly supported none of the internationalist movements, it undoubtedly profited from the popularity enjoyed for example by the Pan-European idea among the more progressive parts of the German middle class, so that Thierfelder in 1933 was not wrong in seeing the earlier rise of the Esperanto movement in Germany as characteristic of 'the spirit of the post-war period'.[281]
Hitler on Universal Language
Yet the nationalists never disappeared. Consumed by missionary fer- vor, and seeking to ignite what was in their opinion a lack of national pride on the part of the German people, they considered preoccupation with Esperanto a sign of insufficient patriotism. And among them there emerged, at first barely noticed, a new kind of enemies of Esperanto: the National Socialists. While not entirely different from those militant chauvinists who attacked Esperanto in the years before the First World War, they displayed, ever more clearly as the years advanced, an uncom- promising hostility to the language and the ideas correctly or incorrectly imputed to it.
The departure point for this basic hostility was Esperanto's 'Jewish ori- gin'. As early as 1923, following agitation in the National Socialist meet- ings and newspapers in Bavaria, particularly northern Bavaria, where the infamous anti-Semite Julius Streicher was particularly active, the bulletin boards of Esperantists were stolen; and during the World Congress in Nuremberg Nazi sympathizers 'cut down the big green flag in front of the congress building'.[282] Shortly after these incidents became known, the editor-in-chief of Germana Esperantisto was obliged to repel the attacks of an old opponent, Albert Zimmermann, who declared the battle against 'the Jewish Esperanto' one of his missions in life.[283] Early in 1926 a news- paper on the extreme right described Esperanto as 'a danger to, in fact a mortal enemy of, all forms of volkisch development' and described the movement as led by Jews and their lackeys.[284]
At first the Esperantists tended to turn away from such attacks in dis- gust, based as they were on racial hatred.[285] But, as the final years of the 1920s approached, they were forced to note the degree to which the Nazi attacks went beyond the framework of traditional anti-Jewish prejudice against Esperanto. On 21 January 1928, a debate in the budget commit- tee of the Bavarian parliament gave striking testimony to the dividing line between merely reactionary and entirely fascist arguments con- cerning Esperanto. On the agenda was a petition from the Esperanto groups in Munich and Nuremberg to introduce the elective teaching of Esperanto in middle schools. The only positive interventions came from the Social Democratic[286] and Communist deputies. As was to be expected, the representative of the German National People's Party Hermann Bauer was entirely opposed, calling Esperanto 'a purely mechanistic, soulless creation', a mere code; two years earlier, in a parliamentary intervention, he had referred to Esperanto as the 'un-language' and compared the level of Esperanto congresses to that of striptease shows.[287] But the leader of the National Socialist faction Rudolf Buttmann far exceeded him in the sharpness of his comments. For him, Esperanto was something stitched together by a Jew—a member of a race known for its lack of creative ability and its hostility to German culture; it would undermine German influence in smaller countries and was 'the forerunner of Latinization'.[288]
The roots of this effort to link Esperanto to a worldwide conspiracy against the German nation can be found in Adolf Hitler himself, who as early as 1922, in a speech in Munich, announced:
Marxism became the driving force of the workers, freemasonry served the 'intellectual' levels as a force for disintegration, Esperanto was about to facilitate their mutual understanding.[289]
Better known are Hitler's formulations in Mein Kampf, the book which, as we now know, anticipated in theory what was later put into prac- tice, with catastrophic consequences, in the 12-year reign of the Nazis in Germany and Europe:
As long as the Jew has not become the master of the other peoples he must speak their languages whether he likes it or not, but as soon as they become his slaves, they would all have to learn a universal language (Esperanto, for instance!) so that by this additional means the Jews could more easily dom- inate them![290]
In 1926, a year after the publication of Hitler's book, an extreme right- wing weekly journal published the following characteristically maniacal outpouring of conspiracy theory:
This bastard language, lacking roots in the life of the people and lacking any kind of literature arising from that life, is in fact acquiring that position in the world assigned to it by a Zionist plan aimed at exterminating patrio- tism among the future slave workers of Zion![291]
With rising anxiety, the Esperantists noted this grotesque declaration of war on their language by the ever more powerful Nazis.[292] With increasing frequency, articles appeared in GEA's journal discussing nationhood and the international language. Their authors called for 'true international- ism', possible only 'on the basis of strong and healthy nationalism',[293] or repeated the odd assertion that Esperanto helped to purify the German language by ingesting its foreign words.i [294] In October 1932 Germana Esperantisto published a proclamation by the new leader of the Esperanto Institute for the German Reich demanding that Esperanto serve 'the highest earthly value known to a German, the Fatherland'. [295] The same issue carried a letter of resignation from a GEA member who saw the cause of the insufficient progress of the movement in its excessive link to pacifism.[296] In response to this declaration, Arnold Behrendt, a postal offi- cial and, as of 1929, president of GEA, reasserted the total neutrality of the Association, judging political or social activity for Esperanto 'neither useful, nor necessary'.[297]
Almost in the same breath, however, Behrendt confessed that, for him personally, 'as also probably for most adherents of Esperanto', the movement was 'more than a purely language movement'[298]—apparently unconscious of the contradiction between the principle of neutrality, as he had formulated it, and the implicit allusion to the 'internal idea'. In any event, his assumption about the feelings of the membership was not wrong; undoubtedly the majority of members saw their movement as more than the dissemination of a language, but, more or less explicitly, the advancement of peace. For their part, the Nazis noted that at the heart of Esperanto lay the struggle for peace among the peoples and that such a goal could be achieved only by 'a death blow to the vampires of the inter- national powers' responsible for the Treaty of Versailles and not by having Germans and French 'stuttering among themselves' in Esperanto.[299]
The efforts of GEA to defend its position against the rising tide of Nazism had no effect. The Nazi press insisted on identifying the Esperantists as enthusiasts for 'this artificial, international, pacifist lan- guage; this anemic hothouse culture aimed at further stupefying incur- ably pan-European mongrels'.[300]
Gleichschaltung
When Hitler seized power on 30 January 1933, the GEA leaders had every reason to suppose that the new situation would have consequences for Esperanto.
The first sign of alarm was the liquidation of the powerful workers' Esperanto movement. Less than two years before the 'National Socialist revolution', the movement had already been torn apart by the growing conflict between the Social Democratic and Communist parties.[301] As a result, relations between the old, now primarily Communist, Workers' Esperanto Association (GLEA) and the newly founded, social democratic Socialist Esperanto Association (SEA) were characterized primarily by reciprocal insult. But after the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, which provided the new regime with a pretext to suppress unions and workers' parties, they were united by a similar fate. Early in April, police invaded the headquarters of GLEA in Berlin and confiscated all its property; thus, GLEA was forcibly disbanded, though in a few places it continued to operate in secret.[302] SEA choosing not to wait for an official order, freely disbanded on 31 March; an attempt to continue its existence under the new name 'Society of Esperanto Friends' was abandoned within a few weeks.[303] In Leipzig the police confiscated the inventory of the Communist publisher EKRELO and arrested its leader Walter Kampfrad although the administrative office of SAT, located in the same city, was able to send the larger part of its possessions to Paris before it too was banned at the end of 1933.
Many activists were imprisoned. A German SAT member reported early in June that Storm Troopers 'confiscated absolutely everything. The German "brown idiots" don't like Esperanto; they call it a Jewish language worthy only to be spread among the savages of Australia.'[304] A request by an SEA group leader for permission to conduct purely private lessons was refused. Of course, the persecution of worker Esperantists was aimed primarily at their Marxist activities, not their knowledge of Esperanto,[305]but often the state police, particularly in doubtful cases, considered the fact that they were Esperantists as the last straw, prompting the arrest of a suspected socialist or communist. On occasion, the victims noted that the Gestapo called Esperanto 'a secret communist language'.
After the disbanding of the workers' movement had eliminated the organizational base of three-quarters of the Esperantists in Germany, GEA was of the opinion that it could survive under the Nazi regime only by abandoning its previous moderate internationalist line and giving up its political neutrality.
'To All!' was the title of the April editorial in Germana Esperantisto, in which—beneath a quotation from Hitler—the GEA leadership stressed its fidelity to the German nation.[306] Two months later, Behrendt, whose political leanings favored the German National People's Party, pub- lished a five-page article on 'Esperanto in the Service of the German Spirit', which asserted that Esperanto was capable of 'conveying to other countries an understanding and respect for those things that make us German'.[307] In the same issue, the Association reported on its proposal to the government to make use of Esperanto, particularly to counteract the 'atrocity propaganda' ('Greuelpropaganda') directed at the Nazi regime from abroad.[308]
On 30 May the GEA addressed a written request to the ministry of internal affairs for so-called Gleichschaltung (such 'bringing into con- formity' with Nazi policies was a requirement for the continued exis- tence of voluntary organizations).[309] Two weeks later, the ministry replied that the coordination of GEA 'can be left to [your] consideration'. Communicating this reply, nebulously formulated and devoid of detail on the procedures to be followed, the leadership presented its members with its guidelines for Gleichschaltung. Point number 11 required that 'persons with an anti-state attitude cannot be members in GEA' and that 'non-Aryans [that is, Jews], Marxists or communists' would be excluded from leadership bodies. At the same time the leadership underlined the necessity of Gleichschaltung, 'if GEA wishes to continue its existence and to go on with its work without hindrance', and it called for discipline among the membership.[310]
The GEA leaders were painfully aware of the level of concern among the Association's members. As early as the end of April, the president of the Saxon League reported that 'whole groups' had lost the courage to continue disseminating Esperanto, given the political changes.5 6 In May, Paul Christaller, president of the Stuttgart Esperanto Club from the time of its founding in 1905, announced his resignation, also as a member; as a known pacifist, he sought to avoid giving the club difficul- ties under a regime that considered pacifists, like communists, 'enemies of the people'.[311] In July, an activist in Heilbronn wrote that in his city 'the movement is almost entirely stagnant' and that 'these days, we don't
Fig. 3.1 On 1 August 1932, Heroldo de Esperanto, a weekly newspaper pub- lished in Cologne, included a message of greeting from the lord mayor, Konrad Adenauer, to the future attendees at the 25th World Congress, planned to take place in Cologne a year hence. In March 1933 six weeks after Hitler's seizure of power, the Nazis removed Adenauer from office. The Congress did indeed take place, but with far fewer participants than origi- nally anticipated
have a very good reputation around here'.[312] He and probably many oth- ers were waiting for the results of the coming annual meeting of GEA; though there were also numbers of direct protests against the proposed
Gleichschaltung.[313]
For GEA the situation was complicated by the fact that during the first six months of the Nazi regime preparations were proceeding for the 25th World Congress, to take place in the summer of 1933 in Cologne. The invitation had been issued in 1932 by Konrad Adenauer, the Lord Mayor at the time (Fig. 3.1).
When the Nazis expelled him from office, preparations for the congress were thrown into crisis when the new authorities limited their support for the Local Congress Committee (LKK). The organizers also knew that the Nazi press had earlier condemned the idea of inviting an Esperanto congress to Cologne.i 0 The concerns of the LKK were all the greater because as soon as the first news of the reign of terror in Germany was published abroad, many of those registered to attend began to reconsider their participation. Calls came to move the congress to a country where participation could be guaranteed to 'Jews, working people and generally to everyone with differing opinions'.[314] Foreign indignation grew when it was learned that a Slovak businessman traveling through Germany was beaten unconscious by a group of Nazis because he was wearing a suspi- cious badge—the green star of Esperanto.[315]
Nonetheless, the majority of German Esperantists probably favored holding this international gathering in their country, hoping thereby to gain support, or at least less negative pressure, from the new rulers; accordingly, they sought to reassure those foreigners afraid of encounter- ing difficulties during their stay in Hitler's Germany. Particularly Heroldo de Esperanto, published in Cologne, repeatedly asserted that 'today the situation in German territory is quieter and safer than it was before'. [316]Yet such assertions led to protests:[317] early in June the Polish Esperanto Congress, meeting in Warsaw, accepted a resolution that the World Congress 'cannot be attended by Poles'.[318]
In mid-May the president of UEA, Eduard Stettler, urgently asked the LKK whether 'the Congress can take place [...] in complete liberty, without police oversight or the necessity of police protection'.[319] Receiving no reply after four weeks, on 17 June Stettler dispatched a circular to the members of the UEA committee asking for a vote on the question of whether to hold the UEA Congress in Cologne or to abandon it. Of the 20 replies, 14 committee members, all of them German, voted to go ahead; only four members voted against, and two abstained.[320] Although Stettler himself was willing to give up on the Congress[321], such a decision would have affected only the Congress of UEA, traditionally taking place within the larger World Congress. This larger event was fully the respon- sibility of the International Central Committee. In any case, the result of the vote was clear, and in the meantime the LKK was able to commu- nicate to would-be participants that the authorities had guaranteed that there would be no 'difficulties or hindrance to invited foreign guests'.[322]For the moment, the Nazi regime, concerned for its international reputa- tion, chose to put its ideological opposition to Esperanto on one side.
In the end, the Congress attracted a mere 900 participants from 32 countries—approximately half the number earlier anticipated.[323] A British participant noted that 'you felt a somewhat strange atmosphere [in the congress] because of the Hitler paraphernalia'.[324] The Nazi mayor, Gunter Riesen, greeted the Congress wearing a brown shirt, ignored Esperanto com- pletely and expressed his joy that so many foreigners had come to Cologne 'to learn for themselves about Germany as it really is'. He defended the 'National Socialist revolution' as protecting the world against Bolshevism.[325]Subsequently, the Cologne newspapers published the favorable views of a few participants on the harmonious conclusion of the World Congress, adding that in the future the worldwide community of Esperantists would have no ground to believe the 'tales of terror' in Germany.[326]
GEA's annual general meeting took place as part of the World Congress on 29 July. A priority item on its agenda was the proposal for the Gleichschaltung of the association. The delegates—41 groups with 106 votes were represented, though they comprised less than 5% of the total membership—unanimously approved the Gleichschaltung. In the interim, Behrendt assumed the role of 'leader'. Directly responsible to him was a four member Steering Council (pre- viously the executive committee) and the leaders of the groups ('Obmanner'). The annual general meeting would now have only an advisory role.[327]
GEA's new constitution[328] was emptied of any mention of political neu- trality. Drastically illustrating this changed situation were Behrendt's omi- nous words in Cologne to the effect that 'misusers' or people who used Esperanto 'for bad purposes [...] should be punished'.[329] The guidelines did indeed state that people with 'an anti-state attitude' were not allowed to belong to GEA.[330] But, in contrast to the draft guidelines published in advance of the Congress, the final version did not contain the require- ment that 'non-Aryans, Marxists and Communists' should be excluded from leadership positions in the Association. This condition had brought indignant reactions. A long-time member, the Austrian Esperanto pioneer Otto Simon, sent Behrendt a sharply worded declaration of resignation,[331] and numerous protests came from German Esperantists.[332]Although the discriminatory clause had disappeared from the guidelines, Behrendt nonetheless required that a candidate for the function of club leader should provide a written guarantee that he was neither Jewish nor Marxist and that he would report 'anti-state' members to the GEA.[333]
The report on the Congress noted optimistically that 'all concern has been removed because the German Esperanto Association has effectuated its Gleichschaltung .[334] But it soon became apparent that such expectations were mere illusion. To begin with, no government authority named an official leader for GEA, as was required for orderly Gleichschaltung. To curry favor with the regime, Behrendt advised the members that it was everyone's responsibility to use correspondence with foreign Esperantists to provide 'correct information' on the new Germany.i [335] Indeed, this appeal did not remain without echo,[336] nor was there a lack of Esperantist voices from other countries expressing their sympathy for the Nazi regime, including its anti-Jewish policies.[337] In the October 1933 Germana Esperantisto six pages were devoted to an Esperanto-language translation of a speech by Hitler,[338] and the Esperanto Union of Saxon Teachers pub- lished a four-page leaflet, La Nova Germanlando (The New Germania), which was distributed to 70 countries in 10,000 copies. Using statistics in an attempt to prove that Jews dominated German public life, this pamphlet, with its clear anti-Semitic bias, must be numbered among the most odious publications ever produced in the language of Zamenhof.
Nazi Esperantists
Around the autumn of 1933, a group of individuals hitherto largely unknown to the German Esperanto movement began to rise to promi- nence. For these people, GEA's submission to the authorities was still insufficient. As early as 9 February 1931, the young SA squad leader Herbert Wohlfahrt had founded the so-called Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Esperanto-Bund, an organization that from the start made itself available for Nazi propaganda by way of Esperanto. However, the party refused the Association the use of the epithet 'National Socialist', with the result that it changed its name to 'Neue Deutsche Esperanto- Bewegung' (NDEB). In October this group launched a divisive cam- paign against the 'eternaj hiera^uloj ('eternal yesterpeople') in GEA, with the aim of attracting GEA members to their cause.[339] NDEB's constitu- tion required, among other things, that all Esperanto organizations in Germany 'who tolerate and accept as members Jews, pacifists and prof- iteers' should be resisted 'by all interested authorities' until 'this anti- German attitude ceases or they are forced to dissolve'.[340]
At first, chiefly because of the prestige of Behrendt, the subversions of NDEB had only limited success. Realizing that even the Nazi GEA members were disinclined to support it, NDEB relaxed its earlier con- dition that only party members could join and from then on accepted sympathizers as well. GEA resisted NDEB's attacks, asserting that essen- tially the aims of the two organizations were identical, only excepting the ambitions of the NDEB leadership and the Jewish problem. GEA refused to expel its Jewish members (if they were 'honest people'), because GEA had not yet received an order to apply the 'Aryan paragraph'.[341]
In April 1934, however, the conflict entered a critical stage. Sixteen local groups in Saxony threatened to resign if the leadership of GEA did not resign and if the Aryan paragraph was not applied.[342] In reply, Behrendt underlined the fact that there was no legal hindrance to the existence of Jewish representatives (delegitoj) of UEA in Germany[343] and promptly expelled the person principally responsible for the ultima- tum, the leader of the Saxon League, Albrecht Naumann.[344] Naumann, a teacher in a technical school and for many years head of the GEAs press office, had earlier, in Cologne, proposed Behrendt as leader of the
Association. His present effort to remove Behrendt found little support among the GEA membership. Of the 1048 members who expressed an opinion, only 22 argued for the immediate introduction of the Aryan paragraph,[345] and in May, during the Whitsuntide annual general meeting of GEA in Wurzburg, Behrendt was unanimously re-elected as leader.
But in the course of the annual meeting a further ultimatum arrived. NDEB demanded that the two associations merge in a new 'German Esperanto Front' whose leader would be Naumann; if GEA did not yield, NDEB announced that it would 'launch, in the most severe and uncompromising manner, a fanatical battle against the present personali- ties, reactionaries who obstinately seek to resist the creation of a patriotic spirit within the German Esperanto community'.[346] The annual meeting greeted the reading of NDEB's letter with cries of 'Shame!' and derision, but the recently re-elected Behrendt, wounded by the letter's naming him a 'reactionary', announced that he was stepping down and resigned. As the new leader he proposed the engineer Kurt Walther, from Dresden, a member of the party who had joined GEA only at the end of 1931.
Assuming office, Walther not only paid homage to his predecessor but also bowed to Naumann. Two weeks later, on 3 June, Walther (for GEA) and Willibald Pietsch (for NDEB) signed an agreement for the merger of the two organizations in a working relationship whose goal was the creation of a German Esperanto Front.[347] In July, Walther ordered every GEA member to complete a survey that required, among other things, an answer to the question of whether he or she was of Jewish ancestry. [348]
Because GEA had adapted itself to NDEB's line, for a while it seemed that the quarrel was in fact at an end. But peace did not last long, because Friedrich Ellersiek, publisher of GEA's journal, categorically refused to accept contribu- tions from NDEB. When, in addition, a Berlin group contested the validity of the decisions taken in Wurzburg—in fact, Behrendt, in the general confusion, had not followed the correct procedure for invitations to the annual general meeting—NDEB again broke off relations with GEA and, as of September 1934, began publishing its own newsletter.[349] It openly appealed to members of GEA to leave their Association, attacked Ellersiek for publishing advertise- ments for 'anti-German' Esperanto publications, and demanded that the lan- guage be used in the service of the Fatherland 'on an unconditionally National Socialist basis'. Although barely a month passed before GEA submitted to the Nazi regime, NDEB considered the delay to be pure opportunism.[350]
In an effort to avoid giving NDEB fodder for further attacks, Walther tried to erase the most recent differences between GEA and NDEB. He assured Pietsch, the leader of NDEB, that with his consent nothing had occurred in GEA that was not in accordance with his National Socialist principles.[351] On 6 January 1935, an extraordinary annual meeting of GEA took place in Dresden, at which a new constitution was accepted and the goal of the Association was defined, next to the dissemination of Esperanto, as 'utilization [of the language] in a National Socialist sense'.[352]Now definitively elected as leader, Walther asked for the cooperation of his members 'to spread our National Socialist worldview in all countries of the world through Esperanto'.[353] And, finally, to 'satisfy in every way the requirements of the times', in September 1935 Walther communicated the message that 'only German compatriots can be members ofGEA'[354]—an action that meant that Jews would have to resign from the Association.
The once neutral and globally respected GEA had expelled from its ranks in the name of 'love of country' members of the same ethnicity as Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, who addressed the forerunners of fascism in his day with the following words: 'You who sow the dark seeds of conflict, talk if you will about your hatred of everything that is not yours, talk about egotism, but never use the word "love"—because in your mouths that sacred word "love" is defiled.'[355]
4
'An Ally of World Jewry#
The Road to Prohibition
We have described the steps by which the politically neutral GEA degenerated into an association overtly dedicated to Nazi ideol- ogy. We can now turn to, among other sources, the papers of the State Secret Police. These papers, preserved in the German Federal Archive in Berlin-Lichterfelde, will help us to reconstruct the tac- tics employed by the regime in its anti-Esperanto policy and also to discover how it reacted to attempts to create a kind of symbiosis between Esperanto and National Socialism.
The first major official blow to the German Esperanto movement, after the destruction of the workers' associations, was delivered by a decree of the Reich Minister of Science and Education, Bernhard Rust, on 17 May 1935:
The cultivation of artificial world auxiliary languages such as Esperanto has no place in the National Socialist state. Their use leads to a weakening of the essential values of the national heritage. Thus we should avoid all
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 109
U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4_4
promotion of the teaching of such languages; instructional classrooms should not be made available for this purpose.[356]
Although this decree, canceling official permission for such instruction granted in 1924, merely confirmed the continued silent suppression of teaching of this kind (all radio courses in Esperanto were closed down immediately after the seizure of power), it nonetheless provoked widespread discussion in the press, which tended to interpret the decree as a total pro- hibition of Esperanto.[357] In reply to a memorandum sent to the government shortly before the decree, Walther was notified on 3 June by the Ministry of Internal Affairs that work on behalf of Esperanto 'is not prohibited, but also will not be supported by the state'. Informing the members of the leader- ship and the group leaders about this response, Walther 'urgently' requested that all members send him excerpts from their private correspondence that might document 'that the Esperantists, through their world auxiliary lan- guage, are working abroad for the [German] people and fatherland'.[358]
At almost the same time, the first expression of official opinion arrived regarding the efforts of German Esperantists to have Esperanto serve the Nazi ideology and thereby ignore the humanist origins behind the language and movement. It was clearly negative. In a semi-official com- mentary on Rust's decree, ministerial counselor Kohlbach delivered the following lesson to the Esperantists:
As in most international efforts, the driving impulse of the Esperanto movement is a desire to secure the advent of eternal peace among the peo- ples. [...] Even if today many German Esperantists distance themselves from such political fantasies [...], the original driving idea behind a move- ment is nonetheless difficult to dispel. But even greater than the danger of self-delusion [.] is the risk that elements unalterably opposed to the pres- ent form of the state and to any effort at national self-preservation will use the cover of such a movement to pursue their old goals, both within and beside it.[359]
This was still a relatively moderate statement compared to the tone used by NDEB. In April 1935 that organization declared its opposition to 'the limitless glorification of Zamenhof, which is unfortunately still in style in some German Esperanto circles'. It continued by spewing out the follow- ing offensive utterance: 'between the Jewish-pacifist goals of the "inter- nal idea" of this Zamenhof and our Fuhrer's desire for peace there lies a racially conditioned and hence abysmally profound contrast'.[360] This was a level of betrayal of the Esperanto tradition never before experienced.
This constant battle on two fronts made GEA's situation more and more complicated. In fact, we must attribute the Association's repeti- tion of Nazi slogans and its opportunism not so much to specifically Nazi tendencies as to a high degree of political blindness—the result of a longstanding tradition of ignoring the political implications of work for Esperanto. We should also take into consideration the fact that at the time the vast majority of the German people was equally blinded and that much more prominent figures than Behrendt or Walther paid homage to the regime with elaborate declarations of loyalty. It would be unjust to condemn the entire GEA membership as infected with the brown virus. As German Esperantists explained when the war was over, only for the sake of appearance and through gritted teeth did they pretend 'that their Esperanto club was in harmony with "national concepts"' to ensure its continued existence.[361] A few, for example the publisher Ellersiek, revealed the limits of their willingness to adapt quite early on or even protested directly against injustices. After the GEA group in Magdeburg intro- duced the Aryan Paragraph in 1934, for example, it immediately lost not only its single Jewish member but also about a quarter of its members through voluntary resignation.[362]
How little the attitude of GEA came from sincere conviction was evi- dent also in the statements of NDEB. To some extent, GEAs Nazi devia- tion was excusable, given the constant pressure and slanderous utterances on the part of NDEB, which never tired of blaming GEAs leaders for their insincere and 'reactionary' attitude, finally coming to the conclusion that most Esperantists in Germany, in spite of everything, continued to march, consciously or unconsciously 'along the old much-traveled paths of the Jewish illusion of brotherhood among the peoples'.[363] It remains for us to note, however, the sad fact that GEA increasingly presented itself as a 'militant patriot brigade'—the kind of organization into which ten years earlier Albert Steche had refused to transform it.
As late as 1935, Walther was apparently still unaware of the futility of his battle against the regime's disapproval on the one hand and NDEB's insults on the other. Emphasizing that GEA was ready to review hostile Esperanto publications from abroad, on 23 June he asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs to 'protect' the association against slanderous articles in the press to the effect that German Esperantists harbored unpatriotic thoughts and engaged in unpatriotic activities, and to declare that GEA, led by a member of the party, continued 'its work in accordance with its constitution' and that officials and teachers were entitled to join as mem- bers.[364] But the Ministry refused—'for reasons of principle'—to make such a declaration,[365] with the result that the GEA found itself in the delicate position of being neither prohibited nor officially confirmed as acting legally.
Soon afterward, NDEB learned its limitations too. From its deal- ings with the authorities, among them the Ministry of Propaganda, it concluded that 'recruitment for Esperanto linked to National Socialism is not desired'. As a result, in a meeting in Leipzig on 18 August, it decided to dissolve its local groups, cease recruitment for Esperanto in Germany and limit itself only to the 'practical use' of the language for Nazi pro- paganda abroad; at the same time it threatened GEA with drastic con- sequences if it too did not give up on recruitment within the country.u
Neither GEA nor NDEB could know how closely their conflict was being watched by the SS Security Service. Among comments internal to the SS were the observation that even after the departure of the 'politi- cal charlatan Behrendt', little had changed in GEA, and complaints that the Ministry of Propaganda had twice provided financial support for Esperanto publications (which GEA with 'foolish lack of caution' had announced to the world).[366]
At around the same time, in the summer of 1935, the political police insisted to the ministries that all Esperanto organizations be liquidated. On 26 June, Reinhard Heydrich, deputy of the Politische Polizeikommandeur der Lander, Heinrich Himmler, drew the attention of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the fact that 'recently the Esperanto movement has been engaged in very lively activity'. As an example he mentioned that, among 36 people arrested in March 1935 in Dusseldorf for treason against the state, no less than 29 were Esperantists.[367] Because 'a large part of the membership of the Esperanto unions are suspected of anti-state activity' and because, on the other hand, it was not possible to check their correspondence on such a large scale, Heydrich recommended the dissolution and prohibition of all such organizations and the confiscation of their property.[368]
While the Ministry of Science and Education supported Heydrich's proposal, the Ministry of Propaganda, led by Joseph Goebbels, in fact had scruples about direct prohibition at this stage. In a letter of 23 October the Ministry (undoubtedly mindful also of the Berlin Olympics to take place in the summer of 1936) expressed concern about the international reaction such a step might have:
Among the millions of adherents of Esperanto abroad there is certainly a large number who are not political and see only the idealistic side of work for Esperanto. These people will receive the impression that because of activities in their opinion totally benign, as is indeed the learning of a new language, in Germany even associations of this kind are persecuted. This opinion will naturally be promulgated in the abundant pamphlets distrib- uted by Esperanto organizations throughout the world. Also the foreign press will use such an occasion to launch propaganda against Germany.
Thus, the Ministry recommended that Esperanto Associations led by party members should not be hit with official prohibition; instead, 'with a certain amount of pressure easily achievable' it would be better to work for their voluntary dissolution.[369]
On 21 January 1936, Heydrich communicated the Ministry of Propaganda'sopinion to Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer. In his letter he repeated that in the past year the Esperanto movement had been notably active: in Munster 44 members of a Communist group had been arrested, and in Bottrop the local GEA club had been dissolved for the distribu- tion of leaflets by former GLEA members. Heydrich wrote that originally he intended to dissolve all Esperanto organizations, but he now asked Hess that a party order be promulgated prohibiting party members from belonging to these organizations. At the same time he asked Goebbels' ministry 'to issue propaganda in a suitable form' against GEA.[370]
Indeed, as of the end of 1935 an anti-Esperanto campaign was clearly visible in the Nazi press. Its sharpness far exceeded the tone of earlier attacks. In November, Der Weltkampf, a journal founded by the principal Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and fully dedicated to the battle against Jews, named Esperanto 'an ally of world Jewry'. [371] The article was written by Theodor Koch, an elementary school teacher in Bremen who knew enough Esperanto to supply the Gestapo, regularly as of April 1935, with information on the movement. We will return to him.
Also relevant to the situation in November 1935 was an internal report by the Gestapo branch in Potsdam: 'it seems extraordinarily odd that in Germany the publication of journals in Esperanto, that deceitful Jewish language, is still allowed, as is the case in Cologne'.1 8 The report was referring to Heroldo, which at the time was preparing to move to the Netherlands. At the beginning of 1936 the attacks became so frequent and intense that they could only give the impression that coordinated activity aimed at systematically preparing for the liquidation of the move- ment was proceeding. The newspapers gave their principal attention to the use of the language in a National Socialist sense, which they condemned without reservation. Under the title 'Information under the Soviet Star' the journal of the Nazi student union wrote that it was amazed by the fact that 'the German Esperanto Association is naive enough to believe that through the use ofits internationalist artificial language it can campaign fOr a nationalist idea such as National Socialism to workers in foreign countries influenced byJewish-Marxist beliefs'.[372] Thus, it was from the Nazi side that GEA had to learn of its naivety in failing to understand that Nazism and Esperanto were irreconcilable.
At the end of 1935 GEA's journal ceased to appear. Its publisher Friedrich Ellersiek gave up on it partly because of financial difficulties and partly because of the attacks of NDEB against its 'un-German attitude'. In the final issue Kurt Walther still optimistically quoted a communication from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 'Every German can, if he wishes, learn Esperanto!',[373] but midway in the preparations for the 25th German Esperanto Congress in Weimar, came the decree demanded by Heydrich. Signed by Martin Bormann, chief of staff in the office of the Deputy Fuhrer, and dated 18 February 1936, it declared:
Because the creation of an international mixed language runs counter to the basic concepts of National Socialism and ultimately can respond only to the interests of supranational powers, the Deputy Fuhrer hereby forbids all party members and members of organizations affiliated with the party from membership in all forms of artificial-language organizations.[374]
Because NDEB was led by party members and probably a large number of its likely 500 members also belonged to the party, its existence was essentially ended by this decree. GEA also faced the question of whether it should continue its activity or dissolve itself, because Bormann's decree meant that not only Walther but also many of its members would have to resign. At the end of May 1936 the Congress in Weimar took place as planned; a publicity leaflet on Esperanto produced on that occasion lacked all mention of the origins of the language and its authorship by Zamenhof.[375] The participants unanimously decided to continue their activities, approved a new constitution (the fourth in three years) and elected the Dresden businessman Fritz Thieme as their new leader.[376]
But the new leadership scarcely had time to draw breath before the regime abandoned its last scruples. On 26 April the Gestapo arrested two Dutch Esperantists who were meeting in Dusseldorf with German fellow speakers; after four days of questioning they were escorted to the frontier.2 4 An internal decree of the political police bearing the date of 24 April left to the discretion of local police forces the dis- solution of groups whose members were engaged in activity against the state. The decree indicated that 'for reasons of state politics, a general prohibition of Esperanto organizations is currently not the intention'.[377] According to an internal report of 1940, irregular and illegal activities by members of Esperanto associations continued, so that it was necessary to put an end to the organized movement entirely. The fatal blow came on 20 June. A decree from Heinrich Himmler, who had recently combined the offices of Chief of Police and Leader of the SS, prohibited activity for the international organizations UEA and SAT and required that internal associations, principally GEA,[378]dissolve themselves before 15 July if they wished to avoid compulsory liquidation. After that date all activity for any artificial-language orga- nization was forbidden.[379]
This requirement was communicated by Thieme to the clubs and indi- vidual members in a circular of 4 July.[380] Thirty years and almost two months after its founding, the German Esperanto Association ceased to exist.[381]
Just a Language?
What, then, can we learn from the papers of the secret police? We can surely conclude that GEA was banned because, despite its efforts at adap- tation, it remained infiltrated by elements opposed to the regime.
Clearly, throughout the period of the Third Reich, Esperantists, par- ticularly those in the workers' Esperanto movement, engaged in anti- fascist resistance. The group most active in using Esperanto to organize resistance proved to be the communists.[382] In the first years of the Nazi regime, GLEA members organized underground courses3 1 and distrib- uted information about the situation in Germany among their comrades abroad, sometimes hiding them in advertising leaflets, for example for Nivea Cream.[383] In the reverse direction, translations from the workers' Esperanto press in other countries served as instructional material in ille- gal anti-Nazi cells. In addition, the periodicals published by SAT in the years 1933-35 were full of first-hand reports from German comrades about the Nazi terror; it seems, furthermore, that in general they painted a more realistic picture of the situation[384] than the newsletters produced by the communist PEK.[385] Worker Esperantists maintained contact with one another by means of secret meetings not only in private houses but even in such places as public baths and in forests,[386] and they also undertook to serve as couriers, transporting banned literature from Czechoslovakia to Saxony[387] or from the Netherlands to the Ruhr region;[388] in Hamburg, seamen smuggled anti-Nazi brochures to local Esperantists.[389] Esperanto also helped victims of political persecution flee abroad. Many worker Esperantists nevertheless fell victim to the regime. Some of them lan- guished in prisons or concentration camps, in some cases for several years. In the Hohnstein concentration camp Gerhard Schubert, a Social Democrat and a teacher, was tortured to the point of suicide in March 1933,[390] and Theodor Stoterau, founder of the workers' Esperanto club in Bremerhaven, threw himself to his death from the fifth story of the courthouse where he had been sentenced to six years of imprisonment.[391]A highly active communist Esperantist in Frankfurt am Main, Herbert Haupt, arrested in 1933, was shot dead, probably in a cellar.[392]
In concentration camps, workers continued to teach Esperanto wherever they could, though it seems that increasingly such courses served primarily as secret fora for political discussion.[393] As the years passed, the opportuni- ties to work for the spread of Esperanto were reduced to a minimum. For example, a Berlin GLEA club spawned an anti-fascist resistance group that succeeded in surviving until 1944; its core consisted of Esperantists, but little by little, and in increasing numbers, new members joined primar- ily to participate in its underground activities; these new members were either not competent in Esperanto or had no knowledge of it at all.[394]
To what extent did the resistance of worker Esperantists have an effect on GEA? How did they relate to the 'neutralists' in the shadow of Nazism? In June 1933, SAT members were reminded by their leader Lanti of advice he had given a few years earlier, in August 1929, to mem- bers in countries where SAT was banned. 'Where our members can- not gather under the red flag', Lanti advised, 'they must simply shelter under the green one; they must participate in the neutral, bourgeois, even fascist Esperanto movement'.[395] Although Lanti had in mind activi- ties in countries suffering under 'white terror'—countries which, unlike Hitler's Germany, were not in principle opposed to the neutral Esperanto movement—part of the German SAT membership certainly followed his advice and joined GEA 'to stay in contact and to avoid losing our knowl- edge of the language'.[396]
But certain facts argue against widespread infiltration of the associa- tion by socialists and communists. First, GEA itself, for its own protec- tion, had no wish to tolerate widespread membership in the association by people earlier known as adherents of the workers' organization. Secondly, those who followed Lanti's call were warned by SAT not to engage in political activity within a neutral association. Thirdly, some SAT members were critical of Lanti, suggesting that he 'has forgotten that the Esperanto movement in Germany is no longer "neutral" but "fascist"' and that to such a movement 'our adherence is not possible'.[397]Diehard resisters accordingly could not regard GEA as a suitable forum for their activities.
The conclusion that GEA was banned because it failed to free itself of members hostile to the regime is contradicted by a further consider- ation—namely that Heydrich intentionally exaggerated the possibility of the existence of Marxist elements in the German Esperanto movement because he hoped in that way to achieve more rapidly something to which the conservative bureaucracy (and apparently even the Ministry of Propaganda) was still disinclined: the complete destruction of the entire
Esperanto movement. Undoubtedly Heydrich's agents kept him well informed of the internal structure of GEA and the apolitical viewpoint of most of its members. The question of whether more or fewer Marxists were active in it had little essential influence on his conviction that Esperanto was the invention of a Jew and therefore had to be exterminated. To him, all active Esperantists were enemies of the state by their very nature, because only such people could possibly be interested in, as he wrote in June 1935, 'the propagation, entirely superfluous and from a nationalist point of view utterly repulsive, of a universal language for individuals of all peoples and races'.[398] Heydrich's insistence on the destruction of the Esperanto movement might also be considered an element in the struggle of the Gestapo and the SS for a stronger position in the state. Himmler and Heydrich achieved this goal with the establishment, on 17 July 1936, of the institution Reichsfuhrer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei.[399] Three days later the definitive demise of GEA was decreed.
It remained unclear whether the Nazis were willing to tolerate Esperanto as a language. Fritz Thieme, the last leader of GEA, informed the members in July 1936 that Himmler's decree was not directed 'against the application' of Esperanto 'through the spoken and written exchange of ideas with speakers of foreign languages'[400] and that 'Esperanto itself is not forbidden in Germany'.[401] Heydrich also noted under the date of 27 August 1936: 'The use of Esperanto in private correspondence cannot be opposed, as long as it does not take place with negative intentions against the state or to advance the unity of the Esperantists.'[402] In the following year the Gestapo confirmed that 'a ban on the application of Esperanto has so far not occurred and probably will not occur in the future'.[403]
Indeed, after the dissolution of GEA many Esperantists—those who did not fear persecution for political activity—continued their private involvement with the language, corresponding with foreign friends and subscribing to neutral magazines. However, permission for the private use of Esperanto often had only symbolic value: the permission was not widely known, nor did it hinder individual denunciations on the part of local Gestapo members. Thus, on the one hand, we know of Esperantists who never suffered hindrance, and even a few Germans who fled to Switzerland having secretly learned Esperanto.[404] On the other hand, there were those who were called in for questioning by the police for receiv- ing foreign Esperanto magazines, were given written orders 'to desist from all activity for the Esperanto language'34 or were threatened with punishment after having participated in an informal meeting at which Esperanto was spoken.3 5 On one occasion an Esperantist in Antwerp received a recommendation from the German ambassador to Belgium that he cease correspondence in Esperanto with his German friend,[405] and on another occasion, when a Chinese Esperanto journal published the names of two financial contributors and indicated that they were from the no longer existing Austria, the Gestapo did not neglect to take an interest in their identity.[406]
In April 1938 Theodor Koch, the Gestapo informer in Bremen, reported that, according to German regulations, 'only organized Esperantism is forbidden in Germany'; in his view, this fact was cleverly exploited by Esperantists in Germany and abroad.[407] But the office of the Reichsfuhrer SS confirmed the actual situation, noting in June 1939, that 'the dissemi- nation of Esperanto in Germany is forbidden'.[408]
Of the European countries annexed by the Nazis or under their grow- ing influence, Austria was the first to discover that a legal Esperanto movement was no longer possible. The workers' Esperanto movement in Austria, as in Germany, was much stronger than the neutral movement. At the end of 1933 the social democratic Austrian Workers Esperantist League (ALLE), whose guiding force was Franz Jonas, postwar federal president of Austria, numbered over 1700 members, while the neutral Austrian Esperanto Association (AEA) had only around 500. Following the unsuccessful workers' uprising of February 1934, the dictatorial regime of Engelbert Dollfuss banned ALLE, along with all other workers' organizations. This did not change the traditionally favorable attitude of the Austrian authorities toward Esperanto. When in 1936 the 28th World Congress of Esperanto took place in Vienna, its honorary com- mittee included large numbers of well-known figures—from the Federal Chancellor to the president of the Danube Steamship Company.[409]
On 12 March 1938 Austrian independence came to an end. As early as 20 March, members of the SA closed the International Esperanto Museum in Vienna.[410] Individual Esperantists suffered exploratory visits by Gestapo agents.[411] On 1 August, instructions from Berlin decreed the end of the organized Esperanto movement.[412] Significantly, the instruc- tions made a distinction between the AEA, characterized as primarily Catholic and rightist,[413] and the competing organization, the Austrian Esperantist Federation, founded in 1936 and, according to the Nazis, headed by former Socialists. The former was 'requested' to disband itself, while the latter was forcibly dissolved. After the annexation of the Sudetenland, the German Esperanto League in Czechoslovakia too was dissolved on 16 December 1938, as a result of a local initiative, before the order came from Berlin.[414]
The Swiss journalist, Hans Unger, who worked in Berlin as a special correspondent to several Swiss newspapers, experienced at first hand the degree to which Heydrich's attitude grew more and more severe. Soon after IEL's yearbook for 1939 appeared, listing him under 'Germany' as its only representative—in this case as a journalist—he was visited by a Gestapo agent. When Unger later met with a dozen or so Esperantists in a Berlin cafe, he was called to the head office of the Gestapo. There, Heydrich personally questioned him, characterizing Unger's contacts with Esperantists as efforts to organize an 'international network' opposed to the Third Reich. When Unger replied that the conscience of humanity would be offended if people were sent to concentration camps simply for the use of Esperanto, Heydrich curtly interrupted him: 'Our conscience is German, and we act only on that basis. The idea of a human conscience is a Jewish creation and is of no interest to us!'[415] Unger later heard simi- lar insults from the mouth of Rudolf Hess, who even went so far as to present him with a fantastic plan for a simplified German language to be forced on a pan-European federation of states under Nazi German
hegemony.[416]
Not long after Unger's conversations with Heydrich and Hess, the Second World War broke out, bringing death and unimaginable suffer- ing to millions of people. Here, there is no need to present the details of the Nazi terror rampaging across Europe, particularly in the east. A less well-known aspect of the enslaving policies of the Nazis was the sup- pression of the communication rights of Jews and Slavs. Hitler himself insisted in July 1942 that the non-German population of Eastern Europe 'should never be allowed a higher education' and that in the schools this population should be allowed to learn 'nothing more than the meaning of traffic signs, at most'. The German language was to be taught to Jews and Slavs only to the extent that it was necessary 'to create the linguis- tic preconditions for our leadership'—so, to explain to such people the meaning of Nazi orders.[417]
The expansion of the Nazis to the east ruled out possibilities for the use of Esperanto, that symbol of linguistic equal rights that found its first enthusiastic support among precisely the Jews and Slavs. Within two or three days of the occupation of Poland, German soldiers appeared among the Esperantists.3 [418] One of the most eminent such Esperantists was the bacteriologist Odo Bujwid, of Krakow, a former fellow student of Zamenhof.[419] Security police searched his house in mid-September 1939; he was subjected to interrogation, also about his Esperanto connections, for three days. Singled out among the first victims were members of the Zamenhof family. On 4 October, shortly after he German army's entry into Warsaw, members of the Nazi security service arrived at the Jewish Hospital asking for Adam Zamenhof, the head doctor in its ophthalmol- ogy department.[420] Adam, son of Lazar Zamenhof, was arrested.
Adam's son, Louis Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof, is convinced that the Zamenhof family was on a specially prepared list, since the family members were arrested, at various addresses, all on the same day. Given that all Jews and Polish intellectuals were no longer safe in the face of the unbridled harassment of Heydrich's executioners, one could assume that no special order was needed to arrest the Zamenhof family and other
Fig. 4.1 Lazar Zamenhof's three children, murdered by the Nazis: Lidia, Zofia and Adam
Esperantists.[421] But the fact that such a list existed is evident from a report sent by Lothar Beutel, head of 'Einsatzgruppe IV' of the Security Police, to Berlin on 6 October 1939 (one day after the triumphant entry of Hitler into the conquered Warsaw). Beutel mentions particularly that the 'well- known Jewish Zamenhof family' had been arrested and questioned.7 3 Adam Zamenhof was shot dead on 29 January 1940;[422] his sisters Zofia and Lidia, along with Ida Zimmermann, Lazar's sister, were transported from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 to Treblinka, where all three perished.[423]
Many Esperantists were among the numberless victims of mass murder in Poland,[424] some of them probably primarily because they were activists for Esperanto (Fig. 4.1).[425]
On 27 September 1939—a few days before the occupation ofWarsaw— an office was set up in Berlin known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office), which combined the state Security Police, including the Gestapo, with the party's Security Service and as of that date served as the center of power for the discovery and suppression of all opponents of the Nazi system; its leader was Reinhard Heydrich. It seems evident that the arrests of Esperantists in Poland also originated in a carefully prepared plan emanating from that office. In fact, even before the RSHA was created, the preparations for persecution had been elevated to the status of scientific research: as of April 1937, these plans were in the hands of Franz Alfred Six, head of Department II, responsible for 'ideological research'/[426] Six soon became the most important functionary at RSHA after Heydrich and his deputy Werner Best, and faithfully followed the line that maintained that an ideological opponent was more dangerous than the more easily identifiable political enemy.[427] Six was a SS-Brigadefuhrer and, as of 1940, also a university professor. Although he always (particularly after the war) liked to pose as a mere scientific manager, he was well informed about the extermination plans of the Nazis—or, to put matters differently, Six saw no contra- diction between research and persecution. Characteristically, many years later Adolf Eichmann expressed his admiration for the scientifically based work of his former superior Six.[428]
Beginning in 1936, Eichmann worked in Section II 112 ('Jewry'). Another section in Six's department, II 122, was responsible for oppo- nents other than Jews, Freemasons, Marxists and churches, namely lib- eralism, pacifism, emigres—and Esperantists. The head of the Esperanto office was SS-Untersturmfuhrer Horst Kunze, who also remained in reg- ular contact with Theodor Koch, the fervent ex-Esperantist and Gestapo confidant in Bremen.
It was this same Koch who pointed out, following the annexation of Austria, that the annexation presented a unique opportunity to seize not only the 'treasures' of the Esperanto museum but also all papers associ- ated with the AEA. This material had, he maintained, 'the greatest sci- entific significance—also for research on the Jewish community'. Koch attempted to explain matters to his colleagues:
Because the world organization of the Esperanto movement, in addition to its Messianic task of abolishing the languages of the peoples (First Epistle to the Corinthians 13.8), also serves as a political auxiliary force (for exam- ple in the siege of Germany before 1914), all leading Esperantists should be considered not only as cultural subversives but also as international conspirators.[429]
One could certainly conclude that such delusion was no more than paranoia masquerading as science. But Koch seems to have found in the RSHA a ready audience for his favorite topic. We know that Heydrich was fanatically convinced of the omnipresent subversion of the Jews. On 13 April 1940, Koch personally appeared in the RSHA. Kunze asked him to 'compile a summary report on the ideology of the international Esperanto movement' and promised to provide him with confiscated 'Esperanto literature' in support of his studies.[430] Koch seems not to have been particularly dependent on this material because very soon thereafter there appeared, under the title 'Esperanto' and with the date of 8 June 1940, an internal report of 11 typed pages.[431] This remarkable document summarizes the ideological position of the RSHA regarding Esperanto. It was evidently based on Theodor Koch's studies.[432] In the introduction we can read how Esperanto came into being:
From a Zionist movement (Chawewe Zion[433]) came the Polish Jew Zamenhof, at one time an eye doctor in Warsaw. He sought to realize Jewish world rule in accordance with the prophecy of Isaiah 2.4, as a reign of peace under Jewish leadership.[434] All peoples would freely submit to the Jews. This goal would be achieved through the 'peaceful' penetration and subversion of the master peoples. Serving Zamenhof in this effort would be unlimited pacifism, a new religion of his own creation, Homaranismo, as a first step to the Jewish religion and the universal language 'Esperanto' invented by him, which, through application of the same law for all mem- bers of all peoples, colors and climes and through the same education, ideals, convictions and goals, would little by little lead to the same mish- mash of peoples.[435] These three goals together, not simply propaganda for a universal language, constitute Esperantism, which, after around 1905, plays the role of an auxiliary force for the Jews. Among its special resources are anticipated, among other things: an international press at first partially and later entirely in Esperanto; an international literature; international employment and freedom of domicile.
The document goes on to describe the development of Esperanto in the Weimar Republic through the lens of Nazism:
In Germany, leadership was in the hands of the B'nai B'rith Jew [Georg] Arnhold, of Dresden. Esperantism in Germany always had an anti-German attitude and its culturally subversive tendencies have become particularly evident in the period since the end of the war (after 1918). Precisely in the period after 1918, Esperantism was able to establish itself readily in Germany. Left-wing parties and circles made use of the artificial language 'Esperanto'. The leadership of almost all Esperanto associations was in the hands of Jews and Freemasons. The 'progressive' governments of the day advanced this language because it propagated in its literature the ideas of Marxism and communism, forming an excellent international organ for the idea of world brotherhood contained in such world concepts, and used by the Jew to attain his aim—world domination.
Given the above, it comes as no surprise that even the compliant GEA experienced no indulgence from the authorities. Even if a few patrioti- cally minded people wished to advance and disseminate Esperanto 'in a way useful to the state'—the document continued—experience showed that this was 'an entirely erroneous belief'. Despite the Gleichschaltung, even the politically reliable leaders of Esperanto organizations could do nothing to prevent activities hostile to the state within their ranks, given that a large part of their membership came from the working classes who did not know how to use the language professionally 'but employed it for their illegal political activity'. The malign political influence attributed to the German Esperantists was also applied to the Universal Esperanto Association. At first the document, relatively accurately, called it an 'inter- national union of bourgeois liberalist character for the neutral application of Esperanto in the field of tourism etc.' but later it noted that UEA 'par- ticularly in other countries is strongly infiltrated by Jews and pacifists'.
As if to dissolve any hope that, after the destruction of the Esperanto organizations, the Nazis might begin to tolerate Esperanto as a mere hobby, the June 1940 document gave precisely the opposite instructions:
To consider 'Esperanto' merely an auxiliary language for international communication would be incorrect. The artificial language Esperanto is part of Esperantism, the weapon of the Jews.
We can gain a better understanding of the 'scientific research' from read- ing one of Heydrich's memoranda prepared less than a month after the above document. Heydrich proudly reports that the invading troops, most recently in Poland, were accompanied 'under special order of the Fuhrer' by special groups of police operatives who
on the basis of earlier preparations, have delivered a severe blow, by means of arrests, confiscation and the securing of the most important political material, to the worldwide anti-Reich elements in the camp of emigration, freemasonry, Judaism and political-ecclesiastical opposition, and in the Second and Third Internationals.[436]
Not only in Austria and Poland but also in other countries, the Esperantists constituted an often small but always carefully monitored part of these 'anti-Reich elements'.
Soon Theodor Koch received a new task. At the end of July 1940, he traveled to Vienna, on instructions from Six, to look at the contents of the Esperanto Museum.[437] As we have noted, the Gestapo closed the museum immediately after the annexation of Austria. There followed, on Six's orders, more widespread confiscation of archives and libraries, among them Esperanto collections.[438] A few of the museum documents were confiscated, but it was decided to leave its library in Vienna, since it would be too great a burden to transport this material to Berlin, given that it was 'politically unimportant to the Reich'.[439]
Two years later, the RSHA had a different view. It now regarded the contents of the museum as extremely important and for that reason sent
Koch to Vienna. But at that point there arose unexpected difficulties: the new director of the Austrian National Library (to which the museum belonged), Dr. Paul Heigl, himself an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer, categorically refused to agree to the transfer of the museum material to Berlin. Koch was only able to spend a couple of hours in the completely disordered museum and was obliged to conclude, with some consternation, that Heigl had no idea how valuable the contents of the museum really were. Two days later, Koch returned to Berlin empty-handed. In April 1941 he reported:
This library is unique in the world. Through it, the Jews have created a monument for themselves, assembling here everything [...] that attests to their goals of world destruction—and to a degree that probably could not be rivalled by any Freemasonry library.[440]
Reading this report, one has the impression that Koch was seized by a desire to accord the library an importance out of all proportion. He attributed to it major significance for the discovery of biblical secrets, particularly concerning the Messianic goals of the Jews. In sum, Koch proposed that the museum material be dispatched to Berlin, and he also recommended that all public libraries in Germany be refused permission to lend any Esperanto titles, depositing them instead in a special secret storage space. Koch's approach was partly (pseudo-) scientific, partly a hobby; but the responsible parties at the RSHA took it altogether seri- ously. Research since the war has revealed that Six's department in fact appropriated libraries in all of the occupied countries. In line with this interest, it considered putting pressure on Heigl, head of the Vienna library, to separate the museum from the former national library, so that 'anti-German material without exception' be subjected to 'ideological investigation'.[441] Two months later, however, Six explained that, because of Heigl's angry obstructionism, it was necessary to proceed very carefully and that a solution would be possible only after the war was over.[442]
In this case, then, it was impossible to move further because of dis- agreement within the party; but in other respects the RSHA proceeded in accordance with its plans. In September 1941 an internal document noted that 'in connection with the reorganization of Europe, the banning of the Esperanto movement must be achieved in all European states'.[443] As we have seen, in Austria, the Sudetenland and Poland, the movement was duly liquidated. This process continued, but with interesting variations.
Unexpectedly, following the dismantling of the State of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the movement in the 'Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia' was not immediately banned, though the Czech Esperanto Association, which had replaced the earlier Esperanto Association of the Czechoslovak Republic, was obliged to limit itself to activities only among Czechs.[444] In March 1940 it had to close its office, and in a meeting on 3 November 1940 the association decided, in compliance with an order received from the Gestapo, to disband itself.[445] The Prague Esperanto Club continued a clandestine existence until 1944. In the Protectorate, whose leader became, in September 1941, Reinhard Heydrich,[446] many Esperantists were also among the victims of cruel persecution.[447]
Following the Nazi Model
Shortly after the Nazi occupation of territory in western Europe, the RSHA noted that Heroldo de Esperanto had published an article about the Nazi advance in Europe and its consequences for the Esperanto movement. It particularly remarked its introductory sentence: 'The Monster Leaps Ahead' ('La monstro faras saltojn').[448]
The occupying forces in the Netherlands did not bother the Esperanto movement at first, even allowing the use of Esperanto in correspondence with neutral countries. But the RSHA was secretly preparing its liqui- dation: the RSHA archives contain detailed lists of Esperanto organiza- tions and individual Esperantists in the Netherlands.1 01 Soon, in June 1940, Kunze, the RSHA officer in charge of Esperanto, paid an offi- cial visit to the Netherlands to gather information on materials sched- uled for confiscation.[449] While there, he also turned his attention to the International Esperanto League (IEL), which he described as an orga- nization 'absolutely hostile to Germany' and therefore to be banned. Kunze further suggested that Teo Jung, publisher of the 'anti-German' newspaper Heroldo de Esperanto, be arrested.[450] While the arrest did not take place,[451] on 20 March 1941 the Dutch Esperanto organizations were dissolved by a decree from the Commandant of the Secret Police and the Security Service.[452] Responsibility for carrying out the decree fell to Werner Schwier, head of the International Organizations Section of the Reich Commissariat for the Occupied Dutch Territories. Professionally, Schwier was a horse butcher but wished to be called 'Doctor'; he had a reputation for brutality.[453] According to a report by Andras Cseh on the closing of the International Cseh Institute of Esperanto in the Hague (closed as an 'organization affiliated with freemasonry lodges'), Schwier, a 'fanatical enemy of Esperanto', boasted 'that he had already annihi- lated the Esperanto movement in Germany and Poland, and he threat- ened us with arrest and concentration camp if we continued to argue for Esperanto', because 'pacifism and humanism are the greatest crimes against the life of the people'.[454] Parts of the book collection of the Dutch Esperanto organizations—two crates—were sent by Schwier in August 1942 to Berlin, where they were assigned to the library of the planned Advanced School of the NSDAP (an establishment to be opened after the war)—to serve as study material on the conspiratorial activities of the Jews.[455]
In other countries occupied during the war, Nazi policies concerning Esperanto were not unified; in general, Nazi suppression in Scandinavia and Western Europe was less severe than the suppression in the East. In France, no system-wide measures were undertaken; Esperanto courses were sometimes permitted, sometimes not, and in any case were almost everywhere carried on in secret.[456] Similarly, in Norway[457] and Denmark[458]the movement was never banned. In 1942 the Workers Esperanto Club in Copenhagen even dared to publish a book with the highly significant title Tra densa mallumo (Through Deepest Darkness), in which Chinese Esperantists were praised for 'working diligently to employ Esperanto in the service of their struggle against the Japanese invaders' and the German Esperantists were criticized for their 'fevered behavior' when they 'apparently to save the movement, declared themselves ready to serve Nazism'.[459]
9n Belgium, in January 1941, the Flemish Esperantists published (without permission), five issues of Mededelingen voor den Vlaamschen Esperantist. When the sixth issue was in press, the Gestapo appeared and, after a search and interrogation, disallowed further activities by the Flemish Esperantist League. In December 1941, however, the local group in Bruges began secret publication of a monthly mimeographed bulletin whose title was itself a program: Paco kaj Justeco (Peace and Justice).[460]
During the war, Austrian Esperantists met secretly in private homes. At one of these meetings, at the end of June 1944, in the home of Gustav Weber, the former head delegate of IEL and a collaborator with the Esperanto Museum, members of the Gestapo suddenly appeared and arrested everyone present. Weber was sent to the Mauthausen concen- tration camp, where even the SS officers had difficulty believing that he was arrested simply because of Esperanto. Weber was later transported to the nearby Gusen camp and put to hard labor in a stone quarry. One day, shortly before the liberation, an SS guard, made nervous by Weber's constant smiles, symptoms of incipient mental disorder, seized the shovel from his hands and battered him on the head until he died.[461]
Even before the Nazis embraced the countries bordering on Germany, these countries took measures unfavorable to the spread of Esperanto. Next to anti-Communism, the primary cause was anti-Semitism, more or less latently prevalent in many countries of Europe, even the democra- cies. Anti-Semitism reinforced among the broad spectrum of people an antipathy toward Esperanto as a Jewish creation, and was a factor that the Esperantists had to take into consideration even in countries with relatively 'Esperanto-friendly' governments. In May 1934, an Esperanto teacher in a high school in Bydgoszcz, Poland, carried out a survey among those pupils who refused to accept Esperanto as their subject of study. In explaining their motives, the children showed that they were fatally infected with anti-Jewish feelings:
because it's a Jewish jargon, which we must hate [.]
Esperanto serves anti-religious propaganda. Esperantists are most often Jews or atheists. Esperanto must be leveled with the ground. [...]
I am a big anti-Semite and for this reason I do not like Esperanto, [.] because in my opinion it is a Zionist discovery to make it easy to spread communism, freemasonry and other hindrances.[462]
A few years after this survey, Esperantists across the world became wit- nesses to the nightmarish force of nationalism and anti-Semitism in a country that soon became a victim itself. When the government, prob- ably wishing to enhance the international reputation of Poland, gave permission to organize the Jubilee Esperanto Congress, marking the 50th anniversary of Esperanto's publication, in Warsaw, birthplace of Esperanto, the far-right and fascist press sharply attacked the govern- ment for allowing the organization of a 'Jewish-communist' congress.[463]During the congress week the absurd allegations and 'unashamedly cyni- cal attacks' of the far-right press created such a fraught atmosphere 'that the Congress participants, or at least a large part of them, felt themselves almost terrorized'.[464]
In Poland, the enemies of Esperanto did not succeed in influencing the essential viewpoint of the government, but, through the example of the Nazi regime, which led the way in systematically opposing not only troublesome elements in the Esperanto movement but the entire move- ment and the language itself, several other right-wing and fascist regimes were stimulated to increase their surveillance of Esperantists and to step up their persecutions. In the process, they often dispensed with the earlier practice of differentiating between neutral and workers' movements.
Portugal, where Salazar's almost 40-year reign began in 1932, was a pioneer in imitating the German model. In September 1936 all Esperanto societies were closed. The sudden annihilation of the Portuguese move- ment, which had a distinctly proletarian color, was obviously influenced by events in neighboring Spain, namely the newly exploding Civil War; at least for the duration of that war one risked arrest if one sought recruits for Esperanto in Portugal.[465] After a period of relaxation, on 11 August 1948 a decree from the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed the pro- hibition of 'any Esperantist activities or publications' and two months later the Ministry of Education banned the teaching of Esperanto; 1 [466]one argument was that the language had a deleterious influence on the purity of the Portuguese language.[467] Agents of the secret police (PIDE) carried out a search of the homes of Esperantists, took away Esperanto material and, in August 1949, confiscated the property of the Portuguese Esperanto League. The police also announced that they would confiscate letters arriving from abroad bearing Esperanto stickers.[468]
Only by stealth could the Esperantists succeed in spreading their lan- guage at all. For example, they produced bars of a green soap that they called 'Esperanto' and sold in packages of six. The packing included a short Esperanto lesson.[469] A definitive change came only with the April Revolution of 1974, after which the Portuguese Esperantists could finally inform their friends abroad that the weight had been lifted: 'Esperanto in our country will no longer be the dangerous language'.[470]
The reasons why Esperanto encountered official disapproval in Spain only partly resembled those in Portugal. Before the explosion of the Spanish Civil War, during which the fascists more or less indiscriminately identified the Esperantists with the enemy camp, conflicts with state power occurred not because of the waging of class war through Esperanto but—seemingly paradoxically—because of the use of the language for nationalist goals, more precisely its implication in Catalan aspirations for autonomy. As early as 1905 the society 'Unio Catalanista' adopted Esperanto for its international relations,[471] and from the beginning the leadership of the Catalan Esperanto movement was firmly in the hands of people who saw validity in the maxim 'the Catalan language first, Esperanto second'. Spanish, the official language of the country, was sys- tematically marginalized in the pages of the journal Kataluna Esperantisto, and contacts with the international movement were maintained directly, rather than through the Spanish Esperanto Association in Madrid.[472] As a result, particularly during the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-30), the Catalan Esperantist Federation was often accused of sepa- ratist activity against the Spanish state. When in 1928 a general with jurisdiction over Barcelona required that the Federation no longer call itself Catalan and promote fraternity with the other regions of Spain, the Catalan Esperantists, instead of submitting to the order, decided to suspend the organization's activities and await more favorable circum- stances. After the fall of the dictatorial regime in 1930, a more positive period did indeed begin, and by the following year a second edition of Kataluna Antologio could appear, in which more than 50 authors elo- quently pleaded for their language and people in prose and verse trans- lated into Esperanto.[473]
But soon came a new and more terrible test afflicting more than the Catalan Esperantists. The rebellion of Francisco Franco's troops against the government of the People's Front in July 1936 limited and, after the rebellion's success, cut off all opportunities for action throughout the entire Spanish Esperanto movement. Examination of the contents of a number of Esperanto-language periodicals makes it easy to establish on which side most Esperantists found themselves during the bloody Civil War. The best known of these periodicals was a journal published by the 'Grupo Laborista Esperantista' in Valencia, Popola Fronto. In the period of a little more than two years during which the journal was published, it sought to galvanize its readers in Spain and beyond, using a style of Esperanto unprecedented in its bellicose language . [474] In addition, press releases from the Catalan government appeared in Esperanto, 1 28 along with the anarchist Informa Bulteno and other more short-lived periodi- cals, illustrating the heterogeneous composition of the anti-fascist camp by arguing energetically among themselves.[475]
Esperantists struggled against the perils of fascism in many other ways too: the International Brigades attracted numbers of the almost prover- bial 'pacaj batalantoj',[476] making their way to Spain from ten or a dozen countries; Esperanto courses were also organized under the auspices of the Brigades.[477] The most outstanding Esperantist brigade member was the German writer Ludwig Renn, who delivered an Esperanto-language greeting to Esperantist fellow-combatants over Radio Barcelona.[478] As for the Spanish, among the fighters on the Republican side was the president of the Spanish Esperanto Association, Colonel, and later General, Julio
Mangada Rosenorn, who was known as the publisher of a booklet by Zamenhof on Homaranismo (1913) and as the author of fragile poems in Esperanto.[479]
On the island of Mallorca, three members of SAT were murdered. Persecution of Esperantists seldom occurred simply because of their activities for Esperanto, though this was often an element in the charges against them. The editor of Heroldo de Esperanto was on one occasion the recipient of an insistent plea from a Spanish Esperantist that people stop writing to him in Esperanto 'because it is mortally dangerous'.[480] On the other side, there were also Esperantists who supported Franco's rebellion. In August 1936, Republican militia members murdered Father Joan Font i Giralt, who for a number of years was president of the International Catholic Esperantist Union; but again it is unlikely that the murder had to do with Esperanto.
For several years following Franco's victory, Esperanto was regarded with suspicion by the authorities,[481] but in 1947 conditions permitted the re-establishment of the Spanish Esperanto Federation. However, when efforts were made to set up an Esperanto course in the University of La Laguna (Tenerife), a Falangist student newspaper ensured its rejection by publishing a hostile article.[482] Only in 1951, after an interval of 14 years, did Esperanto courses begin again in Madrid. Subsequently there were no further obstacles, and, in 1968, almost 30 years after the end of the Civil War, the capital hosted the 53rd World Congress—under the honorary sponsorship of Generalissimo Franco.
For many years, Italy under Mussolini was cited by the neutral move- ment in support of the proposition that the International Language could survive even under extreme nationalist regimes; the strong position main- tained by the Italian movement during the first 15 years of Mussolini's regime caused many to believe that fascism and Esperanto could live in harmony. The Italian Esperantists could point to frequent support from the authorities, who saw the language as a useful tool for informing the world about Italy's touristic beauties. The culmination of such support came with the organization of the 27th World Congress in Rome (1935). Franz Thierfelder, the energetic opponent of Esperanto in Germany, was not entirely incorrect when he observed that the makers of Italian lan- guage policy attributed to Esperanto, because of its Latin elements, an indirect advertisement for the Italian language.[483]
Not long after the Rome Congress, the efforts of the Italian movement to secure ongoing official favor took on a more compromising charac- ter. Beginning in 1936, the journal of the Italian Esperantist Federation (IEF) called on the Esperantists of the world to show their support for Italy in its war of conquest in Ethiopia.[484] In 1938 the delegate of the IEF provoked an incident during the inauguration of the 30th World Congress in London when he refused to greet the Congress because of the presence of a representative of the Spanish Republic.[485] By this time, winds less favorable to Esperanto were blowing across Italy. In 1936 and 1937 permission was refused for the organization of a national congress; that of 1938 did indeed take place, but with the subject 'Esperanto as a Means of Tourist Propaganda'. As of September 1938, Italy, in part because of pressure from Germany, approved anti-Jewish laws. At that same time anti-Esperanto propaganda began to appear in the columns of the newspapers. Il Popolo dltalia suddenly discovered that the existence of a Zamenhof street in Milan 'is an insult to Rome, which has other bridges for relations with other peoples' than Esperanto.[486] IEF advised its Jewish members not to renew their membership for 1939, and in this way the Federation succeeded in escaping persecution. As of 1939, IEF's bulletin ceased publication. Bureaucratic rumor-mongering prevented the organization, in September 1939, of the previously announced con- gress in Turin.
At the end of 1939 the International Esperanto League's journal noted that for several months the Italians had been 'enjoying' reading matter of a kind already well known in Germany, to the effect that Esperanto was a Jewish language.[487] In October 1941, a fascist magazine rained insults on the linguistic creation of the Polish Jew Zamenhof, 'an instrument of Zionism and international subversion',[488] thereby espousing, somewhat late in the day, Nazi conspiracy theory. The Esperanto broadcasts of Radio Roma, long a source of unease for the German Gestapo,[489] continued for a while, though they consisted primarily of the reading of military bul- letins.[490] There was no longer much opportunity for Esperanto in Italy.
I n Hungary and Bulgaria, where there were strong organizations of worker Esperantists, for a long time it seemed that the neutral movement could avoid difficulties with the authorities simply by emphasizing its dis- tance from these leftist associations. But in 1935 the Hungarian Esperanto Federation (HEF) was founded. HEF, as opposed to the neutral, moder- ately progressive Esperanto Society of Hungary (HES), argued for submis- sion to the regime's political line. HES was obliged to yield and join the Federation; the journal Hungara Heroldo tried to demonstrate that 'inter- nationalism and Esperanto are different things'.[491] Although during the war the Federation shifted considerably to the right, it resisted official pressure to expel its Jewish members, and the Federation president, Jozsef Mihalik, tried to save the lives of young people ofJewish descent.[492] In 1940 the Nazi RSHA angrily labeled Hungary a country 'currently least resistant to the advance of Esperanto-Jews and their helpers'.[493] As long as Horthy's govern- ment could maintain some semblance of resistance to its powerful ally Nazi Germany, a modicum of freedom of action still remained for Hungarian Esperantists, but the short but bloody duration of the government takeover by fascist 'Arrow Crossers' beginning in October 1944 brought an end to the organized movement. In these last months before the conclusion of the war, many Hungarian Esperantists fell victim to the fascists.[494]
In Bulgaria, too, the neutral movement tried hard, particularly as of the end of the 1920s, to disperse any suspicion by the authorities that it served as camouflage for communist activity. After the disbanding of all communist organizations, the neutral Bulgarian Esperantist Association (BEA) used various artifices in an attempt to survive; during the war it avoided any public demonstration of its existence.[495] Intentionally, BEA delayed acceptance of an invitation to join the organization Otets Paisii, in which almost all intellectual organizations in the country were assem- bled, for so long that the authorities eventually forgot about them. The last issue of the journal Bulgara Esperantisto appeared in June 1942. A little earlier, in the middle of February, Radio Sofia, which broadcast a regular program in Esperanto, one day received a visit from the German cultural attache; that same evening, the Esperantist in charge was informed that the broadcasts were ended—at the 'suggestion of higher authority'.[496]
It is interesting that, of the allies of Germany, Japan was the only country that did not follow the Nazi model. The Japanese Esperanto movement was not persecuted, even during the war. When, after the mid-1930s, so-called proletarian organizations of Esperantists were obliged to cease activity, the Japanese Esperanto Institute (JEI), earlier criticized by the left, now opened itself as a refuge for its critics and willingly employed their knowledge and experience on behalf of the neutral movement. Understandably, JEI was forced to make concessions to the reigning ideology, but its influential leaders succeeded in steering the Institute through the war years by rigor- ously defining itself as a purely linguistic organization, in this way escap- ing both persecution and compromising implication in the hypocritical supranational rhetoric by which the regime sought to justify its expansion in Asia.[497] In Korea and Taiwan, in connection with the planned spiritual mobilization following the opening of the Chinese-Japanese War of 1937, the Japanese liquidated the modest remains of cultural autonomy. In 1938 they also abolished the teaching of the Korean language in all primary and secondary schools. The policy of forced assimilation led to the compulsory use of Japanese even on the street. While the suppression of the Korean language continued, the Esperanto movement in Korea was also obliged to remain silent. In October 1937 the first issue of Korea Esperantisto, a handsome magazine entirely in Esperanto, was published. No second issue followed it, since the publisher, Hong Hyeong-eui, was promptly impris- oned. Until the end of the war, the publicizing and teaching of Esperanto were severely forbidden; but in Japan itself, even at the height of the war in 1942, it was still possible to publish the opinion of one brave soul, Inoue Masuzo, who, speaking out against the language policy then being applied by the Japanese in the occupied regions, proposed Esperanto as a means to bring the peoples of Asia closer together outside the circle of the elites.[498]
The plea was published in the journal ofJEI, La Revuo Orienta, which was able to continue publication until March 1944, long after legal Esperanto periodicals had ceased publication in the heart of Europe.
A Healthy Lesson for the Neutral Movement
We end this part of our narrative by turning our attention to Yugoslavia, where the Esperanto movement quickly understood the consequences of the Nazi declaration of war on Esperanto, and its conclusions also had an effect internationally. Emerging in a country characterized by fundamen- tal sociocultural diversity and a strong, often scarcely bridgeable, antago- nism among its constituent nations, the Yugoslav movement as a whole adopted a generally more progressive approach than that in neighboring countries. As early as 1922, in connection with the preparations for the founding of a South Slav Esperantist League, the desire was expressed
[to] use all available means so that at least within our own circles we might preserve the idea of Man as a citizen of the whole world and not simply of the piece of ground where he was born. Everyone should understand this: Croatians, Serbs, Slovenes and others, Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims and others—and we should show to our compatriots the solidarity that is the foundation of our success and the most effective path to influence.[499]
In line with this call for unity across national and religious boundaries, the Yugoslav movement was also able to maintain greater internal coher- ence than the movements in other countries. Although as a result of a resolution in favor of Esperanto accepted in June 1920 by the Second Congress of Communists in Yugoslavia,[500] many left-wing members joined its ranks, the movement did not split apart between middle-class Esperantists and workers in the way that it did in other countries. Of course there were plenty of collisions between more progressive members and those who, fearing pressure from the regime, argued for a strict focus on linguistic activity, but the conflicts did not shake the fundamentally unified organizational structures.[501]
Significantly contributing to the solidarity of the Yugoslav move- ment were the continual misrepresentations to which the Esperantists, particularly at the local level, were subjected, and the usually weak argu- ments used by the authorities to justify the searches of Esperantists' homes or the refusal of requests to found Esperanto groups.i 56 The Yugoslav Esperantists understood that, because the persecutions were not lim- ited to explicitly revolutionary activity through Esperanto, but reflected a general official unease at grass-roots emancipatory tendencies, it was important to stay together and face the opposition down in unison.
As a result, and early on, Yugoslav Esperantists developed an acute sense of the social and political implications of their activities. This self- confidence also spread to other countries—par ticularly after the Yugoslavs, in July 1932, established the largely Esperanto-language journal La Suda Stelo[502] as a platform for the dissemination of their point of view. As early as June 1933, the Yugoslav Esperanto League (JEL) organized, as part of their congress in Belgrade, an international conference on the topic 'The Ideological Problem of Esperantism'.[503] Through this event, whose central idea was later summarized in the sentence: 'We all condemn only one thing: the suppression of free speech!',[504] JEL launched a discussion whose pertinence was confirmed by recent developments in Germany, but for which the international Esperanto movement was evidently little prepared.
Though the enmity of the Nazis toward Esperanto was widely recog- nized, the international movement took several years to realize that such hostility was of a new type, radical in nature—namely that it addressed the fundamental right of Esperanto to exist. At the end of September 1932, so four months before Hitler's victory, a Dutch Esperantist dis- patched a laconic postcard to the International Central Committee of the Esperanto Movement, in which, citing Hitler's opinion on Esperanto in Mein Kampf he asked: 'Can we remain indifferent to a movement [the Nazi movement] that has already declared war on us?' In its political shortsightedness the reply was the equivalent of a tranquilizer:
The quotation is very interesting. It only goes to prove the inferiority of the author, who arrogates to himself the right to force on others a point of view acceptable only to people of very limited horizons. [...] It seems to us superfluous to waste our time tilting at windmills that will eventually stop turning because they lack the right wind. Of course we are following these developments.[505]
When in 1933 the journal Esperanto received letters from readers pro- testing the earliest acts of terror perpetrated by the Nazis, the editors refused to publish them, admonishing their writers with the follow- ing words: 'Dont complain in the name of an Esperantist organization about political events that we cannot prevent.' Although UEA pointed to the principle of neutrality regarding religion, nationality or politics, the Association explicitly agreed that this principle could be ignored when circumstances required: 'In countries with a nationalist/authoritar- ian regime, the national Esperantist society can do nothing other than arrange its affairs in accordance with required conditions.'[506] This line of argument served also to justify the organization of congresses in dictato- rial states, as for example, the World Congress in Cologne in 1933.
In 1934 UEA was able to dodge a test of its resistance to outside pres- sure. When NDEB issued an ultimatum requiring that the office in Geneva cease publishing the names of Jewish delegates in the section enti- tled 'Germany', the problem was solved when the delegates in question voluntarily (?) resigned.[507] In the same year, the UEA journal provided a strange demonstration of neutrality. The December issue, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the birth of Zamenhof, contained an article describing the Nazi point of view on the race problem, with quotations from Hitler and Wilhelm Frick,[508] while the same issue, as if to provide balance, offered a passionate denunciation by Lidia Zamenhof of the chauvinism sweeping the world.[509] After the Congress in Cologne, there was no lack of voices in the neutral movement calling for a reorientation of 'the essential character and ideology of Esperantism' if the movement really found it useful to organize congresses in the Third Reich 'when the best friends of the green flag are rotting and suffering in prisons and con- centration camps'. Resignations followed in protest at the display of the
Nazi flag next to the green star of Esperanto in the congress venue.[510] But UEA and Heroldo de Esperanto showed no understanding of the undi- vided enmity toward Esperanto exhibited by Nazism and accordingly had no idea how to redefine its position to confront the danger threatening the entire movement.
In truth, there was no precedent in the history of the Esperanto move- ment for a threat of this scale. In the past, it was always possible to con- tinue activities under unfavorable political conditions if at the same time, by pointing to the principle of neutrality, the movement kept its distance from those Esperantists who used Esperanto for goals unfavorable to the regime in question: people could always retreat to the relatively secure position of harmless language hobbyists. Even a more or less emphatic emphasis on the 'internal idea', by which the movement claimed that its character was not purely linguistic, but generally supportive of fraternity and peace, did not necessarily provoke the opposition of governments. Indeed, it is important to consider that the 'internal idea' often served the members of neutral groups not only as an internal unifying factor but also as a kind of protection against the involvement of Esperanto in the battle of ideologies and classes as long as it resisted any effort to give it concrete form—in other words to politicize the 'internal idea' and thereby impede the principle of neutrality.
Neutrality undoubtedly helped the movement to resist external oppo- sition. But at the same time it led to a fatal misunderstanding, namely a failure to distinguish between friends and enemies, or between (on the one hand) governments or ideologies characterized by tendencies that could be reconciled with the humanist basis of Esperanto, or could at least tolerate it, and (on the other) political movements whose program was unalterably opposed to the international way of thinking and whose dominance reduced or even erased any ground for fruitful activity on behalf of Esperanto. In reaction to insults against the 'Jewish universal language', the leading functionaries of the neutral movement tended sim- ply to add the point 'Esperanto and Jewishness' to its list of prejudices to be countered. Thus, Heroldo de Esperanto attempted to refute such arguments by suggesting that, by the same logic that the anti-Semites employed to attack Esperanto, they 'should also reject Salvarsan, the anti- dote to syphilis, because it was invented by [Paul] Ehrlich, a Jew'.[511]
The apologists were of course correct to emphasize the universality and not just the Jewish character of the language, but, chiefly because of the blinders of neutrality, they failed to appreciate that there was no sense in trying to convince people who could not be convinced, namely those who condemned something simply on the grounds of its Jewishness. For a movement desirous of contributing to the goodwill of all people, those suffering from such prejudices could only constitute a dangerous impedi- ment; it was absurd to try to recruit anti-Semites to support an interna- tional language. It should be noted that at no assembly of Esperantists in the early years of the Hitler regime did any leader of the neutral move- ment make a declaration to the effect that Jews constituted an element of humankind as valuable as the members of all other races and religions.[512]The leaders were blind to the danger that confronted the Esperanto movement, along with all human civilization as it faced an implacable enemy. This blindness derived in part from the distraction of the long debates on the reorganization of the movement that they allowed to go on in the 1930s. These internal conflicts came to a head in 1936, when the neutral movement split into two competing organizations, UEA and the newly founded International Esperanto League (IEL). From this point forward, UEA no longer played an essential role: the majority of indi- vidual members of UEA shifted their allegiance to IEL, which served at the same time as a federation of national Esperanto societies.[513] To some degree, the schism was a consequence of the growing demand by national Esperanto societies for a share in UEA's decision-making, but it would be an exaggeration to interpret the founding of IEL, which sought to har- monize individual membership with the federation of national societies, as a break with UEA's supranational tradition.i 69 A primary contribu- tor to the split was the poor financial management of UEA, rather than principled opposition to any supranational ideal. In any event, we have to recognize the fact that such organizational matters so occupied the attention of the functionaries in the neutral movement that they failed to recognize the full dimensions of the danger from outside.
While the international movement was primarily preoccupied with itself, the Yugoslav Esperantists criticized it for its passive attitude to fascism. Struck by the prohibitions in Germany and growing pressure in their own country, they confronted the widespread acquiescence to such persecutions by initiating a counter-offensive against the enemies of Esperanto. In 1937, the April editorial in La Suda Stelo attacked the false understanding of neutrality afflicting the Esperanto movement as a 'can- cerous wound'. The writer of the editorial, the young Croatian lawyer Ivo Lapenna, suggested that some Esperantists expected others 'to be neu- tral in an impossible way, empty of thought and opinion, or to remain silent and by silence to assent to everything!' Lapenna insisted that the 'principles of freedom of thought and of democracy' have to accompany neutrality if it is to be anything other than a negative phenomenon.[514]Two months later he went further by proposing that the Esperanto move- ment, finding itself on the defensive more or less everywhere, should take as its common basis 'that ideology that is the opposite of the principles of our enemies', namely 'the ideology of full democracy, which at the same time signifies freedom, equality, tolerance, culture and progress'. The movement should once again grow conscious of these values if it was to survive and recover confidence in a time when the Esperantists were persecuted simply because 'they see in people of other countries fellow humans and not inferior beings—people with whom they wish to exchange ideas, with whom they wish to remain in contact and friend- ship and with whom they wish to enjoy collaboration rather than recipro- cal destruction'.[515]
Such were the words of the person who in September 1937 was elected president of JEL, a year later joined the board of the International Esperanto League, and after the war was for many years general secretary and later president of UEA.[516]
At about the same time as the Yugoslavs called for active opposition to the external dangers confronting Esperanto, such sentiments began to emerge in other countries as well, in the form of discontent at the ostrich- like behavior of those who clung to the principle of absolute neutrality. Among IEL and UEA members, at least as of the mid-1930s, there was a growing desire to stop identifying neutrality with silence. This new activism was evident, for example, at the World Congress in Warsaw in 1937. A telegram of greetings from the Catalan government was met with thunderous applause,[517] and a member of SAT who, attending the Congress and expecting to find it populated with apolitical members of the bourgeoisie, noted with surprise that the opening plenary became 'a demonstration for liberalism, humanitarianism, democracy'. He summed up his impressions with a conclusion almost heretical for a member of SAT, namely that the bourgeois Esperanto movement 'is in its essence antifascist'.[518]
This opposition became even more evident a year later, during the World Congress in London. There, Ivo Lapenna won the sympathies of the participants with a stirring speech in which he named Esperanto's inter- nal idea as 'a bastion against fascism',[519] and in November 1938, when, following the annexation of Austria, the independence of Czechoslovakia was annihilated, even UEA's journal Esperanto uttered the cry, far too long delayed, 'Away with illusions!', along with the following confession:
To remain indifferent, that is, neutral in the old sense, would be a betrayal of our ideals. Esperanto stands and prospers only under a regime that respects individual freedom.[520]
When the Second World War broke out, the journal Esperanto no lon- ger ignored the evident fact that 'further successes by this regime [the
Nazi regime] would wipe out our cause completely'.[521] Finally, then, the experience of the advance of fascism became a healthy lesson for the inter- national movement—in the sense that it abandoned its neutrality where such neutrality equaled political blindness, and actively reconfirmed the internationalist and humanistic basis of the Esperanto movement. In May 1939 a congress of Yugoslav Esperantists in Karlovac accepted a resolution to be proposed to the World Congress in Bern that noted that the IEL had never protested when the movement in a given country was banned. The resolution went on to insist 'that we state clearly what we want and that we fight against those who persecute our movement'.[522]
Soon, even La Suda Stelo was forced to go silent. Its last issue appeared in March 1941. On 10 April, German troops entered Zagreb, whose streets were still hung with posters advertising spring Esperanto courses. The following day the Croatian fascist police broke into the headquarters of the Esperanto clubs, destroying or burning their contents and arresting a large number of Esperantists.[523] Among the first victims of the Ustasha terror were several members of JEL's board.[524]
The inferno of the Second World War, as we have seen, did not bypass the movement in other countries. By serving as intermediaries for corre- spondence and by sending medical supplies and food, the IEL and UEA sought to mitigate the hardships of many of those suffering in various parts of Europe, but such Esperantist relief could no longer be as effective as it was during the First World War. Occasionally, Esperantists were saved in some crisis situation when a soldier or even a member of the SS turned out to be an Esperanto speaker.[525] In the Dachau concentration camp a
Fig. 4.2 With renewed hope after the war, on 14 April 1946 Polish Esperantists marked the 29th anniversary of Zamenhof's death by gathering among the ruins of the building where Zamenhof once lived. His grandson Ludovic holds the flag
Yugoslav prisoner, Joze Kozlevcar, taught an Esperanto course attended by fellow victims from a number of nationalities.[526] In the Stutthof con- centration camp near Gdansk, a textbook compiled on the spot from memory by the Polish Esperantist Albin Makowski circulated from hand to hand.[527] In the years 1942-45, the Hamburg Jew Felix Epstein orga- nized secret meetings of a half-dozen Esperantists in the Theresienstadt concentration camp;[528] the Hungarian Elek Tolnai taught fellow victims at Bergen-Belsen.[529] And in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation two Esperantist women Gesine and Ali Obbes risked their lives by hiding a Jewish couple in their home.[530] Similarly, the Lithuanian Antanas Poska hid Akiva Gersater, a fellow-Esperantist, in his home in Vilnius for ten months.[531] Valdemar Langlet, of Sweden, and his wife Nina (daughter of the Russian Esperanto pioneer Nikolai Borovko) used their diplomatic status in Budapest in 1944-45 to provide Jews with 'letters of protection' issued by the Swedish Red Cross, thereby shielding many from the death that would otherwise have been their destiny.! 88 We could give many other examples showing how during the war Esperantists continued to use their language or how it brought assistance to the afflicted. In this regard we should add that Esperanto also performed the function of a 'secret language'. For example, the Austrian parents Rudolf and Emma Fischer, when they needed to talk about politics, used Esperanto to pro- tect their children against compromising information.[532]
Fortunately, after the war the international Esperanto movement rec- ognized its moral responsibility to the numerous victims of fascism.[533]On 14 April 1946, Polish Esperantists raised their green flag of hope in the stonydesert that was once Warsaw to mark the spot where the home of Zamenhof had stood (Fig. 4.2).
The gesture symbolized their invincible enthusiasm for Esperanto. But it was not enough simply to continue along the road of idealism, how- ever honorable such a course may have been in the face of fascist attack. The 'naive internationalism of Zamenhof's time is over', 1 91 declared UEA's journal at the end of 1946. Indeed, the 'internal idea' in its tradi- tional, somewhat unclear form, and with its tendency to exaggerate the role of Esperanto, was unsuited to the period of postwar reconstruction.
Understanding this reality, the leaders of the neutral movement, led by the Yugoslav Ivo Lapenna, did not attempt to formulate a new ideology for Esperantism, but instead declared the Esperanto movement loyal to values valid not only for Esperantists but more widely recognized, namely the values of human rights.
When, in the middle of 1947 UEA was re-established as the represen- tative organization of the international Esperanto movement, it added to its constitution a paragraph declaring that 'respect for human rights is an essential condition for its work'.[534] In so doing, UEA emphasized that its neutrality regarding politics, race and religion extended only as far as respect for fundamental human rights and only when the development of peace and international cooperation was not threatened. Thus, UEA redefined the principle of neutrality—in a way different from the timo- rous, passive neutrality practiced in the earlier hurricane of persecution.
Esperanto survived the fascist era, proving its viability in the face of pressure and persecution by ruthless enemies. Thus, in the sense that the movement both learned its lesson through its own mistakes and moved on to a more realistic judgment of the external world, it would be right to say that Esperanto triumphed over fascism.
Part III
'Language of Petty Bourgeois and Cosmopolitans'
5
Finding a Place for Esperanto in the Soviet Union
Post-revolutionary Hopes
In the previous section we saw how the Esperanto movement suffered under the attacks of conservative and fascist regimes. We will now turn to a second variety of persecution. This variety came from a regime that considered itself the vanguard of worldwide socialism. Exploring the details and causes of the suppression of Esperanto in the Soviet Union is incomparably more difficult than analyzing the persecutions under Hitler because for many years we had no access to archival material generated by the authorities responsible for the suppression. Until 1988, the topic went unmentioned in the Soviet Union, and so researchers had to be con- tent with the limited documentation available to them—documentation so limited that it was difficult indeed to gain a clear understanding of the fortunes of the Esperanto movement.
From the beginning, the Russian Esperantists were a numerous— and extremely progressive—element among the enthusiasts for the International Language. The American historian Richard Stites charac- terized their movement as 'emphatically middle-class and respectable—
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 159
U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4_5
cosmopolitan and urban, but also patriotic'.[535] The vast majority of them undoubtedly welcomed the political changes of 1917, if only because of the disappearance of the barriers of censorship and police interference that characterized the old regime.
The text of a 1919 poster perhaps best illustrates the hopes of these Esperantists in a post-Tsarist Russia. It was published by 'Esperanto House' in Moscow, a former mansion,[536] which the government, with- out charge, put at the disposal of local and national Esperanto organiza- tions.[537] The poster compares the historical significance of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 with that of Zamenhof's language project of 1887. The call of the former, 'Workers of the world, unite!' was answered by the October Revolution; now the time had come for a liberated proletariat to tackle, with comparable energy, the task of realizing the idea contained in the latter—adopting Esperanto as the worldwide instrument of com- munication for the proletariat.[538]
Many Russian Esperantists were fired with enthusiasm at the prospect of helping to liberate their oppressed comrades in the West through the medium of the language of the worldwide proletariat, Esperanto.[539] This spontaneous desire to put Esperanto at the service of world revolution accorded with the atmosphere of the first years of Soviet rule. It is no acci- dent that a rapid increase in the numbers of Esperanto groups occurred in the same period as the so-called proletarian cultural movement was also expanding, namely between 1917 and 1921. According to the inspi- ration behind that movement, Aleksandr Bogdanov,[540] the worldwide pro- letariat could come together not only through political and economic activity but also through cultural collaboration. With emotions border- ing on exultation, the followers of 'Proletkult' proclaimed the proletariat the conveyor of a new culture, radically different from the earlier, bour- geois culture. This soon-to-be created proletarian culture was destined to become the general culture of all people after the destruction of class divisions in society.
The radical plea for a new culture for all humankind sounded attrac- tive to Esperantists as well. Likewise, within the proletarian cultural movement there was considerable support for embracing Esperanto. In February 1919, one of the theorists of 'Proletkult', Platon Kerzhentsev, in an article on 'International revolution and proletarian culture', argued that, to facilitate cultural exchange among the workers of various coun- tries, thought had to be given to a (proletarian) international language.[541]Bogdanov also devoted a 1919 lecture to the topic 'Proletarian culture and the international language', in which, however, he saw English as providing the core of such a language.[542] An All-Russian Congress of Art unanimously voted in favor of Esperanto.[543]
Such hopes were not without substance. In 1918-19 Esperanto groups existed in around 100 locations in Russia.[544] Early in 1920, the Polish and German press published a release containing an extract from a Soviet Russian magazine announcing the compulsory introduction of Esperanto in schools in accordance with the decision of a government commission.[545]The French writer Romain Rolland, winner of the Nobel Prize for litera- ture in 1915, called this apparent decision 'a historic event',[546] and sev- eral national Communist Party congresses, influenced by the news from
Soviet Russia, approved resolutions in support of Esperanto.[547] The decree seemed to put workers of all countries under a kind of obligation to learn Esperanto. But, from the beginning, doubts were raised about the verac- ity of the report, and in May 1920 the People's Commissar for Education Anatolii Lunacharsky denied that such a decision had been made.[548]
Also unsuccessful were efforts to approach the Comintern. In November 1919, a group of Esperantists in Samara founded a so-called Esperanto Section of the Communist International, without consulting the Comintern, which had only national sections. A decision to change the name to 'The Esperanto Communist International' (ESKI) did not save the initiative: late in 1921, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party put an end to the further existence of ESKI, probably considering it a kind of sectarian enterprise.[549]
A similar fate befell an effort to convince the Comintern to recom- mend favorable consideration of the question of an international lan- guage. A proposal that the matter be discussed at the Second Comintern Congress, in July-August 1920 in Petrograd and Moscow, was submitted by several delegates, among them the Spaniard Angel Pestana.[550] It was referred to the Executive Committee for action at the next Congress. When that event took place, in Moscow in June-July 1921, a resolu- tion was indeed proposed, submitted on this occasion by delegates from almost all the nations represented; it called on an already established[551]Study Commission for the adoption of an auxiliary language in the Third International to examine objectively the utility and applicability of an international language.[552] On the final day of the Congress, 12 July 1921, the German Wilhelm Koenen, on behalf of the Presidium, achieved an agreement that the proposal be taken up by the Executive Committee.[553]Perceiving that agreement as an official mandate, the commission began its work—under its chairman Jozsef Pogany[554] and secretary Hans Itschner, both of whom were adepts of Ido, the reformed version of Esperanto.
Although the commission in its report of June 1921 took a nonpar- tisan approach to the various projects,[555] a few months later Communist newspapers[556] published the information that the commission had con- cluded that a language like Ido would have a better chance than Esperanto of acceptance as an international language.[557] Noisy uproar among the Esperantists ensued. They were not wrong in suspecting that the work of the commission was a plot by a handful of Idists (adepts of Ido) under the 'apparent auspices' of the Comintern. Although news soon came from Moscow that the commission had been disbanded, probably in March 1922,[558] Eugene Lanti, of France, leader of Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (SAT), traveled from Paris to Moscow to find out about the affair for himself. From Matyas Rakosi, secretary of the Cominterns Executive Committee, Lanti received confirmation that the Comintern had dis- solved the commission, 'which in fact never got started', and that the International in truth 'had no interest in this enterprise'.[559] In May 1923, the Executive Committee finally noted in its official minutes that 'no language-advocacy organization has any right to claim the authority of the Comintern'.[560] The Swiss researcher Jean-Fran^ois Fayet, after study- ing the Comintern papers on the Esperanto movement preserved in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History in Moscow, con- cludes that the Executive Committee used the quarrel among Esperantists and the 'much less influential Idists' to delay indefinitely a decision on an auxiliary language, itself assuming no responsibility in the matter. The Esperantists were caught in a vicious circle: 'In other countries, everyone waits for a decision from the USSR and here everyone says that the inter- national language must first find mass support in other countries.'[561]
Lunacharsky's denial and the confirmation by the Comintern that it had no interest in Esperanto or Ido made the Soviet Esperantists sharply aware of the limits imposed on them by the crude realities of post-Tsarist Russia. This was also the experience of the proletarian cultural move- ment, whose spontaneous enthusiasm hardly harmonized with the firm organizational goals of the Communist Party. Lenin's aim was to do battle with illiteracy and to bring to the people the knowledge needed for building socialism, rather than confusing them with experiments in revolutionary art and literature. He considered the claims of the 'cultural autonomy' of the proletariat as out of conformity with the needs of the time, indeed even threatening the hegemony of the Party. Accordingly, in October 1920 he required that 'Proletkult' be folded into the People's Commissariat for Education. In 1922 it essentially disintegrated as a mass organization.
This development was part of the beginning phase of a new political and economic direction in the Soviet state. To put the Russian economy on its feet, weakened as it was by the Civil War and by over-hasty efforts at socialism, in March 1921 Lenin proclaimed his so-called New Economic Policy (NEP). Its aim was a radical realignment of the economy, even at the cost of strict observance of communist principles. The NEP, among other things, once again permitted private enterprises and virtually free commercial activity. Many Communists greeted this move with a mix- ture of shock and disillusionment.[562] In June 1922, a Russian Esperantist wrote that the NEP had 'stripped official support from many cultural initiatives. Among their number was Esperanto. So now the Russian Esperantists are organizing themselves in a private way.'[563]
In the meantime the first steps were taken to adapt the Esperanto movement to changing circumstances. At the beginning of June 1921, in Petrograd, the Third All-Russian Esperantist Congress was held, the first since the revolution. It was attended by 160 delegates and resulted in the founding of the Soviet Esperantist Union (SEU) (Fig. 5.1).[564]
The founding of SEU did not meet with unanimous approval: protests were raised against the crude and restrictive homogenization of the move- ment in Russia.[565] But the victory went to those who emphasized the need for organizational unity after almost four years of disorder and factional- ism. The Congress accepted two sets of principles. One, on questions of
Fig. 5.1 The Tauride Palace in Petrograd, in June 1921, was the site of the founding congress of the Soviet Esperantist Union (SEU). In front of the flag (no. 6) sits its longtime leader Ernest Drezen
organization, required that the Soviet Russian Esperanto movement act in full conformity with the regime, criticizing those 'factions' that judge the present only from an Esperantist viewpoint; the second set of prin- ciples, on relations with other countries, pointed out that all Esperanto activity, including receipt of magazines and other literature from abroad, should be fully centralized in SEU.[566]
These statements of principle were developed by Ernest Karlovich Drezen, who was elected president of the 15-member Central Committee of SEU and led the organization through almost its entire existence. A Latvian by origin, born in 1892, Drezen attended secondary school in Kronstadt and later the Polytechnic Institute in Saint Petersburg, where he was also very active in the student Esperantist group. A fellow member recalled him as a 'lively, playful young man', intelligent and well educat- ed.[567] During the war, Drezen was sent to a military engineering school, and in August 1916 he became an officer in an electrical engineering bat- talion. After the February Revolution, by whose third day he was already assisting in guarding arrested Tsarist ministers in the Tauride Palace, he joined the left wing of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, which along with the Bolsheviks formed the first Soviet government. In 1918 Drezen joined the Communist Party, serving in the Red Army as commandant and commissar. As of 1921, he worked in the Kremlin—as deputy charge d'affaires in the Central Executive Committee of Soviets.24 Having a president in a position close to the centers of power was undoubtedly advantageous for the Soviet Esperantists. This new beginning, fol- lowing the dashing of the earliest post-revolutionary hopes, seemed promising indeed.
SAT and SEU: Pluralism Under a United Front
Two months after the founding of SEU, an additional important orga- nizing event occurred in the international Esperanto movement, mark- ing the beginning of a new phase. Early in 1921, SAT was founded. Its aim was to serve as the representative organization of those united in the desire to put Esperanto at the service of the worldwide class struggle.
Efforts to create self-supporting groups of worker Esperantists actu- ally began before the war. Most workers using Esperanto preferred to distance themselves from the traditional, neutral organizations. Quite apart from the fact that the leadership of the traditional movement lay primarily in the hands of 'socially respectable' individuals, the workers were put off by the apolitical atmosphere of 'samideanoj' (adepts of the same idea, as the Esperantists called themselves), the cult surrounding the 'master' Zamenhof (which he himself abhorred), the singing of a nai've hymn (Zamenhof's poem La Espero, which became the anthem of the Esperantists) and symbols of the Esperanto movement, green flags and stars. They were drawn by the idealistic element in Esperanto, to be sure, but they noted, not without disquietude, that many Esperantists seemed to have an insufficient understanding of the ideas of Zamenhof or Hodler, both of whom emphasized the link between Esperanto and the goal of removing international tensions and social injustice.
The historical merit of initiating an independent international organi- zation of worker Esperantists goes to the Frenchman, Eugene Adam, who became known by the pseudonym Lanti.2 5 Born in Normandy in 1879, Lanti received only an elementary education, but as an autodidact rap- idly acquired considerable knowledge. He learned the craft of woodwork- ing, which he later also taught. In Paris, around the turn of the century, Lanti was drawn to anarchism, under the influence of Peter Kropotkin and Elisee Reclus, and later had personal contact particularly with the theorists Sebastien Faure, Jean Grave and Han Ryner.[568] He was particularly taken with the undogmatic character of anarchism and its radical opposition to nation- alism. The war, in which Lanti participated as a member of an ambulance brigade, reinforced his hatred for everything associated with nationhood; but also, because of the dispiriting example of the great anarchist Kropotkin, who in 1914 announced himself a Russian patriot, the war caused him to distance himself from anarchism. As a result, when in 1917 the October Revolution triumphed, Lanti gladly joined the sympathizers of the Bolsheviks.
In December 1914 he began to learn Esperanto; and, following the war, he had his first contact with revolutionary Esperantists in Paris, who had just re-established 'Liberiga Stelo' (Star of Liberation), a small orga- nization that had come into being before the war. They offered Lanti the editorship of their journal Le Travailleur Esperantiste. He accepted, including in the first issue a declaration that established the priority 'socialists and trade-unionists first ... Esperantists second' and ended with the cry, 'Down with all fanaticisms!'.[569]
In his articles for the journal, Lanti expressed skepticism about efforts to unite the national workers' associations in a 'Red/Green International'. He argued, for the first time in April 1920, for a 'nationless' form of organization,[570] and in the following months repeatedly returned to that theme. Time after time proclaiming his conviction that nations must be stamped out, he called on his readers to put into action immediately 'a society which could, as it were in embryo, function as society might uni- versally function in the future'. Lanti conceded that national associations were needed, but he refused the idea that they might form a basis for the desired worldwide organization. He preferred that an effort be made, through a kind of Esperanto-speaking microcosm, to create a 'nation- less people', which 'could immediately accustom itself to action and to a capacity for thought and feeling outside nationhood'.[571]
Lanti insisted on rigorous separation from the neutral Esperanto move- ment. He condemned its bourgeois spirit as he condemned the illusion that Esperanto would inhibit wars[572]—in fact the whole Esperanto neutral- ism that 'clouds the vision to class consciousness'. For Lanti, 'Esperanto is not the goal of our action, but merely a means to reach our goal'[573]—and he concluded with the battle cry 'Down with neutralism!'. This was the title of a collection of Lanti's articles that later appeared, bearing on its cover the following supportive words of the French revolutionary writer Henri Barbusse: 'The bourgeois and worldly Esperantists will be more and more amazed and terrified by everything that can emerge from this talisman: an instrument allowing all human beings to understand one another.'[574]
Lanti saw himself as linked to a venerable tradition in the workers' movement when he argued energetically for ignoring nationhood.23 In the same way, he was inspired by the model of Hector Hodler, who in 1908 founded the Universal Esperanto Association on the basis of indi- vidual members, not national associations.[575] Unique to Lanti, however, was his decisive effort to put Esperanto at the service of the class struggle regardless of party-political preferences. From the beginning, Lanti aimed to open his organization equally to socialists, communists and anarchists and not to allow it to be swayed by the passions and tactical zigzags of the different workers' parties. Though the understanding of such agen- das may diverge, Esperanto should remain the common language of all revolutionaries, providing a basis for the solidarity of all people, even if outside the framework of Esperanto they might feel themselves linked primarily to their own parties. This strategy meant that Esperanto had, in effect, a wider role than a mere tool of class struggle:
By means of our language a spiritual current must arise that overcomes all national boundaries. This constant intercourse will cultivate in our hearts a feeling that transcends nations. It will serve as a kind of antidote to the ugly nationalist education thrust on us by the state. It will be a kind of spiritual hygiene against the nationalist miasma that we inhale constantly in the chauvinist atmosphere created by governments. Using an artificial lan- guage as often as possible, we will incorporate in our beings characteristics suitable for making us true citizens of the world. We cannot over-emphasize the importance of this fact. Therein lies the revolutionizing essence of Esperanto. Because we are in constant contact with our Comrades in all countries, we can be justly proud that we are the most committed of all of the so-called internationalists.[576]
We will explore later the question of whether the requirement to submit Esperanto to the class struggle[577] and the implicit assertion that in itself it had a revolutionary effect were contradictory, and, if they were in con- flict, whether that conflict could be resolved.
At the beginning of August 1921, at the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague, some 80 members of 'Liberiga Stelo' met to found an association inspired by the ideas formulated by Lanti. It took the name SAT. Chosen, despite his absence, as honorary president of the founding meeting was Henri Barbusse, whose movement 'Clarte' (Clarity)—a union of progressive intellectuals from various countries[578]— somewhat resembled the organization of revolutionary Esperantists in its undogmatic internationalism.'[579] In planning the founding of SAT, Lanti sought to steer a course between two obstacles: first, to prevent the association from falling under the influence of Zamenhof's 'illusionary' Homaranismo; secondly, not to allow it to consist of the members of a single political party. The first obstacle was easily dispensed with; as for the second, while SAT ran the risk of communist uniformity, the discus- sions in Prague showed that a majority of the communists accepted the project for an organization that would rise above party differences.[580] The founding resolution was unanimously approved; its final words declared: 'Down with neutralist hypocrisy, down with capitalism, long live SAT!'[581]The break between the workers' Esperanto movement and that of the neutralists was now an accomplished fact.
The degree to which SAT took its defiance of 'neutralism' seriously was revealed at the Second Congress in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1922. By a small majority the participants decided on a clarifying amendment to their constitution whereby a member of SAT could not at the same time hold membership in 'any bourgeois or so-called "neutral" Esperantist organization'. When Romain Rolland, honorary president of the congress (not present), read about this prohibition in the newspaper L'Humanite, he was sharply critical. He considered the decision sectarian in nature and reproached the revolutionary Esperantists who 'have no idea about the importance of Esperanto [... which] is in itself a revolution much more effective than all so-called revolutionary congresses: because it creates [...] an international way of thought that is "nationless and worldwide"' (sen- nacieca tutmonda).[582] In truth, it was not possible to sustain such a radical stipulation; in 1924 the rigid article 2 of the constitution was made less severe.[583] However, with or without such a constitutional requirement, in the early years of the life of SAT many capable Esperantists were drawn away from the neutral movement. This trend continued: people of left- ist persuasion preferred to join SAT rather than other, neutral Esperanto associations.
The natural consequence of this separation was not only a weaken- ing of numbers but also an ideological impoverishment of the neutral movement, so that little by little its leaders began to conform perfectly to the caricatures cultivated by SAT from the beginning: business people, generals, clergy and reactionary professors interacting with a crowd of petty-bourgeois Esperantists. And the members of SAT were proud of their separation, happily punning on the resemblance of SAT-ano (SAT member) and Satano (Satan).
In 1922 SAT had 1064 members. Between then and 1926 the num- ber grew to 2960. In 1927 it rose to 5216 and in 1929 to 6500. SAT's official journal was initially, as of October 1921, Sennacieca Revuo, previ- ously entitled Esperantista Laboristo. Three years later its chief periodical became the newly founded Sennaciulo, which appeared weekly until the end of 1931.) 3 Under the editorship of a young German communist, Norbert Barthelmess, it little by little became one of the most important Esperanto periodicals. The intention from the beginning was to make Sennaciulo a mirror of the real life of workers all across the world. Because its columns were indeed largely filled with descriptions of daily life sent in by the readers themselves ) 4 and because, particularly in the 1920s, some 100-200 articles were annually translated into national languages, the direct, often dispassionate reports in Sennaciulo on living conditions in the various countries reached a readership far in excess of the circle of worker Esperantists.
For the worldwide workers' movement in general, relations with Soviet Russia played an essential part. It was, after all, the first state in which, by its own claims, the proletariat had taken over power. Also SAT, from its beginning, was aware of the special links that it had with the country in which just a couple of months earlier the SEU had been established. Outside Soviet Russia, the non-communist SAT members were also sym- pathetic with Lenin's newly founded state—a condition that facilitated collaboration of various socialist factions within SAT as an independent organization free of party politics. Furthermore, unity was reinforced by the common desire to win workers worldwide for Esperanto. At the time, probably few asked themselves such questions as: How long can this har- mony last? What influence will the development of Soviet Russia have on the attitudes of comrades outside that country? And will the Soviet side be willing to tolerate the over-arching character of SAT?
First, it was urgent to get to know the Russians better, because no Soviet delegate was present in Prague. For Lanti the occasion presented itself in August 1922, when he traveled to Moscow for the previously mentioned mission to the Comintern to establish its attitude to Esperanto. During his visit he also met Drezen; he found in the person who would later
Fig. 5.2 Eugene Lanti, founder of SAT, the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, visited Moscow in August 1922. Here he met with the editors of the literary journal La Nova Epoko (New Era). L-R: Valentin Poliakov, Natan Futerfas, Lanti, Nikolai Nekrasov, Grigorii Demidiuk
become his chief antagonist a deep devotion to the language. Exploration of possible collaboration between SAT and SEU remained for the moment unresolved. Drezen complained that SAT was not purely communist and refused to work with anarchists and social democrats, while Lanti in his report of the conversation responded by pointing out that Drezen was president of an organization 'in which there were not only anarchists but also bourgeois members of a particular kind' (Fig. 5.2).[584]
Drezen soon reconsidered his skepticism regarding SAT. In November 1922, after the victory of the fascists in Italy, the Fourth Comintern Congress formally proclaimed the principle that communists should try to create a united front among the working classes, collaborating, if necessary, with social democratic organizations. In the following months SEU discussed how to align itself with this new Comintern directive. In a declaration of principles defining SEU's position, the Central Committee in March 1923 left no doubt about its views on SAT—its idealism, 'polit- ical imprecision' and 'politically ideological neutralism'—but nonetheless decided to call on communist Esperantists in all countries to support SAT as long as 'an organizational form for international activity more suited to the communists has not been created, though at the same time unmasking SAT's idealistic and false ideas and urging on it a truly practi- cal approach and greater communist influence'.[585] These were the terms on which SEU was willing to support SAT, if without much enthusiasm.[586]
From then on, SEU presented itself as a cooperative participant in the international workers' Esperanto movement. One sign of this coop- erative spirit was the elimination, in May 1923, of UEA's presence on Soviet territory through its local representatives and members.' [587] Three months later, a Soviet delegation appeared for the first time in a SAT con- gress: Drezen and five other delegates from SEU attended the Third SAT Congress in Kassel.[588] Elected as one of the chairs of the meeting, Drezen demonstrated in his closing comments that he was a loyal colleague:
We have here found that middle way, that we, sons of the revolution, using the international language for the profit of the proletariat, can follow together, whether we be anarchists, or communists, or members of other revolutionary parties. We believe that we have found the right and true way.[589]
Such public support for the idea of SAT as above party politics was not without risk for SEU, since it was unable to tolerate similar attitudes in its own ranks, namely any doubt that leadership was in the hands of communists. Drezen had just lived through a conflict with the editors of the Moscow literary journal La Nova Epoko.[590] The journal had been founded in June 1922 by Grigorii Demidiuk and Nikolai Nekrasov, who had met Lanti during his stay in Moscow and subsequently carried on an active correspondence with him.[591] Anarchists were also among the jour- nal's collaborators. Everyone opposed Drezen's centralizing tendency and defended SAT's pluralism, implicitly demanding that the latter tendency should reign also in SEU.
But Drezen's position was stronger. In the second half of 1923 he suc- ceeded in shutting down La Nova Epoko. When in mid-1924 Sennacieca Revuo published an extensive article about the fate of the anarchist move- ment under the Soviet regime, quite openly reporting the clashes with the Bolsheviks and the persecutions that followed,[592] Lanti, as editor, received a sharp protest from Moscow because of this 'anti-revolutionary article'. Lanti found himself obliged to announce that in future he would refuse to publish offensive articles containing attacks against positions repre- sented in SAT.[593]
In SAT, this refusal was, for the moment, the culmination of a pro- cess making 'unity above all' the association's watchword. The first victims of this trend were the anarchists, who in 1924 finally lost con- fidence in SAT and founded their own organization, under the name Tutmonda Ligo de Esperantistaj Senŝtatanoj (TLES: World League of Non-State Esperantists). At the same time SAT's publications took on a more uniform character. Instead of the announced free competition of philosophical positions, they began to be characterized by articles that for the most part avoided offending anyone. Contributions with an anti-Soviet bias were, according to the editors, not received at all, and Lanti met criticism of the preponderance of contributions favoring communism by declaring that this was because 'the communist com- rades are more active'.[594]
Thus, SAT learned that an organization desirous of serving the proletar- iat across all party differences could not escape the antagonisms reigning in the workers' movement. The dilemma was made concretely apparent by the anarchists. SAT solved it provisionally in favor of a united front, which in practice meant the dominance of the communists, at least in its periodicals. The Association chose to sacrifice to the struggle for unity its declared tolerance for differing opinions. For SEU, on the other hand, an organization that had overcome the crises of 1923-24 with an internally strengthened structure and a now undisputed leader, the way was open for expansion of its collaboration with SAT. The Central Committee offi- cially called on all active members of SEU to join SAT.[595]
Demonstrating Esperanto's Utility
Having achieved organizational stability, SEU could move on to execute its plan of action. Its goal was to win over the Soviet public to the useful- ness of Esperanto. The obstacles to be taken into consideration were for- midable. Before and after the revolution advocates of Esperanto among the Bolsheviks were not numerous. Rakosi, the Comintern function- ary, warned his visitor Lanti that the Russian Esperantists were not to be trusted: 'Many of them are counter-revolutionaries.'[596] Lanti himself observed that the communist Esperantists 'are ashamed that they are Esperantists' and that they 'fear compromising themselves by making propaganda in communist circles'. He added that the 'severe commu- nist discipline has stifled among many of them the enthusiasm and fer- vor' for Esperanto.[597] Drezen was probably able to counter the strongest suspicions concerning unreliable Esperantists by pointing to the disci- plined 'sovietization' of SEU. As of 1925, an increase in declarations of sympathy could be noted among communist leaders, among them the former People's Commissar for Foreign Commerce, Leonid Krasin,2 [598]the president of the so-called Small Council of People's Commissars, Mikhail Boguslavsky,[599] the Japanese member of the Comintern Executive Committee, Katayama Sen,[600] and the writer Ilya Ehrenburg.[601] But at the Second SEU Congress several delegates complained that the party orga- nizations and those of the trade unions and the young communists were indifferent to Esperanto and that this indifference remained the biggest obstacle to successful activity on the ground.[602]
Drezen was well aware of the situation the local delegates complained of. The recipe that he proposed for changing it—to eliminate such igno- rant treatment and even mockery encountered by Esperantists among 'authoritative revolutionary circles'—was very simple: they should use the language and thus prove to the doubters its practical utility. Drezen immediately specified the area in which Esperanto should demonstrate its utility: his recommendation 'Apply Esperanto' was aimed principally at demonstrating the value of Esperanto as an easy means of interrela- tions between Soviet workers and those in other countries.
Explaining his position, Drezen mentioned that much attention had recently been given to 'direct communication' among worker journal- ists in the various countries.[603] In fact, in Moscow in July 1924 the Fifth Comintern Congress had discussed the question of intensifying the flow of information to foreign workers about the struggles of everyday life among their Soviet class-brothers, and, conversely, information to work- ers in the Soviet Union concerning their comrades in western Europe, still suffering under the yoke of capitalism. As a concrete step, the Comintern Executive Committee recommended that the so-called workers' corre- spondents should expand their sphere of action to other countries.[604] The Soviet Union already possessed an extensive network of these workers' correspondents, understood as a new type of volunteer journalists: people who, active among the working masses, tried, in their widely distrib- uted correspondence, to reflect the wishes of the local workers, refer their complaints and proposals to the authorities and thus function as inter- mediaries between party and workers. In regional and local newspapers, factory bulletins and wall newspapers, they 'dispassionately bring to the 2 udgement of society all the ulcers of everyday life and work''6 among Soviet factory workers and farm workers.
The workers' correspondent movement was already well established in the Soviet Union when, in July 1924, this call to organize interna- tional workers' correspondence was published. Drezen was correct in understanding the extent to which language difficulties inhibited exten- sive correspondence between Soviet and foreign workers; he saw in the new Comintern initiative a unique opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of Esperanto and reinforce SEU's reason for being. From the beginning of 1925 he repeatedly called on the members not only to cor- respond privately but also to propose their services to all Soviet organi- zations wishing to have contact with other countries.[605] SEU's chief task was defined as 'directing the application of Esperanto for the goals of Sovietism, approaching workers in other countries, and, telling them the truth about the Soviet countries, recruiting among them friends of the Soviet working people and the Soviet system'.[606]
To many of SEU's members, Drezen's call to action confirmed that they were working in the right direction; in fact, as soon as the international isolation of the Soviet state was broken, Esperantists began extensive correspondence abroad. The quantity of Esperanto correspondence was impressive: in 1925-26 around 2000 letters in Esperanto were mailed in a period of eight months from the cities of Minsk and Smolensk alone. After the issuance of the call to expand international workers' correspon- dence, many of the letters from abroad were translated and published in the press or in wall newspapers. In a single year, more than 360 Esperanto letters appeared in the press in Belarus, and as early as mid-1924 in the city of Tver the local newspaper printed 100 Esperanto letters from abroad. When in May 1926 the all-Soviet conference of industrial and farming worker-correspondents reviewed the achievements of the still barely two-year-old campaign, particular praise was given to activities in Crimea, Smolensk and Tver—all three of them organizations of worker correspondents almost exclusively using Esperanto for their international contacts.[607]
Early in March 1926, the Komsomol Central Committee dispatched to its regional committees instructions on how to organize Esperanto circles in youth clubs; the circular encouraged the founding of such cir- cles where there was interest in Esperanto, requiring that members 'must link their acquisition of Esperanto with practical work in the form of correspondence with workers in other countries'.8 0 And three months later the Soviet Esperantists received praise from an authoritative source, which they duly noted with particular pride: the Moscow-based news- paper Izvestiia named the international workers' correspondence, carried out by comrades in Smolensk through Esperanto, a model for the entire Soviet Union.[608] Esperanto's role in the service of the state was symboli- cally recognized when in 1925 the Soviet post office, for the first time in philatelic history, published postage stamps with texts in Esperanto.
Such practical application of the language took place in the context of the dream of world revolution. On a small scale it seemed to anticipate what would one day characterize interpersonal relations in the emerging proletarian civilization. The publicist Lev Sosnovsky expressed this view in 1925 with the following prognosis:
If not today, then tomorrow, a veritable torrent of workers will flow in mass excursions out of the USSR into other countries and vice versa. It is naive to hope that a Russian worker travelling in Europe will learn five or six languages to visit five or six countries. It is true that with Esperanto he won't be able to contact the working masses in the west, since also in those countries the language is insufficiently widespread. But if in every country the communist parties devoted at least some attention to the matter, how much easier it would be for the worker on our side, having no knowledge of foreign languages, to communicate with his brothers and connect with the activities and struggles in other countries.[609]
As if to confirm Sosnovsky's optimism, with increasing frequency western workers visiting the Soviet Union found easy contact through Esperanto. During their stay, such visitors, the first of whom were British,[610] Czech,[611]
German[612] and Swedish[613] workers, helped dispel the skepticism of local authorities about the functional capability of Esperanto and, returning home, issued positive reports of their impressions of the Soviet Union.[614]More direct help to SEU's activities came from a few experienced foreign Esperantists who came to the Soviet Union for longer stays. In addition to political emigres, like the Hungarians Pal Robicsek,[615] Istvan Michalicska[616] and Sandor Szatmari,[617] they included two founding mem- bers of SAT. One, the Frenchman Robert Guiheneuf, was a friend of Lanti.[618] The other, the Austrian communist Lucien Laurat,^2 played a particularly important role because he lived in Moscow for four years as of 1923. Working in the Comintern press office, serving as a correspon- dent of LHumanite and teaching in the Communist University of Eastern Working People, Laurat in those years, during which he was also a mem- ber of the SAT Central Committee and published, under the pseudonym
L. Revo, numerous articles in Sennaciulo, seemed the personification of the close connections between SAT and SEU.
These connections became increasingly important for SEU because the effective advancement of the international correspondence of its members depended on the cooperation of workers' Esperanto associations in other countries and the coordinating activity of a worldwide organization. This consideration caused Drezen to put particularly strong emphasis on the principle of a united front. In a radio talk on the Fifth SAT Congress in Vienna (1925) he not only reinforced the characterization of SAT as a 'cultural association in the service of the proletarian class' but explicitly welcomed victory over 'comrades too devoted to party and doctrine':
We don't have to make propaganda in SAT about our particular political
ideals. We must argue with facts. We should quote facts alone. In the facts
resides the remarkable quality of education, of acculturation.[619]
A year later, the Soviet Esperantists were themselves hosts of the SAT Congress. In August 1926 the Sixth Congress, held in the Tauride Palace in Leningrad, brought together more than 400 participants, of whom some 150 were from abroad. The People's Commissar for Education, Lunacharsky, agreed to be honorary president of the congress; in his written message of greeting he acknowledged 'that the Esperantists, feel- ing themselves to belong to the vanguard of the most progressive forms of human intercommunication, also feel a certain kinship with the great movement for communism'.' [620] A representative of the Association of Proletarian Writers publicly confessed 'a grave error'—namely that he and his comrades had formerly believed Esperanto to be 'a utopia and a fantasy'.[621]
The brotherly atmosphere during the days of the congress put the par- ticipants in a state bordering on euphoria, which had a positive influ- ence on their general judgment of the Soviet Union. Bartelmess spoke enthusiastically of 'a paradise for Esperantists and people with free ideas', called the freedom of the Soviet citizen 'incomparably greater than in any "democratic" country', and spoke of 'enviable health resorts and spas' where workers, after the sweat of hard labor, could enjoy the relaxation they deserved.[622] The conviction that only thanks to Esperanto was it pos- sible to engage with and adequately assess the gigantic progress made by the Soviet Union accordingly inspired unanimous approval of a resolu- tion that demanded that Esperanto be applied in the struggle 'against the efforts of false leaders to trick and to keep in ignorance the workers of the various countries, to hide from them the truth about the living condition of the workers in the various countries, and to impede the creation of a united front'.[623] With pride they acknowledged that the Congress was a significant step forward in demonstrating the suitability of Esperanto 'not only for commerce, tourism, philately, nudism, etc., but also to express with scientific accuracy the proletariat's aspiration for the struggle'.[624]
Another resolution[625] called on all SAT members to give 'priority atten- tion' to correspondence by assisting workers' organizations wishing to make contact with other countries, and organizing the translation of cor- respondence published in Sennaciulo for local workers' periodicals and also letters of foreign workers received by these periodicals directly. SAT's magazine would serve as the central organ of international correspon- dence through Esperanto, multiplying its effect. To avoid hindering this process, Drezen explicitly agreed, in the course of the congress, that in his editorial work for Sennaciulo, Lanti would have the right 'to refuse publication of articles too "communist" or too "anarchist", if they might hinder SAT's united proletarian front'.[626]
Not only did the congress reinforce SEU's position at home, but it also proved fruitful for SAT: after Leningrad SAT's membership in the Soviet Union grew to almost 2000.[627] Interest in Esperanto so increased that in April 1926 SEU complained of its limited capability to respond to the needs: a textbook printed in 10,000 copies sold out within three months.[628] SEU's membership in this period reached a total of 10,000.[629]SEU noted contentedly in mid-1927: 'People no longer treat us with mockery or suspicion, or by ignoring us: they consider SEU and the pro- letarian Esperanto movement a valuable social factor'.[630]
Confirming the position of respect that SEU enjoyed during this period was the fact that in 1927 it received, along with other Soviet orga- nizations, the right to invite guests from abroad to participate in the festivities marking the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The invitation was accepted by 11 people from 9 countries, to whom were added another 12 Esperantists belonging to various other delegations.[631]They attended, among other events, the World Congress of Friends of the Soviet Union (Moscow, 10-12 November 1927), of whose almost 1000 delegates from over 40 countries one-fourth signed an expression of support for the wider use of Esperanto in the cultural relations between the Soviet Union and other countries.[632] The visit, which took the guests of SEU also to other cities in the Soviet Union, allowed them to gain impressions of Soviet life which were probably deeper than those most other delegates, unable to avail themselves of Esperanto, were able to gather.[633]
Letter Writing
Given that the possibility of direct contact or face-to-face conversation with foreign Esperantists was always extremely limited, no other practical use of Esperanto was more important than correspondence. Correspondence, opening as it did a doorway to the outside world, satisfied personal aspira- tions and at the same time, given the goodwill of the authorities for the idea of international workers' correspondence generally, helped raise the prestige and the organizational strength of SEU as a whole.
The aspirations of many Soviet Esperantists were apparent in the large number of requests for correspondents that appeared in almost every issue of Sennaciulo. The feelings stirred by this awareness of links with the whole world through the medium of Esperanto were well described by the Germanist Lev Kopelev,[634] who in 1926, as a schoolboy in Kiev, began studying the language. Describing his teacher and the enthusiasm that he ignited among young people, Kopelev writes:
The newspapers offered only the same boring telegraphed stories from abroad, while the magazines, with their dark grey photographs, gave only dull reflections of far-off foreign life.
By contrast, Kopelev alludes to
the personal letters from distant lands, only recently received, addressed to this man right in front of us, our teacher. From an old satchel he took postcards and envelopes, so bright they seemed lacquered with rare and wondrous stamps. You could hold them in your hands, sniff them—inhale the air of London, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo ...
[...] he showed us postcards from Australia, Japan, Spain, Argentina. ... All of them began with the same salutation: 'Kamarado or 'Samideano' (fellow thinker).[635]
A similar description of an enthusiastic Soviet worker is provided by Andrei Platonov in his novel Happy Moscow. His hero, in whose room hung portraits of Lenin, Stalin and Zamenhof, received letters from dif- ferent parts of the world almost every day:
Clerks and factory works, far-off men pinned to the ground by eternal exploitation, had learned Esperanto and so conquered the silence between peoples; drained by hard work, too poor for travel, they communicated with one another through shared thought.
The Soviet correspondent replies to every letter, proudly recounting the steady improvement in life thanks to socialism, and anticipating a time when 'a whole billion of them' [workers] will want to come to the Soviet Union 'and live with us forever, bringing their families—and, as for capi- talism, let it remain empty, unless a revolution sets in there as well'.[636]
What was the content of these exchanges of letters? The sheer num- ber of letters exchanged between Soviet Esperantists and those in other countries makes it more or less impossible to give an overview of the top- ics covered. But the fact that for the most part this correspondence was targeted does allow us to draw some conclusions about favored topics. Because SEU wanted to share the letters received with as large a public as possible, namely by publishing them in the press, the organization both offered its members advice on how to organize their correspondence[637]and also sought to instruct the correspondents in other countries about the kinds of letters they should write to serve as material for Soviet pub- lications. Analysis of the instructions addressed to correspondents abroad about preferred topics reveals primarily two characteristics.
First, correspondents were warned not to fill the letters with trivia. Instead of descriptions of 'the beauties of the homeland or purely bour- geois, local sensations', Soviet readers expected—as the activist Pavel
Kiriushin, of Minsk, put it—letters in which workers should 'freely' recount the various aspects of their lives:
For us and for our readers it will be interesting to know from the letter of a simple worker what kinds of working conditions exist in given places in a given country, and it is important if the description is an eye-witness account. Similarly interesting for us is to read about the political rights of workers, about harassment of the workers' movement, about workers' ide- als, and about the feeling of worldwide brotherhood among working people.[638]
There was no lack of readiness on the part of western comrades to reply to such appeals, because the topics indicated seemed, in this general for- mulation, of common interest to workers in all countries. Many were convinced that the Soviet Union merited their support and so they will- ingly used Esperanto to demonstrate their solidarity. For their part, they hoped, in return, to receive from their Soviet correspondents informa- tion on living conditions in the Soviet Union that could be published in national-language workers' periodicals. With this in mind, the most enthusiastic among them even asked their Soviet friends directly for help in providing authentic information that would correct misrepresenta- tions about their country. For example, soon after the British Evening News asserted, in June 1927, that Soviet workers had to pay personally for the education of their children, Sennaciulo published a brief related article that asked whether 'some Soviet reader would help us rebut these bourgeois lies by replying to the following questions: [.. .]'[639] On another occasion the journal published a translation of an article that appeared in Mŭnchner Zeitung about Siberia, quoting examples from the Siberian press of uncivilized behavior, drunkenness, homelessness and super- stition; the translator, a SAT member from Munich, asked that these assertions be answered so that he could demand a correction from the newspaper.[640]
But it would be incorrect to suppose that these letter-writing contacts between Soviet and foreign Esperantists were stimulated by the fervor of people who believed that bourgeois papers contained only falsehoods about the Soviet Union and that Esperanto opened a privileged route to knowledge of the truth. On the contrary, the correspondence flourished in large part because those SAT members who were less inclined to regard the Soviet Union as a model for the building of socialism found it inter- esting in itself and important for the Esperanto movement. Many began corresponding with Soviet citizens out of natural curiosity about living conditions in their country and the desire to describe their own environ- ment in their letters. They understood that in the Soviet Union there was a great deal of interest in corresponding with other countries, and they were happy to respond to it—also to advance Esperanto. This awareness was sharpened by the warnings published from time to time in Sennaciulo about the threat of imbalance in the dissemination of Esperanto between the Soviet Union and other countries.[641]
This brings us to the second principal characteristic of the correspon- dence. As the warnings about disequilibrium suggest (and to them we could add the constant admonitions that SAT members should be faith- ful and timely correspondents), the desire to keep the letter writing going clearly exceeded any tendency to limit the topics to be covered. Efforts to prescribe the contents of the letters in any case held little promise of suc- cess. Certainly the comrades in other countries did not limit themselves to complaints about their miserable lives under capitalism and, on the other hand, their Soviet correspondents did not confine themselves to long reports of their victories in the building of socialism. The encour- agement of correspondents to cover topics in their letters that could later be of interest also to newspaper readers could not weaken the element of spontaneity, curiosity and personal pleasure. Furthermore, for the intended exploitation of foreign letters in, for example, factory newslet- ters, there was even an initial preference for the specific atmosphere of the personal letter. The coloring of individuality in the letters written by foreigners was popular among readers, as a worker Esperanto correspon- dent in Kremenchug emphasized early in 1927:
Letters from simple, barely educated workers often have much more effect than the discourse of high politics because they are more 'alive'.[642]
Similarly, the editors of Sennaciulo called on their correspondents
[...] not to write politically colored articles, not to produce poor imitations of the professionals, but to talk in simple terms about your life, your pro- fession, the customs of your region; in this way our magazine will acquire a special character, a certain originality.[643]
When a magazine for Ukrainian working women expressed a wish to receive regular information about living conditions abroad, its Esperantist collaborators laid out for non-Soviet SAT members the topics that should be covered in letters destined for publication:
in what conditions women work in factory working-places; how they are paid (differences between men's and women's wages); how many hours they work; dangers in the workplace and accidents (injuries at work); whether the company's premises have special clothing if the work is dirty or damag- ing to clothes; whether female workers receive paid free time (time off) and for how long; is insurance available as part of employment (which a female worker can receive if sick, or in the final months of pregnancy and right after giving birth, or if injured; who, how, how long and how much gets paid in such non-working periods). Write about the exploitation of wom- en's (and particularly girls') work; write about successes in the revolution- ary women's movement and also the struggle against the petty bourgeois women's 'emancipation' movement; about cultural work among women workers; how working women, including working wives, participate in cooperative work; how workers' cooperatives facilitate the lives of women workers (establishment of cafeterias, day care, kindergartens, help for preg- nant women, etc.); unemployment among females [...] Send us a torrent of letters!! Get your friends to write! Make the letters simple, but full of facts![644]
Preference went, according to several appeals, to letters whose topics were close to the everyday experience of working people. Because articles on living conditions in various countries made up a large part of the con- tents of Sennaciulo and were evidently particularly liked by its readers, we can assume that even without special appeals most SAT members would be disinclined to engage in 'the discourse of high politics', believing that it would be more interesting and more in line with their competence if they wrote about everyday affairs.
At the end of the 1920s, the Esperanto movement in the Soviet Union was prospering. The letter-writing relations between Soviet and foreign Esperantists reached impressive numbers. In eight months the Esperantists of Sebastopol received 500 letters from 20 countries,[645] their colleagues in Kurgan in 17 months received 696 letters from 23 countries and themselves dispatched 938 pieces of correspondence.[646] In Irkutsk, where the young communists' committee recommended that its branches learn foreign languages for the purpose of international education and mentioned primarily Esperanto, foreign correspondence amounted to around 500 items a year.[647] A growing readiness on the part of editors to publish material received through such correspondence was apparent. Such material appeared regularly in 10% of Soviet periodicals.[648] In 29 Moscow periodicals a total of 82 letters, translated from Esperanto, were published[649], and in Kurgan, of 481 letters received in a single year, 86 appeared in newspapers or wall newspapers.[650] Of material on other coun- tries that appeared in 1928-29 in the Leningrad district of Volodarsky, 95% had their origins in Esperanto.1 25 The SEU periodicals regularly reported on local experiences in letter-writing activity, giving advice to SEU members about 'how by skillful use of Esperanto correspondence you can penetrate the indifference and even the opposition of all editorial staff regarding Esperanto'.[651] Editors who preferred to use national lan- guages for correspondence were criticized for wasting money by spending large sums on translators instead of using the services of Esperanto.i [652]The Esperantists also argued that their material was more authentic than that received from abroad by way of 'mediating authorities'.[653]
I t was largely due to the tireless use of Esperanto in international letter-writing work that SEU encountered more often than not a positive attitude to its work among organizations and people of influence. Early in 1928, for example, the press department of the Communist Party of Belarus noted with approval the successful activity of Esperanto corre- spondents in Minsk.[654] In that year, Soviet workers were officially urged to learn foreign languages in order to have more intimate contact with foreigners; SEU reacted to this advice by arguing that Esperanto was the most easily learned language and that it also helped in the acquisition of the national languages of other countries.i 30 These efforts brought results. The Eighth Komsomol Congress in May 1928 accepted a resolu- tion stating that Esperanto organizations 'must be used for international contact',[655] although the secretary of the All-Union Komsomol, Lazar Shatskin, counseled against learning Esperanto. His position was bal- anced, however, by the warm support of Ukrainian functionaries, who recommended that young communists pay attention to 'this vast vol- unteer movement, which came into being spontaneously, without any pressure from above'.[656] A representative of the district party committee of Vladivostok in March 1929 described as 'unhealthy' the fact that a local school was corresponding in English with a bourgeois school in the USA and recommended that 'Our schoolchildren must correspond with the children of the proletariats of other countries, and Esperanto can help with that.'[657]
In August 1929, the Central Committee of the Ukraine Komsomol, having earlier recognized the service of young communist Esperantists in the field of international correspondence, praised the 'total suitability' of Esperanto particularly for the reciprocal understanding of young workers in the various countries. It strongly recommended that its readers learn and use the language.[658] Around the same time, a well-known economist and public figure, Iurii Larin, linked the present usefulness of Esperanto with the need for international communication in the period after world revolution:
Our workers cannot master several foreign languages all at once. But it is
necessary that we have the ability to communicate with comrades in other
countries, and understand them. To be sure, those who are now entering
school will be adults by the time of the victory of the proletarian revolution
in the rest of Europe, when travel abroad (and the arrival of foreigners in our midst) will be common and widespread. But if it is difficult to master all languages, it is accordingly easy to master the single language Esperanto [...]. Right now, one can travel through the principal countries of Europe and interact with workers there with a knowledge of Esperanto alone. [...] If the teaching of the Esperanto language were introduced in our secondary schools, that would accelerate further acquaintance with the language and with foreign workers.[659]
In a book written following a journey through the Soviet Union, the British journalist and writer, Emile Joseph Dillon, reported that 16,000 Esperantists could be found there, and that in schools where non-Russian languages were taught, Esperanto occupied fourth place after English, German and French. Dillon noted with surprise the extent of Esperanto correspondence by factory workers and members of the Red Army.[660]
Organizationally, SEU noted growth 'to an almost catastrophic degree'. In May 1928 the Central Committee calculated that a second ten thou- sand people 'have been attracted to our circles and groups'. The active members of SEU (subscribers to the journals) at that time numbered 3500. In a mere six months, a total of 35,000 textbooks were sold.1 37 Although these achievements still did not satisfy SEU and although it often reproached its local groups for organizational lapses, public inter- est in Esperanto seemed sufficiently large to look to the future with optimism.
The Growing Class Struggle and the 'Misuse' of Esperanto
Although local newspapers during this period supposedly had a degree of freedom in the choice of what letters to publish, on what topics, this freedom was not as broad as the topics chosen by the letter writers. In other words, not everything that foreigners wrote to their Soviet friends was actually publishable. Lanti himself experienced this problem as early as 1924-25 when he was serving as an Esperantist correspondent for a Siberian newspaper. After about six months he resigned his—paid— position, having received word from the editors 'that my articles are not much to the readers' liking; not because they are not interesting, but because I apparently don't believe that French capitalism is standing on the brink of bankruptcy; and also because I haven't reported sufficiently optimistically about the "progress" of the communist party'.[661]
It is not surprising that Lanti's openness clashed with the editorial cri- teria of a Soviet newspaper. But, more significantly, personal correspon- dence was also not without its problems. Foreign Esperantists, in their letters, often (partly unintentionally) led their readers to understand that the living conditions of workers in capitalist countries were not irremedi- ably worse than those in the Soviet Union. They also, even if they were fully sympathetic with the building of socialism in the Soviet Union, sometimes revealed the phenomenon of revolutionary virginity, namely the attitude of people who naively measured Soviet realities in accordance with their imagination of the character of a successful revolution. For example, one writer, in a letter to his Soviet correspondent, expressed amazement at the information that Soviet trade unions 'had to be con- cerned with making work more productive' rather than fighting for the worker against the factory administration. In response to such letters, SEU in 1926 warned their members to avoid giving inaccurate or impre- cise information about life in the Soviet Union, which 'fosters confusion among workers in other countries'.[662]
In the first three years of the program, SEU only sporadically alluded to negative issues with the correspondence. If problems were mentioned at all, they related to such matters as the 'difficult conditions' under which correspondents in other countries had to work,[663] or the fact that in a few countries Esperantists corresponding with the Soviet Union were harassed.[664] That the presentation of the Soviet Union in these letters began to be a matter of attention emerged for the first time in April 1927 in a discussion in Sennaciuloi in which Demidiuk expressed his fury about earlier published assertions by a certain 'Soviet citizen' con- cerning salaries, taxes, rent and holidays, which, Demidiuk maintained, 'confused the facts to such an extent that it looked like the beginning of systematic misinformation about the Soviet Union'.i [665] The problem was made clearer in a letter published in Sennaciulo in early 1928, in which an Esperantist from Rostov complained that the magazine contained 'abun- dant material about the total success of Soviet workers' economic and cultural life'. The writer entered a plea for reporting about his country that was more in conformity with the reality. He recommended that the Soviet Esperantists 'not remain silent on such topics as unemployment, homelessness [...], the urban housing shortage, the lack of education of country people', because only in this way would the comrades in other countries receive 'a full picture'. The letter ended with the words 'I believe that the truth must come first'.[666]
The correspondence during this period seems to have dealt more and more with the negative sides of Soviet life. Foreign Esperantists displayed in their letters a bothersome curiosity, asking their correspondents what they thought about the struggles within the Soviet Communist Party fol- lowing the expulsion in December 1927 of the opposition figures Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. The Bavarian SAT member Karl Weber, in a let- ter to his friend Veniamin Zyrianov, approved the expulsion but at the same time expressed disagreement about 'the deadly punishment of exile, because it is a counterrevolutionary, anti-Marxist perpetration'. Weber also asked about the truth of the rumors that the letters sent abroad by Soviet Esperantists 'were for the most part not written by them, but by some Esperanto office', to which they were required to submit correspon- dence received from other countries. He warned that, if such informa- tion proved true, he and his comrades would stop corresponding with Soviet Esperantists, because under such conditions they 'would always be deceived and would never learn the truth about the Soviet Union'.[667]Because the incidence of disagreeable interest on the part of foreign- ers continued to grow, often stimulated by letters from the Soviet Union itself, the SEU Central Committee in June 1928 took an unprecedented step. In a letter addressed to the editors of Sennaciulo the committee stated:
Recently, individual neutral Esperantists still resident in the Soviet Union [...] have spread lying information in their letters abroad about apparent political and economic crises in the Soviet Republics, about alleged cruel treatment of political prisoners [...]. Foreign proletarian Esperantists [...] are clearly confused by such information—with the result that many ques- tions about the truth of such information have been received by SEU orga- nizations and by individual Esperantists in the Soviet Republics.[668]
At the same time the Central Committee sent the SEU organizations a circular, warning them against 'misinformation' emanating from the Soviet Union. The circular confirmed that such difficulties with corre- spondence did not come only from the letters of Soviet 'neutralists'. The numerous questions from abroad about the actions of the opposition had created confusion among the SEU membership: 'Frequently our com- rades, unable to reply to all, often difficult, questions, have been bom- barding the SEU Central Committee with letters asking for advice'.[669]
SEU had already confessed to 'a few sufficiently serious defects' in the correspondence between Soviet and foreign Esperantists. Responsibility for such problems lay above all in the fact that the correspondence was carried out almost exclusively on an individual basis. SEU described the defects as follows:
[... the] circle of use of the letters received is very narrow, and often, apart from the correspondent himself, no one knows about this correspondence. In individual correspondence, misinformation to comrades abroad about life in the Soviet Union is more frequent; individual correspondence is very hard to assess.
To avoid such misinformation, SEU believed it necessary to reorga- nize the correspondence effort completely. It recommended 'that such correspondence should now move to a higher level—to that of collec- tive correspondence'. What would such an arrangement look like? SEU gave the following illustration: a letter from abroad would be publicly discussed in a group, its translation would be posted on a special notice board so that non-Esperantists could also be informed of its content, and finally the response to the foreign correspondent should be the result of a collectively discussed text, initially developed in the Russian language.[670]By the call for 'collective correspondence', it was clear that SEU aimed at greater control. A member of the Central Committee, Roman Nikolsky, urged that 'private individual correspondence be replaced, completely and by all means possible, by collective correspondence by conforming groups (associated with the party, professions, trade unions, etc.) and by correspondence for newspapers'.[671]
In an earlier circular to its organizations, SEU pointed out that the 'increased activities of neutralists' and lapses in the political education of the membership, causing misrepresentation of Soviet life in letters abroad, was directly related to its social structure—that such dangerous tenden- cies were due to the insufficient proportion of workers in SEU. In so stating the matter, SEU touched a nerve, because in fact the membership included many teachers and office employees, and only a few ordinary workers.[672] From this point forward, priority attention was devoted to the recruitment of industrial workers. The Central Committee indicated as a goal its intention to raise the percentage of workers in SEU from 17% to at least 40%. This task was urgent because in the autumn of 1928 the leaders of the official worker-correspondence movement expressed their disinclination to support the broad application of Esperanto. The question was taken up by the journal of the worker and peasant cor- respondents, Raboche-krestianskii korrespondent. in an article written by none other than Lenin's sister, Mariia Ulianova, the managing editor of the journal. She declared that Esperanto, although, thanks to its use, a few positive results in the organization of international contacts had been achieved, did not, because of its insufficient powers of expression and its limiteddissemination, have a future, 'despite the paeans of praise of its practitioners'. She suggested that preferably a worker should learn a foreign national language and that there were occasions when 'Esperanto has been used in ways that harmed the Soviet Union'.[673]
This last point was more starkly emphasized by another author in the next issue of the journal:
We have facts that confirm that Esperanto is used by enemies of the work- ing class for spreading lies and implausible information about the situation of the workers in the USSR and in capitalist countries. We should further add that in other countries Esperanto is more widespread among the petty bourgeoisie, in circles of office workers, business people and bureaucrats, in those of people who are hostile in their orientation to all things revolution- ary. It is superfluous to explain how such people use their free access, thanks to Esperanto, to links with the workers of the Soviet Union. Attention to this matter is long overdue.[674]
This warning about the misuse of Esperanto was published four months after the SEU Central Committee itself, in a letter to Sennaciulo, had confessed that 'neutral Esperantists' had been spreading 'lying informa- tion' abroad about the political situation in the Soviet Union. It came right before a conference of the Worker and Peasant Correspondents in Moscow (28 November-7 December 1928), whose agenda included the use of Esperanto. A draft resolution contained the assertion that the Esperanto movement was petty bourgeois. After discussion, in which many defenders of Esperanto spoke out, the sentence was struck out and replaced by a recommendation to use Esperanto in parallel with national languages for correspondence.[675]
The fact that the leaders of the worker-correspondence movement themselves opposed Esperanto undoubtedly unsettled SEU's activi- ties. The leaders continued to reproach the Esperantists for their over- confidence and criticized the fact that 'particularly in the provinces' the newspapers published an over-abundance of letters translated from Esperanto or printed contributions that were unnecessary, lacking in seri- ousness, nai've or simply dangerous—for example the letter of a German Esperantist who complained that the socialist and communist parties sometimes fought against one another more than they fought against the bourgeoisie.[676] An additional criticism of the Esperantists was the asser- tion that workers' Esperanto periodicals were full of personal announce- ments by stamp collectors and even people looking for wives.[677]
Throughout 1929 Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk. SEU's monthly theoreti- cal organ, devoted extensive space to efforts to refute such accusations, particularly the idea that Soviet letter writers were corresponding with the petty bourgeoisie in other countries. Agreeing that the Esperanto movement in other countries had its petty-bourgeois residue, it pointed out that, almost without exception, the correspondence belonged to the working class.i [678] To prove the point, it quoted from letters expressing foreign friends' burning curiosity about the achievements of the Soviet Union, their enthusiastic support for the struggle against kulaks and right-wing deviants and their confession that, though sometimes made hesitant by the misrepresentations of class enemies, they re-established their revolutionary equilibrium thanks to the convincing explanations of their Soviet correspondents.[679]
This leads us to a key question. To what extent were Esperantists in other countries, on whose collaboration success ultimately depended, willing to participate in this new form of collective correspondence? Were they willing to follow the path dictated to SEU by the circumstances prevailing in the Soviet Union?
In January 1929, Ida Lisichnik, one of the most active organizers of letter writing in the SEU, directed an appeal to the Sennaciulo reader- ship. She encouraged SAT members to increase their awareness of the 'social significance' of correspondence and to actively pursue connec- tions with fellow professionals, places of work, party cells, editorial teams and so on, in the various countries. She pointed out that in her city, Sebastopol, the young communists 'were extremely eager' to correspond, but that Sennaciulo did not provide them with enough addresses of part- ners matching their age and professions.[680] A month later, Barthelmess replied to Ida Lisichnik's appeal. In principle he supported it, but he named two serious obstacles which 'effectively prevented an immediate solution'. One was the imbalance of numbers between correspondence requests from the Soviet Union and replies from the rest of the world. The other obstacle preventing the expansion of letter-writing connections had its origins in Soviet particularities:
We have often noted that Soviet letter-writers are content to address slogans and dry, schematic analysis of organizational topics to their foreign com- rades. Young Soviet comrades should consider that the spiritual condition of many young comrades in other countries has been formed in surroundings totally foreign to the Soviet world and that, if they are to establish intimate contact with them, they must begin not with descriptions of organizing or party work, but by telling them about individual and collective living condi- tions in the workplace, in clubs, and in the family.[681]
Such admonitions had up to this point been unnecessary or unexpressed. They were based on current conditions which in the moment of publica- tion were in a sense already anachronistic. Barthelmess probably did not realize that, in supporting collective correspondence and calling for fewer slogans, he was advocating two things that were directly opposed to one another. The invitation to Soviet Esperantists to include in their letters descriptions of their private lives and expressions of personal feelings was undoubtedly addressed to people whose way of thinking was essentially no different from that of people living in the rest of the world. But the new form of collective correspondence was directly aimed at suppressing the incalculable risks of individuality. A primary requirement of such cor- respondence from abroad was that it harmonize with the editorial policies of the Soviet press and demonstrate the utility of Esperanto as a source of welcome information. By the same token, the flow of letters abroad should faithfully report the achievements of the building of socialism. Thus, SEU in 1929 began to prescribe to its members directly what they should write to other countries—namely 'the sense and significance of the five-year program of "Great Tasks" and the uninterrupted five-day work week and other great moments in the life of the Soviet Union'.[682]But these were precisely the kinds of topics of which many non-Soviet members of SAT had had enough; and even if they were still willing to correspond with the Soviet Union, they were less and less able to deliver the kinds of content deemed suitable for publication in Soviet newspa- pers, factory bulletins and wall newspapers.
Early in 1928, Drezen's language grew more truculent. In proposals prepared for the upcoming Fourth SEU Congress he explained that it was no longer enough to pursue the struggle against neutralism: now it was necessary to unmask 'the opportunistic and class-betraying tenden- cies of certain leaders of the workers in other countries'. Drezen described the world situation as characterized 'by a pervasive sharpening of the class struggle', in which 'all compromise is increasingly pointless'. He repeated the belief that the members of SEU should 'to the extent that they can' abandon 'the old methods of individual correspondence' in favor of 'col- lective group correspondence'.[683] The earlier exhortations to SEU mem- bers to intensify the battle 'against attempts to exploit the international language not for class-based, revolutionary or technological goals, but for simple amusement or entertainment, etc.'[684] were now followed by attacks on the '25% neutralism' practiced by those members who 'prefer collect- ing stamps to addressing social issues'.[685] It was precisely such 'barterers' who were urged to get serious by turning to collective correspondence.[686]
Drezen's mention of the 'sharpening of the class struggle' reminds us of the political background without which the increasingly authoritarian tone used by the SEU leaders as of 1928 would make little sense. It was Stalin himself who launched the slogan 'sharpening class struggle' in connection with his two major goals: collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization. It was useful to him less as a means of analyzing the actual situation than as a pretext to justify a ruthless battle against all resistance to realizing these goals. The 15th Party Congress in December 1927, which approved the directives for developing the Five-Year Plan for industrial expansion, ended with the expulsion of Trotsky and other 'leftists' who opposed Stalin's program for the building of socialism in a single country. It was followed by the arrest and exile of the opposition; at the same time, the Party rigorously intervened in the lives of the peasants, ordering confiscation of their grain reserves.
In March 1928 the secret police asserted that they had uncovered a counter-revolutionary conspiracy of 'specialists' in the North Caucasus city of Shakhty. There followed not only a public trial and death sentences, but also insistent cries for greater vigilance against such bourgeois special- ists. The ten-year alliance between the Party and non-communist experts, a hallmark of the NEP, was now definitively at an end. At the same time, the people's suffering intensified. In North-western Russia and Southern Ukraine large numbers of country folk starved to death. Workers were forced to submit to severe conditions and threats of punishment, intended to raise the level of 'working discipline'. Arrests became a mass phenom- enon, no longer inflicted on people for actual political deviation but also merely because they belonged to a particular social group.i [687] In April 1929 the Five-Year Plan for industrialization and the plan for rapid col- lectivization were finally accepted. A new period began in the history of the Soviet Union, in which Stalin was the undisputed master. He could now construct socialism in his empire by revolution from above.
Such was the internal political situation in the Soviet Union—reflected in the actions of SEU as of 1928. In a later chapter we will attempt to describe in greater detail how SEU adapted to this situation. But first we will look at how relations between SEU and SAT developed up to the years 1928-29. The question that principally interests us is whether the so-called sharpening of the class struggle in the Soviet Union, which played out within SEU in the form of severe warnings to the members, influenced relations between the Soviet Esperantists and SAT.
6
Schism and Collapse
'Sennaciismo'
Even as SEU was trying to free itself from suspicion that its letter-writing activity was allowing bourgeois ideas to infiltrate the Soviet Union, it was forced to devote increased attention to the development of its relations with SAT. There were two factors to consider. First, the interests of the communist movement had become wholly identified with the goal of maintaining the power of the Soviet Union. Stalin had, in 1927, made it clear that 'An internationalist is one who is ready to defend the U.S.S.R. without reservation, without wavering, unconditionally; for the U.S.S.R. is the base of the world revolutionary movement'.[688] The following year, the Comintern complemented this requirement with a declaration of war against those who, in its opinion, had abandoned the 'true' path of class struggle. Furthermore, the Party launched the equally attention-focusing thesis that the danger of an imperialist war was growing more and more imminent, along with the possibility of a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. The country was gripped by a siege mentality.
The time was past when the Soviet Union could trumpet, or at least toler- ate, the loyal cooperation of communists in international workers' organiza- tions. Now the argument was that, after the fascists, the social democrats were the most dangerous enemies of the Soviet Union. For SAT, as it sought to unite the various camps within the socialist movement, the Comintern's new line was ominous. Lanti's guiding principle was to steer the association in such a way that no one felt discriminated against; socialists, communists and other party members were advised to form interest groups (frakcioj) in which they could carry on their party work outside SAT's responsibility. Sennaciulo, on the other hand, should be free of polemics in support of any one group or opposition to the others. In this way, within SAT, commu- nists and non-communists, aware of their divergent positions, succeeded in maintaining a modus vivendi—or perhaps, given this awareness, were all the more careful to subordinate political or ideological differences to the com- mon goal of disseminating Esperanto.
In August 1928, while the Sixth Comintern Congress was going on in Moscow, the first signs of public disagreement between Lanti and Drezen emerged. The SEU leader, in a working meeting at the Eighth SAT Congress in Goteborg, made a declaration that sounded distinctly threatening:
I can say quite unequivocally: we in the Soviet Union have a dictatorship of the working class; as long as the SAT movement helps us further educate our work- ers, we will participate in SAT. There may come a moment when we are com- pelled to leave SAT or when people of other political tendencies will leave SAT.
Drezen was angry at various unorthodox articles by Lanti in Sennaciulo,[689]in which Lanti, in an often ironic tone, emphasized SAT's specific 'nationless' (sennacieca) character and sought to make the members aware that SAT 'must not be a political organization, but educational, cultural, informational'.[690] Despite his complaint that Lanti was not publishing enough articles on the class struggle, Drezen confirmed his connection with SAT:
SAT now needs a policy that prevents us from bumping into one another, because that's useful to none of us. It would be good if Lanti could manage to find a middle way for us all, with occasional zigzags in one direction or the other. With that arrangement, we might be able to continue together for a few years. For us, our Sennaciulo is precious, and gives all of us good information. We don't want to destroy it because of a vague hope for some- thing that might be more agreeable to us. Let's establish a united front at least in those areas in the field of culture where it is possible to do so.[691]
Drezen was also not opposed to Lanti's proposal to adjust the SAT con- stitution by a redefinition of its goals, implicitly addressing the tendency of the communists to insist that they were right. The newly accepted text declared SAT's goals as follows: 'by comparing facts and ideas, by free discussion, [the Association] aims to prevent among its members the dog- matization of the teachings that they receive within their own spheres'.[692]This redefinition was a clear requirement to avoid fanaticism at all costs.
However much the two sides took care that discussions not become disputes, as the communists' sensitivity heightened Lanti's restraint declined. (In 1928, having long since lost his illusions about commu- nism, and having failed to pay his membership fees for two or three years, he resigned from the French Communist Party.) At the end of 1928, in a brochure entitled La laborista esperantismo (The Workers' Esperantism),[693]Lanti made an attempt to present sennaciismo as a separate doctrine. Previously there had not been much discussion among SAT members about the precise meaning of the term. As we explained earlier, from the beginning SAT had sought to educate its members to a 'nationless' way of thought, beyond nation and nationality.[694] Most members, including the communists and probably Lanti himself, were happy enough to consider
Fig. 6.1 Members of the Lipetsk Esperanto group, Tambov Governorate (1927-28)
sennaciismo a combination of proletarian internationalism and the fight for an international language.[695]
In any event, sennaciismo had its enthusiastic supporters among the Soviet Esperantists.[696] Kopelev describes in his memoirs the feelings that he had when as a 14-year-old schoolboy he received his SAT membership card: 'From now on, in answer to the question of nationality, we were supposed to declare proudly: "Without nationality, sennaciulo, satano"— that is a member of SAT. The game was all the more beautiful in that it was not intended to be a game, but the beginning of a new life.'[697] He goes on to explain:
When as a schoolboy I learned about a language that urged all the peoples of the world to unite among themselves, the future looked pure and simple to me. The people of the different countries would learn to understand each other, and all the causes of war—distrust, enmity, chauvinistic myths—would simply vanish. [...]
We hoped that soon the forces fighting for the brotherhood of all men— for communism—would triumph throughout the world. And we believed that in our country these salutary forces were ascendant, that a natural fusion of different peoples and races had already been realized with us.[698]
Such was the atmosphere in 1926. Two or three years later, when the communists of the world were urged to cease concentrating on world rev- olution per se and to dedicate themselves entirely to building socialism in the Soviet Union as the model for world revolution, the Esperantists could escape the threat of a conflict of loyalty between membership in SAT and support for the Soviet Union only for as long as the content of sennaciismo remained largely without precise definition.
But now Lanti was trying to provide sennaciismo with a clear defini- tion. He once again emphasized the undogmatic character of SAT and its openness to free discussion. But in one chapter, 'The emergence of a new tendency: sennaciismo , he revealed his wish that, despite the fact that SAT stood above party, the Association would do more to allow the dis- semination of the idea of sennaciismo, even if it 'in certain respects does not fit with the present program of the workers' parties'.[699]
While the social democrats, among them Franz Jonas, expressed their disapproval of Lanti's views, the strongest opposition came from the leaders of the Soviet Esperantists, who accused Lanti of 'ideologi- cal opportunism' because he declared the battle against imperialism vain and the right of nations to self-determination unworthy of support. 1 3 The principal accusation was that Lanti, opposed to national emanci- pation and apparently hoping for the disappearance of the nation state though assimilation, was 'making a fatal and extremely dangerous error', since by ignoring the struggle of oppressed peoples he was encouraging the appetite of the 'major nationalisms'.[700] Evidently Lanti's new initiative was an acute embarrassment for the Soviet Esperantists—all the more so because, equally evidently, it was an outcome of his disillusionment with the Soviet Union.
Early in August 1929, during the Ninth SAT Congress in Leipzig, Drezen attacked the leadership of the association directly. By allowing the publication of the brochure La laborista esperantismo, the leaders perpe- trated, in his view, 'sins or crimes [...] against the tradition of revolution'. Drezen even insisted that the association move its headquarters from Paris to a city in Germany, where its members would be 'more connected with the masses'.i [701] The proposal failed to receive support; surprisingly, the following day Drezen withdrew his demand, only asking that the perpetrators 'not repeat their errors'. In an emotional speech he declared that for him, who for 20 years had been 'a worse communist than a good Esperantist', the danger of disintegration caused much pain: 'For that reason, I am looking for a middle way, to preserve our unity. Making SAT communist is not at all our goal.'[702]
A compromise was found: the Leipzig congress resolution expressed confidence in the leadership and noted its confession that the manner in which it published Lanti's brochure was 'a mistake'. It attributed the chief blame for these misunderstandings to 'the capitalist system, which must be destroyed' and which 'currently prohibits normal and free contact between the vast masses in the Soviet Union and the proletariat in the capitalist countries'.[703]
Following its conclusion, Lanti summed up the results of the congress in optimistic terms, writing that the resolution had returned SAT 'to a clean, healthy state'. He speculated, probably picking up also on Drezen's words, that the avoidance of a break was due to the fact that 'we are all of us, more or less consciously, Esperantists first and party members second'.[704]
In fact, Drezen's conduct showed his flexibility. While on the one hand he energetically defended the communist understanding of the class struggle, on the other he was willing to yield when too much emphasis on the communist position threatened the basic agreement on the unify- ing role of SAT. At the same time, there was no getting away from the fact that the internal situation in the Soviet Union left him less and less room to maneuver: the Soviet circumstances, on which SEU's remaining ties to SAT depended, had changed, according to Drezen's comments in Goteborg. The question was how long the contradiction between the condemnation of 'middle positions' directed at SEU members by Drezen in 1928, and his support of a 'middle way' for SAT, proclaimed in Leipzig, could be maintained.
Sn December 1929, shortly after the difficult Leipzig compromise, Sennaciulo published a translation of a long article in The Daily Herald claiming that the Soviet Union was reviving nationalism and that the Bolsheviks 'aimed less at the realization of world revolutionary upheaval than at ensuring the safety of Russia'.s 9 The analysis was accurate, but with it Lanti delivered new ammunition to those who saw him as drifting into the anti-Soviet camp. The leaders of SEU, for whom cooperation in an organization not overseen by communists was already risky, now had to ask themselves how much longer it was possible to continue to present SEU at home as an ideologically faithful organization, while at the same time tolerating a situation in which SAT not only resisted conformity with the guiding principles of the Comintern but, through dissemination of Lanti's ideas, was acquiring a more independent philosophical profile than ever before.
SAT Dismembered
SAT was aware that traditions of nationhood still had considerable sur- vival power even in the workers' movement, but at least SAT members, united by a common language, should never be infected by nationalist tendencies: they should serve instead as models for the solidarity of the worldwide proletariat. This sense of solidarity, SAT members felt, should be defended not only against narrow national loyalties but also against the parties and their competing claims to best represent the proletariat. In practice it was not possible to avoid involvement in the work of parties and unions, not least because SAT members needed to spread the word about Esperanto in such circles. The leaders of SAT, particularly Lanti, were equally concerned that party disputes not intrude on the Association and that, within SAT—which they saw as primarily a cultural and educational organization—harmony among the various political factions should pre- vail. As the addition to the constitution, accepted in Goteborg stipulated, SAT's goal was that the widening of mental horizons made possible by the international language Esperanto should counterbalance the dogmatism generated in the mind of the proletarian by party guidelines.
The fact that SAT itself did not take a specific position on the best revolutionary strategy nor was too precise in its definition of the con- tent of sennacieca thought undoubtedly helped maintain the coexistence of the members of the various parties, even though there was no lack of occasions for controversy brought on by the articles published in Sennaciulo and Sennacieca Revuo, which one or another party member could find offensive. However, in the late 1920s the areas of friction grew.
Among western non-communist SAT members the willingness to shield the Soviet Union from all forms of criticism declined, particularly when in the individual countries the relations between communists and social democrats grew more contentious. It was only a matter of time before SAT's balancing act would be disrupted.
SAT members, for example the social democrats, firmly embedded in a particular party, nonetheless worked harder than ever to prevent SAT from getting drawn into the growing antagonism of communists and socialists. Those who had earlier often complained about communist dominance in SAT, but who for the sake of unity had avoided polem- ics, now paid particular attention to the question of whether SAT would retain its independence. For them it was particularly important that developments in SAT not impede their work at home, particularly in their national social democratic party.
The social democrats were not alone. Those who had no party to fall back on or who did not need to consider their national situation were equally concerned to preserve SAT's unity. But these members felt that it was important to give SAT a more independent character that would allow the Association to resist getting drawn into party disputes. Lanti, particularly, was among them.
Sooner or later, SEU had to recognize the 'sovietization' of the commu- nist movement and try to modify its cooperation with SAT. After Leipzig, Franz Jonas called on the socialist SAT members to be prudent, pointing out that the insulting expression 'social fascism', used by the commu- nists, covered at least half of the membership of SAT.[705] Shortly thereafter, in November, the bulletin Kunligilo began publication, as the organ of the 'International Communist Esperantist Interest Group' (Internacia Komunisma Esperantista Frakcio). Kunligilo openly raised the question of whether 'class conscious' Esperantists could any longer remain in 'a politically amorphous association like SAT'. Might they not have to leave if the 'mistaken opportunistic philosophizing' of its leaders continued?[706]
Particularly troubling to SAT were developments in the Workers' Esperanto Association for the German-language Regions (GLEA), after SEU the largest national organization collaborating with SAT. Although a majority of its membership consisted of non-communists, the GLEA's board was, as early as 1924, primarily communist. In its annual meet- ing of April 1930 in Essen, a majority of the delegates voted to join the 'Workers' Culture Circle', which was a clearly communist organization.
For SAT, GLEA's abandonment of its party-independent character was a major blow. An even larger and unexpected blow came a couple of months after the events in Essen. The SAT administration informed its membership that the Soviet Commissar for Finance had forbidden further transfer of money from SAT's accounts in Moscow, which had reached the sum of 15,000 German marks, and that therefore, at least for the moment, no further payments for purchases or subscriptions could be accepted from the Soviet Union.)2 SAT was threatened with bank- ruptcy by the middle of the year.
Demidiuk explained that because of the foreign boycott of Soviet goods[707] the state was obliged to limit the scheduled export of money and that this decision was not applied to SAT alone. He also promised that SEU, to the extent that it could, would do everything possible to offset the debt.[708] But, despite this conciliatory effort, tension in the relations between SAT and SEU moved to a climax. A significant role was played by the feelings of the members. Outside the Soviet Union the financial issue dispelled any remaining illusions about the natural alliance of the proletarian state and 'the cultural and cooperative organization of prole- tarian Esperantists', while despair set in among Soviet SAT members at the prospect that, from now on, the only reading material available to them would be Esperanto-language brochures on the building of social- ism, published by SEU and translated from Russian.
Early in 1930 SAT held its Tenth Congress, in London. For the first time in seven years no Soviet delegates attended; no explanation for their absence was provided to the congress organizing committee. Instead, in the first working meeting of the congress the arrival of a telegram from Moscow was suddenly announced. The text of this telegram did not declare, as many people anticipated, that the money problem had been solved, but crudely accused the leaders of the Association of creat- ing division in its ranks.[709] The mood abruptly changed. Lucien Laurat, the Austrian-French former member of the SEU Central Committee, launched a counter-offensive, declaring his suspicion that 'certain Soviet comrades' had exploited the money transfer problem to 'squeeze out' of SAT a guarantee that Sennaciulo would continue to report favorably on the Soviet Union.[710] When it became known that SEU had invited the next congress to Moscow, but had set an implicit condition that first the current leadership of SAT had to be removed from office, Lanti and his friends adopted the interpretation that the money transfer issue had served SEU as a welcome occasion to weaken SAT's financial base and blackmail it into suppressing the spread of 'anti-Soviet' tendencies.
Even as Demidiuk and possibly also Drezen were trying to fix the money problem, SEU was made painfully aware of the delicate implications that its entire cooperation with SAT carried with it on the home front. The warning came from one of the most authoritative politicians in the Soviet Union. In June 1930, Komunist, the journal of the Communist Party of Ukraine, published, under the title 'Esperantization or Ukrainization' the text of a speech by Mykola Skrypnyk (in Russian, Nikolai Skrypnik), the Ukrainian People's Commissar for Education.[711] In his speech, Skrypnyk addressed progress and obstacles in the dissemination of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine—a process aimed at overcoming the centuries-long legacy of Russification. Concerning the obstacles, Skrypnyk devoted extensive attention to the theory of sennaciismos whose adepts he had found, much to his surprise, even among young communists. His stance was disapproving. The fact that in a few schools Esperanto was taught and was presented as an alternative to Ukrainization, served him as an example of what he saw as a tendency to move immediately to the idea of a unifying language and—in the name of internationalism—to underestimate the significance of national languages and cultures in the era of socialist con- struction. This was to ignore, said Skrypnyk, the existence of the mother tongue of millions of working people and hence also the practical task of raising their cultural level through a language spoken by the masses. Those who argued for the compulsory introduction of Esperanto in the schools, he claimed, had the petty bourgeois desire to escape Ukrainization; if a new school subject was needed, then training for trades should be intro- duced, not Esperanto. If the Esperantists advocated a separate interna- tional, sennacieca culture, in opposition to the national culture of the masses, their theory should be resisted, because it was neither proletarian nor communist nor international, but reactionary and false.
We will analyze elsewhere and in greater detail the political back- ground of Skrypnyk's initiative.[712] For the moment, it is important only to note that SEU responded immediately with self-criticism: 'We are at fault because we did not better explain to our comrades that we regard sennaciismo only as a weapon against nationalism, chauvinism, and social chauvinists in the workers' movement [...] and that we do not aim to create through Esperanto some separate Esperanto culture, but to use Esperanto to create an international proletarian spirit and substitute it for the narrowly national and nationalist spirit.'[713] After this confession that the entire previous theoretical work of SEU had been inadequate, the Central Committee made the campaign to do battle against the ideology of sennaciismo a first priority.
In October 1930 a new journal, Internaciisto,[714] began publication in Berlin and, in the name of 'class-struggle opposition to SAT' called for a campaign to re-transform SAT into a revolutionary organization and drive out its leadership, which had made the Association 'a sect torn away from the vast proletarian masses'. [715] In November, the publisher EKRELO was established in Leipzig, under whose auspices dozens of books and brochures, printed in Moscow, began to appear.[716] At around the same time, evidently because of SEU's intervention with the authori- ties, confiscation of SAT publications sent to the Soviet Union began.[717]In January 1931 the opposition publicly called for a boycott of SAT's journals and announced that they were organizing a referendum aimed at removing the leadership.[718] The leaders of SAT responded by expelling Drezen and eight leaders of the opposition, mostly German, from the Association.[719]
Because any hope of meeting in Moscow had evaporated, the 11th SAT Congress took place, in early August 1931, in Amsterdam, once again without delegates from the Soviet Union. A vote taken at the Congress resulted in almost unanimous approval of the work of the Executive Committee,[720] while the opposition founded an International Unity Committee to reorganize the proletarian Esperanto movement, thereby turning the schism in SAT into an established fact. Now, the blocked SAT funds became a weapon openly deployed. Relying on the results of an organized ballot indicating that the vast majority of the worker Esperantists no longer supported the SAT leadership,[721] the SEU Central
Committee designated the International Unity Committee as 'the true inheritor of this money'.[722] Finally, at a congress in Berlin in August 1932 a new organization was founded, under the name 'Internacio de Proleta Esperantistaro' (IPE).) [723] In contrast to SAT, which organized its mem- bership on an individual basis and had only collaborative relations with national workers' Esperanto associations, the IPE was an association made up of national sections—which allowed it from the beginning to proclaim its 'character as an organization of the masses' consisting of a collective of 14,000 proletarian Esperantists.[724]
The schism in SAT was more than an outcome of the division of the international workers' movement into two wings, one Stalinist and the other democratic socialist: it had its specifically Esperantist color—in the sense that, following the departure of the communists, SAT was no lon- ger an acceptable home for supporters of the other principal direction in the workers' movement, namely the socialists. Thus, it was reduced to little more than a small group of supporters of sennaciismo and of mem- bers of no political party. The Austrian Franz Jonas, in 1933, declared himself convinced that SAT, having torn away the workers from the neu- tral movement, had 'already fulfilled its historical function' and that a new era had to follow. Jonas judged the situation of SAT following the withdrawal of the communists in the following terms:
What is left of SAT? Comrades who belong to no political party, that is, non-party members who for sentimental or individualistic reasons are wag- ing an 'independent' class struggle, world reformers, fantasists, and embit- tered philanthropists. They all appear in SAT under the guise of revolutionaries. In addition to them, the large group of socialist Esperantists continue as SAT members. Should these people remain above parties in deference to the non-party members? An impossible requirement![725]
Although many social democrats also resigned from SAT, the association, almost ruined organizationally and financially, survived. At the begin- ning of 1933 it had less than 2000 members. At the end of 1932, Lanti, feeling himself unable to bear responsibility for the Association any lon- ger, announced his resignation from its leadership.[726] He was conscious of the fact that it was difficult to explain convincingly that sennaciismo, for which he wanted to continue to proselytize, was only one of several political positions represented in SAT—particularly difficult, given that the sennaciismo interest group was the only one of SAT's interest-groups without support outside SAT and that the Association required that all members have a sennacieca attitude. In 1936 Lanti began to travel the world, a multi-year undertaking that took him to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South America. His final location was Mexico, where he took his own life because of illness in January 1947.[727]
Sn August 1933, during the congress in Stockholm, at which he resigned, Lanti described as erroneous SAT's founding slogan, 'We should be revolutionaries first and Esperantists only second'.[728] Perhaps he understood at the time that SAT's survival was due to those members who could not and would not subordinate their Esperantism to party considerations, or who, lacking party affiliation, were not bothered about priorities. In other words, SAT became a more coherent organization after the double schism, since the remaining members, for the most part resident in democratic countries, felt no conflict between a given party line and their loyalty to Esperanto. The cost of this coherence was often a lack of clarity of political vision, but this much may be said: SAT encour- aged independent thinking and remained at the disposal of its members as a forum for free discussion. Thanks to the fidelity of its remaining members, SAT succeeded in resisting the political storms of the 1930s; its weakness as an organization was compensated in part by the fact that it could finally reveal its basic nature, namely tolerance—a quality which in its first decade was often occluded by partisan fanaticism and oppor- tunistic indecision.
Esperanto and the Culmination of Stalinism
The schism in the workers' Esperanto movement was undoubtedly influenced by the catastrophically unhelpful decision of the Comintern to begin the destruction of fascism by destroying its 'twin', the social democratic movement. This policy, decided in Moscow and urging the communists to wage a merciless battle against 'social fascists', made it impossible for the leaders of the Soviet Esperanto movement to continue even silent tolerance of SAT's pluralism. Esperanto could no longer serve as an overarching unifying factor, above the rivalries of the workers' par- ties, even if, right up to the last moment—probably until the middle of the year 1930—SEU held out hope that it could.
For SAT's Soviet members, the schism was a painful experience. Their cooperation with SAT was too active, its utility as a means of contact with worker Esperantists outside the Soviet Union too evident, for the breakdown of unity not to leave a deep wound. The SAT members in the Soviet Union were in effect torn from their comfortable home; for them the non-arrival of Sennaciulo meant goodbye to a journal to which they had often contributed, through which they communicated their wishes for correspondents, and which kept them supplied with reading matter of a kind no longer to be found in the Soviet press.
The separation of SAT and SEU not only destroyed many years of cooperation but also shook the internal workings of the Soviet Esperanto movement. This was apparent from the time the blockage of SAT's money became known. Shocking and upsetting as it was to the Soviet members, it was not accepted without resistance. SAT's Soviet mem- bers did not want to believe that workers' money in the Soviet Union would be blocked from flowing to a workers' association abroad, and they were furious because SAT, which had always assisted the Soviet Union and which, because of that support, had often been called by its class enemies 'a covert communist enterprise', should now suffer such undeserved treatment.^5 Insistent requests were addressed to the SEU Central Committee calling on it to restore the transfer of subscription payments to SAT because the well-being of the local Esperanto move- ment was seriously hindered by the absence of Sennaciulo, the journal 'so read and enjoyed by everyone'.[729] In Sennaciulo letters appeared from Soviet members complaining (anonymously) about the 'inertia' of the SEU Central Committee concerning the transfer of funds.s[730] After the imposition of censorship made it impossible even to take advantage of gift subscriptions, many people composed bitter letters to SAT, in which blame for the situation was often assigned to the Central Committee in Moscow. Lanti, after initial hesitation, made extensive use of these let- ters in defending himself against the communist attacks. Letters from Soviet members appeared in Sennaciulo declaring support for SAT's lead- ership and at the same time expressing strong disapproval of the Central Committee, particularly Drezen.[731]
There is no proof that the blocking of payments was due to action by Drezen. He himself called it 'a monstrous lie' and officially complained to the Control Commission of SAT, citing 'compromise of personality' on the part of the leadership.[732] Nonetheless, the SAT leadership focused its counterattacks largely on Drezen. It denied that it had a hostile attitude to the Soviet Union and even posed as its most fervent defender, while Drezen was characterized as 'a conspirator and pseudo-communist' who had denounced SAT to the Soviet authorities 'to hide his bourgeois back- ground, his Esperantist neutralism, and to seem orthodox'.[733] This was a much sharper attack than the lines on Drezen that the Hungarian poet Kalman Kalocsay published at about this time, which began as follows:
Drezen, la ruga-verda car'
Rigore regas en la SEU,
Postulas, oni lin obeu
En ciu pens' kaj ciu far'.[734]
[Drezen, Tsar both green and red,
Rules strictly in the S.E.U.,
Insists that they obey him, too,
In all that's thought and done and said.]
Lanti tried to outflank Drezen on the left and to appeal to the solidar- ity of the Soviet SAT members. The SAT congress in Stuttgart (1932) accordingly sent the Soviet members 'brotherly greetings over the heads of the current Central Committee of SEU'.) [735] SAT's leadership could hardly be surprised that Drezen and the Central Committee for their part campaigned against it.[736] Drezen, already on the defensive following the attacks by a senior state functionary to which we have already alluded, was inevitably further intimidated by the public appeal to the Soviet SAT members that they free themselves from a leader described as a clandes- tine enemy of the Soviet Union. This controversy was bound to collide with the political pressure directed at SAT from within the country—not to mention the fact that Lanti's theses on sennaciismo in effect forced SEU to line up against SAT. SEU had been damaged by the discovery that Soviet SAT members had written letters in support of the SAT leader- ship in Paris. That SEU would not yield and that the attacks from Paris would not shake Drezen's position is clear from the following statement in its minutes: 'The SEU Central Committee calls on local organizations of SEU and SAT to stamp out the agents of the reformist wing who have penetrated the ranks of the Soviet Esperanto movement.'[737]
References to 'traitors' among the Soviet Esperantists showed that SEU intended to silence everyone who maintained contact with the SAT headquarters in Paris. One person who quickly went silent was Maksim Kriukov in Irkutsk, a party member as of 1904, who in 1907 met Zamenhof[738] and, in frequent contributions to Sennaciulo, emphasized the revolutionary character of sennaciismo.[739] The members were urged to identify and unmask the disciples of Lanti in their midst. With pedantic precision the names of the SEU members whose position in the conflict seemed unclear were duly listed. Thus, of the group in Kokhma it was noted that it was teaching Esperanto to hundreds of people 'neutrally', without giving them 'living tasks' through correspondence. As an illustra- tion of the 'complete decadence' reigning there, the words of one student of Esperanto were noted:
Why should I write about my life to foreign comrades if I am just an office- worker, i.e. a pariah, an outlaw, if my children do not learn in a school, if I receive almost nothing from a factory, if I do not relax after work but toil in the forest or stand in line outside shops, etc.?
These 'disgusting words' were attributed to the influence of Lanti. The result was that the Ivanovo Regional Committee 'decided to carry out a personal purge of all city Esperantists' in Kokhma.[740]
Although the journal La Socialisto in Austria conjectured in 1931 that intelligent Esperantists in the Soviet Union were retiring from the organization 'to silently protest against intellectual endogamy',[741] the official statistics of SEU showed an increase in membership: at the end of 1930 there were 5116 members in 686 locations, and a year later there were 5740 in 884 locations.[742] Noted as a great success was the fact that Komsomolskaia pravda at about that time published a page of letters received in Esperanto from various parts of the world. And in 1931 the Moscow Regional Council of Trade Unions approved a resolution that encouraged the organization of Esperanto circles in factories, pointing out that Esperanto 'can and must be a preparatory step to the study of foreign languages'.[743]
On the other hand, not infrequently local newspapers refused mate- rial, declaring, for example, that all foreign Esperantists were social democrats.[744] To serve the press effectively, SEU put still greater emphasis on the necessity of collective correspondence. There was an increase in appeals 'to focus the entire correspondence on technical help for indus- trialization and for the collectivization of agriculture'.[745] In such appeals, made in 1930, the year in which occurred, among other events, the mass deportation of 'kulaks', we note the effect that the Five-Year Plan, forcing the entire Soviet Union into a massive industrializing effort, inevitably had also on the Esperantists. They could not stand aside while Stalin declared in February 1931, in words to be noted by every Soviet citizen: 'We are 50—100 years behind the leading countries. We have to cover this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.'[746] SEU was aware that new tasks would be assigned to it by the acceleration in the building of socialism—that it 'must be more closely linked with production, with the masses'.[747] In practice this meant that the use of Esperanto should have significance less to stimulate the world revolutionary fervor of the workers of the world than to bring acclaim and support to the industrial- ization of the Soviet Union.
The Esperantists outside the Soviet Union, although requested to abandon 'harmful individualism',s 5 adapted only with difficulty to the new production-oriented style of correspondence. In truth they were not particularly inspired by directives requiring that they write primarily about the Soviet Union, for example the taking up of collections 'to buy tractors for Soviet villages'[748], and not provide much information of the traditional kind, that is, information on the living conditions in their country. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether such pro-Soviet material, if delivered and printed, would do much to vary the monotony of Soviet newspapers and thus draw attention to the source language, namely Esperanto. In any event, if SEU, in accordance with a party directive, asked for help from abroad to improve its technical capabilities, it was evidently unaware of the extent to which such a request not only taxed the goodwill but also ignored the competence of the worker-correspon- dents in other countries.
In April 1931 the Communist Party Central Committee decreed a reorganization of the worker and peasant correspondents' movement in the Soviet Union. The movement was instructed to dedicate its let- ter writing exclusively to profession-specific problems and was placed under the guidance of Pravda. Thus, the party sought to eliminate defini- tively the risk that spontaneous, unregulated activity might occur at the base—a situation irreconcilable with the idea of bureaucratic centralism. Because editorial teams were increasingly dispensing with the help of 'special correspondents' in their workplaces and preferred to use profes- sional journalists, a steady decline in the importance of the correspon- dence movement set in.
Given that the Soviet network of worker and peasant correspondents was already in the hands of an oversight organization, the international correspondence movement, particularly that part of the movement using Esperanto, could hardly be expected to function any better. Indeed it would be likely to work less well because of its remoteness from current production needs. SEU's admonitions rose to a new level. The unfortunate Esperantists who announced their search for correspondents in Heroldo de Esperanto and whose letters of thanks for gift subscriptions appeared in that neutral journal saw their letters reproduced in pillorying articles in the SEU journal, where they were attacked as seekers after 'bourgeois charity' who profited from 'false philanthropy'.[749] During the SEU con- gress, Roman Nikolsky declared that Esperantists who 'in corresponding with other countries, occupy themselves with pretty postcards' betray the aims of the movement: 'Such apolitical activity should be banished from international correspondence.'[750]
The consequence of such dire warnings, namely the increasingly ste- reotyped nature of correspondence coming from the Soviet Union, had already been noted abroad. In Vienna in mid-1931 La Socialisto observed: 'It seems that the whole Esperanto correspondence effort is growing dis- agreeable to some people, so they are trying to find ways around the direct exchange of letters from worker to worker.'[751] The latest example of this trend, cited by the journal, was the fact that letters from the Soviet Union were beginning to be accompanied, or even substituted, by printed leaf- lets with the title La vero pri Sovetio. Niaj respondoj al alilandaj laboristoj (The Truth about the Soviet Union. Our Replies to Workers Abroad). In 1931 SEU published at least 15 of these leaflets in print runs of between 7000 and 10,000 copies.[752] They contained replies to such questions as the following:
Is it true that workers in the Soviet Union are hungry?
We do not understand. You, Soviet comrades, always write about the successes of socialist construction, but at the same time you warn about various 'shortcomings'.
Why does Comrade Litvinov, in Geneva, talk about disarmament when at the same time the Soviet government is increasing the Red Army's battle readiness?
Why was Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party and exiled from the Soviet Union?
Do all workers in the Soviet Union enjoy a seven-hour workday?
What does it mean that the Soviet Union will this year [i.e., 1931] complete construction of the foundations of a socialist economy? Does that mean that there will be socialism in your country as of next year?
The leaflets were intended to make it easier for SEU members who might lack adequate political education to provide appropriate responses to their foreign correspondents. The fact that the questions coming from abroad were frequently similar and that therefore it was economical to reply to them with printed leaflets might be one explanation for SEU's providing this service, but a more likely explanation is that questions from abroad were often problematic and therefore required polished responses. That the difficulties arose from the problematic nature of the questions and that leaflets were no longer sufficient to overcome them is apparent from a report given by a local SEU group early in 1931: in Tuapse, on the Black Sea, the SEU cell required of all its members who were corresponding abroad to attend a political school run by the Party. Furthermore, it was in regular consultative contact with the cul- tural propaganda department of the local party committee. The goal of the instruction and consultation was to learn how to avoid political errors in international correspondence and to raise the 'quality' of the letters, given the experience that 'foreign comrades ask questions that not all communists can reply to'.[753]
How annoying such questions could be was illustrated by an example in the SEU journal. It quoted from a letter by a French admirer of the Soviet Union who asked his correspondent to clarify for him the clearly improbable assertions found in a French Catholic periodical to the effect that 'In Russia [...] you see in the countryside large bands of miserable children. They have been abandoned and live as best they can. Many die of hunger.'[754]
Hardly surprisingly, the correspondence rapidly dried up. The GLEA group in Munich remarked that their Soviet correspondents grew silent after receiving their first letters. In response to its announcement that it was interested in corresponding, the group received about 40 letters from the Soviet Union, but when the German comrades wrote back, their let- ters were apparently so embarrassing that of the 40 only 4 or 5 replied.[755]This uncommunicativeness on the part of the Soviet Esperantists was particularly annoying to those unreservedly committed to the Soviet Union, as was evident in the reactions of the German communists Otto Bassler and Walter Kampfrad, who were among the first of the opposi- tion group to be expelled from SAT. Bassler reported that complaints 'about the dysfunction of the correspondence' between Germany and the Soviet Union were widespread. And if letters did come, their content was disillusioning:
And what for the most part do we find to read in these letters? 'We are the Fatherland of the world proletariat, we carry out a five-year plan in four years, we build socialism, here or there we are building this or that big fac- tory, in which this number or that number of workers are working, and so on.' After that comes the postal address in Esperanto or in Russian or Ukrainian—and that's generally everything.
Letters with this kind of content Bassler regarded as essentially an insult to his connection with the Soviet Union: 'We know all this and believe it. We are communists, after all.' Instead of using battle cries and news- paper rhetoric, Bassler suggested, Soviet comrades should write, in the 'simple, primitive language of the proletarian' about their working and club life, family, working conditions and wages. Underlining the unhelp- ful consequences of such hectoring correspondence, he mentioned that the 70-member communist cell in Leipzig had discontinued its collective correspondence with a large factory in Kharkov on the grounds that 'they didn't like reading newspaper articles' instead of real letters.[756]
In much the same way, Kampfrad complained that collective corre- spondence was hindered by the Soviet side—either by silence or with responses full of political agitation and little else. He reported that in Germany on various occasions, after much effort and under 'constant threat of dismissal', some Esperantist worker had persuaded his colleagues at work to begin correspondence with a Soviet factory, only to find that 'ninety-five times out of a hundred' the result 'was anything but happy'. Either there was no reaction or the Soviet workers replied with 'mean- ingless phrases about the construction of socialism, the magnificent Red Army, and so on' and with information long known, 'for example "we have overcome our capitalists [...] and we hope that you will overcome yours"'. After that, said Kampfrad, the German workers, who wanted to know about such things as wages in relation to living costs in the Soviet Union, generally lost interest in further contact.[757] Also Japanese workers were sadly reproachful of the Soviet Esperantists for their inertia at just the point when the workers 'were hoping to learn everything about the Soviet Union'.[758]
Silence Descends on the Soviet Esperantists
Shortly thereafter, political developments in Germany made maintain- ing relations with Soviet Esperantists impossible. With Hitler's seizure of power, the Proletarian Esperantist International (IPE), in existence for only a few months, was also destabilized, given that GLEA, its German section, dissolved by the Nazis, was one of its two pillars of support. If it was to survive as a significant organization, the IPE needed the full sup- port of its other pillar—namely the SEU.
About SEU's contribution, however, the western IPE members had reason to complain. In 1934 they could no longer contain their dissatisfaction. The complaint was raised that the 'lack of seriousness, particularly by Soviet comrades', given to correspondence was 'discred- iting' the Esperanto movement/7 In response to these criticisms, SEU attempted to defend itself, applying self-criticism and promising to be more active, also in devoting more attention to its responsibilities in IPE. That was the message delivered externally, but internally SEU had for the past couple of years taken positions that make it easier to under- stand what we have already observed, namely the waning enthusiasm of the Soviet Esperantists and SEU's neglect of the IPE. As early as 1931, the Central Committee had confessed that massive propaganda for Esperanto and efforts to achieve official recognition were useless unless the practical application of the language could be considerably expanded in the era of the Five-Year Plan: 'A single modern Esperanto-language publication on tractor production or on the use of excavators in mines would be more powerful than a million Esperanto textbooks for Soviet citizens'.[759] Citing Drezen, SEU stated, at the end of 1932: 'It must be said clearly that the Esperanto movement cannot be privileged, that the language problem and in some degree the international connections of the workers cannot be put on the agenda as principal priorities in the current period.'[760]
What lay behind these near-defeatist declarations? In September 1934, a plenary session of the SEU Central Committee considered reports on defunct or unsatisfactorily functioning groups; it was noted that both in the provinces and in Moscow the dominant opinion was that Esperanto was dead; and Demidiuk remarked that in the Soviet Union 'in general we do not hear much about Esperanto—in strong contrast to what we were hearing six or seven years ago'. Drezen, publicly, had to listen to complaints that he was not only neglecting recruitment for Esperanto but even denying its necessity.[761]
The issue of the journal Sur Posteno Klasbatala that reported on the Central Committee meeting also published a leading article on the mur- der of the Leningrad party secretary Sergei Kirov[762] threatening that soon 'we will publish material unmasking Trotskyists in the Esperantist camp' ('Brothers and fellow-thinkers of the abominable Zinovievist opposition group')[763]. But the rest of this same issue contained hints that could give SEU members hope of a new beginning. The editors introduced several changes in content, for example a column on language, a puzzles corner and a humorous section ('Red Laughs'), which somewhat softened the activist character of the journal. And there was more: a letter from a reader was published giving the impression that the wavering course of SEU would finally reach a point at which it would no longer be taboo to use the language as a mere hobby. The writer, Evgenii Blinov, appealed for a new mode of recruitment for Esperanto: one should not 'parrot, always and everywhere, the words "capitalism" and "proletariat"': such 'r-r-revolutionary' bigotry only gets in the way of the progress of the movement. Blinov did not hesitate to plead for the right to use Esperanto to express 'loving feelings' even if that did not please the 'radicals'.[764]
Blinov's plea reflected a new trend in party declarations, which now began to proclaim the achievement of a classless society and the consequent right of Soviet citizens to enjoy the fruits of their work in the building of socialism. More optimistic feelings began to prevail, while little by little the economic situation improved; as of autumn 1935, food rationing was sus- pended. A new faith in the future also stimulated the decision to revise the Soviet constitution, announced in February 1935. In meetings across the country the Party encouraged discussion of the proposed changes—includ- ing 'democratization of the electoral system', the principle of political equal- ity of all citizens and the guaranteeing of fundamental human freedoms. Although the new constitution, approved in December 1936, in no way limited the dominant position of the Party (which in practice rendered its promises merely theoretical), it nonetheless encouraged the hope that the time of extreme political pressure was over. That, in turn, seemed to imply brighter prospects for the friends of Esperanto in the Soviet Union.
That interest in Esperanto was growing again seemed evident from mem- bership trends in the Soviet Esperanto Union. In mid-November 1935 there were 13,344 members—a record number in the history of the orga- nization.[765] The British Communist Esperantist Thomas Aldworth, who vis- ited the Soviet Union in June 1936, came home with the impression that Esperanto 'has long been asleep in the Soviet Union and is now reawaken- ing'. However, at the same time the state of organization and the material resources of SEU were growing weaker. There was not even enough paper for textbooks, because the annual paper quota, gradually reduced over sev- eral years, was finally not provided to the SEU at all.[766] Aldworth confirmed that the 'dreadful lack of paper for books' and the lack of time of workers obliged 'to engage in trade training' were a great hindrance to Esperanto.[767]
When in Antwerp in August 1935 the Second IPE Congress took place, delegates from the SEU were once again absent—an absence noted all the more acutely by the fewer than 100 participants because the Congress agenda included the question of the reunification of the work- ers' Esperanto movement. This question was made particularly pressing by policy changes in the Soviet Union. Realizing that the victory of the Nazis in Germany was no ephemeral event, the Soviet Union—under slogans calling for an 'anti-fascist popular front' and 'collective security'— sought ways to achieve a broad alliance against the threat of fascism. The USSR worked to improve its relations with the capitalist governments of Western Europe and, through the Comintern, proposed common activity with non-Communist labor organizations—addressing its proposals to the same people whom until recently it had insulted as 'social fascists'.
Influenced by signs of a new orientation in the Communist movement, hopes were temporarily revived for rapprochement between SAT and IPE.[768] A resolution of the IPE Congress in Antwerp declared no longer valid that part of IPE's founding declaration of 1932 that called for oppo- sition not only to sennaciismo but also to social democracy.[769] While there were perhaps reasons for optimism about the possibility of an accord, the western members of IPE did not take into consideration the situation of their Soviet comrades. The Leningrad IPE center declared all joint activity with Trotskyists impossible, along with cooperation 'with organizations that defy the fortress of the worldwide proletariat, the Soviet Union'.[770]Hardly surprisingly, SAT declared that viewpoint unacceptable.[771]
Feelings of perplexity and anger grew among western members of IPE about the position of their Soviet section. In fact, skepticism in the ranks of IPE about SEU's good judgment was fueled by rumors that the Soviet side—in analogy with the Soviet Union's joining the League of Nations in September 1934—was interested in normalizing its relations with the neutral Universal Esperanto Association.[772] The western IPE members, in whose opinion the neutral movement 'tolerates and even supports fas- cist ideology', refused to believe that SEU would join 'the reactionary UEA'.[773] But soon SEU itself admitted that it was considering the pos- sibility of such cooperation on the grounds that, faced with the fascist threat, the proletariat must, in principle, also cooperate with 'bourgeois intellectuals'.[774]
This clarification of the position of SEU indicating an opening to the neutral movement—always in line with Comintern policies—was the last substantial communication of SEU's Central Committee to appear in the Esperanto-language press. In 1936, the contact of western IPE members with the center in Leningrad became increasingly sporadic and finally ceased altogether[775] and participants in the Third IPE Congress, in August 1937 in Paris, voiced resignation to the inevitable: 'We must accept that Soviet com- rades have difficulties about which we can only speculate, not know.'[776]
Hope was not wholly lost that contact with Soviet Esperantists would be restored. It seemed too incredible that an organization which at the end of 1936 had 11,873 members could suddenly vanish.[777] At the begin- ning of 1937 Sur Posteno reported greater SEU activity in support of the anti-fascist war in Spain; over 500 letters of greeting from Soviet labor collectives to Spanish comrades were organized and Esperanto literature was sent to Esperantists fighting in the International Brigades . [778] SEU even produced some publications: in the first six months of 1937 trans- lations of the new Soviet constitution and of two works by Stalin were published. But the fact that darkness was falling on Esperanto life in the Soviet Union was made abundantly clear with the cessation of Esperanto- language radio broadcasts. Shortly before December 1936 the broadcasts from Minsk had stopped, and in January 1937 those from Leningrad fol- lowed. The Soviet ambassador in Paris explained that the Soviet radio sta- tions were no longer broadcasting in Esperanto 'for "technical reasons", but also because they are already broadcasting in several other languages'.[779]
Esperanto, then, had become superfluous. Thomas Aldworth, of Britain, who in 1936 was a guest of the Esperantists in Leningrad, also noted this silence; his letters were returned to him stamped 'unknown'.[780]
Thus, the second column of support for IPE collapsed—less than five years after the Nazi strike against its German section. The remain- ing leaders of IPE, now reduced to an organization of a few hundred western European members, struggled painfully against the complete paralysis of its now tiny International. Finally all that was left to dis- cuss was whether it made sense to continue the organization's exis- tence. Too late, IPE discovered that in the effort to put Esperanto at the service of the class struggle there was no need to hide enthu- siasm for the language itself—'that the mere defence of Esperanto itself in the present world situation is a battle against fascism, for democracy and culture, for peace, freedom of ideas, for race equality, for internationalism'6 00 and that the separation of 'neutralists' from workers in the Esperanto movement could no longer be justified. A few members, particularly in Britain, decided on the radical step of recommending the dissolution of the current IPE, freely confess- ing that 'we, party esperantists [...] must be numbered among those whom Comrade Dimitroff has named "self-satisfied sectarians"'.[781]Surprisingly, on this occasion Communist discipline proved ineffec- tive in the IPE: by a large majority the British members rejected the proposal to dissolve.[782]
The Proletarian Esperantist International (IPE) endured until the Hitler-Stalin pact of 23 August 1939—which caused the complete col- lapse of all hopes for an anti-fascist alliance of communists, socialists and progressive members of the bourgeoisie. A week later the Second World War began. In due course IPE ceased to exist. Among the victims of war and genocide were two of the French IPE leaders, Marcel Boubou and Honore Bourguignon, who perished in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau.[783]
7
Socialism and International Language
Internationalism Before and After the Revolution
Marxist-Leninists always considered it important for their actions to be rooted in theory. Convinced that historical evolution follows defi- nite 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.[784] Three questions arise. First, can we explain the disappearance of Esperanto in the Soviet Union in terms of the tradi- tion 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?
Ever since the seventeenth century, the idea of a universal language, whose need was recognized by such philosophers and scientists as Descartes, Comenius and Leibniz, has also formed a constituent part of the projects of prominent proponents of utopian socialism. The dream of a united humanity obedient to reason and rejecting superstition—a world in which social inequalities and national differences would disap- pear—conjured up the idea that humankind might return, in linguis- tic communication as in other areas, to a kind of paradisal state. The founders of 'scientific socialism', Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who further developed the tradition of the early utopian socialists, omitted attention to the question of the linguistic unity of humankind under communism—except for, peripherally and partly in jest, commenting on the language planning efforts of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Wilhelm Weitling.
The way to greater understanding, nevertheless, lies in the general theories of Marx and Engels, particularly their views on the relation- ship between socialism and nationalism. According to Marx and Engels, the nation emerged along with the formation of the bourgeois-capitalist world and will disappear with its destruction. 'In proportion as the antag- onism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.'[785]
On the other hand, Marx and Engels, totally fixated on the primacy of class struggle, accepted the growth of nations as carriers of prog- ress during the period leading up to the revolution. Furthermore, they regarded the assimilation of smaller peoples and the denationalization of colonies through the worldwide penetration of capitalism, and even wars, as more or less explicitly stimulating the maturation of conditions for the revolution. In this connection, they expressed skepticism about internationalizing efforts by the proletariat at an earlier stage in the pro- cess. Marx warned against 'the international brotherhood of peoples',[786]because this bourgeois phrase obscured class antagonism and deflected attention from the priority of class struggle. True brotherhood of nations could be achieved only by the proletariat, which was itself 'essentially humanitarian, anti-nationalist'.[787] Only through the proletariat's solidarity of action would the revolution be achievable. In other words, Marxism did indeed affirm a final state of worldwide harmony, but on its own initiative it did nothing for the rapprochement of the peoples in advance of the revolution.[788]
The setting for the battle of Marx and Engels against their opponents was the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), founded in 1864 and known as the First International. Marx and Engels argued for the principle of centralism, fearing that proletarian struggle at the national level would grow weak if it adopted 'the vague notions of a future society entertained by some dreamers'.[789] Their opponents, the anarchists, pre- ferred a program of European federalism and saw in the Marxist strategy the additional danger that national minorities might be ignored or even suppressed. It was no accident that two resolutions favoring a universal language accepted by IWA congresses in 1866 and 1867 were proposed by supporters of Mikhail Bakunin and that they were rapidly forgotten after Marx's victory over the anarchists.
The lack of emphasis on internationalism in the labor movement fol- lowing the disintegration of the IWA, coupled with the silence of Marx and Engels on pre-revolutionary means toadvance world unity, did not, however, signify that the working masses ceased viewing nationalism as the expression of the bourgeois class society. In fact, up until the early years of the twentieth century, the workers persisted in the conviction that they were prevented from participation in national culture and that they would find complete individual fulfillment only in a unified world society. The Austrian theorist Otto Bauer called this attitude naive cosmopolitanism'.[790]
Another Austrian, Karl Kautsky, the leading theorist of the Second International, was particularly insistent in encouraging hope for histori- cally determined world unity. In 1887, the year Esperanto was born, he wrote:
The more international communication intensifies, the more we feel the need for a means of international communication, a universal language.
Despite the parallel in time, the prognoses of Kautsky and Zamenhof diverged fundamentally. Kautsky could not yet have known about Zamenhof's proposed solution, but he does mention Volapuk to empha- size at the outset that a universal language 'cannot, of course, be arbi- trarily invented'.[791] 'Volapuk will not go much beyond the status of a secret language for the few who know it. More likely, one of the already existing languages will probably become a universal language.' In 1908 Kautsky wrote that in a socialist society people will know one or more world lan- guages in addition to their national languages: 'then the basis has been created for the gradual decline and the disappearance, initially of the lan- guages of the smaller nations, and for the eventual fusion of the whole of the culture of humanity into one language and nationality'.[792] In 1917 he reiterated that 'not the differentiation but the assimilation of nationali- ties [...] is the goal of socialist development'. Kautsky stressed that mass production requires not the preservation of multilingualism but the lin- guistic union of humankind: 'Resistance to it is reactionary.'[793]
Kautsky's works, particularly those on the problems of nationality and internationality, had significant influence on the world labor movement.
It was he who first incorporated the question of a world language into the Marxist theory of the stages of economic development. We can con- sider his article of 1887 as the starting point for the essentially negative Marxist stance on the question of a neutral international language—in the sense that it not only abandoned the idea of a supranational, universal language inherited from the utopian pre-Marxian socialism but at the same time excluded the possibility that linguistic unity would be created by way of an artificial language. The principal problem surrounding the Marxist theory of a world language lies in the fact that it not only ignores linguistic pluralism but even goes so far as to proclaim the marginaliza- tion and rejection of smaller languages as an inevitable result of economic progress. This was a radical position with which most Esperantists had nothing in common, because their language aimed to function next to, not instead of, the national languages.
Kautsky never argued for the forced assimilation of nations, but he imagined that the liberated world proletariat would agree, as brothers, to abandon their national connections; however, his orthodox Marxist the- ory revealed a lack of understanding of the aspirations of smaller nations. In practice, such a position could inspire policies of suppression—what the Jewish Zamenhof described as 'the desire of strong nations and lan- guages to swallow weak nations and languages'.[794] In insistently seeking to subordinate national aspirations to the class struggle, Kautsky in effect came close to linguistic imperialism.
But, even independently of Kautsky's explicitness, Marxist theory con- tained justification for the rejection of Esperanto in its requirement that the proletariat not seek linguistic unification before the time was right. Such an effort seemed all the more open to suspicion if it was linked to moral categories. In this connection, Esperanto was particularly exposed to criticism, because Zamenhof and his disciples talked incessantly about 'the brotherhood of peoples' and 'world peace' and announced the com- ing emergence of a humane world in such a manner that there was little room left to recognize the laws of economic development and the spe- cific avant-garde role of the proletariat. The rhetoric of the Esperantists certainly found adepts among the working class, but for the leaders of the proletarian movement, whose attention was focused on the realities of the class struggle, this was a symptom of that nai've cosmopolitanism' to which socialist theory was much indebted, but which, following the transition from utopianism to science, smelled of anachronism.
This was why the spread of Esperanto encountered disapproval from influential Marxist leaders. Particularly the German social democrats sharply criticized the propagandizing of Esperanto among the workers as a remnant of utopian thought, calling it 'petty-bourgeois folly' or simply a waste of time.3 2 Rarely were they willing to consider the popularity of Esperanto among workers as one expression of the spontaneous ten- dency to develop the anti-nationalist sub-culture that was inherent in the proletariat.[795] When, following the outbreak of war in 1914, the workers flocked to the banners of their national leaders, interest in the interna- tional language was inevitably pushed into the background. The criticism that to busy oneself with Esperanto was to anticipate the future while ignoring present essentials was made all the more credible by the height- ened national consciousness now observable among the socialist parties.
At the beginning of 1918, shortly before the end of the First World War, one of the most important Marxist theorists, the Italian Antonio Gramsci, offered an interesting contribution on the question of a supra- national language. He categorically opposed all formal support for Esperanto by socialists, explaining: 'They would like artificially to cre- ate consequences which as yet lack the necessary conditions. Gramsci concluded that Esperanto 'is nothing but a vain idea, an illusion of cosmopolitan, humanitarian, democratic mentalities which have not yet [...] been shaken by historical critical thinking'.
Gramsci's article constitutes what is probably the most profound anal- ysis of Esperanto from a Marxist point of view. He makes abundantly clear the reasons why serious attention to Esperanto is unacceptable to Marxists. First, it has its origins in outmoded utopian ideas; second, it seeks to overcome differences of language in the present, and therefore, by an equally utopian jump, outruns the orderly passage of affairs. Like Kautsky, Gramsci puts his confidence in the ineluctable movement to linguistic unification accompanying the process of economic concentra- tion, in which Esperanto has no role. He refuses to accord Esperanto even a temporary status as an auxiliary language and directly questions whether there is even a need for international communication at the lower levels: 'The majority of citizens [...] carry out their activity stably in a fixed place and do not need to correspond too often by letter with other countries.'[796]
Not directly related to Gramsci is Lanti's confirmation in 1920 that 'the socialist leaders come close to boycotting our publicity [for Esperanto]'. He turned for help to Romain Rolland. Rolland's reply was positive: he declared that if the Communist International did not pay attention to the question of an international language the International would remain 'just a word'. Rolland complained that the French socialist press does not give enough space to the 'great international questions of a general inter- est—not exclusively socialist, but human'.[797]
Gramsci's article on Esperanto appeared a few months after the October Revolution, which inspired communists in all countries to hope that world revolution was not far off. Lenin, creator of the Soviet state, expected that the proletariat in the developed countries would soon fol- low the Russian lead. Like earlier theorists of socialism before him, Lenin imagined that 'The aim of socialism is not only to end the division of mankind into tiny states [...], it is not only to bring the nations closer together but to integrate them.'[798] But because Lenin primarily consid- ered the situation in the territory of the Tsar and saw great revolutionary potential in the minorities rebelling against Tsarist Russification policy, he believed it inevitable that the Marxist position on the national problem would be revised. Against considerable resistance, particularly from Rosa Luxemburg, he advanced the view that the working class should cam- paign for the equal rights of nations and even that the right of oppressed nationalities to secede from the state should be guaranteed.
Lenin's wish to win the confidence of the non-Russian peoples was nowhere more evident than in the field of language. He argued that pop- ulations should have schools in which instruction was delivered in the mother tongue,[799] and in February 1920 he personally ordered Stalin to see that interpreters were available in all army units: 'This is absolutely essen- tial—as far as language is concerned there must be every concession and the maximum of equality.'[800] His uncompromising position culminated in the famous statement 'No privileges for any nation or any one language!'.[801]
However, Lenin strongly opposed transfer of the principle of self- determination to the Party; on the contrary, the structure of the Party had to be centralist. The 'amalgamation of the workers of all the nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organizations'[802] should serve as a prototype of the ideal communist state of the future. Clearly, for Lenin as for Marx, priority should be given to coherence in the socialist movement and, after the victory of socialism in the various national settings, they too should—freely—meld into one.
Self-determination, then, was an exception to the general premises of cen- tralism. Lenin insisted that this exception was 'absolutely essential in view of reactionary Great-Russian nationalism'.[803] He sharply opposed a compulsory state language, and therefore the openly proclaimed priority of Russian.[804] He defended this position all the more vigorously because at the same time he was convinced that people living in Russia, if freed from all pressure, would themselves understand the advantages of knowing the Russian language: 'the requirements of economic exchange will always compel the nationalities liv- ing in one state [...] to study the language of the majority', that is, 'to study the language most convenient for general commercial relations'.[805]
Lenin did not leave any precise statements about how or in what direc- tion the process of linguistic unification would proceed on a worldwide scale. The formation of the world language was not explicitly addressed. The above statement evidently referred only to Russia. But it did not exclude the interpretation that Lenin expected a similar, economically dictated, solution to the problem of international communication.
In fact, it seems that on this point Lenin agreed with Kautsky, regard- less of his condemnation of Kautsky's 'great power chauvinism'. A brief summary of an essay on the national problem contains a table that Lenin evidently borrowed from Kautsky. It addresses the growing significance of English and, to a degree, French and German; in parentheses the follow- ing is added: 'English, or perhaps & Russian, may be a world language'.[806]Lenin said much the same thing four years later, when, shortly after the October Revolution, Carl Lindhagen, mayor of Stockholm, asked him whether the Soviet government would be willing to join an interna- tional convention on the introduction of a world language (Lindhagen had Esperanto in mind) in all schools. 'We already have three world languages', Lenin replied laconically, 'and Russian will be the fourth'. In any case, Lenin did not consider an artificial language for this role.[807]
That in Lenin's theory there was no room for an international lan- guage like Esperanto is perhaps most clearly seen in his description of the character of international culture. In 1913 he emphasized that by 'the international culture of democracy and of the world working-class move- ment' he understood the fusion of the democratic and socialist elements of the individual national cultures, and not—as Jewish socialists mis- understood—'a non-national culture': 'Nobody has proclaimed a "pure" culture, either Polish, Jewish, or Russian, etc.'.[808] Within every national culture the struggle between bourgeois and proletarian elements occurs, he maintained, through the 'indigenous' language. Therefore, despite the formation of working-class internationalism, the national cultures and languages will continue to exist. Lenin never thought of a culture com- pletely emptied of nationhood whose means of expression would perhaps be Esperanto.[809]
Lenin's thoroughly negative relationship to Esperanto was reported by his wife Nadezhda Krupskaia[810] and sister Mariia Ulianova.[811] Worse, two leading Bolsheviks made similarly unfavorable statements: Nikolai Bukharin in 1920[812] and Grigorii Zinoviev in 1923, the latter in a speech to party functionaries in Petrograd, in which he criticized the adepts of Esperanto for their simple-minded approach to the problems of language and nation.[813] The Soviet Esperanto movement, as far as the theoretical basis of its work was concerned, accordingly found itself in the worst possible position. After Drezen, leader of the Soviet Esperantist Union, in 1922 wrote an essay he described as 'an attempt at a materialist con- textualization of the problem' of an international language,[814] not unrea- sonably the anarchist Natan Futerfas mockingly commented that Drezen 'has against him all Marxist authorities'.[815] In such a situation it seemed more prudent (as Drezen intended) to reason purely pragmatically and stress the argument that Esperanto is as essential an aid to communica- tion as the telephone or airplane and therefore needs no explicitly Marxist justification.[816]
In fact, the spread of Esperanto in the Soviet Union, as we have noted, was continuing apace. The language served as a favored means of facilitating contacts with the outside world, and, conversely, the Esperantists used their 'naive cosmopolitanism' more and more to raise the prestige of the Soviet Union among their fellow linguists abroad. Official suspicion declined as Esperanto revealed itself as an effective means of enlivening the officially promoted idea of international work- ers' correspondence. For several years SEU could also benefit from the fact that the Party allowed a certain freedom of action in cultural mat- ters and felt it neither necessary nor convenient to keep checking on whether the various forms of artistic and literary activity conformed to doctrine.
This was still so in the first years of Stalin's reign; SEU's period of pros- perity in fact began after the death of Lenin. Changes in Soviet policy pri- orities—from hope for revolution in other countries to domestic socialist construction—at first did not hinder the work of the Esperanto move- ment. To the contrary, even in the problematic theoretical field a shift of priorities took place that seemed more advantageous for the Esperantists. It was brought on by a theoretical initiative of Stalin.
Toward a Marxist Linguistics
In 1925 Stalin (who in the same year proclaimed his theory of 'build- ing socialism in a single country') pronounced on the question of how the flowering of national cultures and languages, systematically pro- moted in the Soviet Union, would contribute to the Communist goal of a united general human culture. He denied that there was any con- tradiction between the program of national development and the final goal of communism, constructing the famous formula: 'Proletarian in content, national in form—that is the general human culture to which socialism approaches.' As he saw it, the Party's concern for 'proletarian content' would be guarantee enough of the path to an apparently uni- versal, though in fact all-Soviet, community. Regarding the final goal of communism as described by earlier theorists, Stalin was unenthusiastic:
Some people (Kautsky, for instance) talk of the creation of a single univer- sal language and the dying away of all other languages in the period of socialism. I have little faith in this theory of a single, all-embracing lan- guage. Experience, at any rate, speaks against rather than for such a theory. Until now what was happened has been that the socialist revolution has not diminished but rather increased; for, by stirring up the lowest sections of humanity and pushing them on to the political arena, it awakes to new life a number of hitherto unknown or little-known nationalities.[817]
Stalin had for the first time authoritatively dealt with a topic that was understandably of great interest to the Soviet Esperantists. He had rejected the idea of a universal language, but done so in an encourag- ing context. Namely, he had distanced himself from Kautsky, who envi- sioned the universalization of one or several major national languages, and pronounced the formation of a worldwide language congruent with the disappearance of all other languages, which was precisely not the goal of supporters of a world auxiliary language. So it was not difficult for the Soviet Esperantists to praise Stalin for his disapproval of all assimilation- ist rejection of languages.[818]
At around the same time the question of a world language was addressed by a Soviet linguist who was to become more and more important in coming years: Nikolai Marr. In professional circles, Marr was known, as of 1908, for his so-called Japhetic theory of language. He asserted that the Caucasian languages, along with Sumerian and Basque, consti- tuted the Japhetic language family and that the Indo-European languages came about as a result of the transformation of these Japhetic languages. More generally, Marr described an evolutionary process beginning with a mass of interrelated dialects and leading to ever-larger language units. He considered language as part of the superstructure overlaying the eco- nomic basis of society. He denied the existence of national languages and insisted that from the beginning language was class-determined.
Marr increasingly presented himself as an avant-garde campaigner against 'bourgeois Indo-European comparative linguistics'. Originally, his theory hardly contained any elements that could be considered Marxist, but as of around 1926 he cultivated the view that, because his ideas were aimed at revolutionizing linguistics, they at least conformed with Marxism. Because the notion of a stepwise evolution of languages and their dependence on the economy included the belief that social revolutions also transform languages, it was not surprising that he also addressed the question of the final goal of language development—more precisely the question of the linguistic result of the worldwide establish- ment of socialism. Marr was convinced that the evolutionary process would culminate in monolingualism.[819]
Marr was not thinking about any of the existing languages: 'Individual languages, regardless of their imperialist dispersal, will never become this future unified language.' The masses, Marr wrote, will themselves have the capability of speeding up the process of linguistic unification by interven- ing in the existing languages or even independently creating the 'perfect universal language of humankind'. This point of view—affirming artifi- cial intervention in languages—seemed close to that of the Esperantists. However, Marr, as if dampening their expectations, added that, first, sci- ence must be in a position to guide the masses and direct their efforts at linguistic unity along the right paths. At best, he considered Esperanto an indication that the trend to a world language was rooted in the masses: 'Life will certainly not stand still, and there will appear various surrogates similar to Esperanto, Ido, etc.'[820]
Marr's ideas on a future universal language captured the attention of Soviet Esperantists even more than Stalin's initiative. Their fundamental argument in reaction to Marr was: 'We don't claim [_] "scientificality" in our language; we are concerned only that our language should serve our needs, that our language should be used by the masses, because precisely through such use the creative processes of the future world language will come about, because precisely through the language use of the masses the inevitable historical process will be advanced.'[821]
This point of view was characteristic of the Esperantists essentially from the time of Zamenhof. In response to those scholars who regarded Esperanto as needing reform or who denied its viability, they emphasized the priority of successfully testing the language in practice; the more users Esperanto acquired, the faster the theoretical requirements of linguists would be disproved. This was a wise tactic, followed also by SEU when, perceiving the difficulties of justifying Esperanto on a Marxist basis, it gave priority to strengthening its own organization and demonstrated the practical value of the language.
As long as Esperanto was for the most part ignored by scholars of lin- guistics[822] and as long as the Party did not express lack of ideological con- fidence, this tactic seemed to promise success. Skeptics like Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Education, confessed in 1926 that 'the facts spoke for Esperanto'.[823] When Marr's theories pushed the problem of a future world language into public discussion, SEU asked itself whether it should match what was meanwhile its significant organizational strength in practice with parallel achievements on the theoretical side.
As of 1926, theoretical interest grew. In that year, the state publishing house produced a collection of articles on Esperanto edited by Drezen.[824]In October 1926 SEU launched a journal whose contributions dealt chiefly with theoretical questions on the international language.[825] Its first issue included a remarkably combative article by the Belarusian journalist and university lecturer Efim Spiridovich,[826] who later published a series of articles on the theory of language development. On this topic, which was his main interest, Spiridovich rejected the possibility that languages will 'naturally' achieve unity under the influence of economic develop- ment. Increased internationalization of economics, culture and thought was indeed occurring, and the number of international terms was grow- ing. But a significant contradiction remained: the 'archaic structure' of national languages was incapable of fully reflecting the international char- acter of modern thought. To solve this contradiction a linguistic revolu- tion would be necessary, involving 'conscious intervention of reason'.[827]The contradiction was most evident in the Soviet Union. There, in har- mony with the declarations of Lenin, the languages of formerly oppressed peoples were developing into literary languages, while on the other hand there was a growing need for a unifying language. Without alluding to the possibility of an alternative, for example Russian, Spiridovich asserted that this contradiction could be overcome with an 'auxiliary international language'. It would be the language of the 'transitional era', during which the nations would come together and at the same time prepare the way for the era of communism, of the 'confluence of nations', when a fully artificial universal language would arise.[828]
Spiridovich criticized the linguists for overlooking the fact that in the Esperanto movement a new era of linguistic science was beginning, whose chief characteristic was that 'the masses are taking upon themselves the construction and further progress of their chief instrument—language'.[829]Even linguistic reformers like Marr refused to acknowledge this phenom- enon. Thus, Spiridovich asserted, linguistics must be fully rebuilt and the new Marxist linguistics must firmly incorporate the theory of an interna- tional auxiliary language.
Drezen went even further than Spiridovich.[830] Early in 1928 the State Publishing House in Moscow published an extensive volume in which he described the history of efforts to create a world language; included were 217 projects before Zamenhof and 245 after him. Drezen called Esperanto the crowning achievement of the search for an international language extending over many centuries.[831] The introduction was written by none other than Marr, who maintained that Drezen's book contrib- uted 'to the collection of materials for adequate treatment of the problem of the universal language'.[832]
In the same year, Marr made statements about a future world language that were entirely acceptable for Esperantists. He spoke of the 'need, without a minute's delay, for the new international social construction'; we must free ourselves 'from the limited, as it were natural, resources at our disposal'.5 1 Marr's advocacy of the artificiality of the future world language and his refusal to accept the possibility that a current national language would play the role of the universal language in the future class- less society gave some of the Soviet Esperantists enough reasons to see Marr as almost an ally, and to quote him as principal witness for the historical validity of their own goals. An Esperanto-language brochure published by SAT tried to popularize Marr's ideas among Esperantists in other countries.[833]
But the Soviet Esperanto movement lacked a unified position on Marr. Nor was there unanimity in linguistic opinion generally. Spiridovich was criticized by the young linguist Evgenii Bokarev,[834] who lectured him in the SEU journal to the effect that linguistics was in no sense unfriendly to an international language. The more the idea gained ground that lan- guage was an instrument of social communication and thereby negated earlier metaphysical views on language, the more the idea of an inter- national language would gain attention. Indeed, the greatest represen- tatives of the sociological school founded by Ferdinand de Saussure5 4 acknowledged the need and possibility of an artificial language. Noting the gradual convergence of linguistics and the Esperanto movement, Bokarev emphatically disputed Spiridovich's thesis that Esperanto would acquire its rightful recognition only with the complete reorganization of linguistics.[835]
In his response Spiridovich insisted that the Esperantists should in no way expect support from decadent bourgeois linguistics. He aggres- sively asked whether Bokarev, who evidently belonged to the sociologi- cal camp, intended 'to deny the need to build linguistics on the basis of Marxism'.[836]Almost a year later, Bokarev published a new article, 'Linguistics and Marxism', in which he sought to find middle ground.
Bokarev declared that Marxism was the only methodological and philosophical basis for linguistics. But because the classic thinkers on Marxism had left behind them only general statements about language, 'linguistic studies claiming the name of Marxism easily slide into vul- garization and deformation of Marxist methods'. Also Marr's Japhetic theory, which the public often identified with Marxist linguistics gener- ally, only contributed to the future rebuilding; much of Marr's thinking was not original, his theory contained important methodological errors, and furthermore he was chiefly interested in only one aspect, namely the paleontology of speech. For Marxist linguists it was more impor- tant to use the achievements of the sociological school which Spiridovich vainly sought to ignore. Bokarev expressed his confidence that the time would come when Marxist linguistics would turn its particular attention to the Esperanto movement, 'which should constitute a serious moment in current language policy'. Thus the Esperantists were encouraged to participate actively in the building of Marxist linguistics because 'It alone is capable of giving the international language a stable theoretical basis'.[837]
Drezen did not involve himself directly in the dispute between Bokarev and Spiridovich, but he made sure that the members of SEU received help in understanding the essential theoretical bases of their own work. In July 1928 the Fourth SEU Congress approved principles written by Drezen on 'paths to formation and dissemination of the international language'. These principles declared that the Esperanto movement owed its strength only to itself and that 'planting' Esperanto from above would not fit its goals. The Esperantists should continue to pin their hopes 'principally on initiatives from below, on the creativity of representatives of the broad masses'. At the same time, 'creative Marxist thinking' should draw con- clusions from the successful practices of the Esperanto movement and not 'silently pass over the problem of the international language'.[838]
At the end of the 1920s the time seemed not unfavorable for linking the future of Esperanto to the construction of Marxist linguistics. The entire cultural life of the Soviet Union was experiencing a period of profound transformation. During the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32), aimed at a giant step forward in industrialization, the country experienced a new cul- tural revolution, whose chief aim was to put education, literature, art and science fully at the service of socialist construction. The Party made more emphatic use of culture as a political and economic power factor, ending a period of several years of relative tranquility in the cultural sphere.[839]
At the same time the Cultural Revolution included elements of spon- taneous rebellion against all remnants of the past and against supposed missteps following the October Revolution. Earlier visions of the future Communist society underwent a renaissance. As of 1928, many utopian ideas, including projections of the death of the school and radical projects for the 'socialist city', found official favor and support in the Party—which not infrequently was more a consequence than a cause of their attractive- ness to the masses mobilized for the building of socialism. It was not only pressure, but also authentic enthusiasm, that drove people to fulfill the goals of the Plan. The heroic, painful struggle in the years of the First Plan strengthened belief in a better future under communism, and anyone able to contribute to the realization of this utopia felt particularly stimulated by the atmosphere surrounding the dawn of the cultural revolution.[840]
Such feelings also animated the Soviet Esperantists. They felt destined to the task of portraying that aspect of the future that concerned the problem of linguistic understanding.[841]
Skrypnyk Against Esperantization
Into the middle of this discussion on the building of Marxist linguistics fell a further declaration by Stalin on the problems of nation and lan- guage in socialism. In a report to the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in mid-1930, Stalin launched an attack on those 'deviators' who believed that 'the time has come to abolish national differences'. Those insisting on such a policy, said Stalin, are guilty of Great-Russian nationalism 'disguised [...] by a mask of internationalism and by the name of Lenin'. Stalin pointed to the dialectics of historical processes. For the moment, namely the period of socialist construction in the Soviet Union, the 'flowering of national cultures' was an important characteristic, and only in the future would they merge 'into one com- mon (both in form and content) culture, with one common language'.[842]But Stalin overestimated the capability of his dialectics to convince his listeners. During the Congress, delegates asked him how he reconciled this declaration with his 1925 speech, in which he condemned the theory of a universal language.5 [843] In his reply, Stalin denied any contradiction between the two statements: he continued to condemn the 'national- chauvinistic' theory of Kautsky, by which 'all nations, let us say, within the USSR' would flow 'into one common Great-Russian nation with one common Great-Russian language'. In other words, the question of the withering away of national languages and their unification was not a question for individual states, but international; during the construction of socialism in a single country, national languages would in no sense die away, but fully develop and flower. Stalin stated that on this point he continued to accept Lenin's idea, both in the short-term and more long- term perspective,
that in the period of the victory of socialism on a world scale, the national languages are inevitably bound to merge into one common language, which, of course, will be neither Great Russian nor German, but some- thing new.[844]
Even if Stalin denied it, there could be no overlooking the fact that his opinion had changed over the years. In 1925 he emphasized exclusively the flowering of nations and languages accelerated by socialist revolution, and he refused the possibility of a future common language. His dialectic could not hide the fact that in 1925 he made no distinction between the circumstances before and after the worldwide triumph of socialism—and that his speech of 1930 was an attempt at retrospective reinterpretation of his earlier and, for a Marxist, almost heretical opposition to the future merging of nations and languages.[845]
Now, in 1930, Stalin felt it necessary to confirm his opposition to a policy of rapid assimilation, while combining it with a revival of the international perspective. This was bound to have a stimulating effect on the Soviet Esperantists. The 1930 initiative represented progress after the speech of 1925. Giving his support to the idea of a universal language, Stalin at the same time emptied it of tendencies that from the time of Kautsky compromised it in the eyes of Esperantists and those working for the rights of small nations. He did not present the development of a universal language as a process of globalization of a national language, but for the first time forecast a language for all people as 'something new', as a language of a new kind. In this way Stalin adopted a point of view that was at least very similar to that of Marr.
The Soviet Esperantists, however, could not be entirely happy with Stalin's speech.[846] We must consider the situation in which SEU found itself in mid-1930. Its relations with SAT were extremely tense. Furthermore, at just this moment the Esperantists were confronted in their own coun- try by an unexpectedly strong attack from another party functionary. This intervention, already mentioned, requires more detailed scrutiny.
Shortly before the opening of the Party Congress, a speech was pub- lished by the Ukrainian People's Commissar for Education, Mykola
Skrypnyk.[847] He criticized the Esperantists for their 'aim of creating a separate non-national people and a separate non-national culture and ideology, substituting it for the goal of separate nations constructing their own national cultures'.^8 Skrypnyk, an old Bolshevik, was considered not only a supporter of the cultural autonomy of Ukraine, but also as a kind of advocate of all non-Russian communists who feared too great a dominance of Russians in the Soviet Union. He firmly relied on Lenin's belief that the class struggle was an international phenomenon and that nationalist feelings and antagonisms hindered the forward march of the proletarian revolution. For this reason, he opposed Russian chauvinism, particularly in Ukraine, along with Ukrainian nationalism if it threatened to weaken the solidarity of the Soviet republics.6 9 He particularly dis- trusted Stalin's policy on the national problem: as early as 1923 he com- plained that Stalin, by equating two nationalisms, 'the ruling great-power nationalism and the nationalism of once oppressed nations', neglected the paramount battle against "Great-Russian chauvinism" and tended to support 'the desire of our Soviet apparatus for the "united, undivided"'.[848]
Beginning in late 1929, Skrypnyk grew increasingly uneasy that his program of Ukrainization, although it always remained within the frame- work of loyalty to the all-Soviet Socialist fatherland, could be denounced as a stimulus to nationalist opposition. It is in this light that we must see his attacks against certain aspects of the publicity of the Esperantists, who, said Skrypnyk, sought to introduce Esperanto into schools in place of Ukrainian and in general proclaimed their language as an escape from national languages and the substitution of national languages with one single international language. He particularly condemned the 'non- national' theories of the Esperantists as a petty-bourgeois deviation from the true Communist nationality policy.
On the other hand, Skrypnyk, whose secretary knew Esperanto, in no way called for opposition to Esperanto on principle. He recognized that the language had its significance as a means of international communi- cation, drew attention to the fact that through Esperanto information about the cultural progress of Ukraine had penetrated other countries[849]and even promised support for the Esperanto movement if it remained 'voluntary'. In fact, considering the conflicts at this time characterizing nationality policy—specifically the relations between the Russian nation and minority nationalities—we have to doubt whether perceived danger from the Esperantists was what motivated Skrypnyk's warning against sennaciismo. It is more likely that his attack against 'the aim of jumping to a unifying language' was a hidden declaration of war against Great- Russian chauvinism, which seemed more than ever to threaten Ukrainian identity. A similar interpretation is possible regarding a speech made by another high-ranking Ukrainian party functionary, Pavel Postyshev, at the same congress. Postyshev alluded critically to the fact that in Ukraine there were 'a few' who proposed 'introducing Esperanto instead of Ukrainian',[850] seemingly echoing Skrypnyk, whose speech was published a few days before the opening of the 16th Party Congress.
At that Congress, Stalin declared that Great-Russian chauvinism was the most dangerous form of nationalist deviation. All who believed that the time had come to limit the process of the flowering of nations and shift to 'internationalism' were blamed for failure to observe Lenin's teachings. Thus, Stalin, reminding his audience of Lenin's refutation of 'non-national culture', sought to reassure those non-Russian party mem- bers made uneasy by too much centralization and assimilation. Indeed, Skrypnyk's fears seemed for the moment to be dispelled.
The Soviet Esperantists soon evidenced a connection between Skrypnyk's warnings of 'Esperantization' and Stalin's opposition to prema- ture internationalism. In this same year an Esperanto-language brochure was published containing excerpts from Stalin's speeches on the national- ities problem.[851] In the introduction Drezen, citing Skrypnyk, drew from his criticisms and from Stalin's speech a lesson for Soviet Esperantists, namely that they could not oppose Esperanto to the national languages and treat it as a language 'already capable of forming some separate non- national culture'.[852]
Despite the shock given to the Esperantists by Skrypnyk, their reac- tion was not merely defensive, since, after all, Stalin had around the same time put forward a challenging prognosis about the future of languages and nations. Following the theses of Marr, which had already stimulated their own efforts in the area of theory, the similar-sounding declarations of Stalin caused the Esperantists to feel called on to contribute still more intensively to clarification of the process of development of a universal language. Drezen emphasized that preparations for this future language must already be made in the period before the worldwide establishment of the socialist order.[853] Particularly emphatic views on the long-term tasks confronting Esperanto had been presented by Spiridovich. SEU's theo- retical journal published in 1930 a series of articles from his pen on the theory of an international language. They appeared in book form in the following year.[854] Spiridovich now directly posited a criterion for a true Marxist linguistics, namely whether it was aware 'that, just as the bour- geoisie once had to create a language for a new era, namely the national literary language, the proletariat today, on the threshold of proletarian world revolution, faces the task of creating the language of its own era'.[855]While the main aim of bourgeois linguistics was to work for 'assimila- tion of "peoples and tribes"',[856] the proletariat, beginning to mold the lan- guages of oppressed peoples into national literary languages, now needed a linguistics 'principally as the science of the creation of an international language'.[857]
Spiridovich wrote that Marr, opposing the great power thinking of Indo-European linguistics, took a new path, but failed to follow it conse- quentially. His preference for spoken languages, material for his paleon- tological studies, caused Marr to imagine the development of the world language as a 'huge leap', whereas in fact the way forward remained quite unclear, not to say that 'for Academician Marr the problem of a tran- sitional language, of an international auxiliary language, does not even exist'.[858] If, in addition to this, Marr criticized the 'individual' creation of an artificial language and completely ignored the fact that Esperanto owed its success precisely to collective creation,) [859] one could only con- clude that 'although Japhetic theory has made a major contribution to Marxist linguistics, it cannot form the basis of that science'.[860]
In the opinion of Spiridovich, the Marxist development of linguis- tics was already essentially finished. He had in mind the linguistic revo- lution inaugurated by Esperanto.) [861] The 'linguistic genius' Zamenhof)[862]intuitively understood the needs of the age and established the theoreti- cal fundamentals of the proletarian movement for an international lan- guage. The principle of simplicity 'for the less educated' eased the way to Esperanto 'for the broadest masses' and by giving up his author's rights Zamenhof created the conditions for 'the living collective creation' of Esperanto by the masses.) [863] Meanwhile, Esperanto had already become 'a conveyor of a new culture: the culture of the proletariat'.[864] In the era of transition to communism the language will become ever more per- fect, and, in parallel with this process, through 'effective interaction', the creation of the national literary languages of the more backward peoples will continue to develop.6 7 In accordance with Stalin's notion that the flowering of nations would create the conditions for their withering away, Spiridovich argued that 'the broad development of national languages in this period is merely a dialectical premise for the unified language of the future, of the near future 8 He maintained that the revolutionary shift from spoken dialects to national literary languages was only a transitional step on the road to an even greater linguistic revolution, namely the 'cre- ation of a unifying universal language for the non-national society of the Communist epoch'.[865] The completion of this second language revolution must therefore be the 'true banner' of Marxist linguistics.[866]
Discussion of the Russian Language
While Spiridovich assigned to the Esperantists the role of revolutionary vanguard in linguistic science, Drezen entered the ranks of opponents of Marr, the prophet of a future artificial world language who had shown himself an unenthusiastic sympathizer of Esperanto. Drezen belonged to a group of young linguists who appeared before the public shortly after the Party Congress. Calling themselves 'Iazykovednyi front', that is the Linguistics Front (shortened to 'Iazykfront'), the group, among whose founding members were also the linguists Georgii Danilov, Timofei Lomtev and Janis Loja (Loya),[867] opposed both the 'unprincipled eclecti- cism' of the Indo-European school and, interestingly, also the 'mechani- cal tendencies' of Japhetic theory. SEU responded favorably to the first manifesto of the Iazykfront.[868] Indeed it now officially supported efforts to create a Marxist linguistics in competition with Marr's Japhetic school.
Drezen, having already tied the fate of Esperanto to the development of a Marxist linguistics,[869] evidently believed that success would come with Iazykfront's help.
For a while it seemed as though this hope would be fulfilled. Adepts of Iazykfront began to conquer university chairs of linguistics, scientific institutes and journals. Their bitter polemics sought to reveal the weak- nesses of the Japhetic theory. At the same time, Iazykfront let it be known that it did not intend to throw out all previous achievements of linguis- tics, particularly those concerned with sociology. But at the end of 1932 it became clear that the support that Marr and his disciples commanded in the Party could not be shaken by the young linguists of Iazykfront. Marr's career was at its zenith. In 1930 he advanced to the vice presi- dency of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and the Party turned to him for help in its politically motivated reorganization. The degree to which the Japhetic theory merited the epithet Marxist seemed a secondary consid- eration given its incontestably revolutionary character and the fact that Marr came across as a more uncompromising opponent of the old bour- geois linguistics. If Iazykfront favored 'conquering traditional linguis- tics without wholesale rejection of all its results',[870] this 'middle position' exposed it to the accusation that in effect it was simply a group of covert Indo-Europeanists. From there, it was a short step to the destructive conclusion that Iazykfront represented 'the banner of covert reactionaries in linguistics, the banner of our enemies'.[871]
In the years 1931-32 it became clear that Marr's position could be weakened neither by the attacks of Iazykfront nor by the criticisms of Esperantists at the lack of 'leadership to action'. The reason was simply that the elective character of his theory accorded with the intentions of Stalin. If Marr, on the basis of his teachings about the origin and future of language, had sought to formulate a program of language policy, this would have soon exposed the disharmony between the internationalism of Japhetic theory and actual trends in the development of the Soviet Union. The more intensely the path to a universal language was discussed, the sharper the threat of revealing the contradictions between theory and practice.
As we have seen, even in the Party Congress Stalin found it difficult to explain to the delegates the dialectical relationship between the flowering of nations in the current Soviet Union and their unification in the worldwide Communist system of the future. The confusion grew even greater because of the evident contradictions in the process supposedly characterizing the 'flowering of nations'. In his formula 'national in form, socialist in content', Stalin had already alluded to the fact that national cultures would not fully develop without some kind of limits: the national element reaches its limit at the point where it begins to threaten the priority of socialism. However, the careful distinction between 'national form' and 'socialist content' began to lose its coherence if the contours were blurred, that is, if the 'socialist content' became cluttered with national symbols. And that was precisely what happened as of the end of 1931: the 'socialist content' required of all the peoples of the Soviet Union was increasingly filled with symbols char- acteristically Russian. This aspect requires our attention.
The position of the Russian language is a topic that the available writings of Soviet Esperantists almost never mention. This is all the more remark- able because they advanced ideas on the relationship between the principle of linguistic equality and the need for supranational communication that seemed to call for addressing the role of Russian. Instead, the discussion turned almost exclusively on the relationship between all national languages on the one hand and Esperanto on the other. For example, from Stalin's assertion that national languages would merge on the basis of their com- mon socialist content, Drezen concluded that a final confluence without influence on national languages by an 'international auxiliary language' was unimaginable, because that auxiliary language, that is Esperanto, respond- ing to the current need for international communication, was already based on the national languages, formed unity with them 'on the basis of the lexical material of modern international science and technology' and in this way led them to merge.[872] Earlier, Drezen even declared that the 'tendencies to appropriation of supranational socialist content' contained in Esperanto, 'a language used particularly by the most progressive social strata', were 'even clearer and more striking than in the national languages'.[873] Neither Drezen nor Spiridovich pointed out that in the non-Russian languages of the Soviet Union scientific and technical terminology was mostly borrowed from Russian.
Such an omission is surprising because the facts are entirely clear. As George P. Springer emphasizes, Esperanto was never officially consid- ered as an acceptable means of communication within the Soviet Union, although an objective view could perfectly well have left such a possi- bility open, for example given the well-known opposition of Lenin to privileging the Russian language.[874] On the contrary, the aim of the Party was that the many ethnicities of the Soviet Union should use Russian to understand one another and for their part they should feel ever stronger pressure to learn that language. Left to Esperanto was only the role of serving as a link (and a channel of propaganda) to other countries.
Another question is whether the Soviet Esperantists could always dis- tinguish between the two spheres of communication—within and out- side the Soviet Union. There are some indications that Esperantists of non-Russian nationality tended to regard Esperanto as in some measure a counterweight to the domination of the Russian language, while on the other hand among Russian (and some foreign) Esperantists there was a tendency to consider the spread of Russian within the Soviet Union as a step toward the worldwide process of 'denationalization' advanced by Esperanto.[875] The latter ideas seemed to lose viability after Skrypnyk's public warning against the 'Esperantization' of Ukraine,[876] and if, also in 1930, Stalin condemned the supporters of a 'single, common language' in the Soviet Union (because 'they are, in essence, striving to restore the privileges of the formerly predominant language, namely the Great Russian language'[877]), this provided momentary stimulus for those who wished to publicize Esperanto as a kind of guarantee for the equal flower- ing of the nations of the Soviet Union.
But, at about the same time, one incident revealed how risky it was to launch a discussion of Esperanto in connection with the language prob- lem internal to the Soviet Union. Shortly before the Party Congress, the Ukrainian Esperantist Sergei Sinitsky asked several writers in his home- land for their opinion of Esperanto. Among the published responses, particularly interesting is that of the popular poet Volodymyr Sosiura[878]:
I am amazed that Esperanto is not taught in our schools. That would speed up, in parallel with the organization of small groups among the masses, preparations for the substitution of the Russian language by Esperanto as the state language of the USSR. It would help us to fight faster and more successfully against the so-called local nationalisms by dissolving them. It would put the Russian language in the same place as the languages of the other republics, and the Great-Russian chauvinism along cultural lines would become a local nationalism. Esperanto—a language created on the basis of knowledge of the development of languages—helps us to move through the huge ocean of languages towards the world culture with open eyes. In my opinion, it is necessary, finally, to introduce Esperanto into the practical life of our republics as a language that will become the state lan- guage of the USSR and afterwards of the whole world.[879]
Sosiuras heretical claims were published in SEU's theoretical journal— however, with an editorial note that pointed out 'his quite erroneous, anti-Marxist viewpoint'. Sosiura was faulted for opposing the national forms of language and forgetting the principal matter, namely socialist content. To counter nationalisms—the editors warned—'we must remove their class roots, but not their languages; in our country no single state language is privileged: the languages of all peoples of the Soviet Union are equal to one another'. Sosiuras proposal to introduce Esperanto as a state language should accordingly be considered 'an unnecessary and harmful fantasy, a "leftist-radical" quasi-advance'.[880]
We could readily label Sosiura's proposals as a 'purely Zamenhofian program'.[881] In essence, they resemble concepts valid in the Esperanto movement long before the founding of the Soviet Union; the so-called Declaration on Esperantism accepted by the First Congress in Boulogne- sur-Mer in 1905 included, among other things, the goal that Esperanto 'could serve as a reconciling language of public institutions in those coun- tries where different nations fight among themselves over languageV [882]That for the Esperantists the proposals of Sosiura did not seem unortho- dox, and that such clearly unrealistic ideas found support among SEU members, is evident from the reaction of the interviewer Sinitsky to the editors' criticism of Sosiura. It is simply not true—wrote Sinitsky—that Sosiura proposed 'eliminating the national language forms through the Esperanto language'. On the contrary, Esperanto should have its place next to the national languages—as 'a state language of the USSR, an aux- iliary language, a second language after the national mother tongue' and must 'push the Russian language out of its current privileged position', so that the principle of Lenin would be observed. Because 'to overlook and deny', as the editors were doing, 'that the Russian language through its privileged position offends against the Leninist principle of "no privilege for any nation, for any language" seems clearly anti-Leninist'.[883]
Sinitsky courageously tried to defy the current flow of events, using Esperanto as a cudgel to return his readers to the principles of Lenin. Conscious of the political dangers of such an effort, the editors now replied more sharply. They accused Sinitsky of adopting 'a class-based position unfriendly to the proletariat' by ignoring article 34 of the Soviet constitution, according to which the Russian language no longer enjoyed 'the privileges of a state language existing in the capitalist order'. Evidently he also did not know the words of Lenin: 'We, of course, are in favor of every inhabitant of Russia having the opportunity to learn the great Russian language.' The editors asked Sinitsky whether, then, he perhaps wished to hinder the desire of the working people of the national repub- lics to read the works of Lenin and Stalin, and all party decisions, in the original, along with their efforts to acquire the technological knowledge conveyed by the Russian language. Not understanding 'that the totality of class interests is more important than national differences', Sinitsky had turned against not simply 'the language of Russian landowners, capi- talists, priests, police, but against the Russian language in general'. If in so doing he had opposed the idea that non-Russian workers and peasants in the Soviet Union should learn the language of their Russian comrades he was aiming at the separation of nationalities and pursuing 'counterrevo- lutionary activity'. In conclusion, the editors proclaimed that Sinitsky's point of view was 'a clear example of how poorly the Soviet Esperantists were equipped with the Marxist-Leninist method'.[884]
After such a severe dressing-down, nothing was left to Sinitsky and Sosiura other than extensive self-criticism. Both confessed that they were guilty of a 'crude political error' in not distinguishing between 'learning and teaching' the Russian language and underestimating 'the significance of the study of Russian for the proletariat of the USSR'.[885]
How should we judge this polemic, unique in SEU's journal, on the position of the Russian language? It is remarkable how little it had to do with Esperanto. The editors dealt in detail with the progressive charac- ter of the learning of Russian as 'a major step forward in the uniting of nations in a higher union' and made no mention of any contribution by Esperanto in this regard. On the contrary, Sinitsky was condemned because his definition of the role of Esperanto only helped isolate the nations. In his self-criticism, Sosiura did indeed argue timidly for a worldwide language 'of which Esperanto constitutes and will constitute an element', and the editors did not exclude the possibility of the com- pulsory teaching of Esperanto 'where all necessary conditions are pres- ent'. But missing entirely in the long attack against the two Ukrainians was the previously frequently posited idea, particularly by Spiridovich, of the three-way interrelationship of national languages, an international auxiliary language and a future world language.
Stalin's prognosis of a universal language was not mentioned on this occasion, though that is in fact not surprising. Relating to the future period after the worldwide victory of communism, it was unsuitable as theoretical support for current Soviet policy. Although Stalin had con- firmed the future of internationalism, for the present he clearly gave pri- ority to the 'flowering of nations' and linked to that principle criticism of 'great-power chauvinism'. Thus, he argued for mutual respect among the non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union. However—and that must have confused and disillusioned the Soviet Esperantists—the con- tradictions between official theory and practice were rapidly increasing. The Esperantists were obliged to note that Stalin had not only given no encouragement to preparations for the future language of communism but also in practice was pulling away from the principle of equal rights for all nations in the Soviet Union—a principle that could serve as favorable ground for Esperanto. Toward the end of 1931, Stalin began to ratchet up his policy against non-Russian ethnic groups—at around the same time as the discussion of the function of Esperanto within the Soviet Union, launched by Sosiura, prompted the SEU leadership to confess that the Esperantists must also fight 'unrelentingly against all manifesta- tions of local nationalist deviation'. The discussion made it clear to the Esperantists that the scheme presented by Spiridovich was no longer valid, namely the idea that not the Russian language (not explicitly men- tioned[886]) , but Esperanto, would contribute to the unification of lan- guages under socialism.
Vain Theorizing
Stalin himself realized that hopes raised during the Cultural Revolution threatened the politics of the Party. In October 1931 he defined his posi- tion on the correct relationship between theory and practice. In a letter addressed to historians, he condemned the inclination of Communist intellectuals to fruitless theorizing. It was not enough, said Stalin, to rely on 'written documents' alone: 'Who, except archive rats, does not under- stand that a party and its leaders must be tested primarily by their deeds and not merely by their declarations?'[887]
Stalin's letter prompted a wave of self-criticism among scientists and intellectuals. The Esperanto movement felt pressure to engage in a simi- lar disagreeable act of ideological repentance. Early in 1932, the SEU Central Committee established a brigade 1 12 with the task of 'sweeping away once and for all with an iron broom of self-criticism' all errors, deformities and lapses endemic to the Soviet Esperantists. In line with Stalin's attacks against de-emphasis of the nationalities problem, it pro- claimed an intensified battle against the remnants of non-nationalist thinking. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that for the first time SEU made it clear that theoretical considerations of the language problem were of little importance. Alluding directly to the arguments of Spiridovich, SEU now distanced itself from his 'battle cry' that 'at the heart of Marxist linguistics [...] should stand the language of a new proletarian era—the international language'. Major significance, by contrast, was given to the 'flowering process of "cultures national in form and socialist in content"', while 'the watchword of an international language can naturally be only accessory'.[888] This was a clear statement that Stalin's 'history letter' of 1931 had superseded the enthusiasm awakened by his Party Congress speech a year earlier.
In 1932 SEU nevertheless continued to celebrate the 'major victory' contained in a document that for the first time seemed to devote serious attention to Esperanto in the context of Marxist linguistics.[889] The docu- ment was the eleven 'Theses on an International Language' approved by the Scientific Research Institute of Linguistics in Moscow.[890] This institute was linked to the office of the People's Commissar on Education, which functioned as a center for the supporters of Iazykfront.[891] Drezen, as one of the founders of Iazykfront, probably at least influenced work on the Theses.
The Theses stated that one could not ignore Esperanto or present it as 'members of the linguistic guild' tried to do, namely 'as an abortive prod- uct, exclusively a petty-bourgeois utopia'. However, at the same time the document stressed that in the Soviet Union at present 'all efforts to raise the question of a common universal language [...] as a priority of the moment are premature and therefore utopian'. Doubts were expressed that Esperanto could make any significant contribution to the creation of a future language of all humankind: 'The confluence of national languages leading to one world language is occurring independently of Esperanto.'
Reduced to the role of a modest auxiliary in the present, Esperanto was also subjected in the Theses to a whole series of ideological exhortations, among them the remark that Esperanto 'was born in a bourgeois milieu' along with the roots of its so-called internationalism:
The high-minded goals of Dr. Zamenhof and the bourgeois Esperantist propagandists concerning the brotherhood of peoples and worldwide har- mony were, [...] like all petty-bourgeois illusions, aids to imperialism.
Accordingly, the ideological content of Esperanto had to be reformulated and more importance given to the proletarian elements in the language.
SEU declared its solidarity with the Theses,[892] but Spiridovich refused to sing along with the chorus of approbation. He agreed that his own work contained 'crude errors'. For example, he admitted that he 'com- pletely bypassed the problem of the class-based, proletarian character of national literary languages constructed by the proletariat'—which was indirect recognition that he had not given attention to the progressive influence of the Russian language on the vocabulary of the once less- developed minority languages. But his reply amounted to a justification of his central argument, namely that orientation to the goal of the world- wide triumph of communism had to be valid also for linguistics, and that therefore the most important task of that discipline was to build the future language of Communist society. Citing Lenin, Spiridovich insisted that the entire effort of the proletariat should be directed to the 'definitive goal'—which in no way prevented it from the dialectical capability 'of establishing and solving urgent tasks in the conditions of every concrete moment. The authors of the Theses, Spiridovich objected, had engaged in a 'leftist' flight from the requirements of the transitional period. They evidently saw the flowering of nations and languages 'not as a stage in the building of communism but as sufficient to itself', while for him the pro- cess was 'a necessary step in the construction of the future world language .[893]With Spiridovich's plea not to lose sight of the longer view, theoretical discussion of the worldwide language of communism essentially ended. Over the Theses, Spiridovich was still dealing with people who, like him, distanced themselves from Marr; but in the same year came new attacks. This time, Marr's supporters attacked not only Spiridovich but also Drezen and the entire Iazykfront. A book published by the Academy of Sciences sharply criti- cized the work of Drezen and Spiridovich. Its authors asked rhetorically: 'Can such formalism hidden under revolutionary phrases about Esperanto as the language of the proletariat be tolerated in the era of proletarian dictatorship?' They questioned whether the line of argument of Drezen and Spiridovich conformed with Marxism. The international language will develop, they added, only through a united world economy in the era of developing com- munism, and it will be a language with entirely new qualities 'incorporating all major achievements of the national languages'.[894] About Esperanto they had nothing good to say. Its claims as the 'language of the proletariat' were summarily dismissed: 'The fact that proletarians conduct international cor- respondence in it does not make it proletarian.' The publications of Drezen and Spiridovich (his 'Marxist phraseology' evidently seemed particularly pro- voking) were seen as damaging 'because they constitute an attack by class enemies in the linguistic field of the ideological front'.[895]
Against accusations of this kind there was no defense. By the end of 1932, if not before, SEU's theoretical journal had lost all confidence that the Esperanto movement could expect any profit from the dispute among the linguists. It grew increasingly clear that further participation in theo- retical debate would only put SEU at risk of accusations of ideological deviation. The veteran Esperantist Andrei Andreev noted soberly that the question of evolution toward a universal language was a problem 'more political than strictly linguistic'.[896]
Andreev was aware of precedents. The dissolution of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers in April 1932 showed that insistence on a proletarian, class point of view was unsuited to the period at the end of the First Five-Year Plan. The Party had so strengthened its rule that it could now afford to distance itself from slogans about the growing class struggle. Emphasizing the 'proletariat' was no longer necessary after the people had become, with much suffering and sacrifice, though not without enthusi- asm at the progress achieved, melded into a united Soviet people. In educa- tion, as early as autumn 1931, the direction changed, leaving no room for theories about 'the withering away of the school'; polytechnic education and other radical experiments were followed by the development of fac- tory-style authoritarian learning. Reforms introduced in 1932-33 brought regimentation also to the university system. Children of non-proletarian origins were given much easier access to higher education. And while the Marxist, highly politicized intellectuals lost influence, the 'fellow-travelers' once again advanced. Bourgeois specialists reacquired leading positions in the economic machine. Administrative competence, combined with ide- ological fidelity, had more negotiable value than enthusiasm for cultural revolution and knowledge of Marxist theory.
Memories of the communist utopia continued as a source of enthu- siasm for the work of socialist construction; but, while they made the painful efforts of the present more bearable, in comparison with the 'pres- ent tasks' they were relegated to the background. At the same time, the Party understood quite clearly that the socialist utopia contained its unset- tling elements because it allowed people to measure the present in terms of Marxist goals for the future. This was why Stalin had, in the autumn of 1931, condemned the vain theorizing of Communist intellectuals. A fur- ther year elapsed before the Soviet Esperantists finally concluded that it was no longer wise to generate theoretical contributions.[897] Linking their fate to Iazykfront had turned out to be a miscalculation; there were signs that the temporarily pressured Japhetic school had succeeded in keeping the goodwill of the Party. Another, perhaps more important, reason for silence was the new trend in Soviet nationality policy. Although Stalin had still maintained in the Congress of 1930 that among nationalist deviations the chief danger was Great-Russian chauvinism, by 1931 the assaults of the leadership in Moscow were directed exclusively at another form of deviation—local nationalism.
Developments in Ukraine assumed symbolic significance in this regard. After a campaign lasting several months, in February 1933 Skrypnyk was forced to resign from his office as People's Commissar for Education. In June an ultimatum from the Central Committee ordered that he publicly reject his nationalist deviation. Skrypnyk remained intransigent, but, finally, after continued assaults, chose suicide as a last resort.[898] All this took place amidst an enormous human catastrophe: in 1932-33, fol- lowing the merciless campaign of collectivization ordered by Stalin, 3.5 million people died of hunger.
The disappearance of Skrypnyk was, particularly for the Esperantists of Ukraine, a heavy blow, because of all the Soviet leaders he was the only one who took Esperanto seriouslyi 24 and, despite his criticism of the Esperantists' excessive fervor, he clearly endorsed its right to dissemination in the Soviet Union. More generally, Skrypnyk's death and Stalin's new campaign against local nationalism shed dramatic light on how the Party's position on the nationalities problem had changed—and this in the few short years since Stalin had warned against Great Russian chauvinism, the very means by which Skrypnyk and his fears were elimi- nated. During the 17th Congress in January 1934 Stalin simply turned Lenin's principles concerning the prime danger of the nationalities prob- lem upside down. Pointing to Skrypnyk's 'deviations', he named the local nationalism of Ukraine as a precedent-making example of the principal danger to fraternal cooperation among the Soviet peoples.[899]
Beyond this change in priorities, however, Stalin did not reformu- late the principles of Soviet nationalities policy.i 26 His statement still stood: national cultures and languages should continue to flower in the Soviet Union to create the conditions for their unification in the world Communist society. He did not find it opportune to adapt official theory to the new reality, even if the vision of the future had long since dimmed and present priorities had also changed—namely no longer the equality of nations but all-Soviet patriotism, increasingly dominated by Russian symbols, prevailed. Under these circumstances the Soviet Esperantists' efforts to develop a profile as revolutionary vanguard in the battle for the future universal language met a brick wall. Much as the thesis of 'the withering away of the state' had no importance in the present, so the unification of nations and languages was a matter for the distant future.
Attributing to Esperanto tasks directed at the future did not conform with political reality, and the effort to present it as a necessary auxil- iary language beside the 'flowering' national languages was equally vain because the function of language for communication among the peoples of the Soviet Union was, to an ever greater degree, fulfilled by Russian.[900]In fact, by reminding people of the final goal of communism and thereby emphasizing the equality of all languages, the Esperantists were touching on dangerous taboos; in so doing, they unintentionally revealed how far apart theory and reality on the question of nations and nationalities and their relation to socialist internationalism had become. Was this, then, the direct cause of the demise of the Esperanto movement in the Soviet Union? Probably not, because the Party, as already noted, had not provided a theo- retical redefinition reconciling Stalins statement and contemporary reality, nor, as far as we know, had the Esperantists been officially accused of mis- interpreting Stalin and consequently of deviation. More precisely, the situ- ation at the end of 1932 was completely paradoxical. Drezens turn against Marr had proved unfruitful; his efforts to find a compromise between the theory of world language and the practical priorities of the transitional period were premature. The disciples of Marr won (if incompletely) against Iazykfront; unlike the proletarian workers and the leftist teachers, they did not fall victim to the stabilizing process following the Cultural Revolution. Shortly before his death in 1934, Marr was confirmed as the uncontested pontiff of Soviet linguistics—despite the fact that he was certainly not an apologist for the policy of repression that Stalin adopted. In fact, Marr strongly opposed all imperialisms, including the Russian variety, and on occasion tended to put too much stress on the role of national minorities in world history.[901] Furthermore, we should not forget his strong emphasis on the idea that the universal language of the future could not be any national language, and even less so could it be one of the widely disseminated world languages.[902] A further two decadeselapsed before Stalin publicly confessed that the theories of Marr were unsuited to present Soviet realities. Up to that point, they were useful to him precisely because they also remained 'completely nebulous on how to achieve the future worldwide commonal- ity of language'.[903]
As for the Esperantists, we can note that the immediate result of the debate on the development of a Marxist linguistics was their realization that it was no longer useful to participate, indeed that it could be risky to insist on a 'linguistic revolution'. The Esperantists understood what scorching ground they were standing on in discussing the form and con- tent of a future universal language, particularly in making demands that, in the present environment of practical politics, would put Esperanto in a position of opposition to Russian. The discussion did not result in theoretical justification for the suppression of Esperanto: still in place was the theory that, when presented in 1930, seemed to provide Esperantists with a more favorable basis for activity than ever. But political realities narrowed the possibilities open to the Esperantists to interpret that the- ory independently and apply it to their goals, so that in the end they preferred to avoid further discussion and the threat of collision between utopia and reality.
Long and difficult was the road followed by the Soviet Esperantists— under the weight of a Marxist tradition leaving no room for a neutral international language—in their efforts to establish for Esperanto a theo- retical right to exist. After the 'shaky situation' in the 1920s they thought that at the beginning of the 1930s they had achieved a breakthrough: Esperanto seemed to have a chance of a place in the newly defined com- munist utopia. But they were disappointed. The Party did not favor spontaneous approaches to utopia, even declaring 'war on the dream- ers'.[904] Thus, the Esperantists were pushed back to their starting point. However, even maintaining activity conformable to Soviet circumstances after 1930 became more and more problematic.
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Author Index[905]
A
Adam, Eugene. See Lanti, Eugene Adamson, Einar, 185n107 Adenauer, Konrad, 100, 101 Akita Ujaku, 185n107 Aldworth, Thomas, 232, 232n86,
235, 235n99 Aleksiev, Nikola, 187n109 Alexander II (Tsar) , 5, 6 Allize, Henry, 55, 56 Andreev, A.P., 253n52, 273,
273n121 Archdeacon, Ernest, 18, 53, 57
Arnhold, Georg, 21, 130 Asnes, A.I., 19
B
Baghy, Gyula, 69, 70, 70n133 Bakunin, M.A., 239 Barbusse, Henri, 77, 169,
169n42, 171 Barthelmess, Norbert , 173,
184n96, 202 Bassler, Otto, 217n35, 228 Batta, Jozsef, 216n30, 217n35 Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan, 31, 31n113, 32, 250n40, 253n54 Bauer, Hermann , 94 Bauer, Otto , 239 Beaufront, Louis de , 18, 21n70, 23n76, 28n100, 32
Bebel, August, 45n4l Behrendt, Arnold, 96, 98, 103-6,
103n78, 111, 113 Bein, Kazimierz, 23, 23n77 Belmont, Leo, 19, 24n80, 127n76 Benes, Edvard, 51n75, 63 Bergson, Henri, 59 Best, Werner, 117n27, 127, 127n76 Beutel, Lothar, 126, 126n73 Blanke, Detlev, 20n69, 217n32 Blinov, E.V., 231, 231n83 Bochacher, M.N., 271n116 Bogdanov, A.A., 160, 161, 161n8, 248n36
Boguslavsky, M.S., 178, 178n70 Boirac, Emile, 18
Bokarev, E.A., 253, 253n53-4, 254 Bonesper, Ralph, 226n67 Borovko, N.A., 3, 4n3, 155 Boubou, Marcel , 236, 236n103 Boulenger, Marcel, 53 Bourguignon, Honore , 236,
236n103 Bourlet, Carlo, 18, 22n72, 22n74,
27n93, 47n56 Bujwid, Odo, 102n67, 125 Bukharin, N.I., 194n135, 246 Bunemann, Oscar, 122n54 Burda, Rudolf, 164n26 Burliagov, G.I., 270n112 Buttmann, Rudolf, 94, 112n10
C
Cart, Theophile, 18, 22n74 Cecil, Lord Robert, 58 Chavet, Gabriel, 22n74 Christaller, Paul, 99
Comenius, I.A., 238 Comte, Auguste , 28 Couturat, Louis , 32 Cseh, Andras, 69, 102n67, 110n2
D
Dambrauskas, Aleksandras, 17n60,
30n109 Danilov, G.K., 262 Demidiuk, G.P., 174, 176, 196, 197n145, 211n18, 214, 215,230 Descartes, Rene, 238 Dillon, E.J., 194
Dimitrov, Georgi, 233n87, 235n101 Dollfuss, Engelbert , 123 Dreher, Leopold, 127n76 Dreyfus, Alfred, 21, 22, 22n72, 27, 36
Drezen, E.K., 14, 162n15, 166, 167, 167n34, 173-6, 177n66, 178-80, 183, 183n93, 184, 197n145, 203, 206, 207, 210, 211, 211n18, 214n21, 215, 217, 217n35, 221, 221n47, 222, 230, 246, 247, 251, 252, 252n48, 254, 260, 262, 262n91, 263, 263n93, 264, 265, 271-3, 274n122 Drummond, Eric, 56 Dybowski, Benedykt, 19
E
Ebert, Friedrich, 97 Ehrenburg, I.G., 178
Ehrlich, Paul, 150 Eichmann, Adolf, 128 Ellersiek, Friedrich, 106, 107, 111, 116 Engels, Friedrich, 238, 239 Epstein, Felix, 154, 154n184 Eroshenko, V.Ia., 72, 72n142
F
Faure, Sebastien, 168 Fayet, Jean-Franfois, 164 Fenyvesi, Ervin, 74n150 Feoktistov, E.M. , 12 Fischer, Rudolf and Emma, 155 Font i Giralt, Joan , 141 Franco, Francisco , 140, 141 Frick, Wilhelm, 148, 148n163 Fried, Alfred Hermann , 37 Fruictier, Paul , 22n74 Futerfas, N.Ia., 165n29, 174, 246
G
Gandhi, Mahatma , 63 Gautier, Emile, 53 Geispits, Etienne , 13 Gernet, V.A., 13n45, 15, 15n48 Gersater, Akiva, 155 Giesswein, Sandor, 73 Gitzinger, Artur, 122n56 Goebbels, Joseph, 114, 115 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
37, 90 Gramsci, Antonio, 242,
243, 243n14 Grave, Jean, 168 Grosjean-Maupin, Emile , 22n74 Guiheneuf, Robert, 182, 182n91
H
Hamann, Jurgen, 71n135 Hanotaux, Gabriel , 52 Haupt, Herbert, 119 Heigl, Paul, 132, 133 Herriot, Edouard , 60 Herzl, Theodor, 9n26, 22 Hess, Rudolf, 114, 124 Heydrich, Reinhard, 113, 114,
114n15, 116, 121, 121n47, 124, 127, 127n78, 128, 128n80, 131, 131n88, 133, 133n98
Himmler, Heinrich, 113, 113n13,
117, 121, 131n88 Hirt, Ferdinand , 88 Hitler, Adolf, 62n119, 93, 95, 97, 98, 100-2, 104, 113n12, 120,124, 124n67, 125n68, 126, 135n108, 147, 148, 150, 159, 229 Hodler, Hector, 32, 33, 41, 49, 50, 50n72, 51, 63, 82, 83, 168, 170, 170n44 Hoegner, Wilhelm, 94n31 Hong Hyeong-eui, 145 Horthy, Miklos, 74 Hu Yuzhi, 185n107 Huber, Alois, 119n37 Humbert-Droz, Jules, 163n18
I
Inoue Masuzo, 145 Intsertov, N.Ia. , 224n64 Iodko, A.R., 197 Isbrucker, J.R.G., 102n67 Itschner, Hans , 163, 163n18 Ivanov, A.M., 271n116
J
Jabotinsky, V.E., 5n8 Jahnke, Richard, 91, 91n19 Jaures, Jean, 45, 45n4l Javal, Emile, 22n72, 22n74, 26n91, 27, 27n94, 28n95, 28n101, 29, 36 Jespersen, Otto, 253n54 Jonas, Franz, 123, 177n65, 209,
213, 213n20, 218, 219n41 Jung, Teo, x, 70, 70n134, 101n63, 134,141n134
K
Kalocsay, Kalman, 222
Kamenev, L.B., 196
Kampfrad, Walter, 98, 217n35, 228,
229, 229n75 Kaplan, 193n132 Katayama Sen, 178 Kautsky, Karl, 208n8, 240, 240n10, 241, 242n13, 243, 245, 245n24, 248, 248n36, 256, 257 Keable, Gladys, 235n100, 235n101 Keable, Ken, 235n101 Keable, William, 235n101 Kerzhentsev, P.M., 161 Khvorostin, S.K., 11, 13 Kiriushin, P.M., 187-8, 187n111 Kirov, S.M., 231, 231n81 Kliemke, Ernst , 37n7, 90 Koch, Robert, 125n70 Koch, Theodor, 115, 122, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134n100, 143n143, 143n147 Koenen, Wilhelm, 163 Koestler, Arthur, 282
Kofman, A.S., 5 Kohlbach, 110 Kokeny, Lajos, 78n163 Kolchinsky, V.M., 193n134, 208n8 Kolker, B.G., 15n50 Koo, Wellington, 51n75 Kopelev, L.Z., 186, 186n108, 208 Kozlevcar, Joze, 154 Krasin, L.B., 178 Kreuz, Robert, 147n160 Kriukov, Maksim, 223, 223n56 Kropotkin, P.A., 168 Krupskaia, N.K., 246, 246n28,
265n100 Kun, Bela, 164n26 Kunze, Horst, 128, 129n82,
131n89, 134 Kurisu Kei , vii, x
L
La Fontaine, Henri, 52, 52n78 Langlet, Nina, 155 Langlet, Valdemar, 155 Lanti, Eugene, 46n47, 120, 163,
164, 164n26, 165n28, 168, 168n35, 168n36, 169, 170, 170n43, 171, 173, 174, 175n59, 176-178, 182, 184, 184n100, 195, 206, 206n2, 207, 209-13, 209n12, 210n13, 211n18, 215, 219, 219n43, 221-3, 231n82, 243n15, 260n74, 265n99, 265n100, 266n100 Lapenna, Ivo, 60n112, 151,
151n170-2, 152, 153n179, 156,253n52 Larin, Iu.A., 193, 194n135
Laurat, Lucien, 182, 182n92, 215 Laval, Raymond, 195n138 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 238 Lejzerowicz, Izrael, 127n76,
137n117 Lenin, VI., 164, 165, 170n43, 173, 187, 199, 208n8, 210n13, 223n56, 242n13, 243-7, 251, 256, 258, 259, 265, 265n100, 267, 268, 272, 275 Limouzin, Ellen Kate, 175n59 Lindhagen, Carl, 245 Lisichnik, I.S., 191n119, 201,
201n156, 202 Litvin, A., 6n12 Litvinov, M.M., 227 Liu Shifu , 46, 46n49 Lobachev, A., 270n112 Loja, Janis, 262, 262n91, 274n122 Lomtev, T.P., 262 Lopatin, 160n2 Lorenc, F.V., 19
Luchaire, Julien, 59, 61, 61n116 Lunacharsky, A.V., 162, 162n14, 164, 183, 250, 250n41 Luxemburg, Rosa, 170n43, 210n13,
244, 244n21 Luyken, Heinrich, 42
M
Maier, Hugo, 136n114 Maizel, I.E., 235n99 Makowski, Albin, 154 Malatesta, Errico , 46, 46n47 Mangada Rosenorn, Julio, 141, 141n133
Marr, N.Ia., 248-50, 252, 253, 257, 260-3, 272, 276, 277
Marx, Karl, 238, 239, 239n4-6, 244 Meillet, Antoine , 253n54 Metzger, Max Josef, 155n190 Meyer, Gustav, 41n26, 92n22 Michalicska, Istvan, 182, 182n88 Michaux, Alfred, 4, 4n5, 7, 9, 22n74, 25n85, 26n89, 26n92 Mihalik, Jozsef, 143 Moch, Gaston , 21, 22, 22n72,
22n73 Moscheles, Felix, 21 Mosse, Rudolf, 88 Muller, Max, 253n54 Munzenberg, Willi, 163n18 Muravkin, Herbert, 210n13, 217n35 Muribo, Martin, 177n65 Murray, Gilbert , 58 Mussolini, Benito, 141
N
Naumann, Albrecht, 105, 106,
107n96, 113n11 Nekrasov, N.V., 174, 176, 197n145,
208n8 Nell, Karl, 153n181 Nieuwenhuis, Domela, 242n12 Nikolsky, R.B., 187n111, 197n144,
197n145, 198, 226 Nissen, Kurt, 119n41 Nitobe Inazo, 54, 76, 76n158
O
Obbes, Gesine and Ali, 155 Ockey, Edward, 235n100 Okhitovich, M.A., 162n15 Orwell, George , 175n59
Ostwald, Wilhelm, 38, 38n8, 49 Osugi Sakae, 46
P
Pashchenko, M.F., 270n112 Pestana, Angel, 162 Petofi, Sandor, 78
Pietsch, Willibald, 106, 107, 113n11 Pino Alegret, Andres, 141n134 Pinsker, Leon , 7 Platonov, A.P., 187 Pleve, V.K., 12
Podkaminer, S.N., 160n5, 270n112 Pogany, Jozsef, 163, 163n20 Poliakov, V.I., 174 Poska, Antanas, 155, 155n187 Postyshev, P.P., 259, 259n72 Prent, Ethel, 155n186 Primo de Rivera, Miguel, 139 Privat, Edmond, 8n21, 51-3, 56,
56n98, 59, 63, 67, 102n67 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 238 Pruski, Czeslaw, 127n77 Pujula i Valles, Frederic, 139n125
Q
Qin Baopu, 176n63
R
Radic, Stjepan, 73 Rajczy, Rezso, 74 Rakosi, Matyas, 164, 177 Ravesteijn, Willem van, 45 Reclus, Elisee, 168
Renn, Ludwig, 140 Restrepo, Carlos, 51n75 Reynald, Georges , 58 Reynold, Gonzague de , 59, 62, 62n119
Richter, Friedrich Carl, 217n35 Richter, Georg, 217n35 Riesen, Gunter, 102 Rio Branco, Raul do, 58, 59, 62 Robicsek, Pal, 182, 182n88 Robin, Wilhelm, 127n76 Rockmann, Fritz, 112n7 Rolland, Romain, 63, 161, 172, 172n51, 243, 243n15 Rollet de l'Isle, Maurice, 53 Rosenberg, Alfred, 115 Rozen, A.G., 16 Rust, Bernhard, 109, 110 Ryner, Han, 68, 168n36
S
Sakharov, A.D., 186n108 Sakowicz, Roman, 167n33 Salan, Georges, 185n107, 236n103 Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira, 138 Sapir, Edward , 253n54 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 253 Saxl, Margarete, 110n2 Schodl, Ludwig, 97n47, 118n32 Schubert, Gerhard, 119 Schuchardt, Hugo , 253n54 Schwartz, Tivadar, 165n30 Schwier, Werner, 134, 134n106,
135,135n107 Sebert, Hippolyte, 18, 22n72, 22n74, 29
Setala, Vilho, 102n67
Shatskin, L.A., 193
Sidorov, Andrei, 165n31, 196n143
Simon, Otto, 103, 103n78
Singer, Paul , 45
Sinitsky, S.P., 266-8
Six, Franz Alfred, 127, 127n78, 128,
128n80, 131, 132 Skarvan, Albert, 19, 19n66 Skrypnyk, M.O., 215, 215n27, 216, 255, 257-60, 265, 265n100, 274, 274n123, 275, 275n124 Soros, George , 165n30 Sosiura, V.M., 266, 266n102, 267-9 Sosnovsky, L.S., 181 Souvarine, Boris, 163n18 Spiridovich, E.F., 251-4, 252n48, 260-2, 265, 269-73, 274n122, 276n129 Springer, George P. , 265 Sproeck, Adolf, 83n171, 98n48 Stalin, I.V., 187, 203-5, 208n8, 224, 231n81, 234, 244, 247, 248, 250, 255-8, 256n63, 257n66, 259, 260, 262-264, 265n99 Stay, Howard, 173n54 Steche, Albert, 64-7, 66n127, 68,
77, 88-90, 91n20, 112 Steche, Theodor, 91,91n20 Stepanov, N.P., 235n99 Stettler, Eduard, 101, 102, 102n69 Stites, Richard, 159, 277n131 Stoffers, Robert, 119n40 Stolpe, Erwin , 122n55 Stoterau, Theodor, 119, 119n40
Strasser, Josef, 242n13 Streicher, Julius , 93 Streicher, Oskar, 90 Szapiro, Jakub, 127n76 Szatmari, Sandor, 182, 182n90 Szerdahelyi, Istvan, 14n47 Szeremi-Toth, Borbala, 182n90
T
Takacs, Jozsef, 144n148 Thieme, Fritz, 117, 118,
118n28, 121 Thierfelder, Franz, 92, 92n23, 93,
124n67, 142 Tolnai, Elek, 154, 155n185 Tolstoy, L.N., 14-16, 16n53,
17n58, 44 Trauden, Matthias, 113n13, 119n37 Trotsky, L.D., 196, 204, 227, 257n66
U
Ulianova, M.I., 199, 246 Unger, Hans, 124, 124n66
V
Vaillant, Edouard, 45, 45n41 Valentinov, M.S., 162n14 Varankin, V.V., 180n79,
197n145 Vildebrand, Willi, 217n35 Viviani, Rene , 54 Vogt, Anton, 148n163 Vossler, Karl, 75, 75n156
W
Walther, Kurt, 106, 107, 110-12,
110n1, 110n2, 112n9, 116 Weber, Gustav, 136, 136n114 Weber, Karl, 196 Weinstein, Halina, 127n76 Weitling, Wilhelm, 238 Whitham, Arthur, 181n83 Wiesenfeld, Edward, 101n61, 127n76 Wilson, Woodrow, 50 Wohlfahrt, Herbert, 104 Wolff, Fritz, 217n35 Wuster, Eugen, 89, 89n11
Y
Yamaguchi Koshizu, 72 Z
Zaleski-Zamenhof, Louis
Christophe, 125, 154 Zamenhof, Adam, 125, 126
Zamenhof, Lidia, 126, 148 Zamenhof, L.L., 3-15, 20, 22, 24-37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47-9, 53, 56, 67, 68, 76, 104, 107, 111, 116, 125, 126, 129, 141-3, 148, 154, 155, 160, 168, 171, 187, 223, 240, 241, 250, 252, 261, 267, 271 Zamenhof, Marcus, 5, 11, 12 Zamenhof, Wanda, 127 Zamenhof, Zofia, 126 Zhirkov, L.I., 269n110,
274n122 Zieck, B.E.J., 147n160 Zimmermann, Albert , 40, 65, 94 Zimmermann, Ida , 126 Zinoviev, G.E., 196, 246, 246n31 Ziusmen, N.V., 12 Zola, Emile , 22 Zyrianov, Veniamin,
192n124, 197
Subject Index[906]
A
anarchism, anarchists, 6, 24, 31, 44, 79, 168, 170, 174-7, 239 anti-Semitism, 7, 8, 21, 22, 40, 48, 57, 94, 104, 136, 137, 142, 149, 150, 194n135 Austria, Esperanto movement in , 123, 133
B
Belgium, 51, 54, 122, 134n101,
136, 218n40 Bialystok, 3, 3n2, 5, 5n6, 8n18, 29, 29n103
Boulogne-sur-Mer, 23, 33, 267
British government, 62n117 'brotherhood of peoples', 6, 19, 33, 70, 112, 130, 209, 238, 241, 271, 275 Bulgaria, Esperanto movement in, 74
C
censorship, 10, 11, 11n37, 12,
13n45, 17, 41, 42, 49, 160, 197n145, 221 chauvinism, 20, 48, 148, 216, 245, 258, 259, 266, 269, 274, 275 China, 31, 44, 46, 51, 54, 61, 176n63, 218n40
Comintern, 162, 163, 164, I64n26, 171n48, 173, 174, 177-9, 182, 205, 206, 212, 220, 232, 233n87, 234, 235n101, 246n31 communism, 56, 75, 78, 91, 130, 137, 165n31, 177, 183, 207, 209, 238, 247, 248, 251, 255, 261, 269, 276 Communist International. See
Comintern conspiracy theory, 57, 95, 143 correspondence in Esperanto, 104, 110, 121, 134, 179-181, 184, 186-203, 223-9, 247, 273
cosmopolitanism , 8n24, 72, 91, 239,
242,247, 250n41 Czechoslovakia, 51, 54, 63, 119, 124, 133, 152, 164n26, 218n40
D
Declaration of Boulogne (1905), 23, 24, 33
Denmark, Esperanto movement in , 134n101, 135
E
English language, 49n66, 52, 53, 161, 162n14, 193, 194, 240n8, 245 Esperantisto, (La), 13 'Esperantization', 215, 255-62, 265 Esperanto (periodical), 49, 51, 148,152
F
fascism, 107, 118n33, 124n67,
140n127, 142, 151-3, 155, 156, 213, 220, 232, 235 foreigners, 7, 80, 101, 102, 130, 190, 192, 194, 195, 197 Freemasons, 95, 113n11, 128, 130,
135n107 French government, 53, 53n82, 76 French language, 52-4, 54n91, 57, 61, 162n14, 194, 245
G
German Esperanto Association, 37,
66, 88, 104, 115, 118 German language, 38, 39, 41n22,
44, 49, 89, 90, 93, 96, 124, 125,162n14, 194, 245 German workers' Esperanto
movement, 70, 71, 88, 97, 98, 118-120, 214, 228, 229 Germany: Esperanto movement in the Weimar Republic, 87-90, 92, 93, 130 Gleichschaltung, 97-104, 130 globalization, 257 Great Purge, 163n20, 231n81
H
Hebrew language, 6, 12 Heroldo de Esperanto, 70, 88, 100, 101, 101n63, 115, 133, 134, 141, 149, 225, 226 Hillelism , 26n88, 27, 28
Homaranismo, 28, 29, 33, 47, 129,
141, 171 Hovevei Zion, 7, 129 human rights, 21, 22, 57, 156,
156n192 Hungary, Esperanto movement in, 73, 74, 81
I
Iazykfront, 262, 262n91, 263, 271,
271n116, 272, 274, 276 Ido, 32, 38n8, 59, 117n26, 163, 164, 250
imperialism, 63, 170n43, 210, 241,
271, 276 internal idea of Esperanto, 29, 30, 33, 55, 76, 77, 96, 111, 149, 152, 155 International Esperanto League
(IEL), 124, 134, 136, 143, 150-3
internationalism , 33, 38, 41, 50, 63-5, 76, 79, 83, 89, 91, 96, 143, 155, 171, 208, 216, 235, 237-47, 256, 259, 264, 269, 271, 276 Italy, 51,71, 141-3, 174
J
Japan, 16, 54, 54n91, 55, 61, 68, 72-4, 76n158, 144, 145, 186, 218n40,219 Jews and Judaism, 3-10, 14, 14n47, 19, 22, 25-28, 36, 40, 48n57, 93-5, 101, 103, 105-7, 111, 112, 115, 124-6, 128-32, 135-7, 143, 148-50, 155, 194n135, 246
K
Komsomol, 180, 192, 193, 193n132 Korea, 72, 145
L
language planning, 238, 242n13,
249,261 language policy, 142, 145, 254, 263
Latin, 20n68, 57n103, 59, 60n112, 68, 142
League of Nations, 47-63, 233 letter-writing. See correspondence Lithuania, 17, 17n60, 30, 71
M
Marxism and linguistics,
9, 249, 252-5, 260-3, 270-2, 277 multilingualism, 6, 9, 240, 241
N
nationalism, 25n84, 26, 48, 49, 82, 83, 96, 137, 143, 168, 208n8, 210, 211, 216, 238, 239, 244, 256, 258, 266, 267, 274 nationalities problem, 31n113,
239-241, 244, 258, 259, 265, 266, 269, 270, 274-6
National Socialism, 97, 109, 112,
113, 115, 116 Nazi. See National Socialism Netherlands, 115, 115n18, 119,
134,155,218n40, 242n12 Neue Deutsche Esperanto-
Bewegung, 105-7, 111-3, 113n13, 116-7, 148 neutrality, 9, 20, 24, 25, 28, 30, 39, 41, 46, 64, 71, 78, 81-3, 89, 93, 96, 98, 103, 120, 148-53, 156, 167, 169, 171, 235 Norway, Esperanto movement in , 135
Nuremberg, 13, 37, 87, 93, 94, 135n108
O
Odessa, 7, 15, 15n48 P
pacifism, pacifists, 21, 22, 24, 33,
36, 40, 78, 89, 96, 99, 105, 111, 128, 129, 135 Palestine, 7, 8n24, 9n26 'petty-bourgeois', 172, 190, 200, 201, 216, 223n56, 242, 258, 271 pogroms, 6-8, 8n22, 12, 28, 29, 29n103
Poland, 23, 54n91, 71, 73, 125, 127,
131, 133, 135, 137 Portugal , 138
Proletarian Esperantist International (IPE), 229-236
R
Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), 126n73, 127-9, 131-4, 143, 143n142 Romania, 54, 69, 71, 134n101 Russian Empire, 3, 11, 24n80 Russian language, 5, 7, 8, 11, 25, 198, 245, 262-9, 269n110, 272
S
secret police, 43, 109, 118, 134, 138, 204
Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (SAT), 64, 71, 73, 77, 82, 98, 117, 118, 120, 141, 152, 163, 164n26, 167-77, 172n52, 174, 181n80, 182-4, 188-91, 196, 197n145, 201, 203-7, 208n8, 209-23, 228, 233, 253, 257, 265n99 sennaciismo, 78, 170n43, 206-9, 216, 218, 219, 222, 223, 233,259, 260n74, 265n100 Sennaciulo (periodical), 173, 183,
184, 186, 188-91, 196, 197, 200, 201, 206, 207, 211, 212, 215, 220, 221, 223 socialism, 30, 67, 89, 159, 164, 165, 187, 189, 195, 202, 204, 208, 209, 214, 224, 231, 237, 238, 241, 243, 244, 247-9, 255-7, 264, 269 Soviet Esperantist Union (SEU), 14n47, 165-87, 192, 194-206, 211-17, 220-34, 235n101, 247, 250, 251,
253, 254, 255n61, 257, 262, 263n93, 266-71, 273, 274n122 Soviet patriotism, 275 Spain, Esperanto movement in ,
115n18, 139, 140 SS (Schutzstaffel), 113, 117, 121,
121n48, 123, 124n66, 136, 153. See also Reich Security Main Office (RSHA)
T
Taiwan, 72, 145
teaching of Esperanto, 44n38, 51, 55, 56, 60, 68, 94, 138, 145, 162n13, 269 tourism, 24, 69, 181, 184, 194 Tsarist regime, 10, 11, 14, 17, 46n46
U
Ukraine, 193, 204, 215, 258, 259, 265, 265n100, 266n102, 274, 275
Ukrainian language, 215, 258, 259,
265n100 UNESCO, 61n116 United States of America, 8n24, 38,
68, 193, 218n40 Universal Esperanto Association
(UEA), 32, 33, 41, 49-51, 60, 63, 64, 82, 83, 101, 102, 102n67, 105, 117, 130,148-53, 148n163, 155, 156, 170, 175, 175n58,233
W
Warsaw, 5, 5n6, 8, 8n23, 10, 12, 48, 101, 125-7, 127n75, 129, 137, 152, 155 workers' movement , 68, 97, 98, 118, 138, 170, 173, 177, 188, 212, 216, 218, 223n56 World Congress of Esperanto, 29, 37, 45, 54, 55, 67n129, 69, 78, 81, 87, 93, 100-3, 117n24, 123, 141, 142, 148, 152, 153, 171
world language, 20, 31, 40, 58, 72, 80, 90, 92, 95, 121, 124n67, 129, 149, 164n26, 240n10, 241, 245, 248-52, 256-8, 260-2, 264, 269, 271-3, 275-7 world revolution, 77, 160, 181,
193, 209, 243, 260 World War I, 33, 40, 44, 46 49n66,
87, 89, 93, 153, 242 World War II, 26, 62n119, 124, 152, 153, 236
Y
Yiddish, 6n12, 8, 10-12 Yugoslavia, 71, 73, 81, 145, 146, 153n180, 162n13
Z
Zionism, 3n1, 7, 8, 9n26, 22, 48, 95, 137, 143
^DavidVital, The OriginsofZionism,, Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1975, p. 30 (situationin 1880).
37 Hvorostin (1972): 37-46, 79-88; see also Holzhaus (1969), pp. 274-317. On the development of the Esperanto movement under censorship in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, see the Russian-language study by D.V. Vlasov, Esperanto: polveka tsenzury (Esperanto: a half-century under censorship) Moscow: Impeto, 2011, and also his Istoriia primeneniia esperanto v Rossii:
45Hvorostin (1972), p. 38. On experiences with the Tsarist censorship we also have the remem- brances of the Russian pioneers Gernet and Deviatnin: L. Ivn, 'Ad fontes. Intervjuo kun k-do V Gernet', Sennacieca RRevuo 4/8 (1926-27): 166-7. On obscurities in the interview, see Canko
57 PVZ III 215-220; Holzhaus (1969), pp. 285-6.
63 Maksimiljano Blassberg, 'D-ro Benedikto Dybowski', Esperanto 19 (1923): 201-2. Dybowski was ultimately condemned to several years of exile in Siberia.
69 Possibly Zamenhof himself intentionally led people to believe that this was so: Ito Kanzi (1982), p. 109; see also Korjenkov (2011), p. 140. The document appeared first under the pseudonym Unuel, in Fundamenta Krestomatio (1903), later reprinted in Orig II 973-1026. On its significance see Marc Bavant, 'Kritika retrorigardo al la "tezoj" de Esenco kaj estonteco , in Blanke & Lins (2010),
pp. 415-25.
93 So called by Bourlet, according to Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, p. 175.
100 A. Dombrovski, 'Kelkaj rimarkoj pri hilelismo', Ruslanda Esperantisto 2 (1906): 49-50; 'Kio do estas la homaranismo', Ruslanda Esperantisto 2 (1906): 133-5, reprinted in La neforgeseblaj kon- gresoj, Kyoto: Ludovikito, 1984, pp. 134-6, 139-44; L. de Beaufront, in LEsperantiste 9 (1906): 65-7, 86, partially reprinted in Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, pp. 257-8, 262, 277-8. For Zamenhof's replies see: Orig II 1729-39, 1768-71.
101 Letter to Javal, 23 April 1906, Orig II 1723. Likewise, another letter to Javal, 15 Aug. 1906, Orig II 1778.
102Orig II 1787.
4 Alfred Hermann Fried, 'Eine internationale Hilfssprache', Die Woche 4 (1902), 26: 1197—9.
14Alldeutsche Blatter, 17August 1912; quotedin Germana Esperantisto 9 (1912), editionA, p. 152.
22Also the pacifists, themselves virtual pariahs in Wilhelm's Germany, hesitated to reveal their sym- pathies for Esperanto, afraid of provoking protests on the part of the nationalists that the pacifists were undermining the German language and culture: Chickering (1975), pp. 129-30.
46Report in Internacia Socia Revuo 6 (1912): 105-8. On the same occasion there appeared Politika Malliberulo, a special Esperanto-language issue of the Polish journal Wi%zien Polityczny, whose goal was to make world public opinion aware of the terrors in Tsarist Russia.
60 Orig III 2398-2410; English text ('International Language') in Gustav Spiller (ed.), Inter-Racial Problems: Papers from the First Universal Races Congress Held in London in 1911, London: P.S. King, 1911 (reprint New York: Citadel Press, 1970), pp. 425-32.
101 L.G. Montixile, 'L'esperanto', LaNouvelleRevue, 1922, 15July: 167-71 (quotationp. 168);cf. Lescure (1999), p. 705.
104 The report appeared in pamphlet form in several national languages.
108 Esperanto 18 (1922): 167.
111 Letter to Abbe Ricard, 5 June 1923; according to Huber (1973), p. 84. See also Pierre Hirsch & Tazio Carlevaro, 'Gonzague de Reynold kaj Esperanto', Monata Cirkulero, Kultura Centro Esperantista (La Chaux-de-Fonds), 1976, 78: 1-9; Kunzli (2006), pp. 621-6.
126 Albert Steche, 'Der Siegeszug des Esperanto', Leipziger Tageblatt, 4 and 5 April 1914; quoted from the pamphlet with the same title, Leipzig, n.d., p. 7 (emphases in the original).
148 Pechan (1979), p. 90.
170 EdE, p. 548.
14 Steche (1922), p. 21.
56 Sdchs. Esperanto-Landesverband des D.E.B. (circular), 1933, 4 (32): 1.
60 Westdeutscher Beobachter, 7 February 1932; Lokal-Anzeiger (Cologne), 10 September 1932.
nCircular to NDEB members, 18 August 1935. Leadership of NDEB was assumed by Albrecht Naumann, because his predecessor Willibald Pietsch, as a former Freemason, could not be a mem- ber of the Party.
18'55. Lagebericht' (4 December 1935), in Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.), Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei uber die Provinz Brandenburg und die Reichshauptstadt Berlin 1933—1936. Teilband I: Der Regierungsbezirk Potsdam, Cologne and others: Bohlau 1998, p. 390. This same report notes that in Spain and the Netherlands Esperantist activity serves primarily for pacifist propaganda, as proved by stickers used on Esperanto letters, and it recommends that such letters should be confis- cated immediately by the postal authorities.
24 See the report from the Dusseldorf Gestapo to the Berlin headquarters, 27 April 1936, Bundesarchiv, R 58/385, fol. 18-20. On this matter the papers of the Gestapo also contain a clip- ping from the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant of 6 May 1936: Bundesarchiv, R 58/6221a. Report of one of those arrested: J. M. van Meegeren, 'La "malliberiga stelo"', La Praktiko 5 (1936), 6 (54): 5; see Borsboom (2003), pp. 174-5. The Gestapo also noted a report in the Social Democratic Danziger Volksstimme (4 May 1936) that unknown persons, presumably Nazis, destroyed the 'Esperanto oak' in Zoppot (now Sopot), planted during the 19th World Congress in Danzig in 1927: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 203.
31 SurPosteno, 1934,25 (161): 90; 1935, 1 (169): 1.
54 Geheime Staatspolizei Hamburg to Oscar Bunemann, 22 September 1936; facsimile in Theobald (1948), p. 60.
55 Geheime Staatspolizei, Staatspolizeileitstelle Berlin, to Erwin Stolpe, 15 November 1937; per- sonal communication from Erwin Stolpe, 30 January 1968.
73The report was published most recently in Stephan Lehnstaedt & Jochen Bohler (ed.), Die Berichte der Einsatzgruppen aus Polen 1939, Berlin: Metropol, 2013, pp. 337-41 (quotation from p. 337). Beutel further reports that the family members were interrogated about 'the leadership level' among the Jews and that the search of the houses had been 'so far' without result. According to an internal note (1940), in the homes of Lidia and Zofia Zamenhof newspapers, books 'and minutes of the Esperanto movement' were confiscated; the material was taken by truck to the RSHA, 9 October 1939: note by SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Herbert Hagen, Bundesarchiv 58/7430, fol. 25. See also Emanuel Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego, wrzesien 1939-styczen 1943, Warsaw: Cytelnik, 1988, p. 93. On Beutel see Ingrao (2012), pp. 130-3.
101 Also in the archives are long lists of addresses of Esperantists in England, Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, Romania, Switzerland: Bundesarchiv, R 58/6221b.
128 Comunicat de Premsa (Generalitat de Catalunya). Between 1937 and 1938 at least 33 issues appeared.
156 See chap. 2, 71.
169This is the interpretation favored by Forster (1982), pp. 219-20.
188Nina Langlet, Kaoso en Budapesto, trans. Kalle Kniivila, Varna: Bambu, 2001.
191 'Konsideroj pri organizo', Esperanto 39 (1946): 43.
34 R. Nikolskij, 'Kontrau kalumnioj pri kamarado Drezen', Internaciisto 1 (1930/31): 212-13. As of 1924, Drezen worked primarily in scientific fields, for example on organizational rationalization and linguistics. From 1926 to 1930 he was director of the Institute of Communication. He was professor in various technical colleges and also a board member of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS). The most detailed study of Drezen to date is that of Kuznecov (1991).
35Formed out of l'anti (the against-person). Adam called himselfLanty as of 1921, Lanti as of 1928.
43 See chap. 7, pp. 237 and following. Publishing an article by Rosa Luxemburg from Die russische Revolution (1918) on 'Imperialism, nationalism and socialism' (Sennacieca Revuo, n.s., 1 [1933/34]: 1-3), Lanti asserted full agreement between her recommendation against the battle for national liberation and his 'sennaciismo'. It is well known that Rosa Luxemburg encountered strong opposi- tion from Lenin to her radical internationalism.
53 As of January 1932 Sennaciulo appeared biweekly, and, as ofFebruary 1933, monthly. Sennacieca Revuo continued to be published as a monthly literary and scientific journal (from October 1928 to February 1933 with the title La Nova Epoko).
54 See esp. the series 'Tago el mia vivo', in which SAT members from various countries wrote about their personal living situations. It was initiated by the Englishman Howard Stay: Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 125/126 (19 Feb. 1927): 5-6.
76 A. Tomo (E.F. Spiridovich), '"Labkoroj" en Sovet-Unio', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 24: 4.
80Cited in Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 30 (82): 5. The circular recommended that members of Esperanto circles should join SEU and SAT and subscribe to Sennaciulo and Sennacieca Revuo.
92 His original name was Otto Maschl. He learned Esperanto in 1913. From 1932 to 1939 he taught Marxism and economics at the Higher Workers' Institute of the French Trade Union Association (CGT). As of 1949 he was Soviet economy editor for the journal Est-et-Ouest. See the biographical summary in J.-L. Panne, 'Lucien Laurat', in Maitron & Pennetier, Dictionnaire, 1988, vol. 23, pp. 337-8.
125 P. Lisicin, 'Batalo sur la lingva kampo', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 400-1.
130 EdE, p. 591.
137 Ni bezonas disciplinon, devokonscion kaj memkritikon', Bulteno de CK SEU 6 (1927/28):
65-6.
13Homo (Herbert Muravkin), 'Kial SAT devas batali kontrau la imperialismo?', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 164. Lanti replied laconically that on these questions Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg had disagreed: E.L., 'Respondo al "respondo"', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 172. Lanti had long since made clear his dislike of struggles for national independence: see, for example, 'Sennaciismo je praktika vidpunkto', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 123/124: 1-2.
19Mikael [=Michael] Farbman, 'Naciisma revivigo en la nova Rusio. Fiereco je propra lando kaj izoligo de Europo. Ekonomia rekonstruo', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 125 (from Daily Herald, 19 October 1929).
22'Al ciujsovetiajgek-doj!', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 436.
45 'Voĉoj de SAT-anoj', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 468, 483.
65 A. Erjuhin, 'For individuismon', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 266.
^'Rezolucio pri la PEK-laboro', Sur Posteno (international edition) 2 (1934): 105-6. See also Sur Posteno Klasbatala, 1934: 117-18, 120.
100 Circular ('To all Communist Esperantists') by Gladys Keable, general secretary of IPE, 20 Oct. 1938, p. 2; a copy of the five densely typed pages was kindly provided by Edward Ockey.
12 Sachsisches 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 recom- mended 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.
51N.Ia. Marr, Iafeticheskaia teoriia, Baku 1927; German translation in Tasso Borbe, Kritik der marxistischen Sprachtheorie N. Ja. Marrs, Kronberg: Scriptor, 1974, pp. 63-262 (quotation p. 87).
54 Bokarev names, among others, Max Muller, Hugo Schuchardt, Antoine Meillet, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, Otto Jespersen and Edward Sapir.
68E. Drezen, 'Antauparolo', in Stalin (1930), p. 5.
69Cf. Martin (2001), pp. 105-12, 345-56.
87Spiridovich, pp. 95-6, 98.
88 Spiridovich, p. 96.
112The brigade members were Grigorii Burliagov, A. Lobachev, Mikhail Pashchenko and Semyon
Podkaminer.
124See also 'Tov. Skrypnik ob esperanto', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 216 (extract from an article in Bilshovyk Ukra'iny, 1931, no. 8). It was certainly no accident that after Skrypnyk's dis- missal the Esperanto summary sheets La Vojo de Klerigo ceased to appear.
126Cf. Gerhard Simon (1991), p. 150.
[1] It was published, in agreement with the Universal Esperanto Association, by the German publisher Bleicher, and reprinted in 1990 in Moscow by Progress Publishers. In 1988 a German-language version also appeared, and this was followed by translations into Italian (1990), Russian (1999), Lithuanian (2005) and Korean (2013).
[2] La dangera lingvo, Rotterdam: Universala Esperanto-Asocio, 2016.
[3] Orig II 923 (the letter to Borovko was published in 1896, but we do not know when Zamenhof actually wrote it). On Bialystok, see Maimon (1978), p. 17 and following.
[4]ItoKanzi (1982), p. 103.
[5] Letter to Michaux, 21 February 1905, Orig II 1436-46 (quotations pp. 1437-38). The letter to Michaux and other letters and statements important to an understanding of Zamenhof's thought are conveniently brought together in MEH (this quotation: pp. 99-106).
[6] In Bialystok, Marcus Zamenhof taught in a state school for Jews. Later he became one of three Jews working in Warsaw as secondary school teachers. See Korjenkov (2011), pp. 32—3, 41—3.
[7] Orig II 1442. Compare the statement of Vladimir Jabotinsky, a later Zionist leader, on his loving relationship with Russian culture (1903): Slezkine (2004), p. 69. In his youth Jabotinsky learned Esperanto. See also Kunzli (2010), pp. 79—80.
[8] [Isidore Harris], 'Esperanto and Jewish ideals: Interview for the Jewish Chronicle with Dr. Zamenhof', TheJewish Chronicle, 6 September 1907, pp. 16—18 (esp. p. 16).
[9] Orig II 924.
[10] According to Maimon (1978), p. 66, citing an article in a Hebrew journal in 1947, Zamenhof made this comment to the Yiddish writer A. Litvin. In 1889 Zamenhof named the confusion of languages 'one of the great misfortunes of humanity': Orig I 243.
[11] Orig II 926.
[12] Orig II 927.
[12] Friends of Zion. The movement was also named Hibbat Zion (Love for Zion).
[13]The brochure appeared in German in Berlin in September 1882.
[14]Vital, Origins, pp. 122-32.
[15] Orig II 1442. The observation was, however, made in the context of his description of his child- hood in Bialystok.
[16] See Ewa Geller, 'Die vielfach verkannte Jiddische Grammatik des Ludwik Zamenhof', in Marion Aptroot and others (ed.), Leket: Yidishe shtudyes haynt/Jiddistik heute/ Yiddish Studies Today, Dusseldorf: Dusseldorf University Press, 2012, pp. 393-414.
[17] In his interview for TheJewish Chronicle Zamenhof recounted that he proposed such a plan in a meeting of 15 of his fellow students: Maimon (1978), p. 168.
[18] According to Privat, however, Zamenhof began to return to his language project as early as August 1881. See Privat (2007), p. 48.
[19]Stephen M. Berk, Year of Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of 1881-1882, Westport CT & London: Praeger, 1985, p. 127.
[20] Maimon (1978), pp. 101, 169. In August 1883, this student group joined the general society of Hibbat Zion in Warsaw and soon became the most active of all the groups: Vital, Origins, p. 152.
[21] Zamenhof at first pleaded for settlement inthe USA, because in the USA cosmopolitanism was in effect guaranteed, while Palestine, if needed, 'would not be lost for us'. Later he was converted to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. The contributions to Razsvetwere most recently translated in MEH, pp. 5-26 (quotation p. 21).
[22] Orig II 1441.
[23]Zamenhof also came to the conclusion that a return to Palestine was an unrealizable dream. He did not join the great Zionist movement of Theodor Herzl, founded in 1897.
[24] Orig II 1433.
[25]OrigI 84.
[26] Orig I 82.
[27] Orig I 138.
[28] Aldono al la Dua Libro de l Lingvo Internacia (1888), Orig I 190.
[29] Orig I 188.
[30]First Book (Unua Libro), Orig I 83.
^Maimon (1978), pp. 143-9, 151-9; Holzhaus (1969), pp. 7-18.
[32] Z. Adam (Adam Zakrzewski), Historio de Esperanto 1887-1912, Warsaw: Gebethner & Wolf, 1913 (reprinted Warsaw: Pola Esperanto-Asocio, 1979), p. 10.
[33]Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People. Power and the Mandate to Rule, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 543. On Tsarist censorship generally, see Charles A. Ruud, Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. See also Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, Thje Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772-1917, Chur, Switzerland: Harwood, 1983.
Pechat, radioveshchanie, perepiska, samizdat (History of the application of Esperanto in Russia: press, radio, correspondence, samizdat), Moscow: Impeto, 2014.
[35] Facsimile and Esperanto translation in Holzhaus (1969), pp. 292—305, 310—12.
[36] Hvorostin (1972), p. 38; Holzhaus (1969), pp. 306-13.
[37]Maimon (1978), pp. 152-6. Korjenkov (2011), pp. 51-4, questions Maimon's analysis.
[38] Letter to Vladimir Majnov, Orig I 411.
[39]The definite article was dropped from the title of the journal as ofApril 1892.
[40]Waringhien (1990), p. 18.
[41] Hvorostin (1972), p. 39.
Murgin, 'Lumo sur iom nebulitan epizodon', Bulgara Esperantisto 46 (1977): 8-9; V.N. Devjatnin, 'El rememoroj de malnova esperantisto', La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 125-7.
[43]Drezen (1931b), pp. 85-6.
[44] Cf. David L. Gold, 'Towards a study of possible Yiddish and Hebrew influence on Esperanto', in Istvan Szerdahelyi (ed.), Miscellanea Interlinguistica, Budapest: Tankonyvkiado, 1980, pp. 300-67 (esp. pp. 311-12). According to Garvia (2015), p. 76, of the 919 Russians listed in the first address list (1889) 64 % lived in the so-called Pale of Settlement. Esther Schor has observed that in this address list almost 200 of these Esperantists had Jewish names (personal communication, 4 March 2015). According to statistics kept by the Soviet Esperantist Union (SEU), the percentage of Jews among its members exceeded 11 % (Bulteno de CKSEU 11 [1932]: 71). The total for the whole population was only 2.4 %.
[45] Gernet, a pioneer of Esperanto in Odessa, was expelled from the university and arrested for anti- government activity.
[46] Ivn, p. 167.
[47] Letter of 9 May 1894, printed in Esperantisto 5 (1894): 99-100; PVZIII 182-3. Cf. Boris Kolker, 'Lev Tolstoj kaj la Internacia Lingvo', Esperanto71 (1978): 172-5.
[48]Text of the (secret) document in G. Demidiuk, '"Esperanto - vovse ne iazyk!'" ('Esperanto is in no way a language!'), Izvestiia TsKSESR 6 (1928): 330-3 (citation p. 332).
[49] Esperantisto 6 (1895): 27.
[50]The article is in the form of a letter from Tolstoy to Anna Germanovna Rozen, 8 December 1894. It appears in L.N. Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 67, pp. 274-7.
[51]'Reason and Religion', in Leo Tolstoy, Essays and Letters, trans. Aylmer Maude, London: Grand Richards, 1903, p. 159. Cf. Esperantisto 6 (1895): 28-30 (citing p. 30); Holzhaus (19692, pp. 284-5.
[52] Esperantisto 6 (1895): 31.
[53] Esperantisto 6 (1895): 44, 48.
[54] In December 1895 in Uppsala, a new journal, Lingvo Internacia, was launched. Until the First World War it was the principal organ of the Esperantists. Later, in 1912, Posrednik published a booklet containing several of Tolstoy's works in Esperanto translation.
[55] Ivan Kulakov, 'Leo Tolstoj, Esperanto kaj rusia gendarmaro', Paco, 1983, GDRedition, pp. 31-2 (including a reproduction of the instruction to the local gendarmes in Voronezh).
[56]The author was the Catholic priest Aleksandras Dambrauskas (Dombrovski), condemned in 1889 to five years' internal exile in northern Russia for forbidding his Catholic pupils from obeying an order to attend services in the Russian Orthodox church. Until his death in 1938 he played an outstanding part in the Esperanto movement and general cultural life of Lithuania: J. Petrulis, 'Unuaj esperantistoj en Litovio', Horizonto de Soveta Litovio, 1971, 2: 14; Kl. Naudzius, 'Cu vere peripetioj?', lomnibuso 9 (1972), 6 (52): 4. See also A. Dombrovski, Malgrandajpensojprigrandaj demandoj. Artikolaro kaj leteraro, Kovno: Sokolovski & Estrin, 1908.
[57] It was only after the Second World War that it was discovered that his real name was Louis Chevreux. See T. Carlevaro, 'La enigmo de Beaufront', Literatura Foiro 7 (1976), 37/38: 10-13; Marcel Delcourt & Jean Amouroux, 'Grandeco kaj dekadenco. Fino de mito', Literatura Foiro 7 (1976), 40: 6-7; 8 (1977), 41: 12.
[58] Lingvo Internacia 10 (1905): 372.
[59] His real name was Leopold Blumental. See Banet-Fornalowa (2003), pp. 14-71.
[60]Kamaryt (1983), pp. 13-20.
[61]Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 466; Pavel Rosa, Situacio de Esperanto en Slovaka Socialisma Respubliko, Bratislava: Asocio de Esperantistoj en Slovaka Socialisma Respubliko, 1977, pp. 2-5. Skarvan, together with the Russian N.P. Evstifeev, published the first Esperanto textbook for Slovaks, that is a Slovak translation of Fundamento de Esperanto (1907).
[62]Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, p. 3.
[63] Orig II 981. In this work Zamenhof also makes a passionate plea for consideration of the prin- ciple of social equality, contrasting Latin, the language of the higher classes, with Esperanto, a language accessible within a few months to 'even the poorest and least educated peasants' (Orig II 1008).
[64] L. de Beaufront, 'El Francujo', Lingvo Internacia 2 (1897): 145-8 (quoted from p. 147). Rene Lemaire made a similar argument: 'Le mouvement esperantiste et le mouvement pacifique', UEsperantiste 1 (1898): 86-8, 111-3.
[65] His well-known work was also published in Esperanto translation as La juda ŝtato. Provo de mod- erna solvo de la judaproblemo, Budapest: Literatura Mondo, 1934.
[66] Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, p. 24, claims that de Beaufront and Bourlet were opposed to Dreyfus, while Sebert, Moch and Emile Javal defended him.
[67] 'Generalajobservojprilaregularo [deSocietoEsperantistaporlaPaco]', Espero Pacifista 1 (1905): 26-27. According to Moch, it was dangerous 'to present to the people a double "utopia"'.
[68] Listed among the members of the Esperantist Society for Peace, founded in 1905, are the leading French Esperantists Boirac, Bourlet, Cart, Chavet, Fruictier, Grosjean-Maupin, Javal, Sebert and
Michaux.
[69] 'Generalaj observoj', p. 27.
[70] L. de Beaufront, 'Pri la Tutmonda Ligo Esperantista', reprinted in La neforgeseblaj kongresoj : Kyoto: Ludovikito, 1984, pp. 42-8 (quotation p. 42). We should note, however, that the reasons for de Beaufronts opposition were more complicated: see Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, pp. 143, 156, 166 and following.
^Bein (pen name Kabe), one of the greatest Esperanto stylists, was exiled for several years as a young man because of anti-Russian activities. (In 1911 he left the Esperanto movement.)
[72]Kongresinto (Pierre Boulet), 'La Kongreso en Boulogne-sur-Mer', reprinted in La neforgeseblaj kongresoj, pp. 72-100 (quotation p. 91).
[73]Text in EeP, pp. 418-20.
[74] Leo Belmont proposed including such a reference. The Declaration did indeed contain the sug- gestion that Esperanto 'could serve as a pacifying language of public institutions in those countries where various nations fight internally over language'—a formula that was aimed in the first instance at the situation in the Russian Empire.
[75] Harris, 'Esperanto and Jewish ideals', p. 16.
[76] Letter of 28 March 1901, Orig II 1208.
[77] Zamenhof believed that the unique 'religious nationalism' of the Jews barred them from 'all intercommunication with the surrounding world': Hilelismo (1901), OrigII 1154.
[78] Letter to Michaux, 21 Feb. 1905, Orig II 1438, 1440.
[79] Gomo Sum (= Zamenhof), Gillelizm. Proekt resheniia evreiskago voprosa, Saint Petersburg: Sklad', 1901. Reprinted, with an Esperanto translation, by Adolf Holzhaus, Helsinki: Fondumo Esperanto, 1972. French translation (by Pierre Janton): Lazare Louis Zamenhof, Le hillelisme: Projetdesolution de la question juive, Clermont-Ferrand: Universite Blaise-Pascal, 1995. 'Hilelismo' is derived from Hillel, a Jewish sage of Jerusalem (c. 30 B.C.-10 A.D.).
[79]Waringhien (1990), p. 66.
[80]The extremely revealing letter to Michaux, for example, appears only in corrupt form in EdE (pp. 579-82); cf. G. Waringhien, 'Enkonduko', in Maimon (1978), p. 9.
[81] Orig II 1439.
[82] Letter to Emile Javal, 24 Sept. 1905, Orig II 1601-2. The split between a particularist and uni- versal orientation constitutes a basic dilemma in Jewish culture: see S.N. Eisenstadt, Jewish Civilization: Thje Jewish Historical Experience in a Comparative Perspective, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
[83] Letter to Michaux, 5 Jan. 1905, Orig II 1420.
[84]Letter from Javal, 15 Oct. 1905, PVZX 197. As Javal also wrote, 'We needed admirable disci- pline to hide your origins from the public.'
[85] Letter to Javal, 25 Oct.1905, Orig II 1614.
[86] Orig II 1673-82.
[87]Orig II, p. 1695.
[88] Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, p. 258; Forster (1982), p. 95.
[89]Orig II 1783. Zamenhof referred to pogroms in, among other places, Bialystok and the
Caucasus.
[90]Orig II 1787.
[91] Oficiala Gazeto Esperantista 1 (1908/09): 216-7; Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, p. 287-8.
[92] He elaborated further on the role of the congresses in his speech in Cambridge (1907): Orig III 1928-34.
[93] Vortoj deprofesoro Th. Cart, Jaslo: Esperantista Vo^o, 1927, pp. 103, 107-8.
[94] Vitas Adomenas, 'Unuaesperantisto en Litovio' [on A. Dambrauskas, see above, p. 17, note 60], Litova Stelo 1 (1991), 1: 17.
[95] Internacia Socia Revuo 1 (1907), 8/9: 24. See also the report presented to the congress (in Amsterdam): Emile Chapelier & Gassy Marin, Anarchists and the International Language Esperanto, London: Freedom Press, 1908.
[96] Muller & Benton (2006), pp. 48-55.
[97]Karolo Marks kaj Frederiko Engels, Manifesto de la Komunista Partio, trans. Arturo Baker, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1908.
[98]J. Baudouin de Courtenay, 'Zur Kritik der kunstlichen Weltsprachen' (1907), reprinted in Reinhard Haupenthal (ed.), Plansprachen. Beitrage zurInterlinguistik, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976, pp. 59-110 (quotation p. 105). In 1915 the Tsarist police briefly arrested Baudouin de Courtenay over a brochure in which he criticized the suppression of national minorities.
[99]Jirkov (1931), p. 30. On the Ido schism see Waringhien (1948), vol. 2, pp. 3-152; Waringhien (1980), pp. 149-64; Forster (1982), pp. 110-41; Gordin (2015), pp. 134-48.
[100]H. Hodler,'Kompreni kaj apliki', Esperanto 5 (1909), 53 (20 April): 1.
[101]H. Hodler, Esperantism, Geneva: Universala Esperantia Librejo, 1911, p. 9.
[102] Privat (1927/1982), vol. 2, p. 72.
[103] H. Hodler, 'La agado de U.E.A.', Esperanto 8 (1912): 242.
[104] H. Hodler, 'La socia signifo de U.E.A.', Esperanto 6 (1910), 78 (20 May): 1.
[105] See Garvia (2015), pp. 21-56.
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U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4_2
[106] Letter to Zamenhof, 9 Dec. 1906, Waringhien (1948), vol. 1, p. 323. He added: 'we should not forget that the opponents of Esperanto are still many and influential, particularly in the upper levels of society'.
[107] J.B., 'Esperanto kaj internaciismo', Germana Esperantisto 3 (1906): 88—9.
[108]Ernst Kliemke, 'Kulturmalsagajoj. Glosoj al la mondlingva Movado', Germana Esperantisto 9 (1912), edition A, p. 162 (translated from Der Vortrupp, 1912, Sept.).
[109] Kurt Schubert, 'Deutsche Sprache und Esperanto', Das Deutschtum im Ausland, 1912: 648—52. On Ostwald's opinion see, for example, Wilhelm Ostwald, Die internationale Hilfssprache und das Esperanto, Berlin: Moller & Borel, 1907, pp. 16-17. Ostwald, Nobel laureate in 1909, initially supported Esperanto; in 1908 he went over to Ido.
[110] Berliner Beamten-Zeitschrift, 5 May 1911; quoted in Germana Esperantisto 8 (1911): 151.
"Schubert, p. 651.
[112] Schubert, p. 652.
[113] 22 February 1907; quoted in Germana Esperantisto 4 (1907): 42.
[114]Sautter, 'Noch einmal die deutsche Sprache und Esperanto', Das Deutschtum im Ausland, 1913:
758.
[115] Wartburgstimmen, 1913, Oct.; quoted in Germana Esperantisto 10 (1913), edition A, p. 164.
[116]Alfred Geiser in Das Deutschtum imAusland, 1912: 652-4 (quotation p. 654).
[117]Zimmermann (1915); Zimmermann & Muller-Holm (1923). The Union, founded in 1893, did not admit Jewish members; see Iris Hamel, Volkischer Verband und nationale Gewerkschaft. Die Politik des Deutschnationalen Handlungsgehilfenverbandes 1893—1933, Frankfurt a.M.: Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1967.
[118]Zimmermann (1915), p. 3.
[119] 4 January 1913 and 15 January 1913; quoted in Germana Esperantisto 10 (1913), edition A, pp. 19, 41.
[120] EdE,p. 191.
[121] 'Deutschtum, Esperanto und die Volksschule', Sachsische Schulzeitung81 (1915), 41: 606 -7. On Esperanto as a 'national shield' against the German tendency to glorify foreign cultures, see Emil Bausenwein, Was geht den Deutschen das Esperanto an? Haida: La Marto, 1913, p. 10.
[122] Friedrich Ellersiek, 'Staatsburger und Esperantisten', Germana Esperantisto 10 (1913), edition A,
pp. 18-19.
[123] Breiger, 'Ruckblick auf das Jahr 1913', Germana Esperantisto 11 (1914), editionA, p. 2.
[124]G.H. Gohl, Esperanto. EineKulturforderungundihreErfŭllung,Leipzig: Quelle&Meyer, 1914, p. 102.
[125]Editorial note in Germana Esperantisto 10 (1913), edition A,p. 171. See also Th. Rousseau, 'UEA kaj sovinismo', Esperanto 9 (1913): 267-8.
[126] V Bitner, 'Al laboro!', Espero (Saint Petersburg), 1908: 51.
[127] See the notice in Ruslanda Esperantisto 1 (1905): 102.
[128] Ĥvorostin (1972), p. 84.
[129] H.A. Luyken, Paulo Debenh^m, London: British Esperanto Association, 1911 (reprinted Saarbrucken: Iltis, 1990), p. 8; Hvorostin (1972), p. 85.
[130] Ruslanda Esperantisto 2 (1906): 157
[131] de Bruin ( 1936 ), p. 19.
[132] Esperanto 7(1911): 281.
[133] Esperanto 7 (1911): 285.
[134] G. Demidjuk, 'Cirkau la interna ideo. Historia skizo', in Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, Jarlibro 5 (1926): 181-96 (esp. pp. 192-3); de Bruin (1936), p. 20.
[135] Hvorostin (1972), p. 83.
[136]A. Stamatiadis in EdE, p. 201; La Ondo deEsperanto 4 (1912): 145-6. In September 1907, the prohibition was lifted, and three years later the parliament of Samos unanimously voted for the compulsory teaching of Esperanto in all the schools on the island.
[137] Esperanto 8 (1912): 41; K. Ch. Shan (Sheng Guocheng), 'Letero el Hinlando', La Ondo de Esperanto 4 (1912): 57.
[138] Internacia Socia Revuo 1 (1907), 3: 15-16, 6: 16, 8-9: 24, 10-11: 15; 3 (1909): 63; Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongress zu Stuttgart, 18. bis 24. August 1907, Berlin: Vorwarts, 1907, p. 23. Jaures and Vaillant also presented to the congress a proposal for a resolution stating that, in the event of an outbreak of war, the proletariat should stage a massive strike and rebel against the authorities; the German August Bebel violently opposed this radical proposal, which ultimately failed to attract a majority.
[139] Germana Esperantisto 9 (1914), edition A, p. 109.
[140] Internacia Socia Revuo 7 (1913): 260.
[141] De Tribune (Amsterdam), 20 June 1908; quoted in Frateco (The Hague), 1908, 3 (Sept.): 1, and
Internacia Socia Revuo 2 (1908): 111.
[142] The German and Austrian social democrats, on the other hand, sharply rejected Esperanto. See Bahr (1978), p. 232 and following.
[143] See E. Lanti's interview with Malatesta in 1924: Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 10 (51): 5. Inthe early issues of Internacia Socia Revuo (in 1907) Malatesta was listed as an editorial collaborator.
[144]Miyamoto Masao, La mortasuito. Oosugi Sakae, anarkiisto-esperantisto, Kyoto: l'omnibuso, 1984, pp. 31-6. Two letters by Osugi were published in Internacia Socia Revuo 2 (1908): 20, 70-1.
[145]For their part, the socialist Esperantists admitted that this was so. See the 1912 quotation from La Kulturo (Prague) in de Bruin (1936), p. 9.
[146] See the text of the 'abdication' speech, Orig III 2542-5.
[147]The congress was canceled because of the declaration of war.
[148] Orig III 2563-9.
[149]Orig III 2582-9.
[150] Orig III 2588. By 'free faith member' ('liberkredano', or in other contexts 'neutralisto') Zamenhof understood the tolerant, non-dogmatic religious believer.
[151] Letter to Bourlet, 24 February 1913, Orig III 2570.
[152]Letter to Wilhelm Heller, 30 June 1914, Orig III 2655-7. But Zamenhof repeated his position that the Jews 'are most in need of a neutral language', expressed sympathy for the plan and offered to help with advice. It was anticipated that the first meeting of the association would take place in Paris; a new effort to found a 'Worldwide Esperantist Hebrew Association' was made in 1922. At about the same time as the plan was presented to him, Zamenhof reacted sharply to^an anti-Jewish article appearing in Pola Esperantisto: letter of16 July 1914, Orig III 2663-6; cf. Korjenkov (2011), pp. 273-5, 279.
[153]A partial fulfillment of Zamenhof's ideal can be found in modern ecumenical thought and practice.
[154]Cf. Waringhien (1980), p. 74.
[155] 'Post la Granda Milito. Alvoko al la Diplomatoj', Orig III 2687-92 (quotation p. 2689).
[156]Waringhien (1980), pp. 74-5.
[157] Privat (2007), p. 133.
[158] Haimin Wung-Sung (2011), pp. 11, 13.
[159] Krajewski (2014), pp. 56-9, 62. Even before the outbreak of the First World War it was evident that scientists tended to favor their own national language (English, French, German) over an artificial language: Gordin (2015), pp. 159-63; Garvfa (2015), pp. 105-6.
[160] EeP, pp. 365-7.
[161]Jakob (1933), p. 18.
[162]H. Hodler, 'La socio post la milito', Esperanto 13 (1917): 73-5; reprinted in Jakob (19286, pp. 146-57.
[163] H. Hodler, 'Super', Esperanto 11 (1915): 3;reprintedinJakob (1928), p. 103.
[164]H. Hodler, 'Nova spirito', Esperanto 13(1917): 113; reprinted in Jakob (1928), p. 162.
[165]Edmond Privat, 'La verko de H. Hodler', Esperanto 16 (1920): 102. In 1915-16 Hodler also composed an extensive French-language essay on the peaceful organization of the peoples, which remained unpublished; see the biographical sketch by Eduard Stettler, in Jakob (1928), pp. 48-9. One chapter in the essay, 'La justice internationale et le probleme de l'arbitrage', appeared in Les Documents du Progres. Revue internationale (Lausanne) 10 (1916), Jan.: 280-96. Hodler also con- tributed to the journals La Voix de lHumanite (Lausanne) and Demain. Pages et Documents (Geneva).
[166]H. Hodler, 'Novaj perspektivoj', Esperanto 15 (1919): 58; reprinted in Jakob (1928), p. 88.
[167] The signatories supported the project as private individuals rather than on behalf of their respec- tive delegations. Among them were Edvard Benes (Czechoslovakia), Wellington Koo (China) and Carlos Restrepo, former president of Colombia.
[168]Quoted in Esperanto 16 (1920): 221.
[169] Edmond Privat, 'Esperanto ^e la Ligo de Nacioj', Esperanto 51 (1958): 57-9 (esp. p. 57).
[170]The socialist Henri La Fontaine was one of the founders of the Union ofInternational Associations and president of the International Peace Office. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was a strong supporter of Esperanto.
[171] Quoted in Panchasi (2009), p. 147.
[172]Ray Stannard Baker, President Wilson's press secretary (1922), quoted in Panchasi (2009) , p. 140.
[173] Outsiders, however, hardly surprisingly, imputed to the project the goal of introducing Esperanto into the League. See Thhe New York Times, 19 December 1920, reprinted in Ulrich Becker (ed.), Esperanto in The NewYorkTimes (1887-1922), NewYork: Mondial, 2010, p. 219.
[174] Letter of 30 December 1920; quoted in Huber (1973), p. 43. (The headquarters of the French ministry of foreign affairs is located on the Quai d'Orsay.) In general on the anti-Esperanto posi- tion of the French government in the early 1920s, see Panchasi (2009), pp. 135-59.
[175]Lescure (1999), pp. 262-3.
[176] For example the linguist Albert Dauzat (1912), according to Lescure, p. 269.
[177] Lescure, p. 267.
[178] Lescure, p. 413.
[179] Lescure, p. 264.
[180] Guerard (1922), pp. 22, 31.
[181] Andre Baudet, Paris Chamber of Commerce (1921), quoted in Panchasi (2009), p. 152.
[182] Lescure (1999), p. 270.
[183] The Polish delegate also gave his support, with the reservation that the proposal should not lower the prestige of the French language. It is notable that all the Asian member-states supported the proposal, with the exception of Siam, which probably feared offending France. See Masatoshi Matsushita, Japan in the League of Nations, Ph.D. thesis, New York: Columbia University Press, 1929 (reprint New York: AMS Press, 1968), pp. 51-2.
[184] Nitobe, educator, Quaker, pacifist, and a well-known advocate for accord between East and West, was deputy secretary-general from May 1920 to December 1926; later he became a member of the Japanese Chamber of Nobles. His best-known work is Bushido: Thje SoulofJapan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought, Tokyo: Shokwabo, 1900, translated into many languages.
[185] A full version of the report appears in Nitobe (1998).
[186]Nitobe (1998), p. 65.
[187] Nitobe (1998), p. 77.
[188] Huber (1973), p. 59.
[189] Quoted in Lescure (1999), p. 694. Several of Allize's formulations later reappeared in Berard's decree.
[190] Huber (1973), pp. 60-2. On the context see Lescure (1999), pp. 695-9; Privat (1963), pp. 75-8; Mohammad Farrokh, La pensee et Uaction dEdmond Privat (1889-1962). Contribution a lhistoire des idees politiques en Suisse, Berne: Lang, 1991; Tomasz Chmielik, 'Edmond Privat (1889-1962) kaj lia agado por la sendependigo de Polujo dum la unua mondmilito (1914-1918)', in Haupenthal (2011), pp. 59-97. A summary article on Privat appears in Kunzli (2006), pp. 539-46.
[191] Quoted by Lescure (1999), pp. 698-9.
[192]The text of the circular appeared in LeMonde esperantiste 15 (1922), 3 (125): 18. On the reac- tions of the French press see A. Frechas, 'Les gens d'esprit', Le Monde esperantiste 15 (1922), 4 (126), pp. 25-8.
[193] Quoted in Lescure, p. 707.
[194] The text of the letter from Berard to the Human Rights League appeared in Le Monde esperantiste 16 (1923), 1 (129): 1; cf. Panchasi (2009), p. 155. In May 1923, Berard declared Latin a compul- sory subject in secondary schools; this decree was canceled by his successor. Later Berard became a member of the French Academy and (under the Vichy regime) ambassador to the Vatican.
[195] Esperanto as an International Auxiliary Language, Geneva: League of Nations, 1922, pp. 31-2.
[196] Contre loctroi dupatronage de la Societe des Nations a lEsperanto, Geneva, 1922.
[197] Quotations from the summary in Esperanto 18 (1922): 166.
[198] Edmond Privat, Federala sperto. Studopri du sukcesoj kaj unu malsukceso, The Hague: Universala Ligo, 1958, p. 71.
[199]Privat (1963), p. 97.
[200] Cf. Ivo Lapenna, 'The common language question before international organizations', LaMonda Lingvo-Problemo 2 (1970): 83-102 (esp. p. 98). The 'need for direct communication between uneducated or imperfectly educated individuals in different countries' was also denied by a report (30 December 1921) of the Committee on an International Language of the American Philological Association. Since such communication should be 'through leaders and representatives', the 'real desideratum', according to the report, was for a language 'which will satisfy the intellectual and aesthetic demands of educated people of every land, and that language can hardly be any but Latin' (Proceedings of the American Philological Association 52 [1921]: xiii).
[201] Quoted by Privat, 'Esperanto ^e la Ligo', p. 59.
[202] Privat (1927/1982), vol. 2, p. 146.
[203] Quoted by Privat, 'Esperanto ^e la Ligo', p. 59.
[204] F.P. Walters, A History ofthe League ofNations, London: Oxford University Press, 1960, vol. 1, p. 193. The Commissions significance was diminished in 1926 when its executive organ became the Paris-based International Institute for Intellectual Collaboration, with financial support from France; its first director was Julien Luchaire. In 1946 it was replaced by UNESCO.
[205] We should note that, behind the scenes, the British government also sought to avoid an expres- sion of official support for Esperanto by the League: Huber (1973), pp. 87-90; Hilary Chapman, 'The British Governments view of Edmond Privat and the League of Nations', EAB Update, 2009, 46 (July-Sep.): 7-8, 10. The educational authorities in Britain were more favorably disposed towards Esperanto, while the ministry of foreign affairs was completely opposed: Haimin Wung- Sung (2011), p. 38.
[206] Contre loctroi, p. 7; cf. Panchasi (2009), p. 155.
[207]Letter to Abbe Ricard, 5 June 1923; quoted in Huber (1973), p. 100. In his memoirs, de Reynold writes that the Commission, while still barely established, experienced 'the attack of total utopians and integral internationalists, namely the Esperantists': G. de Reynold (1963), Mes memoires, Tome 3: Les cercles concentriques, Geneva: Editions Generale, p. 452. After the Second World War (in which he favored a victory by Hitler) de Reynold continued his agitation against Esperanto.
[208] Edmond Privat, 'Idealo kaj realigo', Esperanto 18 (1922): 121.
[209] See Bon voisinage. Edmond Privatet Romain Rolland. Lettres et documents presentes et annotes par Pierre Hirsch, Neuchatel & Paris: A la Baconniere & Albin Michel, 1977; Edmond Privat, Vivo de Gandhi, La Laguna: J. Regulo, 1967.
[210] See Die WahrheitinsAusland durch Esperanto. Stimmen desAuslands uber den Krieg, Leipzig: Ortsverband der Leipziger Esperantogruppen, 1915. From November 1914 to January 1919, 60 issues of Internacia Bulteno, the 'German newsletter on the war', were published by the German Esperanto Service in Berlin.
[211]Albert Steche, Die Bedeutungder Welthilfssprache 'Esperanto fŭr das deutsche Volk in Kriegund Frieden, Leipzig: Ortsverband der Leipziger Esperanto-Gruppen, 1915, p. 23.
[212]Zimmermann (1915), pp. 14-15.
[213] Cited in Guerard (1922), pp. 185-7.
[214] Steche was vice president of the Union of Saxon Industrialists (1905-20) and a member of the Saxon parliament (1909-18). He also served as a member of the board of the Hansa League, an influential alliance founded in 1909 by industrialists opposed to the influence of extreme conserva- tives in German political and economic life.
[215] Steche (1922), p. 20.
[216] Edmond Privat, 'La 15 Decembro 1859', Esperanto 17 (1921): 201. In 1924, the 16th World Congress of Esperanto in Vienna unanimously accepted a resolution declaring that 'the congress is in no sense a bourgeois or workers' congress, but a neutral congress of Esperantists of all classes': Esperanto 20 (1924): 148.
[217] F. Leuschner, 'Wir und die Burgerlichen', Der Arbeiter-Esperantist 8 (1922), 9: 10.
[218] Steche (1922), p. 20.
[219] Paul Bennemann, 'Das Esperanto und die Schulbehorden', Das Esperanto ein Kulturfaktor, vol. 8. Festschrift anlasslich des 17. Deutschen Esperanto-Kongresses, Berlin: Deutscher Esperanto-Bund, 1928, p. 55.
[220] See Vilmos Benczik, 'Julio Baghy, mitoj kaj realo', Sennacieca Revuo, 1969, 97: 42-52; Marjorie Boulton, Poeto fajrakora. La verkaro de Julio Baghy, Saarbrucken: Iltis, 1983.
[221] See Teo Jung's memoirs: Jung (1979).
[222] Polizeiprasidium Leipzig, Esperantosprachliche Dienststelle, den 22. Februar 1924. Jurgen Hamann kindly made available the photo reproduction of this and other material now preserved in the Staatsarchiv, Leipzig.
[223] Cf. Otto Bassler, 'Fortschrittliche Traditionen', DerEsperantist2 (1966), 5/6 (Apr./May): 33-4.
[224] Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 149; 5 (1928/29): 258,456.
[225] Givoje (1965), chap. 8.
[226] Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 27 (79): 4.
[227] Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 35 (87): 6.
[228] Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25),41: 8.
[229]Mine Yositaka, 'Skizo pri la vivo de V. Ero^enko', in La tundro gemas. Verkoj de V. Erosenko, Toyonaka: Japana Esperanta Librokooperativo, 1980, pp. 69—70. Works by and about Eroshenko have been published in Esperanto, Japanese, Chinese, Ukrainian, and Russian. See also the chapter "Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Colonial Hierarchy: Chinese Responses to Russell, Eroshenko, and Tagore", in Xiaoqun Xu, Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China: The Chenbao Fukan and the New Culture Era, 1918—1928, Lanham and others: Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 53—71 (esp. 62—71).
[230] La Revuo Orienta 3 (1922): 162. The speaker was Sasaki Takamaru.
[231] 'El la verkajoj de f-ino K. Jamagua', La Verda Ombro 5 (1923): 11-12 (Japanese original).
[232] Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 6 (47): 12.
[233] Esperanto 20 (1924): 51.
[234] Givoje (1965), chap. 9.
[235]Ratkai (1985), p. 87.
[236] Zoltan Barna & Ervin Fenyvesi, 'Esperanto-movado dum la Konsilia Respubliko', Hungara Vivo 19 (1979), 1: 10-11.
[237] Ratkai (2010), p. 79.
[238] EdE, p. 230.
[239] Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 19 (71): 8.
[240] Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 3: 6.
[241]NestaH. Webster, SecretSocietiesandSubversiveMovements, 2ndedn., London: Boswell, 1924,
p. 345.
[242]Karl Vossler, GeistundKulturinderSprache,Heideloerg: Winter, 1925,pp. 187-8.
[243] Berard's circular, LeMondeesperantiste 15 (1922), 3 (125): 18.
[244]Inazo Nitobe, Thje Use and Study ofForeign Languages inJapan, Geneva: League ofNations, 1924, p. 26; reprinted in The Works oflnazd Nitobe, Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1972, vol. 4, p. 461.
[245] Henri Barbusse, 'Al la Internaciistoj', Esperantista Laboristo 2 (1921), 2 (13): 3.
[246] Protokolaro de la VHI-a Kongreso [of SAT] en Goteborg (Svedio), 14.—18. a^gusto 1928, Leipzig: SAT, 1928, p. 57.
[247]'Grava dangero', Pola Esperantisto 17 (1923): 81-3 (quotation p. 83).
[248] Baroko, 'Sub verda mantelo', Pola Esperantisto 18 (1924): 33.
[249] L. Kokeny, 'Intervjuo kun s-ano Tieder, prezidanto de HESL', Hungara Heroldo 3 (1930), 7: 6.
[250] Decree no. 9607 of 10 April 1928; quoted in Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 301. Seealsop. 285;and 'Reakcio kaj mondlingvo', La Socialisto 3 (1928): 64-5. The decree was evidently influenced by Berard's circular: Esperanto 24 (1928): 130.
[251]Quoted in Givoje (1965), chap. 12.
[252] In the town of Totkomlos in 1927, mentioned by social democratic deputies during parliamen- tary debate, quoted in EdE, p. 230.
[253] Mentioned during the annual meeting of the Esperantist Workers Society of Hungary (HESL: Hungaria Esperantista Societo Laborista), 23 March 1930: Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30), p. 321.
[254]Antaŭen (organ ofHESL), 1929, April/May: 18; cf. Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 364; quoted also in EdE, p. 230.
[255] Esperanto 25 (1929): 75.
[256] Adolf Sproeck, 'Esperantobewegung und Faschismus', La Socialisto 7 (1932), 10: 3.
[257] Circular, State Ministry of Braunschweig, Department of Public Education, 20 October 1920; cited in Das Esperanto ein Kulturfaktor. vol. 8. Festschrift anldsslich des 17. Deutschen Esperanto- Kongresses, Berlin: Deutscher Esperanto-Bund, 1928, p. 63.
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[258]'Tutmonda statistiko esperantista', Esperanto 25 (1928): 134—56 (esp. p. 137).
[259] Germana Esperantisto 21 (1924): 145;EdE,pp. 192, 195.
[260] Germana Esperantisto 21 (1924): 5.
[261] Germana Esperantisto 22 (1925): 7; 23 (1926): 8.
[262] Germana Esperantisto 24 (1927): 20.
[263]In 1928 it was noted that 'the largest part of the press is favorable to Esperanto': Germana Esperantisto 26 (1929): 7.
[264] Germana Esperantisto 29 (1932): 2; 30 (1933): 7.
9<Bericht uber den 12. Deutschen Esperanto-KongreЈ in Plauen (7.-10. Juni 1924)', Germana Esperantisto 21 (1924): 145-8 (quotation p. 146).
[266] Germana Esperantisto 21 (1924): 147.
[267] Eugen Wuster, Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik, besonders in der ELektrotechnik, Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1931, p. 350.
[268]Eduard Engel, Sprich Deutsch! Ein Buch zur Entwelschung, 2nd edn., Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1917, pp. 15, 111; Maria Grunewald, 'Die deutsche Sprache in der Wissenschaft', Zeitschrift des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins 34 (1919), col. 202.
[269] Karl J. Loy, 'Deutsch und Esperanto', Esperanto-Praktiko 1 (1919): 26.
[270]1 Uber die Gewinnung der hoheren Volksschichten fur Esperanto', Germana Esperantisto 23
(1926): 74.
[271] Heinrich Orthal, 'Wir und der Deutsche Sprachverein', Germana Esperantisto 23 (1926): 216.
[272] 'Uber die Gewinnung', p. 74.
[273] Streicher (1926), col. 133, 137-9.
[274]See the letter from Jahnke, 20 February 1930, published in Arntria Esperantisto 9 (1932): 1; see also Streicher (1926), col. 133.
[275]Theodor Steche, Neue Wegezum reinen Deutsch, Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt, 1925; see also from the same author, 'Sprachwissenschaft und Welthilfssprache', Germana Esperantisto 28 (1931): 85-90. Theodor Steche was the son of Albert Steche.
[276] Orthal, 'Wir und der Deutsche Sprachverein', p. 216.
[277]Hermann Guntert, Grundfragen der Sprachwissenschaft, Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 19255
pp. 128-9.
[278] F. Thierfelder, 'Geistige Grundlagen kultureller Auslandsarbeit', Suddeutsche Monatshefte 28 (1930/31): 229, cited by Kurt Duwell, Deutschlands ausmdrtige Kulturpolitik 1918-1932. Grundlinien undDokumente, Cologne & Vienna: Bohlau, 1976, p. 124. Thierfelder based his asser- tion on 'Tutmonda statistiko esperantista' (World Esperanto statistics), published in 1928, failing to notice, however, that the statistics could not take into consideration, among other things, the extent of Esperanto in the Soviet Union.
[279]Thierfelder, 'Weg mit Esperanto!', Kolnische Zeitung, 14 May 1933.
[280] Thierfelder, 'Weg mit Esperanto!', Kolnische Zeitung, 14 May 1933.
[281]Thierfelder, 'Weg mit Esperanto!', Kolnische Zeitung, 14 May 1933.
[282] DerArbeiter-Esperantist 10 (1924): pp. 50, 55.
[283] F. Ellersiek, 'Alldeutsche Hetze gegen Esperanto', Germana Esperantisto 21 (1924): 224.
[284] Deutsch-Osterreichische Tageszeitung, 17January 1926.
[285] Hartenfels, 'Die deutsche Presse und Esperanto', in Beitrdge zur Welthilfssprachenfrage, Dresden: Ader & Borel, 1918, 18-19.
[286] Wilhelm Hoegner, postwar Minister-President of Bavaria.
[287] So described in the leaflet 'An den Bayerischen Landtag! Protest der Esperantistenschaft Munchens gegen die Ausfuhrungen des Abgeordneten Herrn H. Bauer uber Esperanto vom 18. Marz 1926'.
[288] Bayer. Hauptstaatsarchiv Munchen, 'Niederschrift uber die 271. Sitzung des Ausschusses fur den Staatshaushalt vom 21. Januar 1928', pp. 18-23.
[289] Volkischer Beobachter, 20 September 1922; reprinted in Eberhard Jackel (ed.), Hitler. Sdmtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980, p. 691.
[290]Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim, London: Pimlico, 1992, p. 279. Cf. Christian Hartmann and others (ed.), Hitler, Mein Kampf. Eine kritische Edition, Munich & Berlin: Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, 2016, vol. 1, pp. 799-800.
[291] Prof. Dr. Sieglerschmidt, 'Das Esperanto', Der Reichswart7 (1926), 27 (3July).
[292]Robert Trogel, 'Esperanto und Kultur. Individuum, Volk, Menschheit', in Das Esperanto ein Kulturfaktor, vol. 8. Festschrift anldsslich des 17. Deutschen Esperanto-Kongresses, Berlin: Deutscher Esperanto-Bund, 1928, pp. 5-31 (esp. p. 21).
[293] Fritz Wicke, 'Volkstum und Esperanto', Germana Esperantisto 29 (1932): 131.
[294] Germana Esperantisto 29 (1932): 113.
[295] Letter from Max Friedrich Schreiber to the GEA executive board, 23 September 1932, printed in
Germana Esperantisto 29 (1932): 165.
[296] Letter from Wolfgang Jackel to Behrendt, 11 July 1932, Germana Esperantisto 29 (1932): 156-7. For a similar resignation see Germana Esperantisto 28 (1931): 58.
[297] Germana Esperantisto 28 (1931): 174.
[298] Germana Esperantisto 28 (1931): 174.
[299] Volkischer Beobachter, 4 November 1930.
[300] Die Volksparole (Dusseldorf), 28 May 1932; cited in Germana Esperantisto 29 (1932): 114.
[301] See p. 214.
[302] Personal communication from Ludwig Schodl, 1 June 1969.
[303] Personal communication from Adolf Sproeck, 28 July 1966.
[304] Sennaciulo 9 (1932/33): 95.
[305] Sennaciulo 10 (1933/34): 15.
[306] 'An Alle!', Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 61-2.
[307] Behrendt, 'Esperanto im Dienst am Deutschtum', Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 99.
[308] Georg Habellok, 'Esperanto im neuen Deutschland', Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 100.
[309] Georg Habellok, 'Esperanto im neuen Deutschland', Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 100. The term Gleichschaltung refers to the various methods employed by the Nazi regime to bring all for- merly independent institutions and associations into conformity, for example by putting its leader- ship positions in the hands of members of the Nazi party. Often such Gleichschaltung was also freely entered into.
[310]. Gleichschaltung der Esperanto-Bewegung in Deutschland', Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 121-2.
[311]Text of the farewell speech of P. Christaller, 11 May 1933 (copy in the author's possession).
[312]Letter of Friedrich Bachmann, Heilbronn, to Heinrich Nischwitz, Mannheim, 17 July 1933 (copy in the author's possession).
[313] An anonymous person in Breslau sent a postcard to this effect to GEA groups: Germana Esperantisto, 30 (1933): 117.
[314] Appeal to Vilna Esperantista Societo, May 1933, quoted in Sur Posteno, 1933, p. 28; a similar appeal, also in May, was made by Edvardo Wiesenfeld, 'Publika letero al I.C.K. por LKK', Pola Esperantisto 27 (1933): 66-9.
[315] SurPosteno, 1933, p. 28; La Socialisto 8 (1933), 8: 5.
[316]'Mensogoj pri Germanujo', Heroldo deEsperanto 14 (1933), 13 (718): 2. According to his mem- oirs, the publisher of Heroldo was early made aware ofNazi atrocities: Jung (1979), pp. 235-6.
[317] Sennaciulo 9 (1932/33): 89.
[318] Edvardo Wiesenfeld, 'La VI Tutpola en Varsovio', Pola Esperantisto 27 (1933): 86.
[319] Letter of 13 May 1933, printed in Esperanto 29 (1933): 98.
[320]The ballots are preserved in the UEA archive in Rotterdam. The four negative votes came from Odo Bujwid, Andras Cseh, J.R.G. Isbrucker and Vilho Setala. Edmond Privat abstained, noting that 'The congress cannot be Zamenhof's congress in the current conditions, but UEA cannot stand back if it takes place.'
[321] Hans Jakob, 'Esperantismaj problemoj', Esperanto 39 (1946): 10.
[322] Letter from the LKK to Stettler, 23 June 1933, published in Esperanto 29 (1933): 131.
[323]In Paris (1932) 1650 attended, in Stockholm (1934) 2042. A year earlier, more than 3000 par- ticipants were expected: Lokal-Anzeiger, Cologne, 12 August 1932; cf. Jung (1979), p. 238.
[324] C.C.G., 'De nubo al sunbrilo', TheBritishEsperantist29 (1933): 145.
[325] Kolnische Zeitung, 31 July 1933.
[326] Kolner Tageblatt, 17August 1933.
[327] Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 145-6.
[328] Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 149-51.
[329] Heroldo de Esperanto14 (1933), 32/33 (737/738): 3.
[330] Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 146.
[331]The letter was printed in La Socialisto 8 (1933), 8: 5. In reaction, Behrendt wrote to Simon: 'I very much regret that I do not have the opportunity to turn you over to the German police!' (La Socialisto 11 [1937], 2 [July]: p. 1; personal communication from Joseph T. Simon, Vienna, 2 January 1974).
[332] J. Sapiro, 'Ne ripro^u spegulon, se gi montras nigrulon', Pola Esperantisto 28 (1934): 16.
[333] Sapiro, 'Ne ripro^u spegulon', p. 16.
[334] Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 139.
[335] Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 198-9.
[336] See for example the letter from the Esperanto group in Frankfurt a.M., March 1934, printed in Sennaciulo 10 (1933/34): 40.
^Karl Krober, 'Welt-Echo durch Esperanto-Auftendienst', Der Deutsche Esperantist 32 (1935): 98-101.
[338] 'La mondo atentu: parolas Adolf Hitler!', Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 154-60. The text also appeared as an offprint in 10,000 copies.
[339] Germana Esperantisto 30 (1933): 178, 192.
[340]Text of the constitution in Esperanto in Deutschland, 1934, no. 1 (Sept.).
[341]Justus, 'Brauchen wir eine "Neue" Deutsche E-Bewegung?', Der Deutsche Esperantist 31 (1934): 2-5. The 'Aryan paragraph' proclaimed in April 1933 stipulated that Jews could not be government officials.
[342]Text of the letter of 8 April 1934 in Rundschreiben Nr. 2 of the Leader of GEA, 11 April 1934.
[343]Text of the letter of 8 April 1934 in Rundschreiben Nr. 2 of the Leader of GEA, 11 April 1934.
[344] Deutscher Esperanto-Bund, Gauverband Sachsen (circular), 1934, no. 4 (38), 28April.
[345] 'Die Bundesfuhrung im Lichte der Mitgliedermeinung', Der Deutsche Esperantist 31 (1934): 70.
[346] Letter of 17 May 1934, Der Deutsche Esperantist 31 (1934): 103.
[347] Der Deutsche Esperantist 31, (1934):106.
[348] Der Deutsche Esperantist 31 (1934): 117.
[349] Der Deutsche Esperantist 31 (1934): 134. The newsletter Esperanto in Deutschland was edited by Naumann and continued to appear until May-June 1935 (no. 9/10).
[350] Esperanto in Deutschland, 1934, p. 8.
[351] Letter of 30 September 1934, Der Deutsche Esperantist 31 (1934): 154.
[352]Text in DerDeutscheEsperantist 32 (1935): 15-19.
[353] Der Deutsche Esperantist 32 (1935): 2.
[354] Der Deutsche Esperantist 32 (1935): 130.
[355] Speech in the London Guildhall, 21 August 1907), PVZVIII 89.
[356] Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung 1 (1935), 10 (20 May), official part, p. 228. According to Walther, denunciations of GEA by NDEB led to this decree: circular of 23 December
1935.
[357]For example, HeidelbergerNeuesteNachrichten, 11 June 1935; Die Ostschweiz (St. Gallen), 17 June 1935 ('Esperantoverbot in Deutschland'); see the circular of Walther, 23 December 1935. An up- to-date report from Berlin was provided by a letter (22 June 1935) to Andras Cseh from the Jewish Esperantist Margarete Saxl, published in Borsboom (2003), pp. 156—7.
[358] Circular of 12 June 1935.
[359]Kohlbach, 'Vom Esperanto', Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung 1 (1935), 11 (5 June), unofficial part, p. 106.
[360] Brunwald, 'Was wird das Ausland dazu sagen?', Esperanto in Deutschland, 1935, p. 18.
[361] Letter of 'a long time Esperantist' in GEJ-Gazeto, 1984, 3 (May/June): 34.
[362] Letter of Fritz Rockmann, Magdeburg, to Hans Jakob, 13 December 1934 (copy in the author's possession); cf. Sikosek (2006), p. 134.
[363] Circular to NDEB members, 18 August 1935.
[364] Letter of 23 June 1935; text in an appendix to a circular from Walther to GEA members, 23 June 1935.
[365] Letter of 2 July 1935, published in Der Deutsche Esperantist 32 (1935): 108. The letter, like that of 3 June 1935, was signed by Rudolf Buttmann, who in 1928 attacked Esperanto in the Bavarian Parliament. Buttmann as of 5 May 1933 led the cultural policy department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (until 1935). From June 1933 to 1945 he chaired the Deutscher Sprachverein.
[366]Report of 16 July 1935, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 90, 92-4. The publications were the aforementioned speech of Hitler and La Nova Germanlando.
[367]One of those arrested, Matthias Trauden, from Duisburg, declared to the Gestapo that NDEB was 'the only Communist organization in Germany working legally', and that under the cover of the leadership were party members who were able 'to work without hindrance': police report, Dusseldorf, 7 March 1935, Bundesarchiv, R 58/389, fol. 8-9; communication of Heinrich Himmler, 13 November 1935, Bundesarchiv, R 58/389, fol. 117; internal report of 8 June 1940 (see p. 129), Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 221. NDEB, which expelled Trauden after his arrest, confessed that it had difficulties with 'former worker Esperantists' in its ranks but assured the authorities that because of its 'constant contact' with the Gestapo there was no need for concern: Esperanto in Deutschland, 1935, p. 25. For more details see Bludau (1973), pp. 108-13, 116.
[368] Bundesarchiv, R 58/378, fol. 56-60.
[369]Bundesarchiv, R 58/378, fol. 89. In 1940, Heydrich noted with satisfaction that following the dissolution the foreign press did not involve itself 'except in a single case': internal report of 8 June 1940 (see p. 129), Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 225.
[370] Letter from Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt to Stellvertreter des Fuhrers, 21 January 1936, Bundesarchiv, R 58/378, fol. 114-7 (also R 58/7421, fol. 188-95).
[371]Theodor Koch, 'Esperanto, ein Bundesgenosse des Weltjudentums', Der Weltkampf 12 (1935), 326—9 (quoting p. 327). The author also contributed an anti-Esperanto article to the anti-Semitic periodical Der Judenkenner (no. 27, 21 August 1935).
[372] Die Bewegung (Zentralorgan des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Studentenbundes), 1936, 2 (8 January).
[373] Letter from the Ministry to Esperantists in Katowice, 13 September 1935, quoted in Der Deutsche Esperantist 32 (1935): 162.
[374] Decree no. 29/36, in Zusammenstellung aller bis zum 31. Mdrz 1937erlassenen und noch gŭltigen Anordnungen des Stellvertreters des Fŭhrers, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937, p. 262.
[375] Warum Esperanto? Warum Deutscher Esperanto-Bund? Dresden: Deutscher Esperanto-Bund,
1936.
[376]Deutscher Esperanto-Bund e. V., Bundesnachrichten, 1936, no. 5 (June/July).
[377] Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 3.
[378]The requirement was also directed at the NDEB, the 'Amika Rondo' (Friendly Circle) Club in Berlin and the Esperanto Union of Businessmen in Radebeul. The German Ido Federation (Germana Ido-Federuro) was immediately prohibited.
[379]The decree of 6 June 1936 was signed on Himmler's behalf by Dr. Werner Best, who was Heydrich's deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204-5.
[380]Thieme could read the text of the decree but was not entitled to receive it for distribution to the members: circular of Thieme, 12 July 1936. The Businessmens Esperanto Union was able, under the name 'Commercial Union', to continue to operate for some time. The Esperanto Institute for the German Reich closed its office in Leipzig on 31 December 1936.
[381] Following the war, GEA was re-established (12 April 1947).
[382] Protokolaropri laXIV-a Kongreso de SATen Valencio, 1934, p. 5.
[383]L. Schŭdl, 'NIVEA', Der Esperantist 7 (1971), 50: 6-8.
[384] For example, they denied that workers in Germany had heroically fought against fascism and labeled as incorrect the Communist propaganda to the effect that the regime would not long sur- vive: Sennacieca Revuo, n.s., 1 (1933/34): 51-3.
[385] WG. Keable spoke of their 'grandiloquent, erroneous "high politics"': SurPosteno, 1933, 8 (145): 61.
[386] Protokolaro Valencio, p. 6.
[387]Willi Glier and others, Zur Geschichte der Arbeiter-Esperanto-Bewegung im Bezirk Erzgebirge- Vogtland (1907-1933), Karl-Marx-Stadt: Kulturbund der DDR, 1976, pp. 32-3.
[388]Karl Schabrod, Widerstand an Rhein und Ruhr 1933-1945, Dusseldorf: VVN, 1969, p. 40; Bludau (1973), pp. 108-13, 116. The leader of the workers' Esperanto group, who carried out these courier services, was the miner Alois Huber, of Duisburg, later condemned to life imprison- ment. His companion Matthias Trauden (see p. 113, note 13) was imprisoned for ten years.
[389]Theobald (1948), p. 59.
[390] From a paper by Hellmut Fuchs, Der Esperantist 5 (1969), 28/29: 30.
[391] Personal communication by Robert Stoffers, Cassis, 15 November 1970. Stoterau was arrested along with his fellow members. Today a street in Bremerhaven bears his name. On Stoterau and his companion Stoffers, see also Bundesarchiv, R 58/384.
[392] Interview with Kurt Nissen, July 1977.
[393]Wolfgang Langhoff, DieMoorsoldaten. 13MonateKonzentrationslager, Munich: Zinnen-Verlag, 1946, p. 225, concerning experiences in the Borgermoor concentration camp near Papenburg in
1933/34.
[394]Diethelm Becker, DerArbeiter-Esperanto-Bundaufdem Wegzu einerrevolutiondren Organization des deutschen Proletariats, dissertation, University of Rostock, 1968, pp. 47-8.
T.L., 'Inter ni', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 534. Reprinted under the title 'Vivu la neutralismo!' in Lanti (1931), pp. 73-4; and in Sennaciulo 9 (1932/33): 93-4.
[396] Protokolaro Valencio, p. 6.
[397] Protokolaropri la XIII-a SAT-Kongreso en Stokholmo, 1933, p. 8.
[398] Letter from the Politische Polizeikommandeur der Lander to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 26 June 1935, Bundesarchiv, R 58/378, fol. 56-60. On the position of Heydrich in 1935 see Robert Gerwarth, Hitler s Hangman: Thje Life ofHeydrich, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, p. 94.
[399] In this way the German police were centralized, but, at the same time, following their amalgama- tion with the party SS, in effect were removed from state jurisdiction: Helmut Krausnick and oth- ers, Anatomy of the SS State, trans. Richard Barry and others, New York: Walker & Co., 1968, pp. 157 and following, 164.
[400]Circular from Thieme, 12 July 1936.
[401]Circular from Thieme, 21 July 1936.
[402] Internal report, 8 June 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 225.
[403] Geheime Staatspolizei Berlin, 1 July 1937, Bundesarchiv, R 58/387, fol. 119.
[404] E. Malmgren, 'Novjara saluto de la Prezidanto de U.E.A.', Esperanto 41(1948): 1-2 (esp. p. 1).
[405] Personal communication from Artur Gitzinger, Solingen, 4 July 1966.
[406] Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 150-1. The journal was Vocoj el Oriento (Hongkong), 1938, 7/8 (Aug.): 8.
[407]Theodor Koch to Gestapo Bremen, 7 April 1938, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 135.
[408] Reichsfuhrer SS, 3 June 1939, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 183.
[409]AŭstriaEsperantisto 13 (1936), 2: 2.
[410] Hall & Kostner (2006), p. 383.
[411] Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 75.
[412] Internal report, 8 June 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 226.
[413] In the Gestapo archives, an issue of Aŭstria Esperantisto (13 December 1937) is preserved that energetically pleads for the independence of Austria ('Trifoje Austrio!'): Bundesarchiv, R 58/6221b.
[414] Internal report 8 June 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 227.
[415] Report of Dr. Hans Unger to the German Esperanto Institute, 2 June 1948; extract in La Ponto 3 (1949): 5-6. In much the same way, a guide to the SS in 1942 named the term 'humankind' 'a Jewish lie': Bialas (2014), p. 145.
[416]Hitler himself said early in 1941 that a hundred years hence German would be the language of Europe: Werner Jochmann (ed.), Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1944, Hamburg: Knaus, 1980, p. 124. The policies of Nazi Germany were more and more characterized by efforts to install German as the dominant language of Europe: Dirk Scholten, Sprachverbreitungspolitik des nationalsozialistischen Deutschlands, Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2000, p. 57. Franz Thierfelder published a book on German as 'world language': Deutsch als Weltsprache. I: Die Grundlagen der deutschen Sprachgeltung in Europa, Berlin: Verlag fur Volkstum, Wehr und Wirtschaft, 1938 (on Esperanto see pp. 29-32). See also Christopher Hutton, Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-Tongue Fascism, Race and the Science ofLanguage, London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 201-2. In 1951 Thierfelder was among the founders of the Goethe-Institut.
[417]Henry Picker (ed.), Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fŭhrerhauptquartier, 3rd edn., Stuttgart: Seewald, 1976, pp. 453-4. In May 1942 Hitler expressed the hope that in Bohemia and Moravia the author- ities would succeed 'within 20 years, in reducing the Czech language to the significance of a dialect' (Picker, p. 322). See also Himmler's memorandum of May 1940, specifying that non-German peoples should have an elementary-school education only up to the fourth year: 'Einige Gedanken uber die Behandlung der Fremdvolkischen im Osten', Vierteljahrshefte fŭr Zeitgeschichte 5 (1957): 196-8 (esp. p. 197).
[418] Esperanto Internacia 11 (1947): 3.
[419]Jochen August (ed.), 'Sonderaktion Krakau . Die Verhaftung der Krakauer Wissenschaftler am 6. November 1939, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1997, p. 30. In Bujwid's home the police found his extensive correspondence with Robert Koch and probably did not arrest him for that reason.
[420] Dobrzynski (2005), p. 24.
[421]See Boulton (1960), p. 213.
[422] Dobrzynski (2005), p. 25; Raul Hilberg and others (ed.), The Warsaw Diary ofAdam CzerniakoW: Prelude to Doom, New York: Stein & Day, 1979, p. 179.
[423] Zofia Banet-Fornalowa, Lafamilio Zamenhof, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland: Kooperativo de Literatura Foiro, 2000, pp. 90-1. See also Isaj Dratwer, Lidja Zamenhof. Vivo kaj agado, Antwerp & La Laguna: tk & Stafeto, 1980, pp. 102-9 (reproductions of four postcards written from Warsaw between May 1940 and January 1942); Wendy Heller, Lidia: Thje Life ofLidia Zamenhof, Daughter of Esperanto, Oxford: Ronald, 1985; and the article collection compiled by Amouroux (2008). Wanda, the wife of Adam, and her son were hidden by a non-Jewish family in Warsaw and survived.
[424] Best known are Leo Belmont, Halina Weinstein, Edward Wiesenfeld, Jakub Szapiro, Izrael Lejzerowicz (on these individuals see Banet-Fornalowa [20036 ), Leopold Dreher and Wilhelm Robin.
[425] Czeslaw Pruski, UEA representative in Lublin, was shot early in February 1941 apparently pri- marily because of the fact that he was an Esperantist: Jan Zawada in Pola Esperantisto 42 (1962), 4 (Jul./Aug.): 5.
[426]See Hachmeister (1998); Ingrao (2012), p. 134. Heydrich brought Six into the Security Service in April 1935. Department II was, as of 1940, re-designated as Department VII.
[427] Carsten Schreiber, Elite im Verborgenen. Ideologie und regionale Herrschaftspraxis des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS und seines Netzwerks am Beispiel Sachsens, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008, p. 126.
[428] Hachmeister (1998), p. 157; Ingrao (2012), p. 143. Heydrich designated Six as leader of an operations group to begin activities following the occupation of England: Gerwarth, Hitler's Hangman, p. 177.
[429] Koch to Gestapo Bremen, 4 April 1938, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 131.
[430] Notes of Kunze, 18 April 1940 and 10 June 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7430, fol. 1 & 23. On the back of a notice of material confiscated from members of the Zamenhof family (see p. 126, note 73) Kunze noted (5 June 1940), that he, along with SS-Untersturmfuhrer Schmaljohann, had looked through the material for Koch's use.
[431] Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 217-27.
^Several drafts can be found in the writings by which Koch, beginning in 1935, proposed his services to the Gestapo. See Bundesarchiv, R 58/378, fol. 29-36, and R 58/593, fol. 1-2.
[433] An erroneous rendering of 'Chowewe Zion' (Hovevei Zion, Lovers of Zion).
[434] A reference to Isaiah's prophecy of a future reign of eternal peace: 'And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more' (Isaiah 2.4).
[435] Literally 'porridge of peoples' (Ger. 'Volkerbrei'). The formula appeared earlier in an article by Koch in the journal Der Judenkenner, 1935 (see p. 115, note 17).
[436] Note from Heydrich for Himmler, 2 July 1940, published in Helmut Krausnick, 'Hitler und die Morde in Polen', Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 11 (1963): 196-209 (quotation from p. 206).
[437] Note from Kunze, 10 June 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7430, fol. 23-4.
[438] Ingrao (2012), p. 171; Patricia Kennedy Grimsted and others (ed.), Returnedfrom Russia: Nazi Archival Plunder in Western Europe and Recent Restitution Issues, Builth Wells: Institute of Art and Law, 2007, p. 51.
[439] Sonderkommando II 122, Vienna, 7 April 1938, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7150, fol. 11.
[440]Report of Koch, sent from Bremen to the RSHA, 22 April1941, Bundesarchiv R 58/7430, fol. 61-8 (quoted from fol. 64).
[441] Note by RSHA (VII B 4), 11 September 1941, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7430, fol. 73-4.
[442]Note by RSHA (VII B 4), 11 November 1941, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7430, fol. 75-6; cf. Hall & Kostner (2006), p. 385.
[443] Note by RSHA (VII B 4), 11 September 1941, Bundesarchiv, R 58/7430, fol. 73.
[444] Ligilo, 25 August 1939; quoted in Esperanto 35 (1939): 34.
[445]Kamaryt (1983), p. 69.
[446] As is well known, in June 1942 Heydrich was assassinated, after which the Nazis massacred the inhabitants of the village of Lidice.
[447] Kamaryt (1983), pp. 76-81, lists the names of 37 victims.
[448] RSHA (compilation of Koch, 17 May 1940), Bundesarchiv, R 58/6221b, fol. 102; Heroldo de Esperanto 21 (1940), 9 (1049): 3. See also Esperanto Internacia 4 (1940): 97-9.
[449] Hachmeister (1998), p. 223.
[450] RSHA to the Security Police in the Hague, 2 July 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/6221b, fol. 104. In October 1936 Jung and his newspaper moved from Cologne to Scheveningen in the Netherlands. From then on, Heroldo was also organ of IEL.
[451] Heroldo continued to appear regularly until 1 May 1940. There followed two 'wartime' editions (1 Dec 1940 and 15 March 1941).
[452] Personal communication from the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam, 14 March 1969. See also 'La verda stelo brilis en la mallumo. Esperantista vivo en la okupita Nederlando', La Praktiko 11 (1946): 87; according to Borsboom (2003), p. 185, this article was written by Jan Dercks.
[453] Loe de Jong, HetKoninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Deel 5. Maart'41—Juli' 42, eerste helft, The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1974, p. 416. As of 1941, Schwier was also head of the Ommen concentration camp.
[454]Andreo Cseh, 'La Ce Instituto dum la milito', Esperanto Internacia 9 (1945): 57-9 (quoting p. 57); cf. Borsboom (2003), pp. 182-6. Schwier wrote a book on the Freemasons as an 'organiza- tion hostile to the people' in which were reproduced, among other things, membership cards of the Universala Framasona Ligo: W. Schwier, Vrijmetselarij, een volksvijandige organizatie, Amsterdam: Westland, 1941. In 1967 the Dutch government sent to the Federal Republic of Germany a list of 658 people suspected of war crimes; the list included Schwier's name: Nederlanda Esperantisto 32 (1967): 75. Schwier died in 1971, unconvicted.
[455] Cf. Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militdrgerichtshof, Nŭrnberg, 14. November 1945—1. Oktober 1946, Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1947, vol. 25, pp. 252-3. The confiscation of libraries of international organizations for this pur- pose was led by the so-called Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce, which received from Hitler in July 1940 the task of securing in the occupied territories materials from all organizations whose world view was hostile to Nazism.
[456] Pierre Petit, '50-monata esperantista propagando sub germana okupado', Esperanto Internacia 9
(1945): 3-5.
[457]Arnfinn Jensson, 'Norvega Esperantista Ligo dum la milito', Esperanto Internacia 9 (1945): 78.
[458] K.T. Hansen, 'En Danujo dum la milito', Esperanto Internacia 9 (1945): 87. See also Ulrich Lins, 'Danoj eskapis persekuton. Pri la observemo de Gestapo/SS kaj la spitemo de esperantistoj', Beletra
Almanako 9 (2015), 22: 65-73.
[459] Tra densa mallumo (1942), pp. 27, 25. One of the authors, the seed pathologist Paul Neergaard, had earlier published an Esperanto-language work opposing racism: Scienco kaj pseŭdoscienco pri heredo kaj raso. Populara skizo, Paris: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 1937.
[460] E. Cortvriendt, 'Flandra Ligo Esperantista dum la milito', Esperanto Internacia 9 (1945): 88-9; 'Verda standardo—malgrau Hitler', American Esperantist 60 (1945): 111-12.
[461] Pierre Jayer, '"Pro Esperanto", Memoro pri Gustav Weber', manuscript, 1966. Another former museum collaborator, the Bahai Hugo Maier, also perished. Because of his Jewish ancestry he was deported in August 1942 to the Nazi death camp Maly Trostinec in Belarus: Hall & Kostner (2006), p. 386.
[462] Mieczys!:aw Sygnarski, 'Kion opinias la junularo pri Esperanto?', Internacia Pedagogia Revuo 17 (1938), 1: 6-14 (quoting pp. 11, 13).
[463] ESTO, '29-a Universala Esperanto-Kongreso en Varsovio', Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 2.
[464]Georgo Verda (Izrael Lejzerowicz), 'La Jubilea', Literatura Mondo 7 (1937): 97-100 (quoting p. 99).
[465] Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 23, 88; 15 (1938/39): 78.
[466] Scienca Revuo 2 (1950): 27.
[467] 'Esperanta kaj portugala lingvoj', Revista Portuguesa de Esperanto 1 (1973), 5/6 (Nov./Dec.): 14.
[468] Esperanto 42 (1949): 48, 149.
[469] Heroldo de Esperanto 31 (1955) 15 (1221): 2.
[470] Revista Portuguesa de Esperanto 2 (1974): 101.
[471] Lingvo Internacia 10 (1905): 564; Francesc Poblet i Feijoo, Els inicis del movimentesperantista a Catalunya / La komenca esperanto-movado en Katalunio, Sabadell: Associacio Catalana d'Esperanto, 2004, pp. 26, 90.
[472] EdE, pp. 216-20. In the beginning, the principal force behind Esperanto in Catalonia was the writer Frederic Pujula i Valles, one of the leaders of the Catalan nationalist movement. Because of an article in an Esperanto magazine that was critical of Spanish soldiers he was obliged to flee to France at the end of1905, remaining there for several years: Lingvo Internacia 11 (1906): 150; EdE, pp. 217, 458-9. Beginning in 1911, almost every year the Catalan Esperantist Federation orga- nized literary competitions, the so-called International Floral Games, in which Esperanto authors from various countries competed: details in Francesc Poblet i Feijoo & Hector Alos i Font (ed.), Historia de Uesperanto als paisos catalans. Recull d'articles / Historio de esperanto en la kataluna land- aro. Artikolkolekto, Sabadell: Associacio Catalana d'Esperanto, 2010.
[473] EdE, pp. 219-20. The first edition of Kataluna Antologio, published in 1925, was one of the causes of the harassment.
[474] Between November 1936 and January 1939, 44 issues of this 'international information bulletin on the Spanish struggle against fascism' appeared.
[475] Also the anti-Stalinist (not Trotskyist) Workers' Party of the Marxist Unification (POUM) in Barcelona published an Esperanto bulletin in 1937, La Hispana Revolucio. On the polemics, see, among other sources, Popola Fronto 2 (1937), 22: 7; 3 (1938), 36: 3; Informa Bulteno 2 (1937), 7: 3; 8: 4; Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 35, 68-9.
[476]Franz Haiderer, 'La Internaciaj Brigadoj kaj la esperantistoj', Der Esperantist 10 (1974), 5/6 (67/68): 10-12.
[477] Haiderer, p. 11; La Socialisto 11 (1937), 1 (May): 5.
[478] Sur Posteno 4 (1937), 49 (Jan.): 5.
[479]See the article on Mangada by Jose Antonio del Barrio, Libera Folio: http://www.liberafolio. org/2012/vizagoj-julio-mangada-la-esperantista-donkihoto/?searchterm=mangada.
[480]Jung (1979), p. 195. The Esperantist was the lawyer Andres Pino Alegret, of Valencia, who was also a socialist member of parliament. The most detailed study of the subject to date is Jose Antonio del Barrio Unquera & Ulrich Lins, 'La dangera lingvo en la hispana civitana milito': http://www. liberafolio.org/2006/civitanamilito; also in Poblet i Feijoo & Alos i Font, pp. 67-80, 303-15.
[481] Esperanto 40 (1947): 114-15.
[482] Esperanto 42 (1949): 23.
[483] Franz Thierfelder, SprachpolitikundRundfunk, Berlin: v. Decker, 1941, pp. 38-9.
[484]According to Sennaciulo 12 (1935/36): 33.
[485] Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 82.
[486]According to Esperanto 35 (1939): 11.
[487] 'La plej stulta argumento', Esperanto Internacia 3 (1939): 321.
[488] Roma Fascista, 9 October 1941; quoted by Gianfranco Cardone, Il movimento esperantista cat- tolico in Italia. Storia dei rapporti fra stato e chiesa, doctoral dissertation, University of Turin 1973/74, p. 179. We should remember that the Nazi RSHA, in an internal communication in September 1941, noted that the Esperanto movement would have to disappear from all countries that underwent the German 'reorganization of Europe'.
[489]Theodor Koch commented for the Gestapo: 'Fascist Italy spreads the language of the world rule for which the Jews are striving!' Note of 7 April 1938, Bundesarchiv, R 58/384, fol. 136.
[490] Esperanto Internacia 5 (1941): 37. On this and other details see Minnaja (2007), pp. 87-90, 92.
[491] Ratkai (2010), p. 87.
[492] Pechan (1979), p. 96. Leading Esperantists also protested against the anti-Jewish law of 1938: Ratkai (2010), p. 94.
[493] Note for the Gestapo from Theodor Koch, 11 April 1940, Bundesarchiv, R 58/6221b, fol. 98.
[494] Pechan (1979), p. 108. Among them was the Jewish dentist Jozsef Takacs, for many years the secretary of HES, murdered in October 1944.
[495] Atanas D. Atanasov, 'Esperanto en dummilita Bulgarujo', Esperanto Internacia 9 (1945): 79.
[496] Nik. Nikolov, 'Esperanto—35 jarojn en Radio Sofia', Esperanto 63 (1970): 102 (interview with Kiril Drazhev).
[497] Such entanglement befell the Esperanto journal Tempo, published in Kyoto from 1934 to 1940. Tempo was basically liberal (several issues were banned), but as of 1937 it increasingly sought to justify the missionary declarations of Japanese expansion into Asia. See the reprint of the complete series, with afterwords by Nozima Yasutaro & Ulrich Lins, Nagoya: Eldona Societo de Nagoya Esperanto-Centro, 1982.
[498] Inoue Masuzo, 'Daitoa kensetsu to esuperanto' (The building of East Asia and Esperanto), La Revuo Orienta 23 (1942): 65-7 (esp. p. 66).
[499] Konkordo (Zagreb) 1 (1922), 1 (April): 1; cf. Givoje (1965), chap. 5.
[500]Givoje (1965), chap. 4; cf. EeP, p. 646.
[501]Zlatnar (1976), p. 12.
[502] See Josip Pleadin, 'Kritika analizo de la revuo La Suda Stelo\ in Haupenthal (2011), pp. 317-28.
[503]The texts of the lectures of Jakob Stefancic and Rudolf Rakusa appeared in La Suda Stelo 2 (1933): 101-2 and 115-16.
[504] Leo Kun, 'Post la beograda kongreso', La Suda Stelo 2 (1933): 77.
[505] Postcard from B.E.J. Zieck Jr., Scheveningen, 30 Sept. 1932, and postcard in reply from Robert Kreuz for ICK, 11 Oct. 1932 (in the UEA archive).
[506] H.J. (Hans Jakob), 'Esperantistaj problemoj. La neutraleco', Esperanto 29 (1933): 160-1 (quota- tions p. 161).
[507] Hans Jakob, 'Esperantismaj problemoj. I. Nia ideologio', Esperanto 39 (1946): 10.
[508] E.W. (Ernst Wichert), 'La germana vidpunkto pri la rasproblemo', Esperanto 30 (1934): 169. UEA's vice president was the German banker Anton Vogt, who as early as 1927 was a sympathizer of the Nazi party. Wilhelm Frick was the Nazi Minister for Internal Affairs. See Sikosek (2006),
p. 133.
[509]Lidja Zamenhof, 'Nia misio', Esperanto 30 (1934): 166-7; reprinted in Amouroux (2008), pp. 134-7.
[510] Letter from H. Dijkema (Rotterdam), 30 October 1933: La Dua Jarcento 1 (1995), 1: 5.
[511] Heroldo de Esperanto 18 (1937), 44 (951): 1; cf. Jung (1979), p. 262.
[512] H.J., 'Kalejdoskopo de l' esperantismo. La kontraujudismo', Esperanto 29 (1933): 74.
[513] In April 1947 the two organizations reunited, under the name UEA, but essentially with the organizational structure of IEL.
[514] Ivo Lapenna, 'La malneutrala "neutraleco" ', La Suda Stelo 6 (1937): 9-10.
[515] Ivo Lapenna, 'La dangero unuigas', La Suda Stelo 6 (1937): 25-6 (quotations p. 26).
[516] See the chapter on Lapenna in Lins (2008), pp. 75-112.
[517]Georgo Verda, 'La Jubilea', Literatura Mondo 7 (1937): 98. On this event a fascist radio station in Salamanca later reported: 'The Bolshevik congress of the Jewish language Esperanto, in Warsaw, heard a revolutionary telegram from the red government in Catalonia. The participants, Bolsheviks and Jews, applauded loudly.' See Popola Fronto 2 (1937), 22: 1.
[518] ESTO, '29-a Universala Esperanto-Kongreso en Varsovio', Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 2-3.
[519] Lins (2008), pp. 77-8.
[520] H.J., 'For la iluzion!', Esperanto 34 (1938): 69.
[521]'Milito kaj esperantismo', Esperanto 35 (1939): 30.
[522] La Suda Stelo 8 (1939): 62; see also Bude Borjan, 'Esperanto atakata—Esperanto batalanta', as above, pp. 61-2.
[523] Letter of Ivo Lapenna; quoted in Esperanto Internacia 8 (1944): 54-5.
[524] Of those Esperantists who escaped arrest, the majority joined the Movement of National Liberation and its partisan detachments. From the information available, it seems that 340 Esperantists from 90 locations in Yugoslavia fell in battle or were killed in prison or concentration camps; of these, 37 were later proclaimed 'people's heroes'. See Vokoun (1976), p. 7.
[525] For examples of rescue thanks to meetings with Esperantists, see American Esperanto Magazine 67 (1953): 83; Sennaciulo 25 (1954), 5: 3; Germana Esperanto-Revuo 8 (1955): 94; Paco 4 (1956), 34/35: 16; La Libera Esperantisto, 1961, no. 60, p. 7. The Austrian Karl Nell was freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp when a British Esperantist signed a guarantee on his behalf: ELNA Newsletter, 1986, July-August, p. 4.
[526]Vokoun (1976), pp. 76-9; see also Francisko Haiderer, 'Esperanto en la koncentrejo', Austria Esperanto-Revuo 30 (1975), 10/12: 11-12.
[527] Janusz Sulzycki, 'Intervjuo kun numero "P 23407"', Paco, 1979, GDR edition, pp. 12-15.
[528] Personal communication from Felix Epstein, 5 April 1966.
[529]Ludoviko Kokeny, 'ElekTolnai', Hungara Esperantisto 10 (1970), 5: 5.
[530] Letter of Mrs. Ethel Prent, Israela Esperantisto, 1986, 92 (Feb.): 8-9.
[531] Jokubas Skliutauskas, 'Ne nur esperantisto', Litova Stelo 10 (2000), 3: 4-5. Poska is recognized as one of the 'Righteous Among the Nations' honored in the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem.
[532]The Fischers are the parents of the former Federal President ofAustria (in office from 2004 to 2016): see Elisabeth Horvath, Heinz Fischer. Die Biografie, Vienna: K & S, 2009, pp. 19, 25.
[533]Among them are also the well-known German Catholic priest and pacifist Max Josef Metzger. Condemned to death for 'defeatism', he was beheaded in Berlin on 17 April 1944.
[534] About a year and a half later (10 December 1948) the UN General Assembly in Paris accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[535] Stites (1989), p. 135.
[536] Esperantista Laboristo 1 (1920), 2 (March): 4. The name of the owner was Lopatin.
[537] Esperanto 16 (1920): 32.Accordingtothissource, information onthesubjectappearedin Izvestiia on 16—17 January 1919.
[538]The poster was reproduced in Esperanto 63 (1970): 111.
[539] For a living description of how in 1920 a young Red Army member was recruited for Esperanto, see S.N. Podkaminer, 'Oktobra Revolucio kaj rusia esperantista movado', DerEsperantist 14 (1978),
3 (89): 4.
[540] Pseudonym of A.A. Malinovsky. Published in Esperanto was: A. Bogdanov, Ruga stelo. Fantazia romano, trans. N. Nekrasov & S. Rublev, Leipzig: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 1929.
[541] P.M. Kerzhentsev, 'Mezhdunarodnaia revoliutsiia i proletarskaia kul'tura', Proletarskaia kul'tura, 1919, no. 6; German translation in Richard Lorenz (ed.), Proletarische Kulturrevolution in Sowjetrussland (1917-1921). Dokumente des Proletkult', Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1969, pp. 72-7 (esp. p. 76).
[542]A. Bogdanov, Oproletarskoi kul'ture, Leningrad & Moscow: Kniga, 1924, p. 329. Earlier he had a fairly favorable opinion of Esperanto: see his preface to an article, 'De la filozofio al la organiza scienco', specially written for Sennacieca Revuo. Literatur-scienca aldono 1/3 (1923/24): 83-4. On the context, see Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy, Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1988, p. 147; Smith (1998), pp. 77-8.
[543] Esperantista Movado, 1920, no. 2 (9): 11.
[544] EdE, p. 590.
[545] Edmond Privat, 'Venkoj de Esperanto', Esperanto 16 (1920): 91; E. Adam, 'Le Bolchevisme et l'Esperanto. La langue de Zamenhof officiellement adoptee par le Gouvernement des Soviets', Le TravailleurEsperantiste, 3rd series, 1 (1920), 3 (Apr.): 1.
[546] Letter to E. Adam, 20 April 1920, in Esperantista Laboristo 1 (1920), 4 (May): 2.
[547]The Second Congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Yugoslavia, referring specifically to the 'decision' taken by Soviet Russia, accepted a highly supportive resolution in June 1920: Givoje (1965), chap. 4. The founding congress of the French Communist Party, in Paris in May 1920, accepted an expression of support for more teaching of Esperanto, 'a remarkable aid for achieving concord among the peoples and preventing war': Esperantista Laboristo 2 (1921), 6 (17): 10.
[548] Lunacharsky nevertheless declared that the Soviet government allowed the elective learning of Esperanto on an equal basis with the French, German and English languages—according to the testimony of M.S. Valentinov, member of the SEU Central Committee, in Sennacieca Revuo 3 (1921/22), 5 (24): 9.
[549]H.K., 'Kial Esperanto en Rusio malvenkas', Sennacieca Revuo 3 (1921/22), 10: 7. The founders of ESKI were Mikhail Okhitovich (later to become a well-known figure in urban planning) and Drezen, subsequently remembered, against his will, for his role. Apparently their idea was to con- centrate in ESKI the entire Esperanto movement in Soviet Russia: Esperantista Laboristo 2 (1921), 4/5 (15/16): 8; see also E. Drezen, 'En batalo por SEU', in Drezen (1992) , pp. 151-62, esp. pp. 158-9; EdE, p. 123; Solzbacher (1957), pp. 43-4; Fayet (2008), pp. 10, 13.
[550] Esperantista Movado, 1920, no. 2 (9): 10, 15. See also Tono del Barrio, 'Anarhiisto proponis Esperanton al la Komunista Internacio', Sennaciulo 80 (2009), 5/6: 20-2.
[551] The Executive Committee announced the creation of the commission on12 January 1921: Fayet (2008), p. 11.
[552] Esperantista Laboristo 2 (1921), 7/8 (18/19): 12-13; Sennacieca Revuo 3 (1921/22), 1 (20): 12; Jorg Mager 'Die Esperantobewegung in Russland', Der Arbeiter-Esperantist 7 (1921), 10: 49. The draft resolution was initiated by the Swiss Hans Itschner, at the time a member of the Comintern Executive Committee. Among the signers were the Frenchman Boris Souvarine, Jules Humbert- Droz of Switzerland, and Willi Munzenberg of Germany.
[553] Protokoll des III. Kongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale.Moskau, 22. Juni bis 12. Juli 1921, Hamburg: Verlag der Kommunistischen Internationale, 1921 (reprinted Erlangen: Karl- Liebknecht-Verlag, 1973), p. 1057.
[554] Pogany in 1919 was People's Commissar of the Hungarian Republic of Councils. He was a victim of the Great Purge.
[555] The commission declared that first the communist parties should take a position on the question of an auxiliary language: Fayet (2008), p. 12.
[556]Among others, in UHumanite, 28 March 1922; according to Sennacieca Revuo 4 (1922/23), 7/8 (37/38): 23.
[557]E.L., 'Stranga informo', Sennacieca Revuo 3 (1921/22), 10: 8.
[558] 2 Letero de Sovjetlanda Unuigo Esperantista al E. Lanty', 24 June 1922, in Sennacieca Revuo 3 (1921/22), 11/12 (30/31): 18.
[559] E.L., 'Finitala komedio...', SennacieecaRevuo4 (1922/23), 1 (32): 9-10; Lanti (1982),pp. 14-15.
[560] Sennacieca Revuo 4(1922/23), 11/12: 14. In 1924therewashope,foratime, thattheComintern would interest itself in the world language question. Its secretary Bela Kun requested a report on the workers' Esperanto movement. Commissioned by the Communist Fraction of SAT, Lanti wrote this report in French and sent it to Moscow: E.L., 'Publika letero al kompartiaj SAT-anoj', Sennaciulo 8 (1931/32): 138. It seems that the Comintern also inquired into the situation of the Esperanto movement in various countries through their communist parties: letter of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to R. Burda, 22 March 1926, in Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 29 (81): 7. Nothing is known of the result. (The report for the Comintern later appeared as a brochure: E. Lanty, La langue internationale. Ce que tout militant ouvrier doit connaitre de la question, Paris: Federation ouvriere esperantiste, 1925.)
[561] Fayet (2008), p. 14.
[562] Compare the discussion between Lanti and a Russian Communist: Lanti (1982), pp. 48-56.
[563] N. Futerfas, 'Esperanto en Rusio', La Nova Epoko, 1922, no. 1 (June): col. 22.
[564] In Russian: Soiuz Esperantistov Sovetskikh Stran. From 1927 the name was: Sovetrespublikara Esperantista Unio (Soiuz Esperantistov Sovetskikh Respublik: Esperantist Union of the Soviet Republics). Among the founders was the Hungarian army officer Tivadar Schwartz, father of the financier George Soros.
[565] E. Drezen, 'Al la sovetlanda esperantistaro', Esperanta Informilo (Monthlyjournal ofthe Petrograd Esperantist Society), 1921, 2/6 (June/Oct.): 6. A report from a Chinese student in Moscow at the time describes arrests and the temporary closing of Esperanto groups because 'many long-time Esperantists' resisted the effort 'to unite Esperantism and communism' and expressed their opposi- tion to Bolshevism even in letters abroad: Bao Pu, 'La movado de Esperanto en Rusujo', La Verda Lumo 3 (1923/24): 4-6 (quotations p. 5). In addition, see A. Sidorov, 'Amiko de Zamenhof. Devjatnin—esperantisto el Vilno', Litova Stelo 18 (2008), 3: 19-21.
[566]The two collections of principles appeared in Esperanta Informilo, 1921, 2/6 (June/Oct.): 3-6.
[567] Letter from Roman Sakowicz to Hans Jakob, 2 July 1957 (in the UEA archive).
[568] Lanti (1940), p. 179; Borsboom (1976), pp. 11-12, 14. The most sustained contact was with the French writer and philosopher Han Ryner, whose work La veraj interparoladoj de Sokrato (Beauville: SAT-Bro^urservo, 1999) Lanti himself translated into Esperanto.
[569] 'Declaration', Le Travailleur Esperantiste, 2nd series, 1 (1919), 1 (Aug.): 1.
[570]Aseto, 'Diskutejo. Cu internacia au sennacieca organizajo?', Esperantista Laboristo 1 (1920), 3 (Apr.): 2.
[571] Sennaciulo (=Lanti), 'Liberiga Stelo al la Verdruguloj', Esperantista Laboristo 1 (1920), 10 (Nov.): 2.
[572] E. Lanti, Forla neutralismon!, new edn., Paris: Eldona Fako Kooperativa de SAT, 2007, p. 14.
[573]Lanti, Forla neŭtralismon!, pp. 12-13.
[574] Letter of greeting from Henri Barbusse to the founding congress of SAT in Prague; see Esperantista Laboristo 2 (1921), 7/8 (18/19): 1. Earlier Barbusse had called Esperanto 'the ABC of the International': 'Al la internaciistoj', Esperantista Laboristo 2 (1921), 2 (13): 3. Barbusse's sympathy for Esperanto became known principally through his foreword to the textbook Cours rationnel et complet dEsperanto (Paris: Federation esperantiste revolutionnaire, 1921).
[575] Cf. E. Adam, 'Mortis nobla internaciisto' [on Hodler], Esperantista Laboristo 1 (1920), 4 (May): 1-2.
[576] Lanti, For la neutralismon!, p. 24.
[577] See the essentially programmatic article by L. Revo (Lucien Laurat), 'Mondlingvo kaj klasbatalo', Sennacieca Revuo 3 (1921/22), 1 (20): 1-2.
[578]See 'Lettre de Henri Barbusse', Le Travailleur Esperantiste, 2nd series, 1 (1919), 2 (Sept.): 1; 'Intelektula Internacio', Esperantista Laboristo 1 (1920), 1 (Feb.): 5.Thejournal Clarte publishedan extended discussion of projects for an international language in 1920: Nicole Racine, 'The Clarte movement in France, 1919-21', Journal of Contemporary History 2 (1967), 2: 195-208 (esp. p. 203).
[579] Because of conflict between the idealistic leftists and the controlling Comintern party members towards the end of 1921, the 'Clarte' movement nevertheless lost its original character as an inde- pendent intellectual international.
[580]' La 1-a Internacia Kongreso de la Revolucia Esperantistaro' (minutes), Sennacieca Revuo 3
(1921/22), 1 (20): 2.
[581] 'La 1-a Internacia Kongreso...', p. 4.
[582]Letter from Romain Rolland to E. Lanty, 9 Sept. 1922, trans. Sennacieca Revuo 4 (1922/23), 1: 15. For Lanti's reply see 'Publika letero al Romain Rolland', Sennacieca Revuo 4 (1922/23), 2: 13-14; reprinted in Lanti (1931), pp. 52-6.
[583]See the discussion on Article 2 in Kongresa dokumentaro. IVa Kongreso, Bruxelles, 14. gis 18. a^gusto 1924, Leipzig: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 1924, pp. 17-21. The new formula was: 'only a person who approves its Constitution and declares himself fully ready to serve the interests of the Association may be a member of SAT'.
[584] Lanti (1982), pp. 17-19.
[585] Central Committee of.the Soviet Esperantist Union, Nia pozicio. Deklaracia letero al duj revolu- ciaj esperantistaj organizajoj, Moscow, March 1923 (four printed sheets); cf. Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 79.
[586] In 1932, after the break with SAT, the SEU Central Committee declared that its 1923 document Nia pozicio, defining the relations with SAT, 'from a historical perspective proved entirely accurate and was correct': Bulteno de Centra Komitato de Sovetrespublikara Esperantista Unio 11 (1932): 14.
[587]The letters in question, from SEU to UEA, were printed in Esperanto 19 (1923): 141-2. Commenting on the decision, UEA protested, distinctly un-neutrally, at the 'Bolshevik violence', conveying 'the expression of its warm sympathy to the oppressed Russian fellow-Esperantists'. See Sikosek (2006), p. 174.
[588] In this congress Lanti met Ellen Kate Limouzin, who was George Orwell's aunt. He subsequently lived with her in Paris for several years.
[589]'IIIa Kongreso de Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, Cassel, 11a- 15a augusto 1923' (minutes), Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 1 (43): 11.
[590] On this conflict see Lins (1987), pp. 35-52.
[591] On their relations, see Lins (1996). On Lanti's visit to the editorial office: Lanti (1982), p. 16.
[592] A. Levandovskij, 'Skizo pri la anarkista movado en Rusio dum la Revolucio (1917-1923)', Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 9 (50): 9-10; 10(51): 7-8. In this context we should mention that the anarchist Esperantist Qin Baopu, who studied in Moscow, after his return to China publicly cast doubt on the internationalist character of Soviet Russia and, in support of that judgment, explained that, contrary to widespread opinion, the regime was completely opposed to Esperanto: Gotelind Muller, China, Kropotkin und der Anarchismus. Eine Kulturbewegung im China des fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts unter dem Einfluss des Westens und japanischer Vorbilder, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001, p. 483. Qin Baopu in 1924 published a Chinese-language book with the Esperanto subtitle Malsukceso de rusa revolucio (Failure of the Russian Revolution): Muller, p. 509.
[593] E. Drezen & Lucien Revo, 'Pri iu "kompletigo"', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 49: 4.
[594] 'Protokolo de la Va SAT-Kongreso en Wien', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 49: 4-5; cf. the letter from Lanti to Martin Muribo, 27 January 1925, in Lanti (1940), p. 61. The social democrat Franz Jonas also pointed out that the Russian SAT members were 'more active than us': 'Protokolo [.] Wien',
Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 51: 3.
[595]'Raporto pri agado de CK SEU dum 1923-1925 jj.', Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 98. Because Drezen could allow himself to seek compromise in the relations with SAT only on the basis of complete homogeneity in SEU, he continued to attack the anarchist Esperantists in the Soviet Union, describing them as 'much more detrimental and even dangerous for our movement than the remaining representatives of "neutral Esperantism"': E. Drezen, 'La vojoj de la movado mon- dlingva en Sovetlando', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1926, 15 (41): 2-4 (quotation p. 4).
[596] Lanti (1982), p. 15.
[597] Lanti (1982), p. 20.
[598] Declaration of 27 February 1925: Sovetskiiesperantist, 1925: 55; trans. in Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25)5 26: 7.
[599] Declaration of 28 July 1925: Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1925, no. 1 (27), p. 2; trans. in Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 1 (53): 8. The declaration gave a particularly supportive assessment of the usefulness of Esperanto for the proletariat. Boguslavsky was expelled from the Party in 1927 and shot to death
in 1937.
[600] Greetings to the Soviet Esperantists, 12 May 1925, and letter to the Esperanto group in Dolynska: Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 87-9; trans. in Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 38: 6.
[601]In the essay A vse-taki ona vertitsia (And yet it moves), 1922; cited in Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 55, trans. in Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 26: 7.
[602] Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 136, 137, 139. Regarding Izvestiia it was stated that it had recently published notes on Esperanto; regarding Pravda—that it 'still continues to relate to Esperanto insufficiently favorably' (p. 139).
[603] E. Drezen, 'Apliku Esperanton!', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 17: 6.
[604] J.A. Lwunin (Iu. A. L'vunin), 'Zum Briefwechsel zwischen sowjetischen und deutschen Arbeitern und Arbeiterkorrespondenten 1924-1929', Beitragezur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 19 (1977): 1013.
[605] Drezen, 'Apliku Esperanton!', p. 6.
[606] 'Raporto pri agado de CK SEU dum 1923-1925 jj.', Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 98.
[607] 'Internacia laborista korespondado' (report by Vladimir Varankin), Protokolo de la Vl-a Kongreso de Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, Leningrado, 6-10 augusto 1926, supplementary issue of Sennaciulo, November 1926, pp. 17-18. This report indicated that in Smolensk the work was performed by 18 small circles of worker correspondents, of whom 95% wrote directly in Esperanto.
[608] Gr. L'vovich, 'Smolenskii "narkomindel"' (The Smolensk people's commissariat on external affairs), TzvestiiaTslK, 1June 1926;reprintedin Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1926, 17(43): 15. Seealso Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 38 (90): 6.
[609] Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 33; cited in Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 26: 7.
[610] P. Kiriushin, 'Cherez Belorussiiu pri pomoshchi esperanto' (Across Belarus using Esperanto), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1925, 1 (27): 7-8, onArthur Whitham.
[611] R. Nikolskij, 'Unu vespero kaj giaj rezultoj', Mezhdunarodny iazyk, 1925,2 (28): 9,on the Czech Anna Bouda.
[612] W Bennewitz, 'Kun la germana delegacio laborista al Sovetlando', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 52: 1, and several following issues; W. Bennewitz, 'Cu Esperanto estas utila por laboristaro tutmonda?', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1925, 5 (31): 1-3 (also in Russian). The delegation, which included Willy Bennewitz, was the first of its kind organized by the Communist Party of Germany. See Was sahen 58 deutsche Arbeiter in Russland?, Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1925.
[613] John Nilsson, 'Impresoj el Sovet-Unio', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 48: 4.
[614] 'Kelkaj rezultoj de laboristaj ekskursoj al Sovet-Unio', Sennaciulo 1 (1924/25), 52:4; Kiriushin (1930), pp. 10-12. See also N.V Nekrasov, comp. Tra U.S.S.R. per Esperanto. Malgranda helplibreto por alilanda esperantisto, Moscow & Kazan: La Nova Epoko, 1926.
[615]Paulo Robi^ek, 'Pri lalaboro inter politikaj elmigrintoj', Sovetskii esperantist, 1925: 39. Robicsek, who, like Michalicska, was at the time a member of the SEU Central Committee, was in 1919 deputy people's commissar for postal services in the Hungarian Republic of Councils.
[616] Stefan Michalicska, 'Kiel mi lernis Esperanton', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1926, 7 (33): 3-4 (also in Russian). Michalicska learned Esperanto in prison in Hungary.
[617]Borbala Szeremi-Toth, 'Perloj el la historio de Esperanto', Hungara Vivo 3 (1963), 1: 10-12. Szatmari (1878-1964) is not the same person as the Hungarian Esperanto author Sandor Szathmari.
[618]Guiheneuf (pseudonym: Yvon or Ivon) worked, among other things, as head administrator of a forest in Khabarovsk. In 1934, having lost his enthusiasm for the Soviet Union he was able to leave the country with his Russian wife and child. Borsboom (1976), pp. 29, 136; J.-L. Panne, 'M. Yvon', in Jean Maitron & Claude Pennetier (ed.), Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier fran- gais, Paris: Ed. Ouvrieres, 1993, vol. 43, pp. 403-5; Guiheneuf (2004).
[619] E. Drezen, 'Pri la rezultoj de la V. Kongreso de SAT', Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 1 (53): 1.
[620] Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 46 (98/99): 4.
[621] Protokolo de la Vl-a Kongreso de Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, Leningrado, 6-10 augusto 1926, special issue of Sennaciulo, November 1926, p. 13.
[622]N. Barthelmess, 'Ce la laboruloj. Impresoj pri kongresvojago', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 104: 5.
[623] Protokolo de la Vl-a Kongreso, p. 49.
[624] L. Revo, 'Al la proletaj verkistoj esperantistaj!', Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 101: 7.
[625] Protokolo de la Vl-a Kongreso, pp. 51-2.
[626] Protokolo de la Vl-a Kongreso, p. 52. Lanti did not attend the congress.
[627] Historio de S.A.T. 1921-1952, Paris: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 1953. p. 40.
[628] Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1926, 13 (39): 7.
[629] Of these, 3400 were personally registered with the SEU Central Committee and regularly received the journal.
[630] 'Pli da atento kaj seriozeco', Biulleten TsKSESR 5 (1926/27): 69-71 (quotation p. 69).
[631] 'Alilanda delegitaro esperantista en Sovetio', Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 113-14. SEU's guests were four communists, four social democrats, and three non-affiliated persons.
[632]'Esperanto ^e la Mondkongreso de l' Amikoj de Sovetio', Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28), 116.
[633]These impressions were generally favorable: 'Per propraj okuloj', Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 118. In his report, however, the French communist Georges Salan also openly described the negative aspects of Soviet life: 'Impresoj pri Sovetio de okulvidinto, orelaudinto, fingrotusinto', Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 135. The report of the Swedish journalist, Einar Adamson, Sub la ruga standardo. Impresoj kaj travivajoj en Sovetio, Goteborg: Sveda Esperanto-Oficejo, 1928, was enthusiastic. The most detailed impressions were described by the well-known Japanese playwright, Akita Ujaku: Wakaki Soveto Roshiya (Young Soviet Russia, Tokyo: Sobunkaku, 1929). This book received consid- erable attention from Japanese intellectuals: see also Ozaki Koji (ed.), Akita Ujaku nikki (Diary of Akita Ujaku), Tokyo: Miraisha, 1965, vol. 2, pp. 36-58. A similar or even greater effect among Chinese intellectuals was later generated by Hu Yuzhi's book, Mosike yinxiang ji (Impressions of Moscow), Shanghai: Xin shengming shuju, 1931, based on a week's stay among Soviet Esperantists; see Sau Bin, 'Hujucz kaj Esperanto', El Popola Cinio, 1986, 3: 7, 9.
[634] Lev Kopelev, writer, literary critic and translator from German, was condemned in 1945 to ten years in a concentration camp for 'compassion towards the enemy'. In January 1981, because of his declarations of sympathy with Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents, while visiting the Federal Republic of Germany he was stripped of his citizenship.
[635] Kopelev (1980), pp. 98-9. For similar memoirs, see Konstantin Paustovsky, The Story ofa Life, trans. Joseph Barnes, New York: Pantheon Books, 1964, p. 170; and L. G. Fisb ejn, 'Kamarado
Esperanto', Nuntempa Bulgario, 1966, 4: v. The recollections of a Bulgarian villager about such correspondence make an interesting comparison: Trifon Hristovski, Mia vivo, trans. Nikola Aleksiev, Sofia: Sofia Pres, 1981, pp. 117-18.
[636] The (unfinished) novel, probablywritten in the mid-1930s, was published only in 1991. English translation: Platonov (2012), esp. pp. 11-14.
[637] See for example the articles of Kiriushin and Nikolsky in Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 5 (1926/27): 15-20, 25-26, 254-6.
[638]P. Kirjusin, 'Kion ni atendas de niaj korespondantoj?', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 109: 6.
[639] Mark Starr, 'Pri edukado en Sovetio', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 145: 3.
[640]'"Barbarajoj en Sovet-Siberio"', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 111: 4-5. The original appeared in Mŭnchner Zeitung, 22 Oct. 1926. Members of the Esperanto course in the Tver cavalry school reacted by expressing their indignation at the selective nature of the article but did not deny the facts themselves. They listed steps taken by the Soviet government to counter the negative behaviors
described: Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 15: 3.
[641]I. Avrunin, 'Dangero', Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 38 (90): 6; V. Varankin, 'Pri internacia laborista korespondado', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 104: 6.
[642] 'Konsiloj al la gazetservantoj', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 121/122: 9.
[643] Sennaciulo 2 (1925/26), 100: 7. The editors described as 'extremely important' the desire that 'the letters not relate to general political analysis of the domestic situation' within the country in question.
[644]V Kolcinski, 'La SAT-aparato servu', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 119/120: 9. The article provides a translation of a letter to the editors of Komunarka Ukrainy (organ of the Central Department of Women Workers and Villagers in the Communist Party of Ukraine).
[645]I. Lisichnik, 'Zavoevyvaem massy' (We mobilize the masses), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928),
74-7.
[646]'696 korrespondentsii iz 23 stran' (696 items of correspondence from 23 countries), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928): pp. 145-6.
[647] M. Krjukov, 'Esperanta movado en Irkutsk', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 106-7.
[648] 'Rezolucio pri internacia korespondado' (by the Fourth SEU Congress), Bulteno de CK SEU 6 (1927/28): 101-2.
[649] N. Incertov, 'Al novaj venkoj', Bulteno de CKSEU6 (1927/28): 74-5.
[650]V. Sokolov & V Zyrianov, 'God raboty Kurganskogo "Narkomindela" ' (A year of work by Kurgana Narkomindel [People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs]), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928): 17-19.
[651] P. Kiriushin, 'Ot "printsipial'nogo nesoglasiia"'—k polnoi pobede' (From 'disagreement in prin- ciple—to full victory), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR6 (1928): 19-20.
[652] Baranov, 'Vot poprobuite perelomit' upriamstvo redaktsii' (Let us try to break down editorial obstinacy), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR6 (1928): 141-2.
[653] Lisicin, 'Batalo', pp. 400-1; Kiriushin (1930), p. 24.
[654] Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928): 175-6; cf. Lwunin, p. 1020.
[655]G. Demidjuk, 'Jes, de malsupre kaj per praktikado', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 245. See also G. Dem., 'Pod natiskom molodniaka' (Under attack by our children), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928): 165-71; 'Komsomol i esperanto', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk! (1929): 53-4, 56.
[656]Demidjuk, 'Jes, de malsupre', p. 245. This is how Kaplan, representative of the Komsomol Central Committee, expressed the matter in a conference of young communist Esperantists in Moscow in February 1929.
[657] Bulteno de CK SEU, 1929: 123. The Bulletin also states (p. 116) that editorial staff who at first preferred to organize correspondence in national languages had to acknowledge that they received more useful material from abroad by means of Esperanto.
[658] Dneprano, 'La junkomunistaro de Ukrainio lernos kaj aplikos Esperanton', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 545; 'Esperanto v otsenke Komsomola Ukrainy' (Esperanto as assessed by the Ukraine Komsomol), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 7 (1929): 278-80. See also V. Kolchinsky, 'Esperanto v internatsional'noi rabote Komsomola Ukrainy' (Esperanto in the international work of the Komsomol of Ukraine, Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 39-43.
[659] Iu. Larin, 'Boevye voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia' (Battle tasks for popular education), Revoliutsiia i kul'tura 3 (1929), 14 (July): 10-16, quoted from pp. 14-15; cf. Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 7 (1929): 283, and Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 10-11. Larin protested in Pravda, 20 May 1926, against anti-Jewish discrimination. In 1929 he published a book on Jews and anti-Semitism in the USSR. His niece Anna married Nikolai Bukharin. See also Zvi Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 436.
[660]E.J. Dillon, Russia Today andYesterday, London &Toronto: Dent, 1929, pp. 185-6.
[661] Letter to Raymond Laval, 2 December 1935, in Lanti (1940), p. 116.
[662]R. Skribemulo (Roman Nikol'skii), 'Neobdumannye pis'ma' (Thoughtless letters), Izvestiia
Ts.K. SESS 5 (1926/27): 22-5.
[663] Kir-in, 'Vsegda pod obstrelom' (Always under fire), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESS 5 (1926/27): 27-8.
[664] R. Nikol'skii, 'Zhertvy nashei neostorozhnosti' (Victims of heedlessness), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 5 (1926/27): 102-3. The article warns SEU members to be on their guard in corresponding with Esperantists in these countries.
[665] G. Demidjuk, 'Ankau letero el Sovetio', Sennaciulo 3 (1926/27), 133/134: 6.
[666] Letter from Andrei Sidorov, December 1927, in Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 129.
[667] R. Nikol'skii, 'Vezdesushchie "agenty Kominterna" ' (Ever-present 'agents of the Komintern'), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928): 152-4. Quoting from the letter, Nikolsky contrasted Weber, whose 'nai*ve worker's head' he called 'foggy', with the judgment of a foreign Esperantist visiting the Soviet Union; according to the latter, 'the very air in the country of the Soviets is filled with freedom and with the joy that comes from creative work; in a smoky district of a Soviet city it is easier to breathe than in any seaside resort in any capitalist country'. Nikolsky named the assertion of the existence of a state Esperanto office 'a senseless offence to all Soviet Esperantists'.
[668] Letter to the secretariat of the SEU Central Committee, 25 July 1928, Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 400. The letter was signed by Drezen, Iodko, Nekrasov, Demidiuk, Nikolsky and Varankin. In reaction to the assertion about a state censorship office, it concluded with the following emotional declaration: 'Esperantists of the Soviet Union, members of SAT and of SEU, write to their class brothers abroad only truth, as dictated to them by their class honor, their worker's heart.'
[669] ^Korespondado pri politika vivo de Sovet-unio. Cirkulera letero de CK SEU al ci uj SEU- organizajoj', Bulteno de CKSEU 6 (1927/28): 70.
[670] Tri kolektiva korespondado. Cirkulera letero de C.K. al ciuj SEU-organizajoj', Bulteno de CK SEU 6 (1927/28): 34.
[671] R. Nikolskij, 'Nuntempaj stato kaj taskoj de internacia korespondado. Tezoj por la IV-a kon- greso de SEU', Bulteno de CKSEU 6 (1927/28): 67-8 (quotation p. 67).
[672] Statistics on the 135 delegates to the Third SEU Congress in August 1926 show the following professional representation: 36 clerical workers, 7 railway workers, 25 office workers, 12 medical personnel, 4 unskilled workers, 5 workers on the land, 2 nutritionists, 4 postal workers, 3 journal- ists, 1 scientist, 1 hairdresser, 1 leatherworker, 7 soldiers, 1 carpenter, 7 technicians and 19 others: Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk, 1926, 23 (49): 9.
[673] M.I. Ul'ianova, 'Inostrannye iazyki ili esperanto?' (Foreign languages or Esperanto?), Raboche- krest'ianskii korrespondent, 1928, 21 (15 Nov.); extracts translated in Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 134.
[674] Citedin Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 134 (extracts from an article by V. Fin). The contextis explained by Moret (2007), 47-59.
[675] Bulteno de CKSEU, 1929: 9, 20, 33.
[676] D. Itskhok, 'Za ili protiv esperanto?' (For or against Esperanto?), Raboche-krest'ianskii korrespon- dent, 1929, 7/8 (Apr.); extracts translated in Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 353; I. El'vin, 'Protiv khaltury i bezgramotnosti v mezhdunarodnoi sviazi' (Against errors and illiteracy in international connec- tions), Raboche-krest'ianskii korrespondent, 1929, 15 (Aug.), reprinted in Mezhdunarodnyj iazyk 7 (1929): 253-5. See also Bulteno de CKSEU9 (1929/30): 98.
[677] P. Tilin, 'Filatelismo, bagatelismo kaj lab. esp. propagando', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 412.
[678] P. Kiriushin, 'Kto nam pishet iz-za granitsy?' (Who is writing to us from abroad?), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 7 (1929): 82-3.
[679] I. Lisichnik, 'Nashi zarubezhnye korrespondenty' (Our foreign correspondents), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 7 (1929): 84-8; P. Kiriushin, 'Moi zagranichnye "sobkory"' (My foreign 'own correspon- dents'), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk7 (1929): 149-51.
[680]Ida Lisicnik, 'Aktualaproblemo', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 154.
[681]N.B., 'Internacia interligo', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 191.
[682] P. Kiriushin, 'Ocherednye zadachi esperkorovskogo dvizheniia' (The current tasks of the Esperanto-correspondence movement), Mezhdunarodnyiiazyk! (1929): 326-7 (quotationp. 326).
[683] E. Drezen, 'Nuntempa soci-politika situacio kaj la taskoj de SEU. Tezoj por IV-a Kongreso de SEU', Bulteno de CKSEU6 (1927/28): 50. The congress took place in Moscow at the end of July 1928.
[684] 'Al ciuj SEU-organizajoj', Biulleten TsKSESR6 (1927/28): 1-2.
[685] Bulteno de CKSEU 6 (1927/28): 63.
[686] N. Shumarin, 'Kuda idet Ivanovo-Voznesensk?' (Whither Ivanovo-Voznesensk?), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR 6 (1928): 276-280. The article noted that a few groups in the province of Ivanovo- Voznesensk 'are engaging in frivolous international correspondence simply to exchange illustrated postcards and stamps'.
164 At the end of December 1929 Stalin ordered the liquidation of the entire 'class of kulaks'.
[688] J.V. Stalin, 'Joint Plenum of the Central Committee [...]', Works, vol. 10, Moscow: Progress, 1954, p. 53.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 205
U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4_6
[689] Reprinted in part in Lanti (1931).
[690]This was Lanti's explanation: Protokolaro de la VHI-a Kongreso en Goteborg (Svedio), 14.—18. augusto 1928, Leipzig: SAT, 1928, p. 24.
[691] Protokolaro Gdteborg, p.25.
[692] Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 293; Protokolaro Goteborg, p. 38.
[693]Lanti (1928), p. 3. (English translation: Thje Workers' Esperanto Movement, London: N.C.L.C. Publishing Society, 1930.)
[694] For a somewhat more up-to-date overview, see Petro Levi, 'Pri konkreta tiel nomata internaciismo de SAT', Sennacieca Revuo, 1997/98, 125/126: 23-30.
[695] sAn early attempt at a theoretical definition of sennaciismo was given by Nekrasov at the Third Congress in Kassel in 1923. Quoting Marx, Kautsky, Lenin and Stalin to show the natural struggle of socialists for the assimilation of nations and cultures, he made it clear that SAT, in the field of culture and with special emphasis on the battle against nationalism, should complement the gen- eral struggle of revolutionaries for a classless society by fighting for a nationless world order: 'Elementoj de sennaciismo', Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 1 (43): 8—9; see also his 'Sennaciismo ... burga?', Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), 11/12 (52/53): 14. In 1924SATpublishedabrochure that made the same argument, namely that sennaciismo accords completely with the expectations of Kautsky and Lenin concerning the assimilation of nations following the triumph of socialism: V Elsudo (Viktor Kolchinsky), A.B.C. desennaciismo, 2nd edn., 1926, reprinted in Mickle (2013), pp. 11-58.
[696]See for example V. Vozdvijenskij, 'Interlanda Esperanto-korespondo kiel edukilo al sennaciismo', Sennaciulo 4 (1927/28): 71, 78.
[697]Kopelev (1980), p. 98.
[698]Kopelev(1980), p. 121.
[699] Lanti ( 1928 ), p. 30.
[700]N. Nekrasov, 'Sennacieca kulturo kaj internacia politiko', in Ejdelman & Nekrasov (1930) , pp. 37-46 (quotations pp. 38-9).
[701] 'Protokolaro de la 9-a SAT-Kongreso, 4.-10. augusto 1929 en Leipzig', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 481-498 (quotation p. 491).
[702] 'Protokolaro', p. 495.
[703]'Protokolaro', p. 497.
[704]E.L., 'Postkongresaj pripensoj', Sennaciulo 5 (1928/29): 469. Several years later, in October 1936, Lanti recounted (in a letter to his Paris comrades) that after the surprising concession of Drezen in Leipzig, Demidiuk confessed to him: 'Look, we must contest your political line, but we don't have to do so too bitterly, since at the bottom of our hearts we are Esperantists first'. Lanti added his impression that the same was true of Drezen: Lanti (1940), p. 129.
[705]Franz Jonas, 'Cirkau la Naua SAT-Kongreso', La Socialisto 4 (1929): 76. During the congress SAT's Social Democratic Interest Group was re-established, with Jonas as secretary: see p. 98 of this issue.
[706]'Pri instruoj de la IX-a SAT-kongreso', Kunligilo 1 (1929/30), 1 (29 Nov.): 3; cf. E. Lanti, 'Principoj de unueco', Sennaciulo 11 (1934/35): 25. No author was indicated; according to Lanti,
Drezen wrote the article.
[707] In Demidiuk's (translated) words, 'The massive efforts of the Soviet Union to complete its five- year plan of construction, for its economic emancipation from the capitalist states—has caused a plot to be laid outside the country to hamper the sale of Soviet goods abroad (for example Soviet matches in Germany).'
[708] '"Voĉoj el Sovetio', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 490-2.
[709] Protokolaro de la Xa Kongreso en Londono, 3—7. augusto 1930, Paris: SAT, 1930, p. 23.
[710] Protokolaro, pp. 29—32; see also pp. 53—4.
[711]'Esperantyzatsiia chy ukrainizatsiia', Komunist, 19 June 1930; reprinted in Mykola Skrypnyk, Statti i promovy z natsional'nohopytannia (Articles and speeches on the national question), Munich: Suchasnist', 1974, pp. 185—91; Russian-language text ('Esperantizatsiia ili ukrainizatsiia?') in Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 74—7. Skrypnyk delivered the speech at a meeting of cultural activists in Stalino [Donetsk] (30 May 1930).
[712] See, in the present volume, pp. 255 and following.
[713] 'Bona instruo por nia aktivularo', Bulteno de CKSEU9 (1929/30): 126-8 (quotation p. 127).
[714]The editor was the Hungarian exile Jozsef Batta, living in Berlin. The bi-weekly journal was printed, except for two issues, in Moscow until November 1931, then, as of January 1932, in Berlin.
[715] SA la SAT-anaro de la tuta mondo. Deklaro de la klasbatala SAT-Opozicio', Internaciisto 1
(1930/31): 1-2.
[716] Detlev Blanke, 'La historio de EKRELO', Impeto '91. Soci-politika kaj beletra almanako, Moscow: Progreso, 1991, pp. 69-89; Reinhard Haupenthal, EKRELO [...], Bad Bellingen: Iltis, 2010.
[717] As of mid-November 1930 the complaints of Soviet subscribers about non-receipt of Sennaciulo multiplied: Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 194, see also p. 223; Protokolaro pri la Xla Kongreso en Amsterdamo, 2-7 augusto 1931, Paris: SAT, 1931, pp. 58-9.
[718] lnternaciisto 1 (1930/31): 66.
[719] SA la tuta SAT-anaro!', Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 193-4. The first expulsions were those of: Drezen, Otto Bassler, Friedrich Carl Richter, Walter Kampfrad (head of EKRELO), Jozsef Batta, Fritz Wolff, Georg Richter, Herbert Muravkin, Willi Vildebrand: Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 239. With the exception of Drezen, they were all German or, in the case of Batta and Muravkin, lived in Germany.
[720] A total of 105 approved the action of the Executive Committee, 6 disapproved and 6 abstained: Protokolaro Amsterdamo, p. 64.
[721] In a referendum launched in January 1931 the opposition gave voting rights not only to members of SAT but also to 'all unemployed, poor people, Soviet citizens, non-subscribers of Sennaciulo, i.e.
passive members': Internaciisto 1 (1930/31): 74. By the middle of1931 the opposition asserted that 75 per cent of all organized worker Esperantists had expressed themselves in favor of its point of view: Internaciisto 1 (1930/31): 137.
[722] N. Nekrasov, 'La 5-a kongreso de SEU unuanime vo^donis por IUK', Internaciisto 2 (1932): 10.
[723]On the founding congress of IPE see Internaciisto 2 (1932): 81-3, 85-6. Present were 348 par- ticipants from 11 countries, among them, because of refusal of visas by the German authorities, no participants from the Soviet Union.
[724]These sections were, right before the founding, the associations or 'unifying committees' in Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the Soviet Union, Sweden and the USA: 'Larga estas nia bazo. Antauen al fondo de IPE!!', Internaciisto 2 (1932): 75. In 1935 IPE announced membership totaling 13,728; of those, however, 11,195 were Soviets: Sur Posteno (international edition) 3 (1935): 188.
[725] Franz Jonas, 'Kie mankas la mondrigardo?', La Socialisto 8 (1933), 9: 4. Jonas was replying to the article of John Johansson, 'Kie la mondrigardo mankas. Malferma letero al miaj austraj kamaradoj', Svenska Arbetar Esperantisten 12 (1933), 6/7 (July): 7. In early June 1933, the Socialist Esperantist International (ISE) was founded in Vienna.
[726] E. Lanti, 'De ekstere—de supre', Sennaciulo 9 (1932/33): 45-7.
[727] On Lanti's last years: Borsboom (1976), pp. 145-77.
[728] Protokolo pri la XIII-a SAT-Kongreso en Stokholmo (supplement to Sennaciulo, no. 409, 25 sept. 1933), p. 5.
[729] On 25 July 1930 the Esperantists of Nizhnii Novgorod decided to direct such a request to the SEU Central Committee: Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 88.
[730]'Voĉojel Sovetio', Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 492. A few letters alluded to the dictatorial attitude and 'thieving' policy of Drezen.
[731]'Voĉojel Sovetio', Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 143-4, 247, 280, 342-3.
[732] E. Drezen, 'Al la Kontrol-Komitato de SAT', Internaciisto 1 (1930/31): 4.
[733] 'Kiel la Centra Komitato de Sovetrespublikara Esperantista Unio klopodas por ke SAT "evitu la rifon"', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 531-2.
[734]K. Kalocsay, Rimportretoj. Galerio de Esperantaj steloj, Budapest: Literatura Mondo, 1931, p. 41.
[735]Thus, Lanti at the opening of the congress in 1932: Protokolaropri laXII-a Kongreso de S.A.T. en Stutgart, supplement to Sennaciulo, no. 393, 8 Sept. 1932, p. 1.
[736] 'En lukto por la klasbatala SAT', Bulteno de CKSEU 9 (1929/30): 149-56.
[737] Extract from minutes, 7 August 1930, Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 22.
[738] Maks Krjukov, 'Rememoroj pri Zamenhof', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 313-14.
[739] M. Krjukov, 'Niaj kontrauuloj estas analfabetaj en politiko', Sennaciulo 6 (1929/30): 382-3. Addressing the question of opposition to Esperanto among workers' movement leaders, Kriukov provided a table of the class origins of famous revolutionaries, including Lenin ('petty bourgeois, son of a government official'). Showing that, by comparison, Zamenhof was 'just a simple and impoverished oculist', he concluded that the opponents of Esperanto were 'ordinarily bourgeois polyglots'. See Lanti's statement about Kriukov: Protokolaro Amsterdamo, p. 10.
[740]N. Sumarin, 'Rezultojde renegata laboro', Bulteno de CKSEU 10 (1931): 75-6.
[741] F.S., 'Ein organisatorisches Problem', La Socialisto 6 (1931): 94.
[742] Bulteno de CKSEU 10 (1931): 142.
[743] 'Laboristaj sindikatoj subtenas esperanton', Bulteno de CKSEU 10 (1931): 101.
[744] Sennaciulo 7 (1930/31): 88 (on Nizhnii Novgorod).
[745] 'Sur la vojon de praktika partopreno en la socialisma konstruado (Pri 1-a Moskva landkonferenco de SEU)', Bulteno de CKSEU 9 (1929/30): 47.
[746] Quoted in Martin (2001), p. 270.
[747] 'Plivastigita plenkunsido de CK SEU en Moskvo la 25 kaj 26 de julio 1931', Bulteno de CKSEU 10 (1931): 87-9 (report by Intsertov, p. 87).
[748]Dim. Snejko, 'Kiel ni verku por "PEK".?', Proleta Esperanto-Korespondanto 1 (1929/30): 32.
[749] Bulteno de CKSEU 10 (1931): 13, 79; see also the self-criticism of one of the attacked in Bulteno de CK SEU11 (1932) 19. A complaint about the 'nauseating asking for favors' of Soviet Esperantists, by Ralph Bonesper (New York), is cited in 'Ne misuzu korespondemon de alilandaj kamaradoj!', Bulteno de CKSEU 11 (1932): 44.
[750]i 5-a Kongreso de Sovetrespublika Esperantista Unio', Bulteno de CK SEU 10 (1931): 131-41 (quotations p. 133).
[751] F. Seidl, 'Wie sollen wir korrespondieren?', La Socialisto 6 (1931): 72.
[752] I have seen issues 5-12, all of them dating from 1931, plus four pages without numbers or year. Later the bulletin Veropri Sovetio appeared, as a publication of the Moscow PEK center.
[753]B. Belakov, 'Evitu politikerarojn dum internacia korespondado', Bulteno de CKSEU 11 (1932):
46.
[754] S. Levickij, 'Kio interesas eksterlandan instruiston', Bulteno de CK SEU 10 (1931): 29.
[755] Ludwig Schlamp, 'Plendo (Letero al Redakcio de "Bulteno")', Bulteno de CKSEU11 (1932): 36.
[756]O. Bassler, 'Alvoko', Bulteno de CKSEU 11 (1932): 52.
[757] W. Kampfrad, 'Pekoj kontraŭ "PEK"', Bulteno de CKSEU 11 (1932): 60.
[758] Japana PEK-servo, 'Alarmon al sovetiaj esperantistoj!', Bulteno de CK SEU 12 (1933): 32.
[759]iSaluton al la kvina kongreso de SEU!', Bulteno de CK SEU 10 (1931): 113-14 (quotation p. 114).
[760]TsK SESR, 'Usilivat' razvitie esperanto-dvizheniia vshir' i vglub', no ne forsirovat" (Broaden and deepen the development of the Esperanto movement, but gradually), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 304-6.
[761] 'Plenkunsido de CK SEU', Sur Posteno Klasbatala, 1934: 129-32.
[762] It is well known that the murder of Kirov (1 December 1934) served Stalin as a good opportunity to advance his preparations for the Great Purge.
[763] 6 Memore al k-do Kirov', Sur Posteno Klasbatala, 1934: 129. The announced article, 'Proletoj, pligrandigu vian klasan atentemon!', consisting primarily of attacks on Lanti and his influence, appeared two issues later: Sur Posteno Klasbatala, 1935: 9-10.
[764] Sur Posteno Klasbatala, 1934: 136. On Blinov see EdE, p. 592.
^'Pri nuna stato de SEU-movado', Informilo. Interna organo de la IPE-centro, 1935, no. 3 (Dec.): 13.
[766] 'Pri nuna stato', p. 15.
[767]T. Aldworth, 'Esperanto en Sovetio', Sennaciulo 12 (1935/36): 74. Aldworth published in Sennacieca Revuo (n.s., 4 [1936/37]: 154-6, 170-2; 5 [1937/38]: 7-9, 23-5, 39-41, 56-8) an extensive and very interesting report of his visit, under the title 'Angla SAT-ano en Sovetio'. Although Aldworth concluded that 'despite the shortages, crudities and continuing poverty of the country, there is already something about the USSR that we must consider as the basis and begin- ning of a great and beautiful future' (p. 57), he was expelled from the British Communist Party for his willingness to reveal too much: Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 3.
[768]This reorientation to the tactic of the popular front was officially proclaimed by Georgi Dimitrov at the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, which opened in Moscow on 25 July 1935: E.H. Carr, The Twilight of Comintern, 1930-1935, London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982, pp. 403-7.
[769] 'Rezolucio pri batalo por paco kaj kontrau fasismo', SurPosteno (international edition) 3 (1935): 189-190; cf. Internaciisto 2 (1932): 85-6.
[770] Sennaciulo 11 (1934/35): 83; SurPosteno, 1936, 41 (March): 2.
[771]Letter of SAT to the IPE Center, 9 Nov. 1935, in Sennaciulo 11 (1934/35): 83-4; Sur Posteno, 1936, 39 (Jan.): 3.
[772] Cf. Sikosek (2006), p. 177.
[773] A.R., 'Per tuta forto por IPE', Sur Posteno (international edition) 3 (1935): 155.
[774] IPE Center and SEU Central Committee, 'Proleta esperantistaro kaj la neutraluloj', Sur Posteno, 1936, 40 (Feb.): 1-2. This article was probably written in the second half of1935. The IPE Center specifically instructed that IPE groups 'should address themselves to the neutral groups with a proposal to cooperate in working for peace and against fascism': Informilo. Interna organo de la IPE- centro, 1935, 3 (Dec.): 6.
[775] Sur Posteno, 1937, 54 (June): 3.
[776] Nikolao Ecert (August Schwenk), 'Konciza raporto pri la 3-a IPE-Kongreso', Sur Posteno, 1937, 56 (Oct.): 5-6 (quotation p. 5).
[777] SurPosteno, 1937, 52 (Apr.): 2.
[778] 'SEU k antifasista batalo en Hispanio', Sur Posteno, 1937, 52 (Apr.): 2.
[779] Internacia S.O.S. Bulteno, 1938, 62 (Jan.): 3; cf. Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 24.
[780] Sennaciulo 14 (1937/38): 3. Aldworth supposed that his article series on his visit to the Soviet Union 'brought harm' to the Esperantists who helped him during his stay. One of them was Izrail Maizel, arrested in October 1937. He survived hard labor: Stepanov (1990), p. 77. Stepanov also deals with the fate of other Leningrad Esperantists.
[781] Circular by Keable, p. 2; Dimitrov in the Seventh Comintern Congress, cf. Carr, Twilight of Comintern, p. 406. According to information from William Keable, noted by his son Ken (10 Nov. 1981), the British Communist Party decided to end the existence of IPE; the causes, not revealed at the time, were the silencing of SEU and the fact that the Soviet Party, asked for an explanation, provided no reply: English-language note by Ken Keable, communicated to the author on 26 June
2013.
[782] During the annual meeting of the British Workers' Esperanto Association (BLEA) in Glasgow, Easter 1939.
[783] Bourguignon was primarily active in the International Association of Revolutionary Esperanto Writers (IAREV) and published, as of 1934, the journal Infanoj sur Tutmondo. See the publication of his son Lucien Bourguignon (2001). Another French activist in IPE, Georges Salan, was deported to Germany in 1944 as a member of the resistance; his book La nuda vero. Originala raporto pri propraj travivajoj en naziaj koncentrejoj 1944-1945 (Nimes, 1975) was dedicated to Boubou and Bourguignon.
[784] An overview of the topic is provided by Dulicenko (2003).
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 237
U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4_7
[785] 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' (1848), in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, SelectedWorks, vol. 1, Moscow: Progress, 1969, p. 25.
[786]Marx, 'Critique of the Gotha Programme', Marx & Engels, Selected Works, vol. 3, Moscow: Progress, 1970, p. 22.
[787]Engels, 'The Festival ofNations in London', Marx & Engels, Selected Works, vol. 6, p. 6.
[788]Cf. Walter Lipgens, 'Staat und Internationalismus bei Marx und Engels', Historische Zeitschrift
217 (1973): 529-83.
[789]Engels, 'The Congress of Sonvillier and the International', Marx & Engels, SelectedWorks, vol. 23, p. 66.
[790]Otto Bauer, DieNationalitdtenjrage unddie Sozialdemokratie, Vienna: Brand, 1907, pp. 265 and following. On the topic in general, see Hans Mommsen, Arbeiterbewegung und nationale Frage, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979.
[791] 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 inter- national 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 Nationalitaten', Die Neue Zeit 5 [1887]: 183).
[792] Karl Kautsky, 'Nationality and Internationality', trans. Ben Lewis, Critique 37 (2009): 371—89 (quotation p. 388).
[793]Karl Kautsky, Die BefreiungderNationen, 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'.
[794] 'Pri la homaranismo. Responde al P-ro Dombrovski' (1906), PVZVII 316.
[795]Josef Strasser, DerArbeiterunddieNation, 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.
[796] 'A Single Language and Esperanto', 1l 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).
[797] Letter from Romain Rolland to E. Lanti, 14 April 1920, in La Vie ouvriere, 23 April 1920, p. 3; quoted in Esperantista Laboristo 1 1920), 4 (May): 2. Cf. Panchasi (2009), p. 151.
16<The Socialist Revolution and the Right ofNations to Self-Determination: Theses' (1916), Lenin, CollectedWorks, vol. 22, Moscow: Progress, 1964, pp. 143—56 (quotation p. 146).
[799] 'Resolutions of the Summer, 1913, Joint Conference [...]', Lenin, CollectedWorks,vol. 19, 1963, p. 427.
[800] 'Telegram to J.V. Stalin', Lenin, CollectedWorks, vol. 30, 1965, p. 373.
[801]'The Working Class and the National Question' (1913), Lenin, CollectedWorks, vol. 19, 1963, p. 92.
[802] 'Resolutions of the Summer [...]', p. 428.
[803] 'A Letter to S.G. Shahumyan' (1913), Lenin, CollectedWorks,vo\. 19, 1963, p. 501.0nthedis- pute between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg see particularly 'The Right of Nations to Self-
Determination' (1914), Lenin, CollectedWorks, vol. 20, 1964, pp. 393-450.
[804] 'Corrupting the Workers with Refined Nationalism' (1914), Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20,
p. 290.
[805] 'Critical Remarks on the National Question' (1913), Lenin, CollectedWorks, vol. 20, p. 20.
[806]'Theses for a Lecture on the National Question', Lenin, CollectedWorks, 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.
[807]Carl Lindhagen, I revolutionsland, Stockholm: Ahlen &Akerlunds, 1918, p. 79.
[808] 'Critical Remarks on the National Question' (1913), Lenin, CollectedWorks, vol. 20, p. 24—25.
[809]Cf. Alfred D. Low, Lenin on the Question ofNationality, New York: Bookman Associates, 1958,
p. 54.
[810]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.
[811] See the present volume, p. 199 (note).
[812] Letter to the Esperantist Okhitovich, former party member; cited in Drezen (1931a), p. 249.
[813] Report to the 18th Petrograd region party conference; according to Sennacieca RRevuo 5 (1923/24), 2 (Nov. 1923): 2. Zinoviev was at that time also the president of Comintern.
[814] E. Drezen, Problema mezhdunarodnogo iazyka. Opyt materialisticheskogo obosnovaniia voprosa, Moscow: SESR, 1922; partial translation: 'Pri la problemo de lingvo internacia', Sennacieca Revuo 5 (1923/24), nos. 4 (45) to 7/8 (48/49).
[815] La Nova Epoko, 1922, col. 70-1. On the surrounding events see the present volume, p. 165-6, 176.
[816] A. Jodko, 'Esperanto de l' marksisma vidpunkto', La Nova Epoko, 1922, col. 161.
[817] '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.
[818]They praised Stalin as the opponent of the theorist of proletarian culture Bogdanov, whose view- point 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.
[819] On Marr's theory, see L.L. Thomas, The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957; Rene L'Hermitte, Marr, marrisme, marristes: science etperversion ideologique. Une page de l'histoire de la linguistique sovietique, Paris: Institut d'etudes slaves, 1987; Slezkine (1996); Mika Lahteenmaki, 'Nikolai Marr and the idea of a unified lan- guage', Language and Communication 26 (2006): 285-95.
[820]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.
[821] Voldetero, 'Pri kelkaj scienculaj deklaroj', p. 6.
[822] This was the situation in pre-revolutionary Russia, with the important exception of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay.
[823] 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.
[824] Na putiakh k mezhdunarodnomu iazyku. Sbornik statei (On paths to the international language. Article Collection), Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1926.
[825]The journal, appearing sometimes monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, was initially called Izvestiia Ts.K. SESS or SESR (Informilo de C.K SEU), and as of January 1929 Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk (Internacia Lingvo). Contributions were almost exclusively in Russian.
[826] E. Spiridovich, 'Za novoe iazykoznanie' (For the new linguistics), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESS 5
(1926/27): 1-5.
[827] E. Spiridovic, 'Laskemodelingvaevoluo' [2], Sennacieca Revuo 4/8 (1926/27): 76-9 (quotation p. 79).
[828] Spiridovic, 'Laskemodelingvaevoluo' [3], Sennacieca Revuo 4/8 (1926/27): 105-9.
[829]E. Spiridovic, 'Esperanto kaj lingvoscienco', Sennacieca Revuo 4/8 (1926/27): 150-4 (quotation p. 153).
[830] 0n 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.
[831] E. Drezen, Za vseobshchim iazykom. Tri veka iskanii, Moscow & Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1928; Esperanto translation: Drezen (1991). Cf. Kuznecov (2004), p. 154.
[832]N. Marr, 'K voprosu ob edinom iazyke' (The question of a unifying language), in Drezen, Za vseobshchim iazykom, p. 9.
[833]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: SESR, 1929. This superficially written and in many ways misleading brochure formed the basis for the relevant section of Ivo Lapenna, Retoriko, third edi- tion, Rotterdam, 1971, pp. 44-9.
[834]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).
[835] E. Bokarev, 'Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk i nauka o iazyke' (International language and language sci- ence), Izvestiia Ts.K. SESR6 (1928): 129-35; translation in Bokarjova (2010), pp. 51-63.
[836] 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. SESR 6 (1928): 136-9 (quotation p. 136).
[837] Evgenii Bokarev, 'Iazykoznanie i marksizm', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 7 (1929): 203-6.
[838] Drezen (1929), pp. 39-40.
[839] See Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'The "soft" line on culture and its enemies: Soviet cultural policy,
1922-1927', Slavic Reeview 33 (1974): 267-87.
[840]See the article collection Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931, Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1978.
[841] 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.
[842] '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.
[843] 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 pub- lished only in 1949: 'The National Question and Leninism', Stalin, Works, vol. 11,p. 357.
[844] 'Reply to the Discussion on the Political Report [...]' (22 July 1930), Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 5.
[845]On this see Goodman (1970), p. 720. The article appeared earlier as a chapter in Elliot R. Goodman, Thje SovietDesignfor a World State, New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.
[846] 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 emigre 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: AnAppraisal ofthe 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.
[847] See the present volume, p. 215-6.
[848] Dokumenty ukrains 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.
[849] 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: Putprosveshcheniia), pub- lished by the Office of the Ukrainian People's Commissar for Education.
[850] Quoted by Roman Rosdolsky, 'Stalin und die Verschmelzung der Volker im Sozialismus', Archiv fŭr Sozialgeschichte 4 (1964): 268-76 (quotation p. 270). Three years later Postyshev led the cam- paign against Skrypnyk (see above, p. 274). He himself was killed in 1939.
[851]Stalin (1930).
[852]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.
[853]Drezen, 'Antauparolo', in Stalin (1930), pp. 8, 10.
[854] Spiridovich (1931).
[855] Spiridovich (1931), p. 4.
[856] Spiridovich, p. 9.
[857] Spiridovich, p. 13.
[858] Spiridovich, p. 43.
[859] Spiridovich, pp. 53 and following.
[860] Spiridovich, p. 57.
[861] Spiridovich, pp. 3, 81.
[862] See also E. Spiridovic, 'Genia lingvisto venkita de etburgeco. Fundamentaj momentoj en la lingva teorio de Zamenhof', La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 23-31; republished in brochure form: Kyoto: l'omnibuso, 1976.
[863]Spiridovich (1931), pp. 67-8, 82.
[864] Spiridovich, p. 81.
[865] Spiridovich, p. 98.
[866] Spiridovich, p. 99.
[867] Also Loja, a Latvian like Drezen, was a longtime Esperantist. The significance of Iazykfront is summarized in Smith (1998), pp. 97-102.
[868] ' Obrashchenie gruppy "Iazykovednyi front"' (Declaration of the group 'Linguistics Front'), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 177-8.
[869] Cf. Drezen's clarifications of SEU's theoretical work: Drezen (1931a); 'SESR na iazykovednom fronte' (SEU in the linguistics front), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 291-4.
[870] Wolfgang Girke & Helmut Jachnow, Sowjetische Soziolinguistik. Probleme und Genese, Kronberg: Scriptor, 1974, p. 53.
[871] 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.
[872]Drezen (1931a), p. 250.
[873]Drezen (1991), pp. 335-6.
[874] Springer (1956), pp. 13, 31.
[875]This tendency was particularly evident among convinced SAT members. Lanti, even after the schism, expressed support for Stalins Russification policy; see Lanti (1940), p. 44.
[876] We lack detailed information on how the Esperantists in Ukraine related to their native lan- guage. We should note that in Ukraine Russian was widely spoken in the cities, while in the prov- inces 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).
[877] '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.
[878] From the 1920s on, Sosiura's poems were popular in Ukraine.
[879] S. Sinitskii, 'Ukrainskie pisateli ob esperanto', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 266-8 (quota- tion p. 267).
[880] Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 8 (1930): 267; cf. R. Nikolskij, 'Cu Esperanto povas esti stata lingvo', Internaciisto, 1931, 27/28 (Nov.): 224.
[881] Duc Goninaz (1993), p. 2.
[882] EeP, p. 418-19. See also Michel Duc Goninaz, Lingvoj, gentoj kaj lingvapolitiko, Liege: Someraj Universitataj Kursoj, 1974, pp. 30-1.
[883] S.P. Sinitskii, 'Pis'mo v redaktsiiu' (Letter to the editor), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 9 (1931): 124-5.
[884] 'Priznat', a ne uglubliat' oshibku' (To confess, but not make the error deeper), Mezhdunarodnyi
iazyk 9 (1931): 125-8.
[885] S. Sinitskii & V. Sosiura, 'Priznaem svoi oshibku' (We confess our error), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk
9 (1931): 252-3.
[886] 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, sim- ply because its grammatical structure is too complicated and contains highly archaic characteris-
tics': Jirkov (1931), p. 37.
[887] 'Some Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism', Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 99.
[888] 'Per fajro de senindulga memkritiko ni kontrolu la tutan fronton de nia laboro', Bulteno de CK SEU 11 (1932): 13-14 (quotations p. 13).
[889]iKrupneishaia pobeda' (A great victory), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 97-8; 'Marksisma lingvoscienco turnas sin vizage al la problemo pri lingvo internacia', La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 115-16.
[890] 'Tezisy o mezhdunarodnom iazyke', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 99-102; Esperanto trans- lation: 'Tezoj pri internacia lingvo', La Nova Etapo 1 (1932): 116-18.
[891]The institute director, Mark Bochacher, and a special representative ofIazykfront, A.M. Ivanov, greeted the SEU Congress at the end of November 1931: Bulteno de CKSEU 10 (1931): 131.
[892] E. Drezen, 'SESR na iazykovednom fronte' (SEU in the linguistics front), Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 291-4.
[893]Spiridovic (1932), pp. 157-60. Original: '"Istinnyi lozung bor'by" v markso-leninskom iazykoz- nanii', Mezhdunarodnyi iazyk 10 (1932): 338-42.
[894]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'.
[895] 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.
[896] 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 lau 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".'
[897] In 1933 SEU was still able to publish the collection of articles Novye problemy iazykoznaniia (New Problems in Linguistics), Moscow: SESR, 1933, with contributions by Drezen, Spiridovich, Loja, Zhirkov and others.
[898] 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.
[899] 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.)
[900] Cf. Moret (2010).
[901] Cf. Kucera (1954), p. 27.
[902]Marr, lafeticheskaia teoriia (German translation: Borbe, 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 consider- ation of its material base; quoted in Jindrich Kucera, Language Policy in the Soviet Union, doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1952, p. 334.
[903] Duc Goninaz (1993), p. 2.
[904]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"' and 'internationalists').
[905] Note: Page numbers followed by 'n' refer to foot notes.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4
[906] Note: Page numbers followed by 'n' refer to foot notes.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 295
U. Lins, Dangerous Language — Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54917-4
