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 approvaclass="underline" 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.