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.