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]