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.