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.