The Soviet Esperantists soon evidenced a connection between Skrypnyk's warnings of 'Esperantization' and Stalin's opposition to prema- ture internationalism. In this same year an Esperanto-language brochure was published containing excerpts from Stalin's speeches on the national- ities problem.[851] In the introduction Drezen, citing Skrypnyk, drew from his criticisms and from Stalin's speech a lesson for Soviet Esperantists, namely that they could not oppose Esperanto to the national languages and treat it as a language 'already capable of forming some separate non- national culture'.[852]
Despite the shock given to the Esperantists by Skrypnyk, their reac- tion was not merely defensive, since, after all, Stalin had around the same time put forward a challenging prognosis about the future of languages and nations. Following the theses of Marr, which had already stimulated their own efforts in the area of theory, the similar-sounding declarations of Stalin caused the Esperantists to feel called on to contribute still more intensively to clarification of the process of development of a universal language. Drezen emphasized that preparations for this future language must already be made in the period before the worldwide establishment of the socialist order.[853] Particularly emphatic views on the long-term tasks confronting Esperanto had been presented by Spiridovich. SEU's theo- retical journal published in 1930 a series of articles from his pen on the theory of an international language. They appeared in book form in the following year.[854] Spiridovich now directly posited a criterion for a true Marxist linguistics, namely whether it was aware 'that, just as the bour- geoisie once had to create a language for a new era, namely the national literary language, the proletariat today, on the threshold of proletarian world revolution, faces the task of creating the language of its own era'.[855]While the main aim of bourgeois linguistics was to work for 'assimila- tion of "peoples and tribes"',[856] the proletariat, beginning to mold the lan- guages of oppressed peoples into national literary languages, now needed a linguistics 'principally as the science of the creation of an international language'.[857]
Spiridovich wrote that Marr, opposing the great power thinking of Indo-European linguistics, took a new path, but failed to follow it conse- quentially. His preference for spoken languages, material for his paleon- tological studies, caused Marr to imagine the development of the world language as a 'huge leap', whereas in fact the way forward remained quite unclear, not to say that 'for Academician Marr the problem of a tran- sitional language, of an international auxiliary language, does not even exist'.[858] If, in addition to this, Marr criticized the 'individual' creation of an artificial language and completely ignored the fact that Esperanto owed its success precisely to collective creation,) [859] one could only con- clude that 'although Japhetic theory has made a major contribution to Marxist linguistics, it cannot form the basis of that science'.[860]
In the opinion of Spiridovich, the Marxist development of linguis- tics was already essentially finished. He had in mind the linguistic revo- lution inaugurated by Esperanto.) [861] The 'linguistic genius' Zamenhof)[862]intuitively understood the needs of the age and established the theoreti- cal fundamentals of the proletarian movement for an international lan- guage. The principle of simplicity 'for the less educated' eased the way to Esperanto 'for the broadest masses' and by giving up his author's rights Zamenhof created the conditions for 'the living collective creation' of Esperanto by the masses.) [863] Meanwhile, Esperanto had already become 'a conveyor of a new culture: the culture of the proletariat'.[864] In the era of transition to communism the language will become ever more per- fect, and, in parallel with this process, through 'effective interaction', the creation of the national literary languages of the more backward peoples will continue to develop.6 7 In accordance with Stalin's notion that the flowering of nations would create the conditions for their withering away, Spiridovich argued that 'the broad development of national languages in this period is merely a dialectical premise for the unified language of the future, of the near future 8 He maintained that the revolutionary shift from spoken dialects to national literary languages was only a transitional step on the road to an even greater linguistic revolution, namely the 'cre- ation of a unifying universal language for the non-national society of the Communist epoch'.[865] The completion of this second language revolution must therefore be the 'true banner' of Marxist linguistics.[866]
Discussion of the Russian Language
While Spiridovich assigned to the Esperantists the role of revolutionary vanguard in linguistic science, Drezen entered the ranks of opponents of Marr, the prophet of a future artificial world language who had shown himself an unenthusiastic sympathizer of Esperanto. Drezen belonged to a group of young linguists who appeared before the public shortly after the Party Congress. Calling themselves 'Iazykovednyi front', that is the Linguistics Front (shortened to 'Iazykfront'), the group, among whose founding members were also the linguists Georgii Danilov, Timofei Lomtev and Janis Loja (Loya),[867] opposed both the 'unprincipled eclecti- cism' of the Indo-European school and, interestingly, also the 'mechani- cal tendencies' of Japhetic theory. SEU responded favorably to the first manifesto of the Iazykfront.[868] Indeed it now officially supported efforts to create a Marxist linguistics in competition with Marr's Japhetic school.
Drezen, having already tied the fate of Esperanto to the development of a Marxist linguistics,[869] evidently believed that success would come with Iazykfront's help.
For a while it seemed as though this hope would be fulfilled. Adepts of Iazykfront began to conquer university chairs of linguistics, scientific institutes and journals. Their bitter polemics sought to reveal the weak- nesses of the Japhetic theory. At the same time, Iazykfront let it be known that it did not intend to throw out all previous achievements of linguis- tics, particularly those concerned with sociology. But at the end of 1932 it became clear that the support that Marr and his disciples commanded in the Party could not be shaken by the young linguists of Iazykfront. Marr's career was at its zenith. In 1930 he advanced to the vice presi- dency of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and the Party turned to him for help in its politically motivated reorganization. The degree to which the Japhetic theory merited the epithet Marxist seemed a secondary consid- eration given its incontestably revolutionary character and the fact that Marr came across as a more uncompromising opponent of the old bour- geois linguistics. If Iazykfront favored 'conquering traditional linguis- tics without wholesale rejection of all its results',[870] this 'middle position' exposed it to the accusation that in effect it was simply a group of covert Indo-Europeanists. From there, it was a short step to the destructive conclusion that Iazykfront represented 'the banner of covert reactionaries in linguistics, the banner of our enemies'.[871]
In the years 1931-32 it became clear that Marr's position could be weakened neither by the attacks of Iazykfront nor by the criticisms of Esperantists at the lack of 'leadership to action'. The reason was simply that the elective character of his theory accorded with the intentions of Stalin. If Marr, on the basis of his teachings about the origin and future of language, had sought to formulate a program of language policy, this would have soon exposed the disharmony between the internationalism of Japhetic theory and actual trends in the development of the Soviet Union. The more intensely the path to a universal language was discussed, the sharper the threat of revealing the contradictions between theory and practice.