Sinitsky courageously tried to defy the current flow of events, using Esperanto as a cudgel to return his readers to the principles of Lenin. Conscious of the political dangers of such an effort, the editors now replied more sharply. They accused Sinitsky of adopting 'a class-based position unfriendly to the proletariat' by ignoring article 34 of the Soviet constitution, according to which the Russian language no longer enjoyed 'the privileges of a state language existing in the capitalist order'. Evidently he also did not know the words of Lenin: 'We, of course, are in favor of every inhabitant of Russia having the opportunity to learn the great Russian language.' The editors asked Sinitsky whether, then, he perhaps wished to hinder the desire of the working people of the national repub- lics to read the works of Lenin and Stalin, and all party decisions, in the original, along with their efforts to acquire the technological knowledge conveyed by the Russian language. Not understanding 'that the totality of class interests is more important than national differences', Sinitsky had turned against not simply 'the language of Russian landowners, capi- talists, priests, police, but against the Russian language in general'. If in so doing he had opposed the idea that non-Russian workers and peasants in the Soviet Union should learn the language of their Russian comrades he was aiming at the separation of nationalities and pursuing 'counterrevo- lutionary activity'. In conclusion, the editors proclaimed that Sinitsky's point of view was 'a clear example of how poorly the Soviet Esperantists were equipped with the Marxist-Leninist method'.[884]
After such a severe dressing-down, nothing was left to Sinitsky and Sosiura other than extensive self-criticism. Both confessed that they were guilty of a 'crude political error' in not distinguishing between 'learning and teaching' the Russian language and underestimating 'the significance of the study of Russian for the proletariat of the USSR'.[885]
How should we judge this polemic, unique in SEU's journal, on the position of the Russian language? It is remarkable how little it had to do with Esperanto. The editors dealt in detail with the progressive charac- ter of the learning of Russian as 'a major step forward in the uniting of nations in a higher union' and made no mention of any contribution by Esperanto in this regard. On the contrary, Sinitsky was condemned because his definition of the role of Esperanto only helped isolate the nations. In his self-criticism, Sosiura did indeed argue timidly for a worldwide language 'of which Esperanto constitutes and will constitute an element', and the editors did not exclude the possibility of the com- pulsory teaching of Esperanto 'where all necessary conditions are pres- ent'. But missing entirely in the long attack against the two Ukrainians was the previously frequently posited idea, particularly by Spiridovich, of the three-way interrelationship of national languages, an international auxiliary language and a future world language.
Stalin's prognosis of a universal language was not mentioned on this occasion, though that is in fact not surprising. Relating to the future period after the worldwide victory of communism, it was unsuitable as theoretical support for current Soviet policy. Although Stalin had con- firmed the future of internationalism, for the present he clearly gave pri- ority to the 'flowering of nations' and linked to that principle criticism of 'great-power chauvinism'. Thus, he argued for mutual respect among the non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union. However—and that must have confused and disillusioned the Soviet Esperantists—the con- tradictions between official theory and practice were rapidly increasing. The Esperantists were obliged to note that Stalin had not only given no encouragement to preparations for the future language of communism but also in practice was pulling away from the principle of equal rights for all nations in the Soviet Union—a principle that could serve as favorable ground for Esperanto. Toward the end of 1931, Stalin began to ratchet up his policy against non-Russian ethnic groups—at around the same time as the discussion of the function of Esperanto within the Soviet Union, launched by Sosiura, prompted the SEU leadership to confess that the Esperantists must also fight 'unrelentingly against all manifesta- tions of local nationalist deviation'. The discussion made it clear to the Esperantists that the scheme presented by Spiridovich was no longer valid, namely the idea that not the Russian language (not explicitly men- tioned[886]) , but Esperanto, would contribute to the unification of lan- guages under socialism.
Vain Theorizing
Stalin himself realized that hopes raised during the Cultural Revolution threatened the politics of the Party. In October 1931 he defined his posi- tion on the correct relationship between theory and practice. In a letter addressed to historians, he condemned the inclination of Communist intellectuals to fruitless theorizing. It was not enough, said Stalin, to rely on 'written documents' alone: 'Who, except archive rats, does not under- stand that a party and its leaders must be tested primarily by their deeds and not merely by their declarations?'[887]
Stalin's letter prompted a wave of self-criticism among scientists and intellectuals. The Esperanto movement felt pressure to engage in a simi- lar disagreeable act of ideological repentance. Early in 1932, the SEU Central Committee established a brigade 1 12 with the task of 'sweeping away once and for all with an iron broom of self-criticism' all errors, deformities and lapses endemic to the Soviet Esperantists. In line with Stalin's attacks against de-emphasis of the nationalities problem, it pro- claimed an intensified battle against the remnants of non-nationalist thinking. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that for the first time SEU made it clear that theoretical considerations of the language problem were of little importance. Alluding directly to the arguments of Spiridovich, SEU now distanced itself from his 'battle cry' that 'at the heart of Marxist linguistics [...] should stand the language of a new proletarian era—the international language'. Major significance, by contrast, was given to the 'flowering process of "cultures national in form and socialist in content"', while 'the watchword of an international language can naturally be only accessory'.[888] This was a clear statement that Stalin's 'history letter' of 1931 had superseded the enthusiasm awakened by his Party Congress speech a year earlier.
In 1932 SEU nevertheless continued to celebrate the 'major victory' contained in a document that for the first time seemed to devote serious attention to Esperanto in the context of Marxist linguistics.[889] The docu- ment was the eleven 'Theses on an International Language' approved by the Scientific Research Institute of Linguistics in Moscow.[890] This institute was linked to the office of the People's Commissar on Education, which functioned as a center for the supporters of Iazykfront.[891] Drezen, as one of the founders of Iazykfront, probably at least influenced work on the Theses.
The Theses stated that one could not ignore Esperanto or present it as 'members of the linguistic guild' tried to do, namely 'as an abortive prod- uct, exclusively a petty-bourgeois utopia'. However, at the same time the document stressed that in the Soviet Union at present 'all efforts to raise the question of a common universal language [...] as a priority of the moment are premature and therefore utopian'. Doubts were expressed that Esperanto could make any significant contribution to the creation of a future language of all humankind: 'The confluence of national languages leading to one world language is occurring independently of Esperanto.'
Reduced to the role of a modest auxiliary in the present, Esperanto was also subjected in the Theses to a whole series of ideological exhortations, among them the remark that Esperanto 'was born in a bourgeois milieu' along with the roots of its so-called internationalism: