Re: CHAT: Support/Oppression of Conlanging

Quoting Andy Canivet <cathode_ray00@...>:

> >From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
>
> > > Thomas R. Wier:
> > > > Speaking of prejudice, does anyone know of any actual political
> > > > repression of conlangers besides that of Stalin and Hitler
> > > > against Esperantists?)
> > >
> > > Just why did the abovementioned gentlemen repress Esperantists?
> > > No book I've read ever cared to explain that.
> >
> >In Stalin's case, at least, it had to do with the fact that Esperantists,
> >like philatelists, had lots of contact with the outside world.  This,
> >naturally, was a Bad Thing, and so off to Sibiria both groups went.
> >In Hitler's case, the same probably applies, but the fact that Zamenhof
> >was a Jew, and a Zionist at that, probably also colored the decision
> >to send them to the death camps.
>
> It just makes sense anyway that fascists would have a problem with the
> effort to bring different cultural / ethnic groups together, linguistically
> or otherwise.
It really doesn't have to do with fascism at all so much as
totalitarianism. As a cacologist friend of mine put it once, "This is
a totalitarian state, right? So, sometime down the line the government
is going to have to have a policy on Esperanto." Stalin had lots of
problems with Undesirables like Cossacks, Ukrainians, and basically
everyone in the Caucasus, and Stalin was no Fascist.

Actually, this same cacologist friend owns a translation of a Soviet
Children's book from 1924 about the Great Proletarian Democracy of
the future.  In this book, a bunch of Young Pioneers (basically the
Communist equivalent of the Hitler Youth) gets transported into the future
of 1957, at which time everyone speaks Esperanto. (In fact, most of the
book makes a pretense at being "translated" from Esperanto.) After their
jamboree, they learn that the motto of the Brazilian Soviet Socialist
Republic is "Estu Preta!", and have this to say:

  "The boys had this conversation when they returned to their
   dormitory:

  "'Still, it's awful we don't know Esperanto; it's indispensable
   for international jamborees.'
  "'I studied it some last year,' said Misha Surovtsev. 'Kimo Rudzho
   [sic] means Red Kim--that was the first speaker's name.'
  "'Batalio Grande [sic] means, I think, Great Battle.'"

Don't you love the propagandist quality of it? This book was printed
almost immediately after Lenin's death, and so the powerstruggle that
lead to Stalin's rise had not come to completion yet. It was only later
that Esperantists became Enemies of the State. There's probably a book
to be written in this experience somewhere.

[For those interested, its title is "Yoyage of the Red Star Pioneer
Troop to Wonderland" by Innokenty Zhukov, printed in _Mass Culture
in Soviet Russia_ by James von Geldern and Richard Stites.]

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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