The Nationality Problem of the Soviet Union • Chapter 4

The Soviet linguistic theory was developed by the Academician N. Ya. Marr who was regarded before World War I in Tsarist Russia as an authority on questions of the Caucasian languages. In the years 1908‑1920 he elaborated in several successive conceptions his so‑called "Japhetic theory." He attempted to prove that the Japhetic languages (Kartvelian [including Georgian, Megrelo-Chan, Svanetian], the Highland Caucasian languages [Abkhasian, Adyghe, the Daghestanian languages], Basque in the Pyrenees, the extinct Etruscan of pre‑Latin Italy, the extinct Pelasgic of pre‑Greek Balkan Peninsula, the ancient Hittite, Urartic, Elamitic of Asia Minor) represent a special independent branch of languages related to the Semitic family of languages. These Japhetic languages were supposed to have been the third ethnic element in the creation of the Mediterranean culture.1 In these researches Marr continued to apply the present Western European linguistic methods in trying to establish the common origin and genealogical kinship of these languages.

But soon after 1920, after the establishment of the Communist dictatorship in Russia proper, Marr became a fanatic Communist and under the immediate influence of the Communist ideology he gradually worked out his "Japhetic theory" into a general linguistic theory, also called usually "Japhetic theory." Marr proclaimed it as the "new teaching of language," founded on "the principles of dialectical and historical materialism," on Marxism-Leninism. The Communist dictatorship, confronted in the multinational Soviet Union with basic linguistic problems, was badly in need of a "linguistic theory" and readily accepted Marr's theory as the "official teaching." The Communist Party machine appreciated and glorified Marr as the author of the "progressive revolutionary doctrine, which upsets the racist principles of bourgeois linguistics" and declared him as "the founder of Soviet Materialist Linguistics." Especially outside Russia proper, in the non‑Russian Republics of the Soviet Union, Marr's principles became party dogmas because they gave the Russian Communist Party the pretext and the necessary "scientific arguments and argumentation" for combating "nationalism in the languages" of all the non‑Russian nationalities of the U. S. S. R.

Marr's Soviet linguistic theory is not an example of scientific clarity and precision; it is rather chaotic, without proof, often illogical, even p80 fantastic, and in constant flux until his death in 1934. But nevertheless — like Lysenko's biological nonsense — it was made the "official" Communist Party doctrine and furthermore on July 21, 1949, the Presidium of the U. S. S. R. Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority of the country, proclaimed in a special decree that Marr's theory is "the new materialist teaching of language, a general theory of linguistics, erected on a dialectical and historical material base" and that its principles constitute "the progressive revolutionary teaching."

Let us now look at the chief tenets of this "new and progressive" teaching of language, canonized by the Communist Party for exclusive teaching in universities, and scientific institutes.

Soon after 1920 Marr repudiated all the achievements and principles of European and American linguistics and of the Indo-European comparative philology. The classification of languages according to these principles, their division in separate language families, the conception of the Indo-European family of languages, their derivation from a proto-language, the historical-comparative methods developed for the establishing of sound laws, limited by time and space, the method of tracing etymologies, in a word, our whole linguistic heritage, beginning with the works of F. Bopp until the present time was declared by Marr as "bourgeois nonsense, deceit, or racism." Marr, imbued with Marxism-Leninism, now inaugurated the "new era" and endeavored to answer the cardinal questions of linguistic research: What are the origins of language and of the present languages? What is language and how are languages related? What are the tasks of linguistics?

There are, in my opinion, two starting points in Marr's new way of thought: (1) The languages of the whole world are the products of a single glottogonic (language-forming) process which is a reflexion of the singleness of the historic process. This singleness (unlinearity) of the language-forming process, due to both the process and the initial word elements (to be considered later), warrants comparison of all the languages of the world, one word with another: English with Chinese, Russian with Turkish, French with Semitic, Japanese with Latin or Greek, etc. (2) Language is a "superstructural category" always dependent on production and the productive relation base. Consequently, everything in a language is of a class nature and is created by "class struggle" and "dialectical processes." There is no language which is not of a class nature, there is no thinking which is not of a class nature.

I. (a) According to Marr the origin of language is conceived on the basis of the tenets of dialectical and historical materialism. The facts are as follows:

(b) All vocal languages have a single starting point: all proceed from the four primary words elements, connected semantically with the "cosmic stage of thought." These four words were in "possession" of the medicine men, who used them not as a means of communication with the people (perhaps they were only used for communication with other medicine men), but as "means for communication with a totem." These first four words are: Sal, Ber, Yon, Rosh, they were the archaic totemic magic, both in origin and function, created by the medicine men and serving them as magical technique. Technically Marr conceives these early elements of the work process and magical action as "yells" for addressing magical forces. These "yells" developed the vocal chords and the organs of speech through repetition. But why four elements? Marr could not logically justify the number; his last explanation is: "Some things do not have to be proved; they can be shown. Observation shows that there are only four elements. Why, I do not know."2

c) This vocal speech, the "property" of medicine men, originated in an already "class-differentiated" environment and served as an "instrument of class struggle." "Language (vocal) is a magical technique, an implement of production in the first stages of man's elaboration of collective production," says Marr.3 When that vocal speech originated, this "class struggle" took place between the "ruling class," the "collective with the vocal speech" on the one hand, and the "collective without vocal speech" (only with the gesture language) on the other. This "class struggle" ended with the victory of the more "powerful group" with the vocal speech, over the "deaf-mutes" because the former had control over the implements of production of that epoch, including productive (agricultural and hunting) magic.

d) Immediately there begins (1) hybridization: from one‑element words there arose two‑element words, and (2) composition. Marr ascribes to the phenomenon of hybridization enormous importance for the whole language-forming process. Through hybridization and blending of various tribes there resulted an expansion of the oral language into wider areas, beyond the limits of the class that owned it. This phenomenon accompanied the language-formation process constantly until present times. Thus, Marr denies the existence of languages which are not basically hybridized. He says: "The Japhetic theory is based for its direct origin and sources of developmental growth on the phenomenon of the hybridization of languages owing to increasingly close communication and the unification of the economy."4

p82 e) Thus vocal speech originated and thus began the development of language, later semantically with the technological state of thought. This development of the glottogonic processes in course of time created the present languages. Marr denies kinship of languages in terms of origin. The appearance of kinship (for instance of the present Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages) is due (1) to "social convergence" (but lack of kinship is due to "social divergence" of the languages mentioned); (2) the similarities among these languages Marr explains by hybridization blending of converging social conditions, which develops common linguistic elements, and by contacts between languages. Denying kinship of languages, Marr advanced his classification by "stages." Through these "stages" went the glottogonic process; they created all the differences in the vocabulary, in word structure, in sentence structure and phonetic composition, and according to these "stages" the languages of the world have to be classified.

As there is only one single language-forming process on the whole globe, the various languages represent the various stages of that process. These "stages" do not represent an "evolution" (the reactionary bourgeois linguistics work with evolution in linguistics), but they represent "revolution": the transition by leaps, the revolutionary supplanting of one stage in the development of language and thought by another stage, which is qualitatively different.

How many linguistic stages are represented in the presently existing languages the world over? Marr tentatively classified the languages according to the stages (periods of their origin) in the following chart:

In this scheme each language makes up one of the links of the single language-forming process and its stages. All the languages are classified into four chronological strata according to the time when they originated and the "stage of development" that they represent.

What caused the various "stages"? They express major changes in language and thought resulting from major changes in productive technique. Thus, for instance, the last stage, the Indo-European languages, is according to Marr the result of a special stage of hybridization called forth apparently by the discovery of metals and their use in economic life.

p83 But why have some languages not participated in the "revolutionary jumps" from the primary into the second period, from the second into the third, or from the third into the fourth period?

According to Marr, in the single language-forming process some languages did participate in the "revolutionary jump," because they took part in the "over‑all economic world development"; but some languages have "fallen away from the over‑all world development," they did not participate in the "economic world movement" nor, consequently, in the revolutionary language transformations. They "got stuck" at a given stage, economically, socially, and linguistically; they are "frozen" at the given stages. These language systems are "obsolete" and there is no hope of speeding up their development. Even if world economy and social organization would eventually involve them again in "the cycle of global life," the people concerned would continue to use their present languages of the "obsolete systems." Consequently the "stagnation" of these languages, which have fallen out of the "world movement" is final; apparently, the economic base influences the superstructure only in specific periods:

"Not only the so‑called Indo-European and Semitic languages, but also Turkish, Mongolian, Ugro-Finnic, Chinese, African, Oceanian as well as Australian, and the native American languages, all turned out to be incontrovertibly related to one degree or another. The differences between them are due to the fact that the archaic language systems abandoned the language-creating center and their chief features were preserved almost in petrified fashion at given stages of the development of human voiced language. These stages had already been traversed by all [language systems] which had then moved ahead."5

Summing up, the glottogonic process the world over consists of systems of languages "frozen in their development and illustrating that single language-forming process" — but not developing themselves.

f) The development of language and the languages as superstructural categories is determined by the economic basis which, let us keep in mind, according to Marr was from the very beginning class-differentiated and under the tension of "class struggle." Thus, all languages were and are "class languages." The existence of nonclass languages or national languages is rejected by Marr and any other approach to language study than as class speech is for him unscientific.

The development of a given language, of its grammatical categories, its phonetics, morphology, syntax, or vocabulary and meanings reflects directly the development of productive and class relations. Consequently, Marr explains, for instance, such things as declension of nouns: cases are "active" or "passive"; the direct case (nominative) is usually "active," while the oblique cases (genitive, dative, accusative) are "passive," because the oblique cases are syntactically "dependent," "governed" by a verb or even by nouns, while the nominative is usually syntactically "independent." According to Marr, "active" and "passive" p84 cases must be viewed as "socially evaluable qualities"; in them are reflected "two different categories of the collective." Thus, "social relations" are reflected in the "grammatical dependence" of words. The degrees of comparison are explained similarly:

"Degrees of comparison are of social origin. They are a superstructure of a class, estate, order. At that, the word utilized now to indicate a higher grade, be it comparative or superlative, once expressed not one or the other of the higher grades of that idea which is (now) expressed through an adjective with which it has coalesced, but it expressed membership in that higher stratum, be it an estate or a class, which was ruling, without any additional indicator (suffix or prefix) and its name, its totem, was socially evaluated as a high degree. The suffix, a word with the same function or forming a degree of comparison, actually indicated membership in the corresponding ruling stratum. Degrees of comparison, like adjectives generally, receive definite form only after clan society."6

Thus, everything in the language, declension, conjugation, or the syntactic relations of words Marr attempts to explain as "reflexes of the socioeconomical era" and its constant "class struggle." Every language reflects a "social ideology" and its "class contradictions."

Summing up: all elements of human speech are bearers of "definite social contents" and are socioeconomically determined. Every language reflects a "social ideology" and its "class contradictions."

g) Marr not only traced the origins, history, and present stage of the single glottogonic process but, as a linguist, also stated clearly the final goal of that single language-forming process. Bourgeois linguistics sketches the developmental scheme as an inverted pyramid with a single starting point from which evolved branches, causing a development from singleness of language to multiplicity of languages. Just the opposite is true, according to Marr; the single language process is "revolutionary jumping" from a multiplicity of present languages to a single world language. Mankind is progressing toward a single economic and social system, which will be realized after the victory of the Communist revolution, when the Communist dictatorship will establish a "single economic basis over the whole world." This revolutionary upheaval will have such a force on the language superstructures of mankind that they will make the final "revolutionary jump" into the fifth stage, in which all languages the world over will be "unified into one language." This "scientific linguistic prognostication," as we see, completely agrees with the basic tenet of the Communist Party ideology, with Marxism-Leninism.

II. This "new materialistic teaching on language," the Soviet linguistics, has according to Marr also different "scientific aims," as compared with the "old bourgeois linguistics."

a) It has to become a "scientific sword in the struggle of the Communist Party for world victory under the leadership of the beloved leader p85 and father of the world proletariat, J. Stalin."

b) It is the "sharpest weapon against bourgeois linguistics, which propagates reactionary racist theories"; it has to "unveil, to reveal all the frauds and deceits of bourgeois linguistics, especially of the Indo-European Comparative Philology" and to "combat its hostile idealist theories."

c) How? By "victoriously applying to the research of all languages" Marr's "two techniques," established with absolute finality:

This "element analysis" is the "new revolutionary technique" of Soviet linguistics, the "new comparative technique of element comparison." It stands in "basic opposition to the bourgeois formal-comparative method" and enables us "to penetrate into the true history of human language by showing how language is formed in indissoluble unity with thought" and "illustrating the history of the word-creating development."

How has this "new technique of element analysis" to be carried out? Marr established for that "paleontologic analysis" a "table of regular variations of the four elements." According to it one can trace to the element Sal the following variants: Zal, Tsal, Tal, Dal, Gal, Tkal, Dgal, Tskal, Dzgal, etc. The other three elements have similarly numerous variants.

Are there some laws determining in what languages and at what time the "S" of Sal shifted to the sounds t, d, ts, k, dz etc.? No. According to Marr these changes are universal and unlimited by time or place. These "four elements and the tables of their regular variations" are a universal skeleton key: one can compare all words of all languages of all times: Russian with Arabic, Japanese with Hittite, Turkish with Sanskrit, Latin with Finnish, etc.

This "element analysis" has to be checked with "semantic analysis," according to the "laws of speech paleontology" and also with the data p86 from the history of material culture. Where there should be semantic logical impossibilities Marr refers the case to the "era of prelogical thought."

d) All the other developments in the language superstructure have in Marr's theory two causes: (1) hybridization, (2) some changes in the economic bases and its class contradictions. On the one hand, the new linguistics has carefully to discover all hybridizations, their causes and techniques, and on the other it has to establish a proper relationship between the changes in the economic basis and in the language superstructure, taking into account the basic class nature of all languages.

e) However, the paramount task of the new linguistic teaching is not theoretical research but practical action and participation in the current "linguistic construction in the Soviet Union under the leadership of the genius Stalin and his Party." Because, according to Marr, it would be impossible to conduct the industrialization of the country without having regulated the problem of language. Consequently, the task of "new linguistics" is to be also the "scientific sword" of the Communist party in the fight against the "philological and linguistic opposition" inside the U. S. S. R.

This emphasis of Marr's on the "practical importance for immediate application of the new teaching to the language policy of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union herself" had as a background the violent discussion between the Stalin and Trotsky groups about basic Communist tactics, which had a decisive influence also on the further language policy of the Communist Party. The question was: What is the primary tactical aim? Has the Communist Party to consider as its first task the provoking of the "Communist revolution in the world," but as a second task the establishment of a "socialist economy" inside U. S. S. R. (because the organization of a "Socialist economy" in a State surrounded by the capitalists is impossible)? Or, on the contrary, must the "organization of the Socialist economy, as the arsenal of world revolution," despite capitalistic surroundings, be the first task of the Communist Party with the "organization of the world revolution" postponed and treated as number two? These few lines of background information are necessary for understanding the subsequent points of Marr's "tasks of the new Soviet linguistic theory."

As is well known, the battle between Trotsky and Stalin ended with the victory of Stalin, the termination of the NEP (New Economic Policy, a mixture of capitalism and State Socialism) and the organization of the "Socialist economy," starting with the first Five-Year Plan.

Marr taught along these lines: if it is possible to organize the "socialist economic basis" inside the Soviet Union without waiting for the final victory of the Communist revolution over the world, then why wait until final victory for the "unification of languages"? Let us immediately, parallel with the "organization of Socialist economy inside U. S. S. R.," also organize the "unification of languages inside U. S. S. R." also under the leadership of the Communist Party and its "great" Stalin! Let us change the "language superstructure"; until now "the language-forming process" was, so to speak, unconscious; now the Communist Party will p87 direct it consciously and deliberately like the "Five-Year Plan." . . . Thus, the Soviet Union was conceived by Marr as a practical experimental laboratory for the "unification of languages" inside the U. S. S. R. in order to gather the necessary experience for the future linguistic world unification after the establishment of Communist dictatorship over the world. For Marr, a Communist fanatic, the organization of the "Socialist economy" inside the Soviet Union created the assurance that "world revolution was around the corner." He thought: "Mankind, proceeding to unity of economy and classless community, cannot help but apply artificial means scientifically worked out, in order to hasten this world process (of the unification of languages)."8 To deliver these "artificial means" to the Communistic Party scientifically worked out for speeding up the unification of languages, that is the chief task of Soviet linguistics.

To accomplish this inside the Soviet Union Marr systematically builds up the theoretical foundations:

(1) The "single language-forming process" the whole world over and its "stages" abolished all qualitative differences between the Russian and non‑Russian languages in the Soviet Union. Russian became immediately related to Ugro-Finnic, Azerbaijanian, Mongolian, Armenian, etc — to all the languages of the Soviet Union — but not only to those of the Soviet Union, but also to those of the whole world. All languages are related and all hybridized.

(2) In this "community of languages of the whole world" at large, and in the Soviet Union in a smaller area, Marr elaborated for the Russian language an "international position," so to speak, completely ignoring the fact that for centuries the conquered non‑Russian peoples had been subjected to Tsarist Russification. Marr strongly emphasized the "international foundation" of the Russian language, its "primordial connection" with all other languages in the Soviet Union. He teaches that "there is historical community (oneness) between Russian and languages of many other Union nationalities."9 "Genetically they are interwoven among themselves in the preceding stage of development."10 Completely passing over the persecutions and even prohibition of the non‑Russian languages (Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Byelo-Ruthenian, Latvian), which had been going on for decades, Marr attributes to Russian a special "cultural role" in the history of these peoples.

(3) Against the background of the Communist revolution Marr even exalted the Russian language to a peculiarly unique position. It was the language of Lenin, of the October revolution, of the "attained Socialism," of the "avant-garde of the world proletariat and world revolution." Because the Russians carried out the Communist revolution and established p88 the "Socialist economy", their language became the capstone of all systems of superstructures. Consequently, we can say that Marr made Russian a holy, venerated language in the Communist church, like Latin, Greek, or Old Church Slavic in the Christian Churches. Naturally this language must play a pivotal part in the "unification" of languages in the Soviet Union, for with this language the "unification" has to be practically put into effect.

f) In formulating the practical tasks of Soviet linguistics Marr follows closely the Communist Party line: "Comrade Stalin teaches us that in the era of reconstruction — technique does decide everything. This directive of our beloved leader (vozhd) of the world proletariat is an order also for the sphere of language-construction, in which the bolsheviks also must master the technique of language and of thinking." Consequently Marr says the paramount task of Communist linguistics is "to master the technique of language creation, in order to facilitate and to speed up the process of the language unification, which is now in progress and which, despite all the zig‑zags, is steadily keeping pace with the process of the unification of the world economy."11 Consequently the first task of Communist linguistics became the mastering of the techniques of language hybridizations for immediate practical use of the Communist Party, the ultimate aim being the "unification of languages" in the Soviet Union. Thus we see that the singleness of the language-forming glottogonic process the world over is not an abstract theoretical idea for Marr, but, on the contrary, it is opening to Soviet linguistics immense perspectives for immediate practical application of the techniques for the unification of languages inside the Soviet Union. It is an important instrument in the "language construction" work of the Russian Communist Party. Marr teaches that Communist linguistics cannot be divorced from practice, from life. It has to use its theoretical attainments in the "Socialist development of the peoples of U. S. S. R. and their culture on the path toward Communism."

All the problems which will face the Communist Party in the future, after a total victory on a world-wide scale for the language, are according to Marr already immediate practical problems in the Soviet Union, problems which have to be immediately solved. These tasks are: the unification of the technical and scientific terminology of all languages of U. S. S. R.; the unification of the graphic systems; the "regulation" (or better "hybridization") of the orthographies of the related Slavic nations (Ukrainian and Byelo-Russian); introducing of "unification principles" into grammar, vocabulary, terminological dictionaries; "annihilations of barriers between languages," and the establishment of general directives for the language construction, the final goal being the systematic hybridization with Russian, in order to accelerate unification. The whole unification process had to be speeded up in addition by the systematic imposition of bilingualism upon all inhabitants of U. S. S. R. giving preference to the Russian language.

Thus, the methods and the aims of Soviet linguistics are clearly p89 formulated by Marr and no scholar supporting Marr's work can claim that he did not know them. In his "Language and Society" Marr teaches:

"If each nation and each people represents a mixture of various ethnic ingredients, then its language, too, is similarly an historically blended phenomenon. Thus, the main task of Soviet linguistics becomes the teaching of a complex blending process resulting in qualitatively new languages and not the search for their single aboriginal source."

And finally, the main task of Soviet linguistics is, under the leadership of the Russian Communist Party and the "great Stalin," to realize their aim: the creation of the common Soviet language and the Soviet nation.

Thus, with Marr's linguistic theory the Russian Communist Party entered into linguistics and established, parallel with its economic blueprint, a blueprint for the "Communist language construction." The subconscious natural language-creating process was made by the Communist Party into a Communist-willed, conscious, planned language action. The language factory with production quotas for "unification" was established together with the Muscovite tyranny over the non‑Russian languages.

How far the original ideas of the founding fathers of Socialism were transformed into a peculiar kind of Muscovite "Socialism," we can see from the following letter of Engels to J. Bloch (September 21, 1890):

"Without making oneself ridiculous it would be difficult to succeed in explaining in terms of economics . . . the origin of the high German consonant mutations, which the geographical wall of partition formed by the mountains. . . . In the second place, however, history makes itself in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each again has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus, there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelogram forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This again may itself be viewed as the product of a power which, taken as a whole, works unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus, past history proceeds in the manner of a natural process and is also essentially subject to the same laws of movement."

2. Critical Evaluation of Marr's Theory

Marr really attempted, often in a purely mechanical way, to apply the basic doctrines of Marxism and its philosophical basis, the dialectical and historical materialism, to linguistics. In the following points the parallelism of Marxism and Marr's theory is striking:

a) Thought, mind, and reason are qualities of matter; consequently Marr included here also language as the expression of consciousness and thought.

b) There is a single historical process going on the world over; consequently Marr postulated a single glottogonic (language-forming) process the world over.

p90 c) Marxism (cf. F. Engels, "Work as a Factor in the Development of Apes into Human Beings") put manual work into the basis of human origins, and Marr did the same, teaching the originality of the "manual language." The hand as an implement of labor originated the beginnings of language.

d) There are stages in the above-mentioned historical process. Consequently Marr attempted to establish such stages in the glottogonic process and similar stages in the semantic process.

e) Everything in society (political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic developments) are superstructures of the economic basis; consequently Marr proclaimed language also a superstructure.

f) As dialectics is the universal law of movement in nature, society, and thinking, Marr regards it also as the universal law of language.

g) Class struggle is the essence of all history; Marr attempts to explain all phenomena in language as an expression of this class struggle.

h) As everything in society has a class characteristic, Marr declares that there do not exist national languages, but only class languages.

i) Reality is revolutionary; consequently Marr replaced the idea of evolution in language with the idea of "revolutionary jumps."

j) As the historical and economic process moves inevitably toward the establishment of the "one and indivisible proletarian republic" the world over after the victory of Communism, and Lenin postulated for this era the emerging of the "one Soviet nation, with one Soviet culture and one language," Marr as a linguist testifies that this tendency toward "one language" the world over really exists in the glottogonic process.

k) As the Communist Party regards it as its task to strive the world over for the victory of Marxism-Leninism, Marr proclaims it the task of Soviet linguistics to speed up the "unification process" by the application of "artificial means to language construction," and to act in the war of ideas against the democratic world as the "scientific sword of Communism under the leadership of the universal genius J. Stalin."

l) Since the Leninist doctrine teaches that after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat the world over and the formation of the universal common economic basis, the revolutionary jumps of humanity will reach their goal and enter into the changeless paradise of the classless and nationless society. Thus Marr's idea of the future common Soviet language includes the end of the revolutionary jumps of languages and a final standstill of the dialectical, semantical, phonetical differentiation of the future changeless Soviet language. Apparently the dialectical processes in all of life will also come to a close. The changeless paradise, Moscow style, begins.

m) As the Program of the Communist International (adopted 1928, Chapter II, the ultimate aim of the Communist International — World Communism) demands "the application of the most perfect methods of statistical accounting and planned regulation of economy with the Five-Year Plan introduced later, so Marr attempts to subordinate all language formation to "planned regulation" by the Communist State.

As one notices, Marr tried by force to put linguistics into the Procrustean bed of Marxism-Leninism and to subject the free investigation p91 of language to Marxism, making linguistics a handmaid or henchman of militant Communism. He does not attempt to present scientific proofs for his assumptions — his "proofs" and "paleontologic analyses" are usually fantastic and rather resemble "word games" — but Marr simply extended the infallibility of the dogmas of Marxism-Leninism over linguistics.

His teaching immediately received sporadic criticism by the few specialists interested in Soviet matters outside the Soviet Union, and at the beginning also in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, Ushakov, Peterson, E. Polivanov (especially his "For a Marxist linguistic," 1931) criticizes some points of Marr, also the "Yazyk-front" (language front) in 1930 attempted in a discussion to fight Marr's "paleontology" and "class conception of languages." The opposition of the non‑Russian philologists, especially of the Ukrainians, was silenced immediately by the Communist Party because many Russian Communist scholars, among them M. N. Pokrowski and W. M. Friche, welcomed Marr's theory as the "basis of Marxist linguistics." Outside the Soviet Union, Dirr, Meillet, and Vendryes opposed Marr and the Swedish Communist, Ch. Sheld (Zur Verwandschaftslehre: die Kaukasische Mode, 1929), called Marr's theory even anti-Marxian and said it was based on an "idealistic foundation." (Idealism is the worst sin a Marxist can be accused of.)

Generally speaking, if we put aside the pure Marxist ideas and critically evaluate what Marr has contributed to the advancement of linguistics, comparing with his achievements the results of the separate schools of general linguistics and of the Indo-European comparative philology, with all its ramifications of special branches outside the Soviet Union, we are actually shocked by its crude and arbitrary character and the lack of logic in Marr's views. If we find from time to time an applicable idea, it is an old acquaintance from the old "bourgeois" linguistics, here in "Marxist" disguise, presented by Marr or his pupils as a "Marxist achievement." Long before Marr linguistics was aware of the importance of "social dialects" inside the languages of nations (Meillet, Schrijnen, Breal, Van Ginneken, etc.) and studied their importance for semantics. Marr's semantic "discoveries," like the "cases of contradictions in the meanings of a single stem," trumpeted forth by Soviet linguists as "the great achievements," are old stuff in Western Europe, even among Slavistic scholars (cf. Karl Abel, Ilchester Lectures on Comparative Lexicology, 1880; Karl Abel, Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte, and Jahrbuch fuer Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, Vol. II, 1910). Also Schuchardt and Meringer in their "Woerter und Sachen" long ago stressed the importance of culture-historical processes for every language in European linguistics.

What especially astonished any non‑Communist is Marr's utter incapacity to approach languages also as an object of art, for he looks on them only as mere material for the future "unified Communist Soviet language."

On the whole the linguists outside the Soviet Union regarded Marr's theory as a revolutionary "children disease" of Communism, using Marr's etymologies for jokes and anecdotes at linguistic meetings in p92 Europe. His "paleontology" introduced a new branch into linguistic literature: the humoristic linguistics.

But there was a deeply tragic aspect in Marr's theory, which was almost completely unnoticed by European and American scholars: the practical application of Marr's principle to all non‑Russian languages in the Soviet Union, especially to the Slavic languages, Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian.

Thus the terroristic police State has fathered, in the Soviet Union, a "police linguistics."

The Author's Notes:

1 N. Ya. Marr, The Japhetic Caucasus and the Third Ethnic Element in the Creation of the Mediterranean Culture, 1920.

8 "Concerning the Question of a Single Language," Selected Works, Vol. II, p398.

9 F. Filin, "Genetic Mutual Relations of Russian with Languages of Other U. S. S. R. peoples in the Works of N. Ya. Marr."

10 Symposium of the "All‑Soviet Central Committee on the New Alphabet," Moscow, 1936, p130.

I.	Language systems of the primary period:
	1.	Chinese,
	2.	Living Middle and Far African languages.
II.	Language systems of the secondary period:
	1.	Finno-Ugric,
	2.	Turkish,
	3.	Mongolian.
III.	Language systems of the tertiary period:
	1.	Surviving Japhetic languages,
	2.	Hamitic languages (Near and Far African).
IV.	Language systems of the quaternary period:
	1.	Semitic languages,
	2.	Prometheidean or so‑called Indo-European languages.

p79 Chapter IV

The Weapon of the Russian Communism
against the non‑Russian nationalities

1. The Soviet Linguistic Theory

2. Critical Evaluation of Marr's Theory

The Author's Notes:

p79 Chapter IV The Weapon of the Russian Communism against the non‑Russian nationalities

1. The Soviet Linguistic Theory

2. Critical Evaluation of Marr's Theory

The Author's Notes:

p79 Chapter IV

The Weapon of the Russian Communism
against the non‑Russian nationalities