Stalin: A Biography

Few authors failed to incur some criticism from him. Piotrovski was among them. On the margin of the page where the author had claimed credentials as a pioneer in the historiography of culture, Stalin scoffed: ‘Ha, ha!’²¹ Stalin had combed purposefully through Piotrovski’s book. The notes he took on the ancient languages of the Middle East were important for him, for he intended to write a lengthy piece on linguistics. To say that this caused surprise among the Soviet intelligentsia is an understatement. The expectation had been that when he took up the pen again he would offer his thoughts on politics or economics. But Stalin went his own way. In the course of his extensive reading he had come across the works of Nikolai Marr. A member of the Russian Imperial Academy before 1917, Marr had made his peace with the Soviet state and adjusted his theories to the kind of Marxism popular in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Marr had argued that Marxists should incorporate ‘class principles’ in linguistics as much as in politics. Language was to be regarded as class-specific and as the creation of whichever class happened to be in power. This was the official orthodoxy which Stalin had decided to overthrow.

Articles appeared in Pravda in summer 1950 and were collected in a booklet entitled Marxism and Problems of Linguistics. University faculties across the USSR stopped whatever they were doing to study Stalin’s ideas.²² Much of what he wrote was a healthy antidote to current ideas in Soviet linguistics. Marr had argued that the contemporary Russian language had been a bourgeois phenomenon under capitalism and should be re-created as a socialist phenomenon under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Stalin thought this was claptrap. He insisted that language had its roots in an earlier period of time; in most societies, indeed, it was formed before the capitalist epoch. Recent changes in Russian involved mainly the introduction of new words to the lexicon and the abandonment of old words as political and economic conditions were transformed. Grammatical tidying also took place. But the Russian language written and spoken by Alexander Pushkin in the early nineteenth century contrasted little with the language of the mid-twentieth century.²³ While some classes had had their own jargon and some regions their own dialect, the fundamental language had been common to all Russians.²⁴

Stalin’s motives baffled those politicians and intellectuals accustomed to his polemical contributions on world politics, political dictatorship and economic transformation. His usual menace was barely evident. Only once did the anger show itself. This happened when he said that if he had not known about a particular writer’s sincerity, he would have suspected deliberate sabotage.²⁵ Otherwise Stalin kept to the proprieties of a patient, modest teacher.

Marxism and Problems of Linguistics has been unjustly ignored. Despite turning to leading linguisticians such as Arnold Chikobava for advice, Stalin wrote the work by himself; and he did nothing without a purpose.²⁶ It was far from being only about linguistics. The contents also show his abiding interest in questions of Russian nationhood. At one point he stated magisterially that the origins of ‘the Russian national language’ can be traced to the provinces of Kursk and Orël.²⁷ Few linguisticians would nowadays accept this opinion. But it retains an importance in Soviet history, for it demonstrates Stalin’s desire to root Russianness in the territory of the RSFSR. This was especially important for him because some philologists and historians regarded Kiev in contemporary Ukraine as the Russian language’s place of origin. Moreover, he used the language of Russians as an example of the longevity and toughness of a national tongue. Despite all the invasions of the country and the various cultural accretions, the Russian language was conserved over centuries and emerged ‘the victor’ over efforts to eradicate it.²⁸ Frequently praising the works of Alexander Pushkin, Stalin left no doubt about the special nature of Russia and the Russians in his heart.

Yet this fascination with the ‘Russian question’ did not exclude a concern with communism and globalism. Stalin in fact asserted that eventually national languages would disappear as socialism covered the world. In their place would arise a single language for all humanity, evolving from ‘zonal’ languages which in turn had arisen from those of particular nations.²⁹ The widely held notion that Stalin’s ideology had turned into an undiluted nationalism cannot be substantiated. He no longer espoused the case for Esperanto. But his current zeal to play up Russia’s virtues did not put an end to his Marxist belief that the ultimate stage in world history would bring about a society of post-national globalism.