Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

Marxists understand this matter differently. They hold that the process of withering away of national languages and the formation of a single common world language will take place gradually, without any ‘artificial means’ invoked to ‘accelerate’ this process. The application of such ‘artificial means’ would mean the use of coercion against nations, and this Marxism cannot permit.

At the end of the article Stalin added this paragraph: ‘Marr’s theoretical formulation of a general linguistics contains serious mistakes. Without overcoming these mistakes, the growth and strengthening of a materialist linguistics is impossible. If ever criticism and self-criticism were needed, it is in just this area.’²³¹

Stalin’s interpolations presaged his own contribution to the linguistics debate, which proved to be a master class in clear thinking and common sense.

The arcane debate about linguistics staged by Pravda in May–June 1950 was an incredible spectacle, even by Soviet standards. Chikobava’s 7,000-word article was published as a double-page centre spread that spilled over onto another page. It contained plenty of familiar ideological rhetoric but it was also highly specialised, technical and supported by footnotes. Defenders of Marr responded in kind, as did other critics such as Vinogradov. Pravda published twelve contributions to the discussion before Stalin intervened.²³²

Before he weighed into the debate, Stalin reportedly read a lot of books about linguistics. ‘Stalin was such a quick reader, almost daily there was a new pile of books on linguistics in his study at Kuntsevo.’²³³ Among the materials he did consult were the entries on Yazyk (language), Yazykovedenie (linguistics), Yafet and Yafeticheskaya Teoriya (Japhetic theory) in volume 65 of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (1931). Named after one of Noah’s sons, Marr’s Japhetic theory postulated common origins for Caucasian languages and the Semitic languages of the Middle East. It was the cornerstone of his contention that all languages had a common root. Sections of these entries were quite extensively marked by Stalin and included the intriguing marginal comment ‘Yazyk – materiya dukha’ – language is a matter of spirit.²³⁴

Stalin’s intervention utilised one of his favourite devices: answering questions posed by Pravda.²³⁵ He began by undercutting Marr’s assumption – one shared by his critics – that language was part of the superstructure. Language, Stalin argued, was the product of the whole of society and its history. It was created by society and developed by hundreds of generations of people: ‘Language exists, language has been created precisely in order to serve society as a whole, as a means of intercourse between people . . . serving members of society equally irrespective of their class status.’

Next, he attacked the idea that languages were class-based. Languages were based on tribes and nationalities, not classes: ‘History shows that national languages are not class, but common languages, common to the members of each nation and constituting the single language of that nation. . . . Culture may be bourgeois or socialist, but language, as means of intercourse, is always a language common to the whole people and can serve both bourgeois and socialist culture.’ The mistake that some people made, said Stalin, was to assume that class struggle leads to the collapse of societies. But that would be self-destructive: ‘However sharp the class struggle may be, it cannot lead to the disintegration of society.’ The characteristic feature of languages, Stalin pointed out, was that they derive their use and power from grammar as well as a shared vocabulary: ‘Grammar is the outcome of a process of abstraction performed by the human mind over a long period of time; it is an indication of the tremendous achievement of thought.’

Marr was ‘a simplifier and vulgariser of Marxism’ who had ‘introduced into linguistics an immodest, boastful and arrogant tone’ and dismissed the compara-tive-historical study of language as ‘idealistic’. Yet it was clear that peoples such as the Slavs had a linguistic affinity that was nothing to do with his ‘ancestor’ language theory.

In a subsequent interview with Pravda, Stalin also criticised Marr’s view that thinking could be divorced from language: ‘Whatever thoughts that may arise in the mind of a man, they can arise and exist only on the basis of the language material, on the basis of language terminology and phrases.’