James Stout (115:33)
And the Soviets, while originally recognizing Esperantus, eventually reversed that policy under Stalin during the Great Purge and executed exiled or gulagged Esperantists. And as you can imagine, all that repression all at once kinda killed Esperanto's momentum. Today, despite its goal of being a truly international language, Esperanto's global reach remains uneven. While it has made some strides in recent years, it's still underrepresented in many parts of Africa and Asia. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are in Europe, though its development outside of Europe deserves some attention, as Esperanto managed to leave a mark in China, Iran, Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the response to Esperanto historically should give you an indication as to how anarchists must have felt about Esperanto as an internationalist or anti nationalist movement. Anarchism was very supportive of the Esperanto project. Let me run you through the timeline, courtesy Wilfurth's Esperanto and Anarchism. One of the earliest anarchist Esperanto groups was founded in Stockholm in 1905, the same year the anarchist Paul Berthelot founded the monthly magazine Esperanto. Similar groups soon emerged in Bulgaria, China and other countries. In 1906, anarchist anarchist Siniklaus founded an international association, Paco Libereco Peace Freedom, which published the Internacia socia revue. By 1910, Paco Libireco merged with Esperantista Laboristaro to form Liberriga Stelo Star of Liberation. Strengthening Anarchist Esperanto Networks the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam formally addressed the role of Esperanto in international communication. Subsequent anarchist congresses continued to pass resolutions advocating for Esperanto's use within the movement movement by 1914, these anarchist Esperantist organisations had published extensive revolutionary literature, including anarchist texts in Esperanto. Around this time, correspondence between European and Japanese anarchists became more active, facilitated by Esperanto. In Prague, Eugene Adam proposed the formation of Senaziesa Associio Tutmunde, the SAT or the World A National Association. Unlike other Esperanto associations, SAT rejected nationalism wholesale and sought to create a transnational class conscious workers movement. To quote why is there an Esperanto Workers Movement? By Gary Mickle, SAT was not meant to usurp the role of political parties while engaging in political struggles directly, but was to be a cultural association engaged in workers education, one that would help to break down national and ethnic barriers between workers by involving them in practical collective activity, bringing workers into contact, freeing them from the shackles of nationalism. SAT's ideas, and especially the ideas of its a nationalist faction were an early statement of an idea that has more recently come to be known as globalisation from below. So in August 1921, 79 workers from 15 countries gathered in Prague to formally established SAT. By 1929-1930 SAT had grown to 6,524 members across 42 countries, reaching its peak influence. The use of Esperanto flourished in German workers movements between 1920 and 1933. By 1932 the German Workers Esperanto League had 4,000 members, leading to Esperanto being called the Workers Latin. But as you can imagine, this was not to last. By the time Hitler came into power. The Scientific Anarchist Library of the International Language or ISAB was founded in the USSR in 1923. Published in Anarchist Works by Kropotkin and Anne Borovoi in Esperanto, this also would not last the Great Purge. The Berlin group of anarchist Nicholas Esperantis greeted the second congress of the International Workers association in Amsterdam in 1925 and reported that Esperanto had become so integrated into their movement that an international libertarian esperantist organisation had formed. This likely referred to the TLEs, the World League of Stateless Esperantists, which later merged with sat. Esperanto was also popping off amongst anarchists and socialists in Korea, China and Japan. Liu Shifu, a key figure in Chinese anarchism, began publishing La Vochoe de le Popolo, the Voice of the people, in 1913, the first anarchist periodical in China. His work relied heavily on information from Internacia Socia Revue and helped popularise Esperanto in China. Japanese anarchists and socialists, as I mentioned, were among the earliest Esperantists in the country, but faced heavy persecution and sadly, between Imperial Japan, Francois Speed, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The rise of totalitarian regimes leading to World War II largely suppressed the anarchist Esperanto movement. After the war, the Paris Anarchist Esperanto Group was the first to resume organised work, launching the publication sen Staltano in 1946. Most anarchist Esperantists have since been organised within SAT, with an anarchist faction maintaining its autonomy. In 1969, this faction began publishing the Liberia Sana Bolteno, later renamed the Libretzana Ligilo. By 1997, SAT membership had dwindled to fewer than 1500 members. The initial radical vision of SAT was weakened by political shifts and the growing dominance of English as a global lingua franca. The early separation between SAT and mainstream Esperanto organisations was a response to bourgeois political neutrality, but it also contributed to its marginalisation. And today the anarchist Esperanto movement exists largely as a niche within satisfaction. So what can we say about the role of Esperanto today? Well, one of the more interesting currents I found within the Esperanto community mentioned by Firth is Raumismo, a philosophy named after the Finnish city of Rauma, where a Youth Congress in 1980 helped define this approach. Raou Mismo views Esperanto speakers as a kind of linguistic diaspora, a cultural group bound together by a shared language rather than a national identity. Instead of focusing on making Esperanto a universal second language, Raul Mistozh embraced it as just one language among many, valuing its use in literature, culture and everyday communication without any grand ideological ambition. But it's possible Esperanto can still play a role in facilitating exchange and collaboration between people of different linguistic backgrounds. A German anarchist once lamented the barriers to international understanding quoted in Firth's More or less in isolation from one another, we work and fight without engaging in an exchange about our victories and defeats and without supporting and encouraging one another. Intensifying contact above the regional level with people having similar ideas and aims should be an important component of our work work in order to make effective, active solidarity possible. And that's the trouble. Even today, linguistic barriers hinder international cooperation. Groups struggle to maintain foreign language correspondence, organize multilingual meetings, or find interpreters. Instead, communication tends to rely on chants. You know, someone in a group happens to speak a certain language, that determines who they can connect with. But when those key individuals move on, those connections can end up falling apart. So I get the appeal. I mean, wouldn't it be beneficial for these movements and for any interest group working across language barriers to have a relatively easy to learn, politically neutral means of communication? Major languages like English, Spanish, or French don't fully solve the problem as they come with historical baggage and imbalances in fluency levels. Esperanto, on the other hand, provides a more equitable solution because everybody is starting from the same point. Since it isn't tied to any one nation, it avoids the power dynamics that arise when non native speakers must conform to the linguistic norms of dominant cultures. Unlike English, which often privileges native speakers and places others as perpetual learners, Esperanto fosters a more level playing field. English is treated like a global lingua franca right now, but a lot of people leave school without ever developing enough fluency to navigate an English dominated world. And English is not the easiest language to learn. Esperanto, regardless of whether it ever becomes a global standard, offers an alternative path. It can help people overcome language learning anxieties, especially those who feel disempowered by traditional educational systems. And it can inspire an interest in language itself. If you've ever met an Esperanto speaker, you know that they are very passionate about linguistics. More often than not, many of its speakers go on to study linguistics, language politics, or even lesser known languages. It's also a great way to develop translation skills in a friendly, cooperative environment. For monolingual English speakers, using Esperanto can be an eye opening experience. It puts them in the shoes of those who never got to rely on their native language in international settings. Rather than viewing Esperanto as a competitor to other languages, perhaps a more productive approach is to see it as a tool for promoting multilingualism, cultural exchange, and a more cosmopolitan mindset. Within the Esperanto speaking community, opinions and its future vary widely. But one thing is clear. The question of how we communicate across linguistic divides is still very much alive, and Esperanto offers but one possible answer. However, as I alluded to earlier, Esperanto is not without its critiques. As covered by Firth. Let's start with one of the most frequent critiques. Esperanto is an artificial language. Unlike the so called natural languages which evolved organically over time, Esperanto was deliberately Constructed. But here's the thing. Since the rise of the nation state, the line between natural and artificial languages has become increasingly blurry. Many national languages, like standard German or Standard French have been shaped by deliberate standardisation, legal regulations and media influence. In that sense, every language is to some degree engineered. Authors, storytellers and ordinary speakers continuously influence language development. Meaning that Esperanto is not as different after all. It does continue to evolve. And here's where I think, like James C. Scott had a rather negative characterisation of Esperanto as a purely high modernist endeavour. As though all Esperantos sought to make Esperanto the official international language in Scene Like a State. He claims that Esperanto was created to replace the dialects and vernaculars of Europe. But such was never the case. It was always meant to be a language used to facilitate communication. There was more than one motivation for Esperanto's use and boiling. Such an exercise in human creativity and attempted connection down to just that status Focus, to me seems needlessly reductive. He also calls it an exceptionally thin language without any of the resonances, connotations, ready metaphors, literatures, oral histories, idioms and traditions of practical use that any socially embedded language already had. Which may be true when it began, but it's certainly not true now. Now with over a century of use and evolution.
