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Centre de recherches en histoire et épistémologie comparée de la linguistique d'Europe centrale et orientale (CRECLECO) / Université de Lausanne // Научно-исследовательский центр по истории и сравнительной эпистемологии языкознания центральной и восточной Европы

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-- Edward F. JAMES* : «Soviet Linguistic Policy and the International Language Movement», The International Language Review, vol. 1, n° 1, 1955. (no page)

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        That the world has been divided into two distinct spheres of influence during a major portion of the twentieth century is a truism to almost every civilized person regardless of the geographical area in which he lives and the particular political background which he may claim. Yet Western philologists and interlinguistic scientists rarely seem to reckon with the attitude of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics In regard to the international language movement. It seems all too apparent to the serious student of the international language problem that scholars in the West continue to plan and work for the solution of the interlanguage problem without seriously considering the attitude and aspirations of Soviet linguistic theorists and policy formers.
        Although It may be all very well for the non-Soviet member states of UNESCO to debate the pros and cons of international petitions In favor of one or another auxiliary language system, it would certainly seem to be wise for those states to take into consideration the full implication of Soviet philological thought before further serious consideration of the merits and demerits of any particular auxiliary language system.
        To omit an examination and evaluation of Soviet linguistic policy would render any contemporary study of the world auxiliary language movement Incomplete. With this in mind, we will attempt in the present essay to outline the trends of that policy.
        By way of background, it is important to remember that the first Esperantist publications came in 1887 from the presses of Poland (then a part of the Russian Empire) and in 1889 a list of about 1000 Esperantists, published by Dr. Lazarus Ludovic Zamenhof, showed the majority of Esperanto adherents to be Slavs. The early Slav Esperantists were idealistic humanitarians, for the most part.

"The imprint of their outlook served to keep this humanistic spirit alive when, later, influences of a restricted and more materialistic character also played their part in the movement… the counterplay of these two viewpoints… has stood the Esperantists in good stead."[1]

        The first Esperanto literature was of Slav origin, and Slav influence on Esperanto literary style is said to be profound. The preference of Polish and Russian Esperantists for using the prefix system of word building in enlarging the vocabulary of Esperanto, presumably did much to establish patterns for word-formation, words were more frequently compounded according to the agglutinative principle than borrowed from ethnic languages.[2]
        Yet only four years after Dr. Zamenhof's first list of Esperanto enthusiasts had appeared, three quarters of the subscribers to the Journal La Esperantisto were lost. The magazine came under the ban of Tsarist Russia’s censorship because an article entitled "Commonsense and Belief", written by Count Tolstoi, appeared within its covers.[3] It seems evident, however, that the interest in an international auxiliary language did not die, despite official disapproval of La Esperantisto; for in 1910 two constructed language systems, "Nepo and Neposlava," by one Wssewolod Tscheschichin appeared. In these systems the national words of Slavonic derivation remained unchanged, although the grammar and inflectional forms were Esperantist.[4]
        At the time of the October Revolution In 1917, the "Internationalism'’ of Esperanto had a strong sentimental appeal to the Bolshevist leaders. Trotsky mentions in his account of Stalin's imprisonment in Baku (1909-1910) the statement of one Essar Vereshchak, a prison mate;

"Kobe (i.e., Stalin) slept soundly, or calmly studied Esperanto, (He was convinced that Esperanto was the International language of the future)".[5]

        The study of Esperanto during the first Soviet decade was encouraged officially. The auxiliary tongue was recognized in the 1920's as permissible in the transmission of telegraph messages.[6]
        It was during this era that a Soviet Russian commission was constituted for the purpose of studying the question of the world auxiliary language. Esperanto and Ido, as well as a project called Neutralista, were considered, but the commission advocated the adoption of Esperanto. This decision was responsible for the publication of an Esperanto text on post cards, issued by Russian authorities and the issuance of a few postage stamps bearing Inscriptions In that language.[7] The German Esperanto Institute listed, in 1926, 1.749 Russian Esperantists, but this figure was changed in 1927 by the Central Committee of the Soviet Esperanto Union to 16,066 organized Esperantists in 527 groups and cells.[8]
        About 1930, however, Soviet Esperantists clashed with N. Ja. Marr, the leading philologist of the Union, as will be discussed in somewhat more detail below. During the 1930s, Soviet Esperantists were still encouraged to write to correspondents abroad, but a special motive was given as a raison d’être for the continuance of this correspondence. Esperantists were encouraged to disprove the “lies about the famine” and were advised to elucidate the principles of the Five Year Plan in their letters.[9]
        The year 1926 had seen the foundation of the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA). This federation initiated in 1931 the publication of a comprehensive survey of the problems connected with the standardization of technical words. Included among possible solutions to the problem was a suggestion for the use of a constructed auxiliary language. The Soviet Russian standardizing Commission suggested in 1934 that the ISA should begin to work for a code of technical sciences to be similar to the botanical and zoological nomenclatures based on Latin. This proposal was circulated to all the national standardizing commissions by the ISA. By September of 1934 the proposal, edited by one Ernst Drezen, and approved by the Commission for Terminology of the Soviet Russian Academy of Sciences, was brought forward in the ISA conference in Stockholm. Drezen's report, which included sections suggesting both national and international standardization of technical terms, was unanimously accepted by the representatives of nineteen national standardizing associations. Having met with so favorable a reception, the Soviet Russian Standardizing Commission formed a special committee for the preparation of a code project, and the committee was composed of leading figures in electrotechnical science and philology, all of whom were consultants of the Soviet Russian Academy of Sciences. In June of 1935 a final report, the work of the special committee, was circulated, and this report comprehensively reviewed the problems, proposed solutions and scope of the code. Three main principles were suggested for the code’s structure: (1) that of internationality; (2) that of facility in using the code, and (3) that of precision in meaning. "In this connection it is recommended to profit by the experiences of the planned languages Esperanto, Ido, Occidental, and Novial."[10] The Standardization Commission likewise introduced Esperanto sub-titles in certain works.[11]
        Yet it was precisely during these middle 1930s that the policy of the Soviet Union in regard to international languages and pasigraphy apparently underwent a radical change. A brief glance at what may really be called a "language policy", gives the reason.
        It must be remembered that in the Soviet Union there are more than two hundred languages which belong to various language systems. Of these two hundred-odd tongues, the Slavic languages are the most important, both numerically and politically. Included in the Slavic group are Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, etc., and among the tongues of the non- Slavic group are included Armenian, Azerbaijan, Gruzinian, and many others. At the time of the Revolution, the majority of these non-Slavic tongues were not in a written form; a dearth of schools was also partly responsible for retarding any wide training in these languages. In 1913 not a single book was published in any number of the minor language groups having a written language, and in the same year in Byelorussian, a major language, only twelve published titles appeared. It is reported that even in the universities of pre-Soviet Russia, there were no special professorships in any of the Oriental languages, and only a very few dictionaries existed in any of the minor languages.[12]
        The policy of Imperial Russia toward subordinated countries had been one of linguistic Russianization and the 1917 revolutionaries, decrying such linguistic imperialism, substituted a multi-national internationalistic policy which, coupled with an attempt to broaden educational opportunities in all spheres, attempted to place all languages throughout the Union on an equal basis.[13] The Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia sought to establish the free development of minority groups in the Russian territories. By 1920, diverse languages were recognized as being of equal standing in the Great Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, and this recognition policy was adopted by each of the states of the Union in turn, until about 1926. Indeed, the 121st Article of the Stalin Constitution guarantees the "right of education in the native language.[14]
        During the early 1930s, the linguistic theory of N. Ja. Marr, a leading soviet philologist, was accepted as the favored point of view in all matters of language.[15] Language, according to Marxist doctrine, is of the nature of class struggle, and the transition from one stage of language to another is not evolutionary but revolutionary; it therefore follows that the single world-language will be the language of the classless society of the socialist millennium. "Mankind", wrote Marr, "proceeding toward a unity of economy and a democratic society cannot help but apply artificial means, scientifically worked out. In order to accelerate this world process (toward a single world-language.[16] In 1933, Marr condemned Esperanto on the ground that its construction had been undertaken without proper regard for the transitional and revolutionary essence of language.[17] In the Ukraine, the Commissar of Education, M. Skrypnyk, also spoke out sharply against Esperanto.[18]
        The official attitude of the philologists of the first Soviet era had been one of liberalism in regard to language development throughout the Union, and had therefore been one of benevolence toward the interlanguage movement up until the time of Marr, when, on the basis of Marxist philological thought, constructed languages were first condemned. Official Soviet social philosophy was to veer from liberal internationalism to positive Russian chauvinism, and the death warrant of interest in and work toward a universal interlanguage was to be signed very shortly.
        The end of internationalistic thinking came during the 1930’s, when soviet patriotism (and, subsequently, Russian chauvinism) came to the fore. In the period between 1924 and 1929, Arabic or Mongol orthography was used for twenty-two non-Slavic languages (including various branches of the Altaic and Caucasian language groups) in use In the soviet Union. All of these languages, during the period from 1937 to 1940, changed from Latin or ethnic to Russian orthography. Official lexicographical commissions likewise replaced non-Russian Slavic words with Russian forms in the Slavic languages falling within the Soviet sphere of influence. Of this, the following may serve as examples[19]:

Pre-Revolutionary Ukrainian Words of the 1920s	Present Ukrainian	Russian	English
xlypavka (tech.) mechyk (tech.) borlak (med.)	klapan rubyl’nyk kadyk	klapan rubil’nik kadyk	salve Switch Adam’s apple

        The orthography of other Ukrainian words was made to conform with the Russian: the Ukrainian Ateni (Athenium) was lexicographically changed to the Russian Afeni; katedra (professorial chair) was changed to the Russian kafedra; the Ukrainian avijatzia (aviation) was changed to the Russian aviatzia.[20] In 1930, the first Ukrainian underground anti-Soviet group, the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine, was discovered. One of the leaders confessed to anti-Soviet plotting among Ukrainian philologists. He confessed that the Institute of Ukrainian Scientific Language, in a Ukrainian "nationalist current" had given terminology a Ukrainianized form, and had thereby replaced the accepted terms by nationalistic innovations.[21]
        All peoples of the U.S.S.R. have the strong aspiration to learn the Russian language and to read in the original the works of Lenin and Stalin and the classics of Russian artistic literature; in all republics the Russian language is offered in school, beginning from the second grade, as the second language after the native one. The peoples of the U.S.S.R. aspire to master the progressive Russian culture and science. Eventually the languages of the U.S.S.R. are enriched by a considerable amount of words adopted from or through the Russian language.
        Under these circumstances it is much more expedient to have one alphabetical system for the languages (the native and the Russian), much more expedient than to use two different orthographies... any educated person who knows one alphabet is in a position to read in two languages (in his own language and in the Russian language) without any waste of time and effort on additional training."[22]
        Reminiscent, of Dr. Goebbels’ attempt at Sprachreinigung in 1936, when the German International word forms Radio and Telefon were changed to the "pure” Teutonic formis Rundfunk and Fernsprecher, respectively, and Einstein’s Relativitaetstheorie became Bezueglichkeitsanschauungsgesetz (relativity percepion law), was a statement in 1950 by Soviet Academian A. M. Terpigorev, who declared that "a scientific terminology cluttered with foreign words is Intolerable", and that such word forms as khuligan (hooligan), trolleibus (trolley ous) and stend (stand), must be abolished and be replaced by Russian words. Coincidentally, Professor Heinrich Deiters of Berlin University, in the Russian sector, announced that no student enrolled would pass the final examinations unless he knew Russian.[23]
        The stage for Terpigorev’s pronouncement had apparently already been set, and was evidently not a novel idea: Professor of Foreign Languages, Radovan Lalich, of the University of Belgrade, remarks:

"From the theory of Great Russian scientific priority, these chauvinists now proceed to the theory of the Russian language as the language of socialism. The first to advance this theory was the 'Literaturnaja Gazeta’ In its January 1, 1949 number. The author of the article entitled ’The Great Language of our Era', speaks in prophetic overtones of the successive replacement of one world language by another through the centuries and ages; 'The replacement of one world language by another has occurred time and again throughout the thousands of years of the history of mankind. The Latin language was the language of the ancient world and the Middle Ages The French language was the language of the ruling class of the feudal epoch. It was maintained for a long time together with feudal traditions and customs in International diplomatic circles The English language became the language of world capitalism.' And then the author, Mr. D. Zaslavski, concludes In prophetic strain: 'Looking at the future on New Year's Day, we see the Russian language as the world language of socialism.' After these apocalyptic words, one cannot help but remember an old man named Filofej, who, in a message sent in 1510 or 1511 A. D. to Vasilij Ivanovlč, the great Moscow Prince, spoke with the same prophetic ecstasy of the succession of world empires, of how two Romes had fallen while the third Rome, i.e., Moscow, was standing firm, and of how there would be no fourth…"[24]

        Even in the Soviet satellite countries there was much praise of the 'pleasant, melodious, tender and beautiful language of our liberators".[25] Czechoslovak Minister Kopecki is quoted as stating: "The Russian language — that is the language of our better future."[26] By 1953, Mario Pei in the New York Times was speaking apprehensively of the Russian "relentless opposition" to English, ''repeatedly expressed in attacks upon English as the conveyor of Anglo-American capitalistic ideology,"[27]
        Chauvinism in language has likewise reared its head in the Western world. During the war year of 1943, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, upon receiving an honorary degree at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., enthusiastically endorsed the "Basic English" of Ogden and Richards, as an "international language", in these words:

"I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other's wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe, and without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves in this invaluable amenity and birthright.
        Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan — there are others — but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of very wide transactions of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech, no more, indeed, than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper."[28]

        The reactions of Moscow to these remarks were forthcoming, but not until almost three years later, when the friendship between Russia and the Anglo-American powers was becoming strained. Then, Soviet Marshall Stalin himself had something to say:

"It is worthy to mention that Mr. Churchill and his friends very vividly remind one in this connection, of Hitler and his friends. Hitler initiated the war with the pronouncement of the racial theory, stating that only people speaking the German language represent fully worthy nations. Mr. Churchill also initiates a beginning of the war from a racial theory, stating that only nations speaking the English language are the fully worthy nations called to lead the fates of all the world.
        The German racial theory brought Hitler and his friends to the resulting inference that the Germans, as the only fully worthy nation, had to dominate the other nations. The English racial theory leads Mr. Churchill and his friends to the result that nations speaking the English language… are the only fully worthy ones to dominate the remaining nations of the world.
        In reality, Mr. Churchill and his friends in England and the USA set forth to the nations that do not speak the English Ianguage something like an ultimatum: recognize our domination voluntarily, and then everything will be in order. Otherwise, war is inevitable. "[29]

        Vaslavski’s statement on New year's day, 1949, was followed within four months by a bitter attack on Anglo-American as a world language, launched by doctor of philologic sciences, V. N. Jartseva. Her statement and reasoning seem germane in evaluating probable Soviet reception of any official proposal for a solution to the international language dilemma, whether that proposal be in favor of an ethnic or a constructed language.
        Pointing out that a one-world Anglo-Saxon language is part and parcel of a battle against national sovereignty, compounded by Anglo-American imperialism,[30] she condemns Basic English periphrasticism as an impediment to the clarification of thought.[31] I. A. Richards, Otto Jespersen and Anglo-American scholars are "pseudo-scientists" and "bourgeois linguists", and Hugh Walpole’s assertion that English is a dominant language because of the fact that it is in widespread use, is countered with the charge that the dissemination of English was accomplished by colonial enslavement".[32] I.A. Richards' affirmation that "analytical languages are 'easier' to learn than languages with richly inflected forms is attacked on the grounds that if children are able to learn any form of language, analytical or inflectional, it cannot be more difficult for adults to learn one than the other. Dr. Jartseva further continues;

"The bourgeois linguists, who are not able to understand the dialectical unity of the form and content of language take only either the form and not the content, or content without form. They therefore consider that analysis is the clear-thinking of English-speaking people.
…From the point of view of Jespersen, the progress of the language is nothing else but to communicate the same (content) — but in more simplified form... it follows from this statement that the development of the language is as understandable as the simplification of the forms, but with the static and non-developing content…
…Jespersen confuses form and content and on the basis of form the development of the language is considered. Therefore, he comes to the inevitable conclusion about the preferences of the thinking people who are using the language of the analytical construction, since this construction seems to be approaching perfection.
Now we see from what poisonous source the creators of the world language take the proofs and explain why the analytical construction makes English more or less usable material for creation of a supranational language: Here we see the reaction of the racial contemplation".[33]

        Dr. V.N. Jartseva is no less violent in her denunciation of constructed languages. Although she mentions only Ido and Volapük specifically among the artificial languages contrived by "bourgeois linguists", she condemns all such attempts to construct a language based on any ethnic tongue, as a "racist" linguistic undertaking, having no relationship with intercommunal developmental ties.[34] Of interest is her closing statement that

…the Russian language is presently the international language of the communication of the U.S.S.R. and is also studied by many millions of laborers outside the borders."[35]

        Under such pro-Russian nationalism, the interlanguage movement, not only throughout the Soviet Union, but in all the satellite, states, has obviously suffered. It has been pointed out that not only has the activity of the Esperantists ceased, correspondence in Esperanto rarely gets through the Iron Curtain), but that symptomatically, after the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, the Commissariat of Interior included Esperantists among the "alien elements", which might be considered subversive to the new regime.[36]
        Although no state within the Soviet Union is even listed as having any delegates to the Universala Esperanto-Asocio in the Jarlibro for 1954 (figures are given with a closing date of December 31, 1953),[37] statistics on delegates and members or the UEA in Communist-dominated areas„ are as follows:[38]

        By comparison, one notes the following figures for countries, chosen at random, which are not in the Soviet control group.

        In addition to comparing the figures above, some idea of the effectiveness of anti-interlanguage Soviet policy may be gained from consideration of the fact that the cities of West Germany number a total of 102 UEA delegates, while the cities of East Germany list only 2 such delegates (excluding Berlin).[39]
        Significantly, Esperantists in the United States apparently considered their movement at a standstill behind the Iron Curtain, for in the American Esperanto Magazine of May-June, 1954, it was reported

“The last Esperanto magazine published behind the Iron Curtain is no more. With the December issue of 1953, El Popola Chinio, of Peking, China, has discontinued publication. It was filled with Communist and anti-American propaganda, and insufficient zeal or lack of Marxist orthodoxy cannot possibly have been the reason for the government's decision to kill it. Apparently, as In other Iron Curtain countries, Esperanto has become taboo in China…”[40]

        Notwithstanding the evident hostility of Soviet authorities to the international language movement, the Ido Union still lists representatives in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary,[41] and the Occidental-Interlingue movement counted one representative In Czechoslovakia as an agent for its journal Cosmoglotta.[42] Yet E. Lienhard, editor ad interim of the interlingue Novas admitted quite frankly:

“The second World War and the prohibition by a race-fanatic Hitler-Germany, hindered the wider spread of the… Occidental of Professor de Wahl… Likewise Soviet Russia presently does not allow it to rise and spread in the homeland of its genial creator, whence, over Estonia, it spread outward into the present satellite states."[43]

        In summation, then, we may conclude that a serious obstruction to any proposed solution of the International auxiliary language problem in Russia, will be a Soviet nationalist philosophy. This philosophical judgment refuses to consider any answer to the problem This attitude is based essentially on an a priori Marxist philological thinking and also on a poorly disguised but efficient attempt to Russianize all movements and influences within the orbit of Soviet control.
        There is scarcely any mystery, either, as to Muscovite linguistic plans for the future. Ultimately, it would appear, all language in the Soviet Union and in the satellite states will be imperceptibly or demonstrably replaced by Great Russian.

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* University of Maryland

[1] E. D. Durrant, The Language Problem, Its History and Solution, (Heronsgate, Rickmansworth, Hertz, England, 1943), p. 49.

[2] Durrant, p. 49.

[3] Durrant, p. 51.

[4] Albert L. Guerard, A Short History of the International Language Movement (New York,          1921, p. 218. Guerard gives a sample of Nepo. In the Lord's Prayer following, German words are indicated by an asterisk (*); English by two (**); Russian by three (***), Esperanto and French by no sign:    “Vatero* nia, kotoryja (***) estas in la njeboo (***); heiliga (*) estu nomo via, kommenu (**) regneo via, estu volonteo via jakoe (***) in (**) la njeboo (***), ebene (*) soe (*⁾ na (***) la erdeo (**)." There could not have been many imprints of the system, for the very complete international language library presently in the New York Public Library, contains nothing on either system.

[5] Leon Trotsky, Stalin (New York, 1941), p. 118, quoted in J. Kuchera, “Linguistic Policy of the Soviet Union”, (Dissertation), Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass, 1950, p. 333-4.

[6] Kuchera, p. 333.

[7] Durrant, p. 84.

[8] Durrant, pp.118-119.

[9] Kuchera, p. 334.

[10] H. Jacob, A Planned Auxiliary Language (London, 1947), pp 125-6.

[11] Durrant, p. 143.

[12] B. Grande, "Jazyki Narodov SSSR," Bolshaya Sovietskaya Entzyklopedia (Reprint, Baltimore, Md., 1949), coIumns 1625-26.

[13] Cf. Kuchera, Chapter VI.

[14] B. Grande, col. 1627 et seq.

[15] Kuchera, pp. 16-17.

[16] Kuchera, p. 240.

[17] Kuchera, p. 334.

[18] V. Chaplenko, in a personal letter to the writer, dated July 25, 1954.

[19] Cf. Kuchera, pp. 211, 273-6, 280-3. The subsequent elimination of philologist Marr did not, apparently, change Soviet philologic science in this respect.

[20] P. Kovalik, consultant of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States, in a personal letter to the writer, dated July 25, 1954.

[21] Kuchera, p. 226.

[22] B. Grande, col. 1630.

[23] Article in Time. LV (March 27, 1950, 29.

[24] H. Lalich. The Russian Language and Great Russian Chauvinism. (New York. 1950, pp. 4-5.

[25] Julius Dolanský, "Cím nám byla a je ruština," Slovanský přehled (Prague, 1949), p. 23, quoted in Kuchera, p. 326.

[26] Lalich, p. 11.

[27] M. A. Pei, "Conquest of Babel?" New York Times (May 24 1953), pp. 42-44 Professor Pei suggests that the entire solution to the problem lies in the mutual acceptance by Russia and the rest of the world of English transliterated into Cyrillic. For those sounds in English which cannot be phonetically transliterated, Professor Pei suggests the use of certain letters appearing in the Serbo-Croatian alphabet. He suggests that this might be acceptable to the Russians since the national and international English would be two different tongues. He feels that Russia would have "the satisfaction of having contributed to the world tongue its written form," in the light of what is here presented it would seem that Professor Pei has been guilty, in this case, of some rather wooly thinking. Just as conceivably, one might suggest transliterating Russian into Homan orthography for world use!

[28] W. Churchill, (“Alliance with the United States After the War"): address at Harvard University, September 6, 1943, quoted in Vital Speeches of Today. IX (September, 1943), 715.

[29] J. V. Stalin In "Intervyu Tovarishcha I. V. Stalina s korrespondentom Pravdy otnocityelno rechi Gospodina Churchilla 13 Marta 1946 Goda," Gospolitizdat. 1946, pp. 4-5, quoted by Jartseva, p. 18.

[30] V. N. Jartseva Reaktsionnaia Sushchnost Teorii Mirovogo Anglo-saksonskogo yazyka ("The Reactionary Substance of the ‘World Theory' Anglo-Saxon Language") (Moscow, 1949). It is sub-titled in Russian, "A stenograph of a public lecture given the 23rd of April, 1949, in the Central Lecture Hall of the Society in Moscow by Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor V. N. Jartseva: The All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge," It was printed by the Pravda Publishing House, Moscow.

[31] Jartseva, p. 8.

[32] Jartseva, cf. pp. 11-13.

[33] Jartseva, pp. 15-16.

[34] Jartseva, p. 5.

[35] Jartseva, p. 17.

[36] Kuchera, cf. pp. 333-5.

[37] The term "delegate" as used here may be misleading. Page 95 of the Jarlibro (Yearbook) of the Universal Esperanto Association sets forth that ”anyone may become a "delegate" by being of 21 years of age, an Esperantist, and a membro-abonarto (such membership costing about three dollars a year), and by applying for such delegacy, Membership in the UEA is obtainable on the subscription of approximately one dollar and twenty-five cents. The economic conditions of the country listed, as well as the ability or inability to receive a British-published journal, would doubtless be modifying factors in evaluation of the figures here given.

[38] Figures given ere from The Statesman’s Yearbook of 1954, and are in round numbers. / cf. Jarlibro, 1954: Universale Esperanto Asocio, Unua Parto, (Heronsgate, Rickmansworth, England), pp. 101-255. V. n. 37 supra. / Cf. Jarlibro, 1954: Universale Esperanto Asocio, Dua Parto, (Heronsgate, Rickmansworth, England), pp. 8-10.s V.n. 37 supra.

[39] Cf. Jarlibro, 1954. Unua Parto, pp.167-180. V.n. 37 supra.

[40] "Esperanto in Action”, Amerika Esperantisto, LXVIII (May-June, 1954), 35.

[41] Progreso. (January-march, 1954), (p. ii).

[42] Cosmoglotta, XXXIII (May-June, 1954), p. 32.

[43] E. Lienhard, "Allgemeine Orientierung ueber die heutige Situation in der Weltsprachenbewegung," Interlingue-Novas. (November, 1954), (p. 1.)