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        In the great reorganization of all forms of activity that is going on in the Union of Soviet Republics, nothing is too small or too remote from the material things of the world to be included in the new life of the country. Marxian dialectic will admit no exception to its rules and just as there is a Communist theory of history, so there must be a Communist or Marxian theory of linguistics. We can expect to find in this a clear departure from the normal methods of research and it is of some interest perhaps because under the name of Japhetology, it is being developed by the well-known student of the Caucasian languages, Prof. N. Ya. Marr.
        There is as yet no definite summary of Japhetological doctrine but the Governmental Scientific Research Institute of Azerbaidjan has recently published a pamphlet which aims to supply part of this deficiency. It is entitled “Japhetology and Marxism” (Yafetidologiya i Marksizm) and is a stenographic copy of a lecture of Prof. I. I. Meshchaninov and the remarks made upon it at a meeting of the NIAM (Scientific Research Association of Marxists) in the AZGNII, October 18, 1929. The last paragraph of the preface definitely states this purpose.
        The theory in many of its outlines was definitely started by Prof. Marr before the Revolution as a means of eliminating the belief in families of languages as Indo-European, Ural-Altaic, etc., but with the development of the new regime, he has definitely followed the “compass of Marxism” (34. etc.). He has sought to give a sociological and not a biological interpretation of languages and to avoid thereby many of the errors into which non-Marxian linguists fall.
        In explaining the origin of language, Prof. Marr clearly separates languages from the cries of animals, as clearly as any American fundamentalist, and it is perhaps here that he commences his variations from the usual theories. Thus, Marr argues that man has had the power of speech not more than 60,000 years but that he has used prepared tools 300,000 years. During a long period of time, therefore, man spoke by gestures without using language (13, 58, etc.).
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        Then language was invented, because the human collective found that its method of existence, its economic order, and its social needs could not be satisfied by the language of gestures (25). Meschaninov continues
        ‘The human collective had to pass to the next stage. This transition was performed not accidentally and not at once. Linguistic speech did not appear from above and man did not awake, beginning suddenly to express himself in speech. It appears as the product of long human toil over the development of the beginnings of speech and as the result of a long period, man received ever greater and greater possibility of expressing himself in vocal speech’.
        This is of course a class language, and Marr assumes that the use of speech at this early date was connected with magic and that the priests, magi, or shamans exploited the people by their superior command of the new faculty. (25 ff). This influence of the shamans is denied however by some of the more convinced Marxians and also by some of the Japhetologues (65). However, language passes from stage to stage along with the development of the culture of the class which employs it, but Marr denies that this development is to be understood biologically as the result of biological action of the muscles or the condition of life.
        He also argues very strongly that each process grows out of the one before without new creation. It is here that he finds it necessary to produce some startling etymologies and connections. Thus Meshchaninov says:
       ‘The definite word is attached not so much to an object, as to the role which the object plays in human affairs. Marr brings out some interesting examples. He considers the words, dog (sobaka), deer (olen), horse (loshad), which mean in the languages of several peoples one and the same thing; by studying the economic life of these peoples, he determines that there was meant not a dog, nor a deer, nor a horse, but the animal that drew man. At one time man used a dog for locomotion, then the dog was replaced by the deer, and then by the horse; the term constantly passed from one animal to the other, not because a horse appeared by the change of shape a deer, but because the horse began to play in the life of man that role which the deer had previously played/ (21 f.)’
        Similarly in a study of the Abkhaz language, Meshchaninov groups in one series hand, tree, stone, metal and then metal products, the sword and the axe, since they all refer to the organ or object with which a man works.
        In his original theory Marr tried to reduce as many words as possible to the four most primitive groups, sal, ber, ion, rosh. This theory is especially attacked, and M. Zifeldt in the pamphlet denies that the
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original syllables were ever closed. His argument here can show what there is to expect from Japhetic etymology. ‘The word ‘earth’ in the language of the Zyryans is mu. N. Ya. Marr relates this word to a hypothetical archetype mur, saying that the r had disappeared and he finds justification in the fact that in the Berber language in North Africa mur means ‘earth’, in Chan ‘strawberry’ is murgi, in Georgian martku. The ‘strawberry’ must have the same root as ‘earth’ and therefore the archetype is mur. If you take the Finno-Ugric series, we find not only the open syllables m and ma but in the Mordvin contraction moda- ‘earth’ and in a cognate sense mud also in Estonian and Finnish muda ‘earth’ and in Assyrian matu from the Sumerian mada' (60).
        At first sight all this is a mere list of words, but they are connected because Marr accepts the theory that all languages pass through the same stages though at various rates of speed and therefore at different times. Those Japhetologues who do not seek to construct a single primitive language for humanity are not so bound to these conclusions as to original syllables.
        Taken as a whole, the theory denies the meaning of race and of family of languages because Marr insists on regarding each word as part of a great series and not as a special and distinct entity. In the same way, he secures a logical explanation of the problems why one language or one word or one phrase can remain far more antiquated than another, and why such a language as ancient Babylonian can be more advanced than modern Chuvash. He also denies that there is any pure language any more than any pure race, since all the modern languages are so confused by borrowings that we cannot trace any word or idea back through one group and one only.
        Certain of these assumptions are perhaps already commonplaces in the modern science of linguistics and Marr and his friends are certainly going too far in assuming that the date of a text or of a manuscript plays an overwhelming role in the degree of primitive characters that can be found (3). Likewise he admits that the school of Meillet does pay some attention to the class nature of language in the Marxian sense, but he declares that the conventional linguists have not paid the necessary attention to this fact and that here we have one of the chief differences between the two groups (10).
        It is all based upon the theory that primitive man formed himself into groups not on the basis of clan or blood relation, but that early men ‘were bound together by the need of grouping for the rendering more easy the labor problem, i.e., union went then not on the signs of
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equality of race but on the signs of a unity of toil.' Consequently race never reappears as an important factor.
        We must conclude then that Prof. Marr has created some novel theories and in these theories he has succeeded in hiding many obvious truths which have been perhaps underestimated by many more orthodox scholars. There is also perhaps something of truth in his efforts to secure a Caucasian origin for Indo-European languages and the development of Indo-Hittite is perhaps a step in the same direction.
        On the other hand, he has carried his theories of unity of development altogether too far and at the same time he has placed the theory entirely within the sphere of Marxian dialectic with the result that the really sound observations which it contains are almost concealed by the very obvious desire not to step beyond the bounds of orthodox Marxism. The result has been the denial of certain aspects which do not run according to the compass of Marxism, and a similar attempt to apply the theory to archaeology and to all human sciences dealing with the prehistoric and later periods. Thus, the desire for logic, unity, and dialectic gradually drives the theory further and further from the facts which it tries to explain, and the theory now that it is adapted to Marxism continues in this path. There are however aspects which stress other little known and little regarded sides of modern linguistics, and in this respect the views of Prof. Marr are often interesting and illuminating.