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        Dr. Margaret SCHLAUCH, now teaching at the University of Warsaw, is an outstanding authority on linguistics. A professor at New York University from 1940 until quite recently, Dr. Schlauch has done research in Old English, Chaucer, Icelandic and Sagas in connection with work in medieval literature. Dr. Schlauch has also taught at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins. Dr. Schlauch is the author of numerous books, including Saga of the Volsungs, Romance in Iceland, and The Gift of Tongues. She is an editor of Science and Society and a contributor to many journals. Dr. Schlauch is a member of the D.A.R.
        Warsaw

        LAST SUMMER, it will be recalled, the American press carried reports of a contribution by Joseph Stalin on the subject of linguistic science and Marxism. Journalistic comments on it revealed a good deal of ignorant confusion, since most of the writers obviously knew nothing whatsoever about the scholarly problems involved.
        There was also deliberate distortion. In one section of his article Stalin had stressed the heritage of the Russian language as a national treasure shared by all ranks in the population at all times, and he had stressed also the linguistic unity which permits an entire nation to enjoy that treasure in common. Hence reporters generally tried to prove that Stalin’s intention was to affirm “Russian” linguistic nationalism in a chauvinistic sense. His skeptical position in regard to artificial international languages was taken to
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mean a retreat from international socialist attitudes, to an aggressive nationalist position. Finally, it was likewise implied that Stalin’s statement came as a fiat unexpectedly imposed on linguists from without; that they had no voice in the matter at all, and no choice but to accept an unwelcome ukaz delivered from above by a non-specialist: in fact, by an unqualified interloper.
        All this is quite the opposite of the truth. The distortions amount to downright lying. Stalin is actually a student and specialist in those fields of sociology which border immediately on linguistics (nationalities, minorities, and so on). He wrote about some broad philosophical principles underlying these disciplines and many others.
        Moreover, he did not suddenly descend upon the body of Soviet linguists with an unsolicited decree concerning their special subject. A lively debate on the matter had been going on for some weeks, chiefly in the columns of Pravda. Stalin entered it upon invitation, in response to questions posed to him directly by several young students. What he said was sensible, temperate, and on the whole far better linguistic doctrine than much that had preceded it. It gave a basis for correcting what had become a very unfortunate situation among specialists, due to a cult of admiration for one scholar, supinely followed even by dissenters from his theories.
        Now that the air is cleared, there is no reason why the good research done in the past—despite some fallacious methodology — should not be followed by much better research and practical work in the future. That is all there is to the story.

        At the time of the October Revolution in Russia, there was a scholar named N. Y. Marr working in the field of Caucasian languages (called by him the Japhetic group of languages). He had a wide range of information and a great enthusiasm for his subject. The great impetus given by the young Soviet regime to field work and research in languages no doubt delighted him. He threw himself along with many others into the investigation of the many linguistic families in the USSR, and into the preparation of grammars and texts for a number of them that had never before been written down. He also studied a certain amount of Marxist philosophy to familiarize himself with the guiding principles which had helped to shape the new government’s excellent work in his field.
        With all his enthusiasm, however, Marr apparently quite failed to understand certain fundamental concepts of Marxism. Using glibly such terms as class conflict, ideology, superstructure and economic basis, he misapprehended them, proceeded to elaborate a school of thought which he claimed to be “Marxist linguistics,” and succeeded in making it into something like an official doctrine. Some of the ideas he developed actually had nothing to do with Marxism.
        Marr attacked the methods and results of earlier schools indiscriminately and with increasing acrimony. Thus the vast labors of Indo-European specialists, including his Russian as well as his western European predecessors, were condemned in a lump as “bourgeois idealist” and “reactionary” products. Marr condemned the comparative methods by which these specialists had established the kinship of various families of related languages, and accused them of mystical idealism when they postulated lost “parent languages” to
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explain likenesses among groups of those existing today.
        Here are some of the specific doctrines propounded by Marr to replace those he attacked.
        In the first place, he claimed that in the very earliest stages of humanity, when the first human animals were learning to live together socially on the basis of shared labor, people communicated only by gestures and like inarticulate means. Spoken language, he argued, was later developed by a primitive ruling-class group of priest-magicians; and they kept this device as a class privilege removed as long as possible from the inarticulate masses. Thus language was supposedly developed as a weapon in a class struggle and belonged to the “superstructure” of society (as Marxists technically use that term).
        Marr affirmed that he had worked out and knew of a certainty just what were the first four syllables of human speech to be articulated. They were sal, ber, yon and rosh: no more, no less than these. (Marr never gave his proofs for this claim.) From these four “elements,” so-called, all speech supposedly evolved, diversifying gradually into various similar groups, and then—at certain times in certain places—under favorable conditions taking abrupt leaps forward into new linguistic systems.
        The sudden advances postulated by Marr were supposed to have produced new “stadial developments” in language. The shift from sentences of simple, short words strung together without inflection, into sentences with grammatical agreement and morphology, represented such a stadial advance, initiating a new “family” of languages. The “revolutionary” shifts in question, according to Marr, were produced by technological advances, notably the discovery and the use of metals such as copper and iron among primitive peoples. Those making the discovery moved forward to a new linguistic stage, leaving other sections of the human race behind with the older language patterns. Hence the various stages still found today.
        The innumerable ramifications of human speech began, of course, countless ages ago. Yet Marr claimed that he could juggle vowels and consonants in words existing today, no matter how different they may now appear, so as to show their derivation down the ages from the syllables sal, ber, yon and rosh. (He never explained his procedure.)
        He also claimed that he could penetrate far back into the primitive thought of man, to the “totemic” and “cosmological” stages, by means of a process called “semantic paleontology.” (Again, he never explained his procedure.) His method seems to have been the grouping together of terms and ideas often associated in folklore and mythology. These he called “semantic clusters,” and with
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them he operated in connection with his four primordial syllables. One of his “semantic clusters” was the group “water-woman-serpent,” which he found illustrated in the plots of such various stories as the medieval Tristan legend, modern fairy tales about dragon-killers, and the classical myth of Perseus and its analogues. In the course of their searches for such clusters, Marr and his disciples proposed some etymologies which were, to say the least, startling. They went by the name of “Japhetic” studies.
        The cult surrounding Marr was so great, even after his death, that those who disagreed were pushed aside, in the sense that—as is now revealed—they found it difficult to publish articles and to train students from any other point of view.
        However, it is not true that no scholar raised his voice to disagree with Marr and his school. Lively debates challenged them at various stages. Among other items, I recall reading a pamphlet in 1932 by P. S. Kuznetsov, called The Japhetic Theory, in which some of Stalin’s criticisms were anticipated in matters restricted to language. Others who disagreed, and said so, were V. V. Vinogradov and V. N. Sidorov. In Science and Society, (1936-37), No. 2, pp. 152-67, I summarized Marr’s theories and Kuznetsov’s challenge, with which I agreed. It was Marr’s chief disciple I. Meshchaninov who led the opposition to them.
        The domination by Marr’s followers was first effectively challenged when Pravda, on May 9, 1950, published a long article by A. S. Chikobava attacking the entire school and defending the older “comparative” method. The author accorded warm praise to the undoubted achievements of Marr, but subjected his doctrines to critical analysis. If language was part of the superstructure, a purely class product, asked Chikobava, how could it originate in pre-class society, at man’s initial stage of development? (This was a major point made by Kuznetsov in the 1930’s.) Moreover, Chikobava accused Marr’s school of attempting an oversimplified correlation of economic factors with linguistic phenomena. He rejected Marr’s insistence that an artificial international language is necessary as a pre-condition to realizing a classless society. He strongly disagreed with the “stadial theory” of language development, which in effect establishes a hierarchy of linguistic structures and condemns certain languages to remain on a “lower” stage permanently. Finally, he concluded with a rejection of the four primordial elements and all that had been deduced from them.
        In a long reply (May 16), Meshchaninov did little more than recapitulate the basic doctrines of Marr, while he conceded a few inadequacies in their formulation and corrected Chikobava’s statements in details.
        By the middle of June, fourteen fairly long communications had appeared on the subject in Pravda. Some writers (like Chemodanov, May 23, and Kudriavtsev, June 13) carried on the defense of Marr; others (like Bulakhovskii, May 13) limited themselves to a defense of old-fashioned comparative methods, or deplored the sweeping claims and innovations (V. V. Vinogradov, June 6). More than once the question was raised: Why have we allowed this body of doctrine to be imposed, and to produce a condition of stagnation in our work?

        A group of young students then
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asked Stalin to answer several pointed questions bearing on the controversy. This he did on June 20, in a reply already well known and not requiring long summary here. Its immediate service was that it corrected obvious errors concerning the relations of language to social classes. Not only was it impossible for a class of magician-priests to produce language as a class weapon before there were any classes, but in later times also the existence of classes (even with their special jargons differing in the way of 'vocabulary and usage) does not change the basic nature of language as a means of communication serving entire national communities as a whole.
        Language, Stalin pointed out, differs essentially from the class-conditioned elements making up a cultural superstructure.
        It “is not a product, of one or another base, old or new, within the given society, but of the whole course of the history of society and the history of bases throughout the centuries. It was created not by any class, but by all society, by all the classes of society, by the efforts of hundreds of generations… This, in fact, explains why a language may equally serve both the old, moribund system and the new, nascent system; both the old basis and the new basis, both the exploiters and the exploited.”
        The wider implications of Stalin’s essay pass far beyond the narrow realm of linguistics. They remind us how important it is to discriminate carefully in dealing with elements within and without the superstructure, in relation to all problems of human culture. The Marr school demonstrated how far awry speculation and practice can be bent when such elements are not properly distinguished. Certainly Stalin’s distinctions had nothing to do with any so-called “Russian nationalism,” nor did they imply a retreat from the international affinities of socialism which (as history is teaching us today) does not wait for an artificial world language in order to enlist the support of increasing numbers of peoples, speaking many tongues, throughout the world.
        Among the salutary criticisms made by Stalin was his condemnation of the oppressive dogmatism fostered by Marr’s school. Such defects and kindred problems became the topic of discussion in the scholarly journal News of the Academy of Sciences (Division of Language
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and Literature), in 1950-51. Some writers documented the scope of the inhibiting influence and how it had prevented that “conflict of opinion and freedom of criticism” which in Stalin’s words are needed for the growth of science. Some articles undertook to show how certain special topics should be reoriented in the light of the recent clarification; others discussed problems of linguistics with little or no reference to the recent controversy.
        As this survey must have made apparent, it seems to me that Stalin’s invited participation had a most beneficial effect on the situation of linguistics in the USSR. I believe that this was possible because he showed how to replace pseudo-Marxist principles with genuine ones.
        Having been reminded of the historical role of language and its actual place in the constellation of social forces, linguists can proceed with their jobs with a clearer understanding of them. Just as the problem was first opened up by linguists, they are the ones to do the corrective work and to proceed to more fruitful activities than the juggling of hypothetical primeval monosyllables.
        To investigate how languages serve not merely groups and classes but the entire societies of which they are the products, means to penetrate into some fascinating regions in which grammar and vocabulary are brought into relationship with broad questions of social psychology.
        Realizing that language serves all levels of a society equally (allowing, of course, for nuances of style and vocabulary) helps us, for instance, to understand the universal enjoyment of great masterpieces of literary art even when these had an origin within the patronage of a relatively restricted social group. The people as a whole, moving forward to a socialist society, take with them as their rightful heritage the great language monuments of a Dante and a Chaucer, a Pushkin and a Shakespeare. The medium per se offers no class barriers to a people educated in the best tradition of its national culture; the nobility and the humanity of sentiment embodied in words speak with increasing clarity to audiences released from oppression, fear and exploitation.
        It is the universality of the linguistic medium, of which Stalin spoke, combined with the transcendent quality of grandly creative word-masters, which makes possible the living continuation of great literary traditions.