The example of Einstein and other members of the Nuremberg club, how- ever, did not reverberate far. With the exception of some other ex-Volapukists in current North Rhine-Westphalia, very few supporters of Schleyer's lan- guage shifted to Esperanto. Thus, from a total of 1,709 Volapukists included in the official records of Schleyer, Kerckhoffs, and the editorial board of Rund um die Welt, only about 20 of them appeared in the first Adresaro, or address book, containing the names and addresses of the first 1,000 Esperantists.5 In fact, and as might be expected, the membership of Volapuk and Esperanto at this time was quite unevenly distributed. Volapuk had mostly taken hold in Germanic-speaking and/or Catholic territories (with Bavaria, Baden, the Rhineland, Flanders, present-day Austria, and the Netherlands amounting to 60 percent of the Volapukists), while 92 percent of the first 1,000 Espe- rantists were living in Russian territories. Such a non-uniform distribution of the two language movements reflects the quasi-irreversibility factor: only those most committed to the idea of an international language were willing to forgo their investment in Volapuk and learn a new language, but Russia was unexplored territory for those making their first commitment.6
If the German ex-Volapukists were insignificant in terms of membership numbers, they were crucial in other ways. Like Schleyer, Zamenhof wanted to have a journal, which would serve as a meeting place for the emerging com- munity of Esperantists and as a written record that would help Esperanto es- tablish its literary standard. For this purpose, he planned to launch The Internationalist, but the tsarist authorities rejected his request. The Nurem- berg club stepped in and offered to launch La Esperantisto. They believed, cor- rectly, that it would be easier to circumvent the tsarist censorship if the journal were published in Germany and later distributed in Russia. The ex-Volapukists' offer, however, was not unconditional. In exchange for their offer, they re- quested that Zamenhof consider a radical reform in the language. Zamen- hof accepted the challenge, and in September 1889 the first volume of La Esperantisto was published.7
In December 1889, La Esperantisto announced that its purpose was to create an International League of Esperantists and asked its readers to con- tribute ideas about the bylaws of the future organization, and, more con- cretely, about the rules that would allow the league to introduce changes in the language. Zamenhof made the announcement, even when he clearly indicated that, at this stage, he thought it more useful to produce a body of literature than ponder potential reforms. But as long as there were people who thought otherwise, he was determined to settle the issue and proceed with the creation of the league.8 Three months later, La Esperantisto pub- lished the bylaws of the league and, to the surprise of many readers, also announced that the league was already operative. According to the bylaws, annual elections would be held to choose the ten members who would com- pose a future language academy. The electorate would be composed of local clubs, and each club would have one vote for every twenty members. The ten members of the Academy could introduce reforms, which would only re- quire the approval of six members. If a local club objected to a reform, it would be submitted to a referendum, in which all local clubs could vote.
Although democratic, these statutes were not acceptable for Zamenhof. He had been discussing with members of the Nuremberg club different drafts of the bylaws, the prerogatives of its academy, and the mechanisms to intro- duce reforms, but the bylaws finally published in La Esperantisto were not the result of a common understanding. They only represented the ideas of the German ex-Volapukists and had been published without Zamenhof's agreement. As he confided to a Russian Esperantist: "I had drafted completely different bylaws, but Mr. Schmidt [the president of the Nuremberg club after Einstein's death], without telling me a single word in advance, changed the whole spirit of my bylaws, and, under my name, he gave them their current form, which is something that I cannot approve of."9 Zamenhof could not accept such bylaws because an electorate comprising local clubs would place the Russian Esperantists at a disadvantage, given their difficulties in estab- lishing legal Esperanto associations under tsarist rule. The German ex- Volapukists might not have been aware of these difficulties, but Zamenhof was. He claimed that, if the published bylaws were accepted, the local club of a little German town, comprising people who might have not learned the lan- guage but current with their fees, could be more influential than a much greater number of isolated but active Russian Esperantists.10
It took four months for Zamenhof and the Germans to restore trust and reach a cooperative agreement, during which time La Esperantisto was dormant.11 The terms of the final agreement, outlined in the November 1890 issue of La Esperantisto, included setting aside the creation of the league in exchange for a serious consideration of some radical reforms in the language. Thus, from April 1891 on, the journal began inserting reform proposals sent by the readers and opened a public debate about them. In January 1893, La Esperantisto announced that, in order to make a decision about those pro- posals, it would hold a referendum, in which all journal subscribers would have the right to vote. For the sake of transparency, and to facilitate private communications among subscribers, the journal included their names and addresses. For a year and half, Esperantists were using a language to discuss whether that same language should or should not be reformed. Two oppos- ing views emerged from this debate. On the one side were those convinced that the ultimate victory of Esperanto hinged on its proximity to the ideal of a perfect language.
On the other side were Zamenhof and likeminded Esperantists, who were convinced that building a community of speakers and a literary corpus was more important than trying to perfect the language. These opposing prin- ciples embodied two different conceptions about the nature and goals of an international language. If primarily considered as an instrument of commu- nication, then the more fine-tuned or technically perfect language should, ultimately, prevail and be accepted by the international community. Its fate can be foretold by its grammar and vocabulary. But if conceived as a politi- cal instrument, then the larger a languages community of speakers, the more likely it would triumph. For Zamenhof and likeminded Esperantists, the fate of an international language could not be predicted by its technical merits and attributes, since it depended on the more fluid factors of the number and commitment of its speakers.
These contrasting views were tested in the November 1894 referendum, when only a sub-sample of the Esperantists—namely, the subscribers to La Esperantisto—had to decide whether or not to reform the language. The bal- lot gave the victory to Zamenhof and the anti-reformists, but not an over- whelming one. Whereas 157 voted against reforming the language, 107 wanted reforms, and many more abstained. More important, and as Table 1 shows, the referendum disclosed a clear-cut divide in the Esperanto community: fol- lowing Zamenhof's advice, most of the Russian Esperantists had voted against the proposed reforms, while most of the German ex-Volapukists and West-