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Table 1. Results of the 1894 Referendum on Reforms in Esperanto

Abstain

For reforms

Against reforms

Total

Unknown residence

10

9

4

23

Residents in Russian territories

176

12

117

305

Residents in Western Europe

71

86

36

193

Total

257

107

157

521

Source: La Esperantisto (November 1894): 161-62.

 

ern European Esperantists were convinced that only a reformed Esperanto had a chance to succeed.

Zamenhof was quite relieved with this result. As he confided to a fellow Russian Esperantist: "As a result of this debate about reforms we have wasted the whole year. But I cannot complain, since the final result has been quite positive. The menacing thunderstorm of reforms has disappeared, and the atmosphere has cleared once and forever. . . . Our cause is now safe, and we can apply all our energies to extend [Esperanto]."12

But his was a Pyrrhic victory. In the first place, the long, open discussion in La Esperantisto about the need for or, contrarily, the danger of reforms had drastically reduced the number of supporters. If in 1893 La Esperantisto boasted close to 900 subscribers, by the 1894 referendum, only half of them were still current with their subscriptions. Second, and more important, as a result of the ballot, many reform-minded Esperantists abandoned the move- ment. In 1894, ninety-eight Germans subscribed to La Esperantisto, but the next year there were only ten. The referendum had certainly cleaned up the atmosphere, but there were many fewer people to breathe it.

To stop the attrition, Zamenhof made a desperate move. He reached an agreement with the Posrednik publishing group, which allowed him to re- produce articles from Tolstoy in La Esperantisto. He calculated that this ar- rangement would increase the appeal of his journal, but the tsarist regime could not tolerate his alliance with the Tolstoyans. The Russian government prohibited the circulation of La Esperantisto in its territory, where three- quarters of its subscribers lived. This was the coup de grace, and in June 1895 La Esperantisto published its last issue.

Zamenhofs eagerness to strike an alliance with the Tolstoyans did not surprise fellow Russian Esperantists. As Zamenhof explained, the

Tolstoyans also craved universal justice and fraternity far above and beyond national or religion affinities.13 This demonstrates the extent to which Za- menhof's political vision of Esperanto was shared in the region, in contrast to the more instrumental position of western Esperantists.

Of particular significance is the embrace of Esperanto in Jewish circles. In his private correspondence, Zamenhof confided that there were many Jews among the first senkondiĉuloj, or unconditional Esperantists.14 In fact, 64 per- cent of the first 1,000 Esperantists included in the first Adresaro lived in the Pale of Settlement. Also, a brief look at the biographies of the first Esperanto writers illustrates the kind of people living in Eastern Europe who felt attracted to Esperanto: mostly, people driven by ethical and political commitments rather than by an interest in the advancement of commerce and science. Thus, out of the first six Russian Esperantists who published original work in this language, three had a political resume that could only make a tsarist official raise his eyebrows. They were Leo Belmont (1865-1940), a Jewish lawyer who had served five terms in jail before being permanently removed from the bar; Vasili N. Borovko (1863-1913), who had learned Esperanto in Siberia in 1889, where he was exiled; and Aleksandras Dambrauskas (1860-1938), a Catholic priest who translated and smuggled copies of Unua Libro into Lithuania, since the Russian government had prohibited publications in Lithuanian.15

A vague, quasi-messianic idealism, heralded with broad appeals to uni- versal fraternity and justice, had helped the language overcome its first cri- sis, but it could not keep it alive. A year after La Esperantisto was forced to close, a new journal, Lingvo Internacia, published in Uppsala, was launched, but the dwindling number of Esperantists did not provide a solid platform for takeoff. Also, Zamenhof had to set aside his work on Esperanto and con- centrate his energies on making a living from his private practice as an eye doctor. Languishing in Eastern Europe and about to disappear in Germany, it seemed that Esperanto was going to share Volapuks fate. Under these cir- cumstances, Zamenhof asked French Esperantists for help.16

The French Resurgence

In 1898, a year after Zamenhof turned to French Esperantists for help, Louis de Beaufront launched L'Esperantiste, a bilingual French and Esperanto jour- nal. A man of humble origins, de Beaufront was very ambitious. He had man- aged to climb the social ladder and become the private tutor in a wealthy family. Well connected, de Beaufront concentrated his campaign for Espe- ranto among the intellectuals and the upper echelons of French society. He quickly recruited to the cause a small clique of highly regarded public per- sonalities who became the center of the international Esperanto movement until the outbreak of World War I. They were Emile Boirac, professor of phi- losophy and rector of the University of Dijon; Carlo Bourlet, professor of math- ematics and mechanics; Theophile Cart, professor of foreign languages at the Ecole Libre de Sciences Politiques; and General Hippolyte Sebert, a scientist and artillery specialist, managing director of a public shipyard company, sec- retary of the French Academy of Sciences, president of the Association fran- ^aise pour l'avancement des sciences, and member of the International Institute of Bibliography. Another prominent French Esperantist was Emile Javal, a twenty-year member of the National Assembly, head of the Ophthal- mology Laboratory at the University of Sorbonne, and member of the Acad- emy of Medicine. Like Zamenhof, Laval was of Jewish origin. He was the son of Leopold Javal, former vice-president of the Alliance Israelite Universalle. Javal became Zamenhof's closest confidant until his death in 1907. Gaston Moch, a former military officer and leading member of the international pac- ifist movement, was also an assimilated Jew.1

Founded when the passions unleashed by the Dreyfus Affair were still very much alive, L'Esperantiste did its best to portray Esperanto as a purely neu- tral, technical solution to the problem of international communication. It silenced Zamenhof's poi itical mission for Esperanto, explained in his fa- mous letter to Borovko and published in 1896 in Lingvo Internacia. The rampant antisemitism of key sectors of French society convinced the lead- ing French Esperantists that it would be expedient to misrepresent Zamen- hof as a Polish eye doctor. Concealing Zamenhof's Jewish identity was also a convenient way to avoid internal conflicts between the Dreyfusards Moch and Javal and the anti-Dreyfusards de Beaufront and Bourlet. This approach required teasing apart the language and the political agendas that Zamen- hof thought it could serve. As L'Esperantiste made officially clear: "Regard- ing the opinions and parties in which the world is divided, and available to anybody who wants to use it, as it is the case with any other language, Espe- ranto remains and will remain independent."2 Esperanto was thus portrayed in narrow terms as the best realization of the long-awaited international lan- guage that the law of Progress demanded to promote the advancement of science, commerce, finance, industry, and improved international relations.3 This instrumental depiction of Esperanto fit very well with the mainstream political tradition of a Republique that presented itself as the embodiment of universalism, secularism, rationalism, positivism, and faith in science and progress.4 Unlike Zamenhof and his quasi-messianic goal of bringing together in brotherhood all humanity, as he expressed in his published letter to Boro- vko,5 the leading French Esperantists portrayed themselves as respectable and practical citoyens, allergic to any kind of utopianism. If Gaston Moch, Rene Lemaire, and many other pacifists were attracted to Esperanto, they were mostly moved by practical concerns, such as the establishment of an inter- national arbitrage system, and worked through the official, well-respected channels of regular politics.6