Thread by @hiphilangsci

From the 1920s until early 1950s, Soviet linguistics was dominated by Nikolai Marr (1864-1934). His teaching, known as Marrism, was the linguistic adaptation of the Marxist materialist principles and represented the official linguistic policy in the Soviet Union.

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One aspect of Marrism was the so-called Japhetic Theory. Following Marr, a pre-Indo-European substrate of Japhetic languages, based on four syllabic exclamations "sal", "ber", "yon", and "rosh", had existed in Europe before the Indo-European languages arrived.

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Another aspect of Marrism was its linguistic view of the international class consciousness and class struggle. Marr claimed that different classes within one language community are linguistically further apart than the same classes in different language communities.

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This class-based perspective allowed Marr to predict that in a communist, class-less society, everyone will speak a single language. Prior to that, however, the idea that people are united by their language instead of their class was rejected as false bourgeois idea.

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Marr died in 1934 but his students, such as Ivan Meshchaninov (1883-1967), developed his theories further. After the WW2, Marrism was even exported to the countries within the Soviet sphere of influence as the official party line in linguistics.

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On 20 June 1950, however, the Marrist era ended abruptly with the publication of a paper "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics" authored by none other than Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). Marrism was rejected for being a misinterpretation of the Marxist principles.

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The impact of Marrism on the history of linguistics was surpassed by its role as an instrument of power. This is illustrated by the fate of scholars such as Yevgeni Polivanov (1891-1938) who was first exiled and later executed for his opposition to Marrist teachings.

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