Дискуссия по языкознанию 1950 г. и советский «государственный марксизм»

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of political aspects of Nikolai Marr’s “New Teaching on Language” and the reasons for the opening of the “free discussion on problems of linguistics” in 1950 and the personal participation of Joseph Stalin. The author shows that the main provisions of Marrist theory by the end of the 1940s entered into sharp confrontation with the political and geopolitical imperatives of Soviet policy and Soviet ideology. But this discrepancy is not exclusive and main reason for Stalin’s defeat of Marrism during the linguistic discussion. The essence of the problem lies in the need for a demonstrative “ideological process” over the theory that advocates the class nature of the language, denies the existence of national languages, and calls for a “language revolution”. The purpose of demonstrative exposure of Marrism as an anti-Marxist direction of Soviet linguistics was to show the turn of Soviet “state Marxism” towards the principles of nationwide unity and the nationwide state. This goal determined Stalin’s personal participation in the discussion and his writing of special works on linguistics.