The Circulation of German Comparative Linguistic Knowledge in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Scholarship

Abstract

In the nineteenth century European comparative linguists Franz Bopp, August Schleicher, and Jacob Grimm created a new system of language classification. Late Imperial and early Soviet linguists criticized this type of comparative research denying the existence of a common Indo-European proto-language and proposed their own solutions, notably Nikolaĭ Marr’s Japhetic theory. Early Soviet scholars viewed the competing approaches as an epic confrontation between advanced Soviet science and the backward bourgeois scholarship of the West. In the Caucasus, however, Indo-European comparative linguistics continued to find support. These ideas made their way from Germany, and the study of comparative linguistics led to the study of “Oriental” languages. Armenian linguists like Hrach’ya Achaṛyan embraced German comparative linguistics for various reasons. The Indo-European research of Western Europe suited the national agenda of Armenian Orientalists. Heinrich Hübschmann classified Armenian as a European language and according to Hübschmann, it also provided a link between Iranian and Indian languages. Major Armenian linguists promoted this theory about the double nature of Armenian. Despite the various reactions to Western European language scholarship, one thing is certain. New ideas in linguistics from Germany provided important research tools that scholars in Imperial Russia or the later Soviet Union, whether in St. Petersburg or the Caucasus, could not ignore.