The Soviet reception of Edward Sapir’s linguistic ideas from the 1920s to the 1950s

Abstract

The present paper discusses the reception of Edward Sapir’s (1884–1939) linguistic theories in the Soviet Union between the mid-1920s and the late 1950s. It will focus on how and to what extent changes in the political and ideological climate of the Soviet state during that period were reflected in the interpretation and evaluation of Sapir’s contribution to linguistics. In the late 1920s, Sapir’s theories were regarded as potential sources of ideas for the future development of the sociology of language in the Soviet Union, however the attitude to Sapir changed radically during the first half of the 1930s, when his ideas were discussed in relation to the ‘critique of bourgeois science’. In the early 1950s this critique was spiced with allegations of racism and imperialism, which echoed Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan and anti-imperialistic discourse, characteristic of the Soviet Union of that time.