Esperanto in the Soviet Union

The Esperanto community was restored in the Soviet Union following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, but it did not achieve its earlier prominence.

According to a German press release in 1920, the Soviet Union required the teaching of Esperanto in public schools, though this report was denied by People's Commissar for Education Anatoly Lunacharsky.

Following the New Economic Policy in 1921, the Soviet Union limited its endorsement of cultural initiatives, including Esperanto.

[2] Vladimir Lenin sought international cooperation between socialist movements, but neither he nor the other Bolsheviks believed that a constructed language should serve this purpose.

When Joseph Stalin took power and shifted focus toward socialism in one country, he cast doubt on the idea of a single world language.

[4] When the Great Purge began in 1937, the Soviet government identified "citizens with contacts abroad" as one of the categories of suspicious persons.

[11] Several international advocates of Esperanto also resided in the Soviet Union for periods of time in the 1920s to help promote the language, including founding Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda members Robert Guiheneuf and Lucien Laurat.

[12] According to E. J. Dillon, Esperanto was the fourth most common foreign language taught in Soviet schools by 1929 after English, German, and French.

[18] In the purge the leader of the Soviet Esperantist Union, Ernest Drezen, was executed by gunshot on 27 October 1937.