The Triumph and Fall of Academician N. Ya. Marr’s “New Theory of Language”

Academician Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr was a remarkable figure in Russian linguistics during the first half of the twentieth century. He contributed to the fields of historical linguistics and ancient history, having formulated original hypotheses in these areas. The scholar put forward bold, even fantastical hypotheses to refute the main postulates of comparative linguistics. However, he was unable to prove them. Following the October Revolution, Marr’s ideas enjoyed significant popularity in the Soviet Union. Many supporters of the revolution, particularly young people, sought to reject traditional scholarship and embrace new ideas. The “new theory of language” aligned with these aspirations, prompting Marr to adapt his concepts to the evolving landscape. He was the only member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences to join the Communist Party, and Soviet leaders supported him at that time. In 1929, Marr’s ideas were formally recognised as Marxism in the field of linguistics. Following Marr’s triumph, numerous prominent scholars found themselves unable to continue their research, and some were repressed. For 16 years after his death, Marr was officially considered a “great scholar”. However, many linguists at that time distanced themselves from his ideas. In 1948–1950, some linguists from the Marrist camp initiated a campaign against several specialists accused of cosmopolitanism and “bourgeois propaganda”. Their main demand was to return to all of Marr’s ideas. However, the party newspaper Pravda unexpectedly announced a discussion on issues of linguistics. The discussion was participated in by prominent linguists, but it was merely a prelude to Joseph Stalin’s speech (June 20, 1950). He condemned Marr’s theories, and traditional Russian linguistics became the standard.