Nikolai Marr and the idea of a unified language

Paper Tiger – Hidden Dragon: N.Ya. Marr, Marrism And Pseudoscience For Political Doctrine

“…"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (Screenplay) N. Ya. Marr's attitude to the Bolsheviks has been studied extensively (Bruche-Schulz, 1984;L'Hermitte, 1987;Lähteenmäki , 2006;Reznik, 2007;Sériot, 2009). According to the western and post soviet historiography, during the first post revolutionary years he, as well as the majority of the national scientific (Marr, 1921).…”

On the reception of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s linguistic ideas in the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to the early 1950s

“…Accordingly, the Marrist critique of Indo-European linguistics was perceived to have an emancipatory dimension, because it aimed to battle against the Eurocentrism Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 17:53 31 May 2016 of Indo-European linguistics by replacing categories based on blood relations with sociological categories (Lähteenmäki, 2006). While Marrists admitted that some languages are more developed than others, they insisted that the diversity of languages cannot be accounted for by any reference to ethnic categories, but rather that the typological differences between languages derive from the socio-economic characteristics of society and thereby reflect its stage of socioeconomic development.…”

SEKE, the KKE and the language question

“…He rejected the genealogical classification of languages and considered the concept of language family as a racial account. 48 In his view, language was a feature of the superstructure, reflecting, directly or indirectly, the characteristics of the economic basis of a society; different stages in the development of a socio-economic system generate different stages in the development of a language. 50 Moreover, Marr argued that the class structure of a particular society controls the linguistic structures and typological features of a language, among other factors, so that a change in the class stratification will result in language change.…”