He was more of a shaman than a scientist. Real scientists bewitched by him, interspersed with evil savages with his spells on their lips, danced in the fiery circle of the era. He called the abyss, and she willingly responded. He achieved all conceivable honors in the USSR: he was quoted in linguistics much more often (!) The leader of the peoples, opponents of his teachings were smeared on the walls ... The abyss chewed and spat out: first he was from life, and then - his ideas from the official, the only true science. But it was not possible to completely erase from history the name of this talented, cursed and unfortunate person - Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr.

Opening on the festive morning of May 9, 1950, a fresh issue of Pravda, smelling of printing ink, Soviet readers were amazed. A whole page was devoted to the article by A.S. Chikobava with a sharp critique of "Marrism" - a doctrine, monopoly recognized in linguistics by Himself. Overcoming the confusion, the most insightful among the scientific attacks Chikobava discerned the central one in meaning: "Marr's distortion of the correct understanding of the national." The struggle against "Weismannism-Morganism" and "rootless cosmopolitanism" in all areas of life was in full swing...

The discussion on linguistics, announced on the pages of the main printed organ of the party, lasted two months, and it strictly alternated publications for and against the "Japhetic" theory of N.Ya. Marra. The discussion ended on June 20 with an article by a linguist who signed simply - I. Stalin. In the article, with a modest charm characteristic of the author, the cult of "Marr's anti-scientific theory" was debunked, and a bold cross was put on "Japhetidology". Despite the Marxist rhetoric of the "genius of mankind", the sciences of language were allowed to return to their original positions - the defamated pre-revolutionary linguistics.

Two weeks later, Marr's student and successor, I.I. Meshchaninov spoke in Pravda with public repentance: "We saw all the depravity of the theoretical path we were following ..." From then until very recently, both the mythical and genuine achievements of N.Ya. Marr were carefully extirpated from the practice and history of linguistics.

It is quite possible that Stalin, before his famous letter to Pravda, consulted with Marr's longtime Georgian adversary A.S. Chikobava and the oldest linguist V.V. Vinogradov, especially ceased to suit his national nihilism in "Marrism". For example, Marr wrote that all Russian dialects, and especially Ukrainian, arose independently of each other, and if they are similar, then because they crossed with each other. Until recently, "the best friend of athletes" practically quoted Marr in his speeches, but now, having set a course for pseudo-Russian nationalism and imperialism, he no longer needed Japhetic myths.

Boomerang returned when Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr had been dead for 16 years.

Did he launch the boomerang himself? Was this enfant terrible of linguistics a complete villain, or did he himself become a victim of his cannibal era? It seems that Nietzsche wrote that the executioner is mistaken in that he is not involved in the pain of his victim, and the victim is in that she is not involved in guilt ... Marr's whole life was an illustration of this paradoxical statement, although it seemed to many that this man was generally "beyond good and evil." It doesn't happen! Whether a person realizes it or not, but his good and evil fall on the scales. In the case of Marr, both bowls were full to the brim, and which outweighed. God knows!

The son of a Scot who moved to Georgia, and a Georgian, Nikolai from childhood was distinguished by remarkable abilities and excellent oddities. There is something ghostly in his surname itself - mara, mirage ... He inherited the surname from his father - Yakov (James) Patrikovich (according to other sources - Yakov Montal) Montagu-Marr, a Scot who for some reason settled in Georgia in the 19th century and planted tea bushes there. (He became the founder of the Kutaisi Botanical Garden). Mother - a not very educated Gurian (Guria is a historical region in Western Georgia) Agafia Magularia was the second wife of an eccentric Scot. Marr's parents did not have a common language (he spoke English and French, she only Georgian), and they were of different faiths, so Nikolai, who was born in Kutaisi, was even denied a birth certificate at first. Until graduation, he was considered a British subject. His native language was Georgian, and Marr learned Russian only at the gymnasium and spoke it with an accent and errors until the end of his life. For example, he wrote The Doctrine of Language, and his students embarrassingly corrected the genius.

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In the Kutaisi gymnasium, Nikolai was one of the most successful and ... strange students. Having missed six months due to illness, he suddenly makes a desperate decision - to leave and become a telegraph operator. His mother didn't let him do it. In order to learn several foreign languages ​​on his own, he almost never goes to classes, but ... he is transferred with excellent grades from class to class. Having taken a great interest in the Greek language, he asks the authorities... to leave him for the second year in the 8th (final) grade in order to improve a little more. A zealous schoolboy is recognized as mentally ill and will not be expelled from the gymnasium only thanks to the intercession of the trustee of the educational district ...

Young Marr edits a handwritten gymnasium newspaper, in which he writes incendiary poems, welcomes the assassination of Alexander II and even calls to "take up arms" in order to liberate "native Georgia" from Russian invaders.

Later, obliging Soviet biographers will in every possible way inflate the "pranks of youth" of the linguist into an imaginary revolutionary activity. But Nikolai Yakovlevich never held a weapon in his hands, was not a member of revolutionary circles, and later - right up to the revolution - was a loyal subject of the Russian crown. When voting in the university councils, he often blocked with right-wing professors, he was elected headman of the Georgian church and even appointed censor of Armenian books. Much later, he - the only member of the Imperial Academy - will join the CPSU (b) ...

At the end of the gymnasium, only two careers were open to a young man of "low" origin from the national outskirts: scientific or spiritual. After hesitating, he chose the first one. Nikolai Marr is going to enter the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​of St. Petersburg University as a Caucasian scholar, where he enrolls to study all the languages ​​of the Middle East and the Caucasus at once. This has never happened before in the department! And he really learned all these languages, amazing the worldly-wise professors. Then, on the student bench, he first came up with the idea of ​​​​the relationship of a number of Georgian and Semitic languages, which he begins to cultivate. He set himself the task of proving the great world past of the peoples of the Caucasus.

What makes a particular theory influential during the life of the author? Hard facts? No, most of the time they are not. Star, talent, hard work - a thousand times yes, but this is not enough! It seems that the point is something else - more subtle, "astral", and on the other hand - gross material, to the point of cynicism. Deciding to become a Georgian scholar while still at the gymnasium, and later expanding his passion to the entire Caucasus, he will carry it through his whole life. The paradox is that in maniacally exalting the role of the peoples of the Caucasus, Marr did not think in national, but in "world" and even "cosmic" categories - he was a "cosmopolitan". Some kind of demon sitting in it pushed the scientist not to stop, having gone deep into one area, but to boldly step through the barriers, to involve more and more new areas in the whirlpool of restless thought. Those who knew Marr well called him a "lunatic", spoke of his "fiery intuition", the ability to hypnotize both supporters and opponents. Those who were not completely fascinated noted the scientific adventurism, the unprovenness and contempt for facts that grew stronger over time, in the absence of a truly deep knowledge of the science of language. The "great" linguist Marr did not even attend a course of lectures on comparative linguistics. He was ignorant in too many matters that he undertook. The self-taught pride was intertwined with a remarkable mind, lust for power and ... the spontaneity of a child bewitched by his own idefix ...

This idefix became for Marr "Japhetism", which grew out of Georgian-, and later - Caucasophilia. According to the Bible, Yaphet (Japheth) was one of the sons of the forefather Noah, whose offspring were related to the Caucasus. While still at the university, Marr invented the term "Japhetic languages" first to denote the affinity of the Georgian, Svan, Megrelian and Chan languages ​​\u200b\u200bwith Semitic and Hamitic (from Shem and Ham - other sons of Noah, whose descendants after settlement gave related language families according to Marr). It was quite bold (although not very conclusive), but on the whole remained within the framework of positive science. Further - more: to the "Japhetic family" he began to attract all the ancient dead languages ​​\u200b\u200bof the Mediterranean basin and Western Asia and some rare living languages ​​\u200b\u200b- on the principle, as he himself said, "what lies badly."

If Marr had remained within the framework of Caucasian studies, he would have been entitled to count on a sedate scientific career and (according to his remarkable talents!) A well-deserved world fame as a specialist. But this was not enough for Marr - the leaven of the prophet and the overthrower is too strong. He throws his strong side in the study of the material culture of antiquity, his abilities for languages ​​into the "reactor" of the science of linguistics, which he is not familiar with, confidently confident in the brilliant end result. The method of his stunning linguistic "findings" can be illustrated as follows. It is known, for example, that in the territory of Greece before the Greeks there lived a people called the Pelasgians, about whom nothing is known, except that the Greeks did not understand their language. Marr finds a similarity between the name "Pelasgians" and "Lezgins" and, without hesitation, gives the Greek natives a new homeland - his beloved Caucasus. Or here is the proof of the class nature of languages. In ancient Rome, as you know, there were patricians and plebs. Nikolai Yakovlevich singles out a meaningless piece with the letters "e and b" in the last word and immediately finds a similarity with the plural indicator in the Georgian language. Conclusion: the Roman plebeians are Japhetids, like the Georgians, and the patricians are the Indo-Europeans who conquered them.

He tried to "bring" the Georgian and Armenian languages ​​(the latter, unlike the former, was firmly recognized as Indo-European). Using the similar sound of some words in the dialect of the common people, he concludes: the languages ​​of the "plebs" of these peoples are related and "Japhetic". But the language of the Armenian aristocrats is the language of the Indo-European conquerors. Later, this "class" difference in languages, these arrogant Indo-European conquerors who oppressed the "primordial Japhetids", would fill his works of the Soviet era "to their full height".

Then the luminaries of linguistics did not really argue with the young ignoramus-insolent, his views seemed too anecdotal. Moreover, the real merits of Nikolai Marr aroused universal respect. Starting excavations of Ani - the ancient Armenian capital, founding the Ani museum, releasing a number of excellent works, he founded his own school of scientific archeology. According to an eyewitness, archaeologists were generally called "Marrs" in Armenia at that time, and until now the Armenians keep the memory of him with gratitude.

He was lucky - he discovered in Sinai and translated a unique ancient Georgian Christian treatise, which was considered lost. His ideas on the connection between the development of material culture and languages ​​are fruitful to this day, and some scientific works on the languages, literature and ethnography of the peoples of the Caucasus have become classics. He alone worked as a whole scientific institute with many employees - and the scientific awards and degrees of the Russian Empire, quite deservedly, were not long in coming. Well, how not to forgive such a talent for linguistic "eccentricities" ?!

Academician Marr accepted the October Revolution and immediately got involved in scientific and organizational work. Feeling the element, somewhat related to his own bubbling energy, he bet on her, and she made a return bet. A sympathetic "specialist" is appointed a member of various cultural commissions and colleges, he is personally favored by the influential Bolsheviks Bukharin, Preobrazhensky, Lunacharsky, Friche. Thus began his fusion with the Bolshevik government. He did not heed the warnings from above: in 1917-1918. all the materials of his beloved Ani museum perish on the way, his youngest son, a red cadet, burns in the fire of the Civil War ...

Justice requires it to be said that in the turbulent activity of Marr and after the revolution there were many good deeds. The Academy of the History of Material Culture (GAIMK) organized by him, to which, by the way, many of our academic institutes of archeology and ethnography date back, has become a real Mecca for the humanitarian intelligentsia. She received there something more important than bread - hope for the meaning of her own activity, a waterfall of new ideas. Under the direct and indirect influence of Marr, many "language institutions" were created, grammars were compiled for the peoples of the USSR that did not have a written language. In 1933, the academician opposed the unification of the alphabets of the Georgian and Armenian languages ​​under the Cyrillic alphabet, and the barbaric plan was not carried out. Eyewitnesses said that he even saved scientists from the GPU several times. Attentive and easy to communicate, he could support, help. But he could also casually trample on the interlocutor, without even noticing it.

According to eyewitnesses, once, at an early stage of his activity, Marr spoke in Armenia and interpreted some phrases of the Armenian language. An Armenian gets up from his seat and says: "You are misinterpreting - I am a native speaker" - Marr instantly blurts out: "The fish wants to become an ichthyologist!"

Being already completely enslaved (and having enslaved the linguistics of the whole country) by his delusional "Japhetidology", this person could scatter thoughts, foresights, hints, the genius of which is confirmed only today ... After listening to Marr once, people often went to engage in linguistics (his linguistics!) , completely far from both "Japhetidology" and linguistics in general.

Having created in 1921-1922. the Japhetic Institute (originally it was located in the academician's apartment), Marr managed to attract brilliant humanities scholars of world renown as employees and consultants; only a few of them later became adherents of Marrism. Marr was at the height of his glory - not yet prescribed from above. His bright personality, paradoxical ideas seemed so attractive to many - futuristic, consonant with the time. It seemed that the time had come for revolutions in everything: the Bolsheviks shook "bourgeois society", Einstein - physics. The unprecedented, profound ideas of Vernadsky and the discoveries of Chizhevsky became known. A revolution in literature, in painting... And now a man appears - a tsarist academician (!), who has found a language with new power, carrying a revolutionary theory into a boring linguistics of disparate facts. Bryusov, who was friends with him (and with the Bolsheviks), enthusiastically wrote: "... from the days of Atlantis, the Japhetids bring revelations for us!"

"Inspired" by recognition, Marr goes further and further into his Japhetic fantasies - the connection with the umbilical cord of science is becoming thinner. The academician goes on a business trip abroad with the aim of conquering the entire world science of language, creating an international institute. But Europe - this pitiful stupid old woman, accepts him coldly, demands facts, not revelations. Marr is furious: down with "bourgeois science"!

From now on, he will dominate here in Soviet Russia. The real madness begins. In 1923-1924. the influential Marr publishes a number of works in which he declares that a racially distinct Indo-European family of languages ​​does not exist at all, that at first there was not one proto-language, but many languages, that they have nothing to do with the national character, are "a weapon of class struggle", and after world revolution will inevitably merge into a world language. He also "discovered" the origin of all languages ​​from the "diffuse" cries of primitive people. God knows where his famous shamanic cries came from: "Garden! Ber! Ion! Rosh!" According to Marr, any word of any language can be decomposed into these primary elements. He didn't bother to prove it. "There are things that do not need to be proved, they can be shown," the linguist-mystic declared.

The further, the more his arbitrary conclusions ran counter to the data of comparative linguistics, which had developed a whole century before. With each new stage of the "Japhetic theory", the proofs became more and more fantastic, until they were completely abolished as unnecessary. In the later years of his life in the USSR, it was enough for him to unfoundedly declare something, and this was immediately officially declared the truth. He himself could harshly criticize his still recent concepts, but it was forbidden for others to do so.

All students wishing to study languages ​​now had to prove and substantiate his nonsense. And although in the corners some former admirers of Marr whispered: "Marxism is Marrism-marasmus," they were afraid to speak aloud, and even more so to speak. After all, his teaching, in the words of the Bolshevik historian Pokrovsky, "entered the iron arsenal of Marxism." Only the talented philologist and linguist Yevgeny Polivanov openly spoke out against it, but, hunted by "submarks", he was forced to leave for Central Asia. After Marr's death, he was shot as a Japanese spy...

They said about Marr that at first he walked alone, then with his students, and even later with sycophants. The paradox is that his personality, like a magnet, attracted both very talented and completely mediocre people. And they were people of different professions. The archaeologist Bernshtam said that, having somehow heard Marr's passionate speech, in which he repeated in a refrain: "Down with Venus de Milo, long live the hoe!", He quit all his studies and went after the speaker. Among his students and followers there were prominent scientists: philologist V.I. Abaev, orientalist I.A. Orbeli, philologist-folklorist O.M. Freudenberg (niece of Boris Pasternak), partly sinologist V.M. Alekseev. All of them, to one degree or another, did not accept or moved away from the most odious "Marrism", but retained sincere gratitude and even admiration for their teacher for life. Orbeli, who rejected the fantastic constructions of Marr in the mid-20s, celebrated the day of his teacher's death every year as a date of mourning. Freudenberg, who suffered from Stalinist repressions, already in 1988 wrote enthusiastic memoirs about Marr. Here are her first impressions of Nikolai Yakovlevich's lectures: "The cruelty of heart and the dark bureaucracy of uniformed science collapsed. Human, warm, sweet blew in the face."

At the same time, other contemporaries recalled the method of polemic of the "late" Marr. In response to the interlocutor's words, "I don't understand you," a deadly argument followed: "And you won't understand until you change your class thinking." The academician was angry at the misunderstanding of his colleagues, scolding them with his last words, and the guardsmen from his entourage, meanwhile, were making "organizational conclusions." Did he know about it? Naive question! Of course he knew, but, preoccupied only with his own ideas, he did not want to be careful with his words. Was N.Ya. Marr, in fact, a Marxist, as he declared? For reflection - two of his statements. The academician was asked during a trip abroad: "Is it true that your theory coincides with Marxism?" "So much the better for Marxism," came the reply. On another occasion, he said: "To live with wolves is to howl like a wolf."

The “great linguist” himself did not seem to notice how he turned from a revolutionary into a dogmatist, how among his students, quantitatively prevailing over the “enchanted”, cynical jackals began to cluster, ready to gnaw opponents to death for a banal career ... Again, justice requires to say that the true terror of Marrism was unleashed precisely by these disciples after the death of the "teacher". Member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, "Honorary Red Navy", Academician Marr, who sat and spoke at numerous meetings up to the "Commission for Combating Hooliganism", went further and further into the depths of no return.

Official fanfare thundered more and more furiously, but he was dissatisfied with himself: the idea of ​​​​creating a world language had failed, the stupid bourgeois laughed at "Japhetidology", and not everything went well with this science itself ... In October 1933, he had a stroke. It became clear that he could no longer work. At a time when "all advanced mankind" was preparing for the anniversary of his 45-year scientific activity, Nikolai Yakovlevich was quietly fading away, bedridden. They say that at that time he had terribly guilty eyes ...

It's funny that "Marrism" indirectly contributed to the development of structural linguistics in the USSR, which was engaged in the "formalist" analysis of texts and has been rapidly developing in our years. Shouting "Japhetic incantations" for the sake of formality, serious scholars used the name of Marr as a shield, gaining unprecedented freedom of creativity in a field that had nothing to do with Marrism.

And finally - a somewhat unexpected echo of the ideas of Academician Marr in today's time. Reflecting on the "universal language of the future", Marr predicted that this language would already be cramped in the sound framework, and visual elements would enter it. "Language of video sequence" is an expression of our era of TV and video technologies. Evaluate the still unexhausted potential of the concept! No, whatever you say, this man knew how to bewitch. Indeed, today there are scientists who discover in the notorious Marrian zaum "SAL, BER, YON" ... a prediction of the 4-link structure of the human genome!

Science, as you know, "can do a lot of geeks." Too often in history, Power demanded from it precisely these tricks - scientific myths that justify ideology. The authorities think that they order a scientist for themselves, and the scientist that he successfully uses the authorities. Both are wrong - they are used by a third person, funny and with horns. The crazy Nordic ideas of Gorbiger, declared true in Nazi Germany, the myths of the "folk nugget" Trofim Lysenko and the sophisticated intellectual Nikolai Marr, for all their defiant differences, come from one infernal source. The gaping abyss is always open for new customers...

Opinion about the article
Arik 10.03.2006 04:48:48

Brilliant! I have been looking for material about the scientist and his work for a long time! You got me interested for the rest of my life!!!
I'll start reading Marr!!!


He is right.
Sagitova Gaukhar 16.02.2009 07:06:36

Marr's teachings may be contradictory. There are some misconceptions. He simply could not clarify the foundation on which human language is based. The fact that the meaning of all words comes down to the concept of "sky" is true. But reality is not only the sky.
But in principle, those who carefully study his teaching, and using modern research, rework will make an invaluable discovery in linguistics. This discovery will enable the rapid rise of many sciences.

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Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr(cargo. ნიკოლოზ მარი ; December 25, 1864 (January 6), Kutais - December 20, Leningrad) - Russian and Soviet orientalist and Caucasian scholar, philologist, historian, ethnographer and archaeologist, academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (), then academician and vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. After the revolution, he received loud fame as the creator of the "new doctrine of language", or "Japhetic theory". Father of orientalist and futurist poet Yuri Marr.

Oriental studies

Early linguistic work

New doctrine of language

The lack of linguistic education (at that time strictly separated from Oriental studies) prevented Marr from scientifically testing his a priori hypotheses and did not limit his imagination in any way. Having learned a large number of languages ​​on a practical level, he had any complete knowledge of the history of only the Kartvelian languages ​​and Abkhazian; the history of the Indo-European and Turkic languages, well studied by that time, was actually ignored by him. The First World War and the revolution tore Marr away from work in archaeological expeditions in the Caucasus, which stimulated his theoretical activity. In the “new doctrine of language” he created (“Japhetic theory”), with which he spoke in November 1923, completely unscientific, unverifiable statements, such as the origin of all languages ​​from the “four elements”, the idea of ​​“Japhetic languages” clearly predominate as a kind of not genetic, but social-class community, etc. Among these ideas, presented inconsistently and inconsistently, with a number of extremely dark passages (some contemporaries, from N. S. Trubetskoy to I. M. Dyakonov, and researchers admit, that Marr became mentally ill in the 1920s; a number of neurotic oddities in his behavior were noted even when he was a student at the Kutaisi gymnasium), it is extremely difficult, although possible, to single out some sound statements.

At the top of the honor

In the 1920s-1930s, N. Ya. Marr enjoyed great prestige among the intelligentsia (including some professional linguists), attracted by the scale of his ideas, the setting of many new tasks, and his bright personality (it is characteristic that the influence of Marrism was stronger in Leningrad, where he lived than in other scientific centers). Marr also had a great influence on many culturologists and literary critics who dealt with the problems of ethnogenesis and mythology, including O. M. Freidenberg, who experienced almost religious admiration for the teacher (subsequently, the defeat of Marrism in linguistics deprived her of her job). Eisenstein, together with Marr and Vygotsky, planned to open a creative scientific laboratory to study the methods and mechanisms of perception, the ancient "pralological consciousness" and its influence on cinema and the consciousness of the masses.

He founded the Japhetic Institute in Petrograd (1921), later the Institute of Language and Thought. N. Ya. Marra (now in St. Petersburg and Moscow), at the same time was the director of the Leningrad Public Library. On March 3, he was elected vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and since then he has chaired many solemn meetings of the academy. In -1934 he was the chairman of the Russian Palestine Society.

In the publications of the Marrists of this period, he is increasingly called "great" and "brilliant", he receives many honorary titles, up to the title of "honorary sailor". The role of Marr in the development of writing for the small languages ​​​​of the USSR was emphasized (his universal “analytical alphabet”, developed even before the revolution and introduced in 1923 for the Abkhazian language, was canceled a few years later due to practical inconvenience), however, in fact, all work on the creation of writing took place without the participation of Marr and his inner circle. On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of his scientific activity, Marr was awarded the Order of Lenin (1933). This anniversary passed without Marr himself: in October 1933, he suffered a stroke, lived for another year after it, but did not return to work.

On the occasion of Marr's death and funeral, classes in schools were canceled in Leningrad, and mourning events were comparable to those that took place in honor of Kirov, who had been killed shortly before. In record time, the very next day after Marr's death, a pamphlet in his memory was printed. He was buried at the Communist site (now the Cossack cemetery) of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

After Marr's death, his students (primarily I.I. Meshchaninov), having actually discarded the unscientific "new doctrine", solved many of the tasks set by Marr in the key of normal science (typology, the study of syntax, the problem of "language and thinking", etc.).

Heritage

15 years after Marr's death, on June 20, 1950, his teaching was debunked with the release of the work of I. V. Stalin, who once supported him, “Marxism and questions of linguistics”, and he himself was subjected to official criticism. In particular, Stalin claimed that Marr "sincerely wanted" to become a Marxist, but was unable to become one. Criticizing Marr's concept, I. V. Stalin also noted:

If this "work-magical" gibberish is translated into simple human language, then we can conclude that:

A) N. Ya. Marr separates thinking from language;

B) N. Ya. Marr believes that people can communicate without language, with the help of thinking itself, free from the "natural matter" of language, free from the "norms of nature";

C) tearing thinking away from language and "liberating" it from linguistic "natural matter", N. Ya. Marr falls into the swamp of idealism.

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Marr Nikolai Yakovlevich
In French: Nicolas Yakovlevich MARR
Date of Birth: 06.01.1865
Place of Birth: Kutaisi, Georgia
Date of death: 20.12.1934
A place of death: Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Short information:
Armenian historian, philologist, ethnographer and archaeologist

Biography

In 1884 he graduated from the gymnasium with angry. medal, entered the Caucasian scholarship at the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​of St. Petersburg University, where he studied Armenian, Georgian, Arabic and other languages.

Research in Philology and Archeology of Armenia

In the spring of 1890, N.Ya. Marr went to Armenia (Etchmiadzin and Sevan), where he worked on medieval Armenian manuscripts, he published a description of the manuscripts of the Sevan monastery.

In Sept. 1891 began excavations of Ani - the medieval capital of Armenia, which continued until 1917.

In 1892, the Archaeological Commission instructed N.Ya. Marr to carry out excavations in the medieval city of Ani in Armenia. This order was repeated in 1893, when, in addition to Anya, he also began excavations in Vornak, where he first encountered already “prehistoric” monuments.

Excavations in Armenia gave a lot to N.Ya. Marr, emphasizing the importance of the history of material culture for linguistic research.

Excavations in Armenia were accompanied by work on the collection of materials on the ground for N.Ya. Marr on the topic of medieval Armenian collections of tales and parables attributed to Vardan.

Having received the desired master's degree in Armenian literature, N.Ya. Marr in 1900 appointed Spanish. obligatory extraordinary professor, and in 1902 he defended his doctoral dissertation “Hippolite, Interpretation of the Song of Songs”, where, on the material of a previously unknown manuscript described by him in 1888, he traces the facts of the literary influence of Armenians on Georgians.

Arabic version of Agafangel

In 1902, Marr undertook an archeographic expedition to Jerusalem and Sinai. Here he studied and described both Georgian and Armenian and Arabic manuscripts. It was during this trip that he discovered and a few years later exemplarily published two exceptionally important monuments - the Arabic edition of Agafangel and the work of Georgy Merchul.

By textual analysis, Marr established that the Arabic text represents a hitherto unknown hagiographic edition, going back to the Greek original, and that one to the Armenian archetype.

While working on the publication of Merchul's work - this most important monument on the history of Georgia and Armenia, Marr traveled to Shavsheti and Kladzheti, checking and clarifying all the most important messages of the published source. These publications alone (Agafangel and Merchul) are enough for N. Ya. Marr to become a classic of Caucasian studies and Eastern philology. But Marr has dozens of such volumes.

The results of the Ani expedition

Even during his first trips to Armenia, Marr became convinced that without taking into account material culture (religious and civil buildings, handicraft products, church utensils, etc.), the model of social life cannot be restored. Therefore, Marr stopped his main archaeological choice on Ani, the capital of the Armenians of the Bagratid era, the city in which East and West, the Christian and Muslim worlds, the political and economic changes of the country crossed. The results of the first campaigns exceeded his expectations. And when the first reports of the leader appeared, the scientific world was convinced that the study of a medieval city could solve many key problems.

Of particular interest were Marr's publications on the monuments of Ani architecture, ecclesiastical and civil. Special series were created - "Monuments of Armenian architecture", "Ani series". The Russian Archaeological Society in 1915 recognized the work of N. Ya. Marr in Ani as deserving of the Big Gold Medal.

Armenian epigraphy

In the scientific heritage of N. Ya. Marr, an important place is occupied by his works on epigraphy. N. Ya. Marr considered the publication of monuments and corpuses of epigraphy to be the most topical task of Armenian studies, because with the damage of each inscription, science loses an irreplaceable primary source. Marr founded the "Monuments of Armenian Epigraphy" series.

In 1916, an archaeological expedition to Van (Turkish Armenia), long planned and postponed due to lack of funds, was carried out, the leadership of which was entrusted by the Russian Archaeological Society to N.Ya. Marru. One of the results of the Van expedition was the discovery by N.Ya. Marra I.A. Orbeli of large cuneiform chronicles of the Khald king of the 8th century BC.

Scientific, social activity during the First World War

In 1916, together with his students (N. Adonts, I. Orbeli, S. Ter-Avetisyan, A. Kalantar), N. Ya. wood, handicrafts, inscriptions, etc. He was one of the initiators of the organization of assistance to Armenian refugees in Russia, wrote reports, gave public lectures and continued to publish new series founded by him - "Armenian-Georgian Library", "Christian East" .

Compositions on Armenian subjects

Of the 213 publications of N. Y. Marr in 1888-1915, more than 100 are specifically devoted to the language and culture of Armenians, including

Niko Marr about Armenia and Armenians

Ani - the capital of ancient Armenia

The most favorite monuments in Ani were cross stones, representing each individual sample of fine carving. Patterned crosses in Ani flashed before my eyes everywhere: crosses flaunted not only in the walls of churches and in cemeteries, but at every step - on the streets, in squares, at the gates, on the city walls and outside the city, on the rocks and in cave rooms. However, in this phenomenon one should not see anything local, Ani. Borders on arable lands, crossroads, entrances and exits at gorges, springs where wanderers could quench their thirst, stone bridges thrown over stormy mountain rivers, were decorated by Armenians with the same cross stones. All of Armenia was covered with crosses, since the cross was the sacred banner of the small people who inhabited it, who found in themselves the strength to persistently wage an unequal "struggle against countless hordes of more and more new enemies of Christianity" in the name of national covenants and begin free cultural development, bearing on itself to the last sigh the heavy cross of working life and Christian asceticism.

We are talking about the ancient capital of Armenia (now located in Turkey) and its monuments of the Christian period. Armenia was the first in 301 to adopt Christianity as a state religion. As a sign of this, a part of the central altar in the main Christian church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is assigned to the Armenian church. She is, together with the Orthodox Church and the Vatican, the guardian of the holy places of Christianity in Israel. In April 1979, a large museum of Armenian art was opened in Jerusalem at the Armenian Church, which was founded in the 7th century.

From a lecture by N. Marr in Paris to Armenian students in 1925

Political and economic events drove from place to place, from country to country, this enlightened nation endowed with amazing artistic literary talents. So she spread her art, artistic taste and the light of enlightenment far to the north - giving impetus to the development of jewelry craft in Poland, and far to the south - participating in the literary movement in Ethiopia. Settling in the countries adjacent to Armenia, the Armenians translated their national literature into the languages ​​of the peoples of these countries, which had become popular with them since the Ani period, and this literature entered the borders of other nations, becoming accessible even to those segments of the population of these countries that stood in the very bottom of the class ladder.

Armenian folk books were the first of their kind, they contributed to the rapprochement of the literate layers of the people of various countries, starting from Mesopotamia and Assyria to the Caucasus Mountains. Fine Armenian architecture does not disappear after the fall of Ani. In primordial Armenia, monuments damaged after past destruction are being renovated, and new, beautiful churches are being built as a response to new persecutions...

But the poems about love and universal sorrow created in the same times of crisis by medieval Armenian poets were more stable and received national recognition as cultural monuments.

What wonderful creations filled with the most subtle feelings, the bitter and deepest wisdom of thousands of years of experience, what enchanting musicians! One of them himself is even surprised at the harmony of his word, and imagines himself in this world immersed in his dreams, like a madman. But is not the same state experienced by all the sages of this world? It should not be surprising that the Russian translations of Valery Bryusov not only contributed to the recognition of the artistic taste of the Armenian people by the Russian public, but also created the basis for ideological rapprochement in the highest sphere of human creativity...

The development and high reputation of music in Armenia are also evident from the fact that in Cilicia a specialist in singing art had independence even in the field of Armenian church music and singing, the source of which "we will search in vain outside the tradition of Armenian national folk music...

Narekatsi, like church music in general, architecture, public organization, always bear the stamp of independence, as well as a wonderful language. Suffice it to recall the translations of the Bible. And what a beautiful style!

The original Armenian translation of the Bible, except for the translation of the fraternal Georgian people, dependent on the Armenian text and executed in the same style, is in no way similar to the translations of other Christian peoples. This translation is at the same time "a rich treasure of pagan sayings, which provide exceptional independence to the Armenian translation of the Bible. Of course, the first translators, regardless of the Greek and Syriac languages, inherit both the technical means and the national understanding of faith from the pagan priests and prophets of their people, who become Christian priests and vardapets...

Thanks to the Armenian language, the lost gems of Christian literature were saved. Moreover, in the age of barbarism in Europe, with their translations from Greek, the Armenian people rendered an indispensable service to European human civilization, not only preserving the monuments of classical literature, but also ... energetically promoting the study of the Greek language in the East and even in Greece itself.

Miscellaneous

  • Father - a Scot, a botanist, cultivated tea plantations in Georgia. Mother is Georgian. Marr was considered a British subject until graduation. Before entering the Kutaisi gymnasium (1874), he hardly knew Russian. I read my first book in Russian ("Robinson Crusoe") in the 2nd grade. Independently mastered French, German, English and Italian. At the final exam in Russian. wrote the work "The Importance of Labor in Human Life".
  • N. Ya. Marr made a great contribution to the history, archeology and ethnography of Georgia and Armenia, publishing many ancient Georgian and ancient Armenian texts and inscriptions, excavating a number of ancient cities and monasteries of the Caucasus (his main works were carried out over several decades in the ancient city of Ani; materials most of the expeditions were lost in 1917-1918, so the Ani publications of Marr received the value of the primary source). The significance of his work in this area has continued to the present day and has never been questioned. The founder of the Armenian and Georgian national schools of oriental studies, he trained a large number of specialists.
  • N. Ya. Marr was a great organizer of science. When his efforts at the beginning of the century to create a university in the Caucasus were unsuccessful (Hov. Tumanyan was among the champions of this idea), he concentrated his attention on the creation of research centers. Such were the Ani Museum of Antiquities, the Caucasian Historical and Archaeological Institute , Institute of Language and Thinking.
  • The founder of Caucasian studies, with his weighty works in the field of Armenian studies, revealed to the entire scientific world the treasures of culture created by the Armenian genius. He said: “Armenia's cultural past cannot be imagined and it is even impermissible to study it otherwise than as an essential and creative part of the global cultural community. Strewn with thousands and thousands of magnificent cultural monuments, the primordial promised land of the Armenians is bound by inextricable and irrefutable ties with all civilized mankind, and especially with the peoples of Europe. The Armenian nation not only ennobles them, but is also the most important link for studying the emergence and development of all their cultures. The sculptural wonder of the Akhtamar monastery, the self-government system of Ani, the Dvina and Shaapivan cathedrals, nine magnificent bridges spanning the Akhuryan River with amazing skill, serving world trade, and thousands of other creations of the Armenian people in Armenia itself and outside it.
  • All activities of N.Ya. Marr as a scientist who brought up a galaxy of brilliant Caucasian scholars of various profiles and drew attention to the richest cultural heritage of the Caucasus, Armenia in the first place, has been addressed in our days.
  • Part of the photo sent by K.K. Avakyan.

Quotes

Image

    Academician N.Ya. Marr (1864/65-1934) and his student I.A. Orbeli in the Armenian monastery of Surb Khach

Notable students V. I. Abaev, A. K. Borovkov, R. R. Gelgardt, A. N. Genko,
I. A. Javakhishvili,
S. D. Katsnelson,
I. I. Meshchaninov,
I. A. Orbeli,
B. B. Piotrovsky,
F. P. Filin,
O. M. Freidenberg,
A. G. Shanidze

Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr(cargo. ნიკოლოზ იაკობის ძე მარი ; (December 25, 1864 (January 6), Kutais - December 20, Leningrad) - Russian and Soviet orientalist and Caucasian scholar, philologist, historian, ethnographer and archaeologist, academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (), then academician and vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. After the revolution, he received loud fame as the creator of the "new doctrine of language", or "Japhetic theory". Father of orientalist and futurist poet Yuri Marr.

Oriental studies

N. Y. Marr with his mother (1870)

The name Marr is surrounded by greater reverence in Armenia than in his native Georgia. Marr repeatedly had conflicts with Georgian philologists (including his own students), which was associated with the cultural and political views of Marr (who denied the political independence of Georgia, supported the creation of the TSFSR, demanded that Tbilisi University be all-Caucasian), and subsequently with a general rejection the most authoritative of the Georgian disciples of Marr's "Japhetic theory". However, in Armenia, the “new doctrine of language” (unlike Marr’s early works on Armenian studies) was not popular, and during the anti-Marrist discussion of 1950, among the most notable opponents of Marr were both the Georgian A. S. Chikobava and the Armenian G A. Gapantsyan

Early linguistic work

N. Y. Marr in 1905

There is evidence from contemporaries that such a policy of Marr was associated primarily with career considerations, although the success of his ideas was also supported by revolutionism and ambition consonant with the era (“on a global scale” is Marr’s favorite formula).

Marr's theory received official support in the late 1920s and until 1950 was promoted as "truly Marxist" linguistics, and its critics were subjected to systematic study and even repression, which significantly slowed down the development of linguistics in the USSR.

At the top of the honor

In the 1920s-1930s, N. Ya. Marr enjoyed great prestige among the intelligentsia (including some professional linguists), attracted by the scale of his ideas, the setting of many new tasks, and his bright personality (it is characteristic that the influence of Marrism was stronger in Leningrad, where he lived than in other scientific centers). Marr also had a great influence on many culturologists and literary critics who dealt with the problems of ethnogenesis and mythology, including O. M. Freidenberg, who experienced an almost religious feeling for the teacher (subsequently, the defeat of Marrism in linguistics deprived her of her job). Eisenstein, together with Marr and Vygotsky, planned to open a creative scientific laboratory to study the methods and mechanisms of perception, the ancient "pralological consciousness" and its influence on cinema and the consciousness of the masses.

He founded the Japhetic Institute in Petrograd (1921), later the Institute of Language and Thought. N. Ya. Marra (now in St. Petersburg and Moscow), at the same time was the director of the Leningrad Public Library. On March 3, he was elected vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and since then he has chaired many solemn meetings of the academy. In -1934 he was the chairman of the Russian Palestine Society.

In the publications of the Marrists of this period, he is increasingly called "great" and "brilliant", he receives many honorary titles, up to the title of "honorary sailor". The role of Marr in the development of writing for the small languages ​​​​of the USSR was emphasized (his universal “analytical alphabet”, developed even before the revolution and introduced in 1923 for the Abkhazian language, was canceled a few years later due to practical inconvenience), however, in fact, all work on the creation of writing took place without the participation of Marr and his inner circle. On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of his scientific activity, Marr was awarded the Order of Lenin (1933). This anniversary passed without Marr himself: in October 1933, he suffered a stroke, lived for another year after it, but did not return to work.

On the occasion of Marr's death and funeral, classes in schools were canceled in Leningrad, and mourning events were comparable to those that took place in memory of Kirov, who had been killed shortly before. In record time, the very next day after Marr's death, a pamphlet in his memory was printed. He was buried at the Communist site (now the Cossack cemetery) of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

After Marr's death, his students (primarily I.I. Meshchaninov), having actually discarded the unscientific "new doctrine", solved many of the tasks set by Marr in the key of traditional science (typology, the study of syntax, the problem of "language and thinking", etc.).

Heritage

15 years after Marr's death, on June 20, 1950, his teaching was debunked with the release of the work of I.V. Stalin, who once supported him, " Marxism and questions of linguistics", and he himself was subjected to official criticism for "idealism" in linguistics. In particular, Stalin argued that " N. Ya. Marr really wanted to be and tried to be a Marxist, but he failed to become a Marxist».

Streets in the capitals of Georgia - Tbilisi (Niko Mari), Abkhazia - Sukhum and Armenia - Yerevan are named after Marr.

Compositions

  • The Japhetic Caucasus and the third ethnic element in the creation of the Mediterranean culture. - 1920
  • Selected Works, vols. 1-5. - M.-L., 1933-37.
  • Japhetidology. - M., 2002.
  • Ani, book history of the city and excavations at the site of the settlement. - Ogiz, Mrs. social and economic publishing house, 1934.
  • Caucasian cultural world and Armenia. - Pg.: Senate Printing House, 1915.
  • Armenian culture: its roots and prehistoric connections according to linguistics [Per. from Armenian] - Yerevan: Hayastan, 1990. - ISBN 5-540-01085-X
  • History of Georgia: A Cultural and Historical Outline. Regarding the word Fr. I. Vostorgov about the Georgian people. Ed.2. - M.: URSS, 2015 - ISBN 978-5-9710-2057-8

Notes

  1. BNF ID: Open Data Platform - 2011.
  2. Marr Nikolay Yakovlevich //: [in 30 volumes] / ed. A. M. Prokhorov - 3rd ed. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969.
  3. Encyclopædia Britannica
  4. Alpatov V. M. History of a myth. M. 1991/2004, p. 6.
  5. Great Soviet Encyclopedia . 2nd ed. / Ch. ed. B. A. Vvedensky. T. 10. Gazelle - Germanium. 1952. 620 pages, illustrations; 43 l. ill. and maps.
  6. Marr N. Ya. Grammar of the Chan (Laz) language. SPb., 1910
  7. Alpatov V. M. ISBN 5-354-00405-5
  8. Vyach. Sun. Ivanov. Analysis of the deep structures of the semiotic systems of art// Essays on the history of semiotics in the USSR. - M. : Nauka, 1976. - 298 p.
  9. Alpatov V. M. Philologists and Revolution // New Literary Review. - 2002. - No. 53. Archived from the original on August 8, 2018.
  10. Stalin I.V. Concerning Marxism in linguistics // Pravda. - 1950. - June 20.
  11. Stalin I.V. Concerning Marxism in Linguistics// Works. - M.: Publishing house "Writer", 1997. - T. 16. - S. 123.
  12. Guide to reference and bibliographic resources. Petersburg studies, address books. (indefinite) .
  13. Encyclopedia of St. Petersburg, memorial plaque to N. Ya. Marr. (indefinite) .

Literature

  • Marr Nikolai Yakovlevich// List of civil ranks of the first four classes. Ranks of the fourth class. Corrected on September 1st, 1915. Part two. - Pg. : Publication of the Inspection Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery. Senate printing house, 1915. - S. 2193.
  • Bykovsky S. N. N. Ya. Marr and his theory. To the 45th anniversary of scientific activity. M.-L., 1933.
  • Academy of Sciences to Academician N. Ya. Marr. M.; L., 1935.
  • Gitlits M. M. The main questions of language in the coverage of N. Ya. Marr. Supplement to the Questionnaire on the normative grammar of the Russian language // Russian language at school. 1939, No. 3, May-June, p. 1-10; No. 4, July-August, p. 27-33.
  • Mikhankova V. A. Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr. - M.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1948. - 450 p.(3rd ed.: M.-L., 1949)
  • Serdyuchenko G.P. Academician N. Ya. Marr is the founder of Soviet materialistic linguistics. M. 1950.
  • Tsukerman I. I. The largest Soviet orientalist N. Ya. Marr: on the occasion of his 85th birthday / Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Popular Science Series. M.-L., 1950. 54 p.
  • Thomas Lawrence L. The linguistic theories of N. Ja. Marr. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1957;
  • Abaev V.I. N. Ya. Marr // Questions of linguistics. 1960. No. 1;
  • L'Hermitte R. Marr, marrisme, marristes: Science et perversion idéologique; une page de l'histoire de la linguistique sovietique. Institut d'Etudes Slaves, Paris, 1987, ISBN 2-7204-0227-3
  • Alpatov V. M. The History of a Myth: Marr and Marrism. M., 1991 (ibid., bibliography), 2nd supplement. ed., M., 2004,

Lev Lurie: Today we will talk about linguistics, the most specialized and most sophisticated of all the humanities. It was with the help of linguistics that it was possible to invent the computer languages ​​that we all use. It is linguistics that allows a person to communicate with mechanisms. Serious passions boiled around this special, requiring special qualifications of scientific knowledge in the 1930s-50s. They were associated with Academician Marr, exalted during his lifetime and deposed after his death with the participation of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade Stalin.

Nikolai Marr came to science long before the revolution. A native of Georgia, in 1884 he came to St. Petersburg, where he entered the Oriental Faculty of the University, which he graduated with brilliance. By the beginning of the 20th century, he was already a recognized leading specialist in the Caucasian languages, Armenian and Georgian literature, as well as Caucasian archeology.

Victor Zhivov, philologist: He started with excavations and studies of the Armenian and Georgian culture, he worked very successfully. It was for these works that he was elected an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, this was before the revolution.

Very early, Marr began to show a tendency to build all-encompassing and not supported by scientific facts theories. He proves the kinship of Georgian to either Semitic (Arabic and Hebrew), or Turkish. He invents a special Japhetic family of languages, which includes all the languages ​​of the Caucasus, a number of ancient languages ​​​​of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, as well as the language of the Basques, a people living in Spain and France. All this relies solely on an arbitrary juggling of linguistic facts.

Lev Lurie: The strangeness of the scientific ideas of Nicholas Marr is connected, perhaps, with his origin. A Scottish gardener Jacob Marr comes to Georgia. He enters the service of Prince Gurieli and introduces the culture of Georgian tea in Georgia. Before that, there was no tea in Georgia. In gratitude for this, the prince finds a Scot - and by that time he was already 80 years old - an eighteen-year-old bride, a Gurian peasant woman. This strange couple gave birth to the young Nikolai Marr, who had a very difficult and at the same time absolutely unique childhood.

The family in which Marr grew up was very strange, because the parents spoke different languages. Naturally, the young mother did not speak any European language, Jacob Marr did not speak Georgian properly, so they spoke to each other in some strange synthetic dialect.

Before the revolution, Marr was mainly engaged in serious science. In addition to being elected to the Academy, he was appointed dean of the Oriental Faculty of the Imperial St. Petersburg University. He has many students, he is the largest specialist in Caucasian languages. But gradually the academician is more and more attracted by the general problems of linguistics - an area in which he was a complete ignoramus. After the revolution, Marr moved further and further away from Caucasian studies. He is preparing his own revolution - a revolution in the science of language.

Lev Lurie: This is the famous house of academicians on Vasilyevsky Island. In 1921, it was empty, like the whole of Petrograd, because many members of the Academy of Sciences emigrated, others simply died of hunger and disease. But this terrible year is the time of incredible flowering of science. Here, in the house of academicians, in the apartment of the venerable academician Marr, the Japhetic Institute, organized on a voluntary basis, gathers, where Marr and his students develop an absolutely new doctrine of language.

In 1923, Marr announced the creation of a new doctrine of language, in the spirit of the times, abandoning all the achievements of traditional science. He offers his own explanation of the origin of the language, puts forward an original hypothesis for the emergence of modern languages ​​and easily denies everything that he fantasized before the revolution. Now Marr claims that there are no language families, including the Japhetic one. In the beginning, there were many languages ​​that were not related to each other in any way.

Lev Lurie: In the middle of the 19th century, the German scientist Schleicher first likened the Indo-European family of languages ​​to such a tree - a trunk, and groups diverge from it. The trunk is the Proto-Indo-European language, the most ancient, most similar to the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. Branches are groups: Slavic, German, Persian, etc. Nikolai Marr put this understandable scheme, the scheme of the trunk and branches, with the branches down.

Viktor Khrakovsky, linguist: Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr believed that from the very beginning there was a certain multitude of languages ​​that mixed with each other, crossed, and that all really existing languages ​​are the fruit of this mixing.

Within the framework of the new doctrine of language, Marr argues that all languages ​​in their development go through the same stages and at some point all languages ​​were or will be Japhetic, that is, similar to modern Caucasian ones. This applies to Russian, and to English, and to the Chuvash, and to the language of the Quechua Indians. Language originated from sign language. At the second stage it was slurred speech. Ancient people made some diffuse cries in which it was not possible to separate one sound from another. Only then did speech appear in its modern form, where words consist of phonemes, that is, individual sounds.

Victor Zhivov, philologist: He tackled a very important problem, which already in the middle of the 19th century was banned in linguistics - the problem of the origin of language. Even now it has not yet been resolved, Marr sucked his decision out of his finger, like the whole theory.

Viktor Khrakovsky, linguist: When a person begins to move away from specific work in his science, it seems to him that he is ready to build some general theory that can answer all the questions of science. He began to slip from the solid ground of facts into the realm of only assumptions, hypotheses that were not supported by anything. The result of these assumptions of his was the New Doctrine of Language.

Pavel Klubkov, philologist: In terms of his mentality, Marr is not even a man of the 18th, but of the 17th century, the century of great scientific revolutions. And in the 17th and partly in the 18th century we will find a great many reasonings completely in the spirit of Marr.

Despite the obvious absurdity, the New Doctrine of Language is gaining many supporters in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Marr becomes extremely popular among revolutionary-minded humanitarians - philosophers, historians, literary critics. Somewhere in the mid-twenties, the academician begins to present his teaching as Marxist linguistics. His most important thesis is that with the victory of the world revolution and the advent of communism, a single world communist language will arise on earth. The authorities liked the idea, and gradually Marr secures the status of the leader of Soviet linguistics. Linguists are in no hurry to recognize the doctrine.

Alexander Rusakov, philologist: Some believe that he sincerely sympathized with Marxism, others believe that it was only a means to achieve the main goal - domination in the world of science. From the mid-1920s, he began to actively use Marxism in his activities.

Pavel Klubkov, philologist: For Marr, internationalism is very organic - the recognition of all languages ​​and peoples as equal. Humanity is moving from ethnic diversity to linguistic and, accordingly, ethnic unity - this idea fit well into the ideological doctrines of the 1920s.

Daniil Aleksandrov, sociologist: A diverse, fragmented community of scientists within their discipline sought to somehow come together and trust someone who could talk to authority. On this wave, it seems to me, Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr rose as a leader in linguistics.

Lev Lurie: In the late 1920s The Soviet Union developed a system for organizing Soviet science. It was as if a special ministry was created - the Academy of Sciences. There is some branch of science - there is a research institute. The Institute of Language and Thought, founded by Nikolai Marr, became the main Soviet center for the study of linguistics, and Marr became the country's chief linguist. The Institute still exists today. It is called the Institute for Linguistic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Behind me is a portrait of the founder of the Institute, Academician Nikolai Marr.

Lev Lurie: This is the building of the Academy of Sciences, the same Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, which was founded by Peter the Great. In 1929, the academicians refused to elect three communists whom the authorities imposed on them as full members: Fritsche, Deborin and Lukin. The Politburo and the government were indignant. The academy should have been disbanded. Some of the academicians were arrested, and the famous academic case began. At this moment, Nikolai Marr played, perhaps, the most important role in his life. It was he who managed to defend the academy.

Marr's fiery speech at the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, where the fate of the Academy was to be decided, convinced the Soviet leadership of the need to preserve this old regime institution. For Marr, this victory meant a lot. The leader of the extremely influential New Doctrine of Language, he becomes one of the recognized leaders of Russian science in general.

Nikolai Vakhtin, linguist: All Soviet society was built on the principle of hierarchy, on the principle of a pyramid. Each area had to have its own chief man. Marr, it seems to me, willingly took this position, and the position was simply necessary for the structure of Soviet society. We needed a small totalitarian pyramid in any field, including linguistics.

The era of the undivided domination of the New doctrine of language in Russian linguistics began. When in 1930, at the 16th Party Congress, Stalin himself reproduced Marr's position on the future communist language, the odious teaching of the academician acquired the status of a state one.

Lev Lurie: According to the new teaching on the language of Marra, all the words of all languages ​​go back to the four primary elements: sal, ber, yon, and finally rosh. Linguistic paleontology determines how a particular word came from these four elements. Take the word red. It would seem that there is no fat, no beer, no yon, no rosh. But this is only at first glance. "Ras" - it is obvious that this is a modified "rosh". At the lessons of this very linguistic paleontology, as part of the course on the basics of linguistics, humanities students had to engage in such a game, similar to how they make an elephant out of a fly on paper - look for “sal”, “ber”, “yon” or “rosh” in each word .

Viktor Khrakovsky, linguist: Somewhere at the very beginning of the 20th century, Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy, after reading some of Marr's articles, wrote to Roman Osipovich Yakobson: "If Marr does not need to be put in a yellow house yet, then he is approaching this."

Yaroslav Vasilkov, orientalist: It is paradoxical that at the moment when they began to praise Marr, really make a little Stalin out of him, raise his every word to a shield, to a banner, he was already a really mentally ill person.

In the early 1930s, in the last years of Marr's life, he was already a mad old man, officially proclaimed a genius. His name was even given to the institute where he was the director. The environment is changing. The Marrists of the 1920s were young enthusiastic scientists, fascinated by the grandeur of the revolutionary academician's ideas. When the doctrine became dogma, they departed from Marr. But now Nikolai Yakovlevich had no problems with recruiting new supporters.

Nikolai Kazansky, philologist: Naturally, by the end of his life, pseudo-linguists began to adjoin this theory, who did not know a single language, but were very good at juggling formulations, linking the formulations of the New Doctrine of Language with Marxist theory. This had a detrimental effect on the fate of many, many people.

The first victim of the Marrists was Yevgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov, the largest of the linguists working at that time in the Union. Having dared to speak out against Marr, the scientist was denounced as an enemy of Marxist linguistics and went into virtual exile in Central Asia. In 1937 he was arrested and shot. In 1932, the Moscow group of Marxist linguists "Lyazykofront" came out against Marr, but it was also defeated. The victory became final. There are no doubters left. Only Marr himself did not long enjoy undivided dominance. In 1934, the academician died.

After Marr's death, leadership in Soviet linguistics passed to his closest student, Academician Meshchaninov. The arrival of Meshchaninov became a salvation for linguistics. He turned out to be a decent man and a real scientist. In the second half of the 1930s and into the 1940s, it was enough for linguists to make a ritual reference to the brilliant works of Marr for a work that could radically contradict the new doctrine of language to be published. Soviet linguistics began to gradually come to its senses and solve the really serious problems that confronted it.

A relatively calm situation in linguistics persisted until 1948. A campaign against cosmopolitanism began - science was subjected to the most severe repressions. In literary criticism, the school of Veselovsky was smashed. In biology - geneticists. They dealt with historians, philosophers and economists. There is only one accusation - kowtowing before the West, terrible for the beginning of the Cold War. In linguistics, repressions were carried out under the banner of Marrism. The leading Soviet scientists were accused of departing from the great teaching of Academician Marr, the only true Marxist teaching on language. There were study meetings. Many lost their jobs. It looked like the arrests were about to begin. Subsequently, 1948 and 1949 will be called the Arakcheev regime in linguistics.

Viktor Khrakovsky, linguist: Some scientists had to repent twice and thrice, especially this openly took place in Moscow, for example, Academician Vinogradov had to publicly admit his guilt almost three times.

Yuri Kleiner, philologist: My German teacher told me that in schools children were constantly asked: “In what year was Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr born? When did Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr die? This was already Arakcheevism, in which, probably, Marr was not guilty.

Lev Lurie: On May 9, 1950, the Pravda newspaper began publishing articles on questions of linguistics. These are articles in defense of Academician Marr's New Linguistic Teaching and articles against Academician Marr. There is a feeling of free discussion, but it is quite obvious that this is artillery preparation before the decisive battle, and this battle ends with two works by Stalin: the article “On Marxism in Linguistics” and a series of answers to questions from postgraduate student Krasheninnikova, which are published under the general title - “On Some Questions of Linguistics ". The works of Comrade Stalin are published in mass editions. They are studied by absolutely everyone: military pilots, metal cutting specialists, botanists. Everyone learns them almost by heart. Comrade Stalin's works put an end to Marr's linguistic teaching, which has been declared bourgeois and unscientific.

Yuri Kleiner, philologist: My senior colleague told me how, when he was studying (just after this discussion), it was possible to retake exams. The university was strict, it was not supposed to retake. A student comes for a direction, they do not give him, he declares: "But I am a victim of the Arakcheev regime in linguistics." Immediately all problems are solved: “Please retake.

Victor Zhivov, philologist: Marrism was smashed, but Marrists, it seems, were not imprisoned. Someone repented successfully and was no longer a Marrist bandit, but a bandit of a different color. There were no casualties. For example, Nikolai Feofanovich Yakovlev, a great linguist, a great specialist in Caucasian languages, went crazy. They called him, they said that he was expelled from the Institute of Linguistics, where he was deputy director, for his Marrism, and he went crazy. Then he spent thirty years in a lunatic asylum.

The defeat of Marrism was complete and final. The Institute of Language and Thought founded by Marr in Leningrad, which since the late twenties has retained the status of the main linguistic center in the country, was merged with the newly established Moscow Institute of Linguistics, turning into a branch. For several more years, ritual abuse against Marrism was heard from various stands. Special collections were published aimed at debunking the anti-scientific New Teaching about language, and works extolling the brilliant Marxist teaching of Stalin. Gradually, Marr was forgotten, and the postulates of the New Teaching turned into anecdotes that teachers tell students of philology, teaching the basics of linguistics.

Lev Lurie: The Russian social system is almost always authoritarian. The tyrant raises, the tyrant casts down. Marr's story is a typical one of favoritism. Marr becomes the banner of Soviet linguistics, because Stalin actually referred to him in his speech at the 16th Party Congress, and Marr was overthrown after his death by Stalin too. A soap bubble that arises, hangs, and then bursts.