This volume is the second installment of Ulrich Lins’ work on the history of Esperanto, an international auxiliary language constructed with the aim of promoting peace through mutual understanding. This volume describes how the community of Esperantists first shrank, and then gradually grew again, in both the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Lins particularly traces the effects of Stalinist ideology and policy on Esperanto activities, organizations, and speakers.

Part 1 describes how Soviet Esperantists expected their movement to find a place in the communism of the Soviet Union, but in 1937–38 they were persecuted, resulting in the deaths of speakers and the disbanding of Esperanto organizations. Because international letter writing was a defining activity of Esperantists, many expected to serve a role as disseminators of communist propaganda and gatherers of foreign intelligence. However, the Soviet Esperanto Union was unable to control the ideological conformity of letters written by individuals. Parallelly, the Esperanto movement tried to justify its usefulness as an auxiliary language between the various national languages of the Soviet Union, but as Russian became dominant, the movement lost this justification and even became considered a threat. Esperantists were arrested and convicted on suspicion of espionage.

Part 2 starts with details of similar decline of Esperanto activities in Eastern European countries as the Soviet Union expanded its sphere of influence. Then in the 1940s the movement started gaining momentum again, at first in Eastern Europe and then in the Soviet Union. Occasional relapses to previous persecution occurred as authorities accused Esperantists of fascism, pro-Yugoslav sympathies, or cosmopolitanism. Esperanto activities were also condemned as irrelevant to contemporary politics, and Esperantists were dismissed or arrested, and formal organization was met with bureaucratic obstacles.

Lins asks at various points what can be considered the cause of the persecution of Esperanto under Stalinism. In ch. 4 he examines whether the cause was ideological nonconformity in international correspondence that condemned the Esperanto movement in the Soviet Union in the late 30s, but concludes that authorities were in fact suspicious of all contact with foreign ideas and that Esperanto, though probably specifically targeted, was not the only subject of this suspicion. In ch. 7 he analyzes the ideological tensions between the Esperanto movement and Stalinist Russian-centric transnationalism, but likewise concludes that Esperanto was targeted for security reasons before ideological considerations surfaced.

As Lins notes in his preface, this book does not aim to be an internal history of Esperanto. As such it does not comment on peculiarities of Esperanto as a language and is not a source for sociolinguistic data on, or analysis of, Esperanto. Instead it chronicles a significant part of the history of the Esperanto movement. The original edition, written in Esperanto, is clearly aimed at members of that movement, but this translation makes it accessible to interested non-Esperantist historians. Being clearly and accessibly written, it also presents an unusual case study for other readers interested in one of its themes, such as language policy, language ideology, linguistic persecution, national identity and language or constructed or planned languages.