Orwells Tutor? Eugène Adam (Lanti) und die Ernüchterung der Linken Orwells Tutor? Eugène Adam (Lanti) and the Disillusionment of the Left De En

Résumé En

Since the publication of Bernard Crick’s Orwell biography (1970) we are aware of the relations between George Orwell and left-wing Esperantists. Particular attention has been paid to the connection of his aunt Nellie Limouzin with Eugène Adam, who became known under the name of Lanti as the founder of the SAT, the leading organisation of the workers’ Esperanto movement. A little more than thirty years after Orwell’s death, a statement (often quoted since then) has been published which seems to prove an early influence of Lanti on the development of Orwell’s thinking. According to an interview with SAT co-founder Lucien Bannier, Lanti and Orwell had a heated argument in 1928/29 about the assessment of the Soviet Union. At that time Orwell apparently still believed in the revolutionary potential of the Soviet Union, while Lanti, mainly because of the knowledge he had gained through his Esperanto contacts, doubted that there was a construction of socialism in the Soviet Union. How credible is this source? Orwell declared in 1947 that he had been convinced for ten years that if the renewal of socialism was to take place, the “Soviet myth” would first have to be destroyed. Was Lanti thus almost a decade ahead of him? What similarities can be seen in the attitude of Orwell and Lanti towards the Soviet Union? Were they “premature anti-Stalinists”? I will try to answer these questions in the context of the ideological struggles of the 1930s.