MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

La Nova Epoko (The New Epoch) was an international literary and social magazine of general left-wing orientation, founded in 1922 by four Soviet Esperantists. It was one of the press organs of SAT (Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda/ World Non-National Association), a worldwide association of the workers’ Esperanto movement, which deliberately rejected national differences. SAT, which was an educational and cultural organisation rather than an overtly political one, aimed to “induce its members to be understanding and tolerant of the political and philosophical schools or systems that lie at the base of the various workers' parties”. In the Soviet Union and Germany, the countries in which SAT had the greatest number of members, the organisation was already being persecuted by the time of the 1930s. While Hitler condemned Esperanto as a secret language for Jewish plots, in the Soviet Union one of the founders of La Nova Epoko, Nekrasov was arrested in 1938 and accused of being "an organiser and leader of a fascist, espionage, terrorist organisation of Esperantists". Together with other Esperantists he became a victim of Stalinist oppression and was sentenced to death.