Marxism and Problems of Linguistics - From Marx to Mao

to classes as is language and may, like it, equally serve a capitalistsystem and a socialist system.Further, the superstructure is the product of one epoch,the epoch in which the given economic base exists andoperates. The superstructure is therefore short-lived; it iseliminated and disappears with the elimination and disappearanceof the given base.Language, on the contrary, is the product of a wholenumber of epochs, in the course of which it takes shape, isenriched, develops and is smoothened. A language thereforelives immeasurably longer than any base or any superstructure.This in fact explains why the rise and elimination notonly of one base and its superstructure, but of several basesand their corresponding superstructures, have not led inhistory to the elimination of a given language, to the eliminationof its structure and the rise of a new language with anew stock of words and a new grammatical system.It is more than a hundred years since Pushkin died. In thisperiod the feudal system and the capitalist system wereeliminated in Russia, and a third, a socialist system has arisen.Hence two bases, with their superstructures, were eliminated,and a new, socialist base has arisen, with its new superstructure.Yet, if we take the Russian language, for example, ithas not in this long span of time undergone any fundamentalchange, and the modern Russian language differs very littlein structure from the language of Pushkin.What has changed in the Russian language in this period?The Russian vocabulary has in this period been greatly replenished;a large number of obsolete words have droppedout of the vocabulary; the meaning of a great many words haschanged; the grammatical system of the language has improved.As to the structure of Pushkin’s language, with its7