Ivy Litvinov
Ivy Walterovna Litvinov (n茅e Ivy Teresa Low), born in London in 1889, claimed to have introduced, adapted and disseminated C. K. Ogden鈥檚 Basic English to thousands of people in the USSR in the 1930s. In this short essay, Simon Dunton investigates these claims, and evaluates both her impact on English Language Teaching (ELT) in the Soviet Union and her place among prominent women of ELT history.
Ivy Litvinov: Advocating Basic English in the Soviet Union
by Simon Dunton
Early attempts at teaching
Ivy Litvinov (1889鈥�1977) moved to the USSR in 1920 to join her husband, revolutionary and Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov, whom she had married in 1916 and subsequently had two children with while he was in exile in London. According to her own account (Low, 1942), by the early 1930s, she felt her children (Mikhail, born 1917, and Tatiana, born 1918) were old enough for her to be able to look for meaningful employment. With a self-confessed poor grasp of the Russian language, she felt the most suitable option for her was to turn to ELT.
Completely untrained and unqualified (aside from speaking English as her first language), she began teaching adults, but soon found she lacked the grammatical knowledge required to answer her students鈥� questions. She continued to teach, 鈥渋n a Berlitz sort of way鈥� (Low, 1942: 118) but noted that a focus on vocabulary and memorisation of set questions and answers did not lead to noticeable improvement, other than 鈥渧ery nice pronunciation鈥�. In terms of students' comprehension, she later humorously recalled:
鈥淥nce an inspector came and asked my best pupil: 鈥楢re you a man or a woman?鈥� The pupil replied: and when he saw me looking at him reproachfully, he tried to make things better by saying: 鈥楴o, I am not a man or a woman鈥欌��
(Low, 1942: 120).
Ivy Litvinov as a teacher in Sverdlovsk, 1937 (source: Carswell, 1983)
Basic English to the masses!
Inspiration for a better way to teach English came when Ivy met C. K. Ogden Link opens in a new windowthrough friends during a trip to London in 1931 (or 1932, according to her children: Litvinova & Litvinov, 2001). Ogden portrayed his , which he had developed in 1925, as a simplified version of English of just 850 core words to be used as an international second language.
Ivy almost instantly decided to become,鈥渁 crusader for Ogden鈥檚 plan in the Soviet Union鈥� (Carswell, 1983: 134), believing that Basic English 鈥渕akes the work a cinch, for the teacher and the student really does learn something鈥� (Low, 1942: 122). She set to work spreading it through meetings with teachers from Moscow and Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and, according to her children, wrote numerous articles, including one in the widely read Literaturnaya Gazeta (Litvinova & Litvinov, 2001).
Ivy with assistants and students, 1930s (source: https://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/12575)
With Ogden's permission, she collected a team together (which she referred to as her 鈥楤asic Girls鈥�) to adapt and translate a Basic English textbook for Soviet learners, aiming at both teachers and those wanting to teach themselves. This was printed in several runs of 30,000 copies, which reportedly "sold out in no time" (To Russia with love, 1976).
A copy of Litvinov's (1935) Basic: Step by Step (source: https://habarorg.ru/catalog/49101/)
Following this success, Ivy and her team released a series of instructional vinyl records for Basic English in 1936, and created simplified readers, published in similar numbers to the textbooks, including adaptations of Lev Tolstoy in translation (Litvinova & Litvinov, 2001), as well as Robinson Crusoe and 骋耻濒濒颈惫别谤鈥檚Travels, which were reportedly distributed to Red Army soldiers (Russa: Red notes, 1937).
Who were Ivy Litvinov鈥檚 students?
Evidence of Ivy鈥檚 teaching career is somewhat disjointed, making it hard to determine exactly whom Ivy was teaching at any one time (and where). However, the following can be pieced together through first- and second-hand accounts:
Foreign Office and Red Army officials
The earliest detailed account comes from 1934 when her husband Maxim, by this time Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, helped organise a class of junior Foreign Office officials for her to teach (Carswell, 1983: 138). This was followed by at least two other classes, and Ivy was even given two assistants to help with these lessons. These students may or may not be be the same as those described as 鈥淩ed Army soldiers鈥� in a first-hand account of Ivy鈥檚 classroom by Margaret Gardiner, who observed Ivy teaching in the Kremlin that same year:
We got out of the car and walked to the classroom, where about twenty young soldiers, bareheaded, sat in rows at tables. Ivy took her place in front of them and said briskly 'Now we'll go on learning the words of the song we started last time.' And then, very slow and clear, she recited:
'It's a different girl
It's a different girl
It's a different girl again.'
In unison, solemnly and painstakingly, the young men repeated 'It's a diff-rent girl agaaaain', with a very long-drawn out final syllable. It was a splendid performance and proved that, from the point of view of her pupils at least, both Ivy and Basic were a huge success.
(Gardiner, 1976: 51)
These classes, however, were certainly not seen as 鈥渁 huge success鈥� by all, and by the end of one term were 鈥渧oted a failure and discontinued鈥� (To Russia with love, 1976: 17).
The Institute at Sverdlovsk
By 1935, Ivy had moved away to Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), leaving her family in Moscow to accept a teaching position at an Industrial Institute. According to her correspondence, she taught Basic English to over 100 students, with single class sizes reaching up to 45鈥攁 workload that caused her to temporarily lose her voice (Carswell, 1983: 137鈥�138). Photographic evidence from 1937 suggests she also taught children during her time in Sverdlovsk.
Throughout this period, she faced strong opposition from professional Soviet language instructors and officials in the Commissariat of Education, who 鈥渨ere up in arms against an unqualified teacher who taught English in an unapproved way. Representations were made, but Ivy was not abashed or deterred, and her classes continued to flourish鈥� (Carswell, 1983: 137).
(Source: Low, 1942)
Ivy Litvinov as a teacher in Sverdlovsk, 1937 (source: Carswell, 1983)
VGIK and political backlash
By 1938, Ivy was back in Moscow, where she taught Basic English at VGIK (The State Institute of Cinematography) to students of renowned filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (Seton, 1952: 327). However, criticism of her methods continued. While some educators agreed that Basic English was a pragmatic tool for global communication, critics viewed it with suspicion, accusing it of being, "a sinister capitalist plot to mislead and confuse" (Gardiner, 1976: 51).
The long pause
When Maxim was promoted to become Soviet Ambassador to the United States in November 1941, Ivy went with him, putting her ELT activities on hold and turning instead to the life of an ambassador's wife. Following his recall to the USSR in August 1943, Ivy stated she planned to return to her work, writing to a friend,鈥溾�業 am determined not to go back to family life. I will try to get a job organizing Basic English groups in any town they like, so long as a room goes with it鈥欌�� (quoted in Carsell, 1983: 156). However, this did not come to be, and Ivy never returned to the classroom.
Basic English: The movie
Could Warner Brothers have been considering a film about Basic English in the USSR in the autumn of 1943? What would such a film have even looked like, especially given the fact that by March 1937, 鈥渢hroughout the entire Soviet Union, there were maybe one or two organized Basic English classes that had not yet been shuttered鈥� (O'Keeffe, 2021a: 233)? It鈥檚 an intriguing and unusual prospect for those interested in the history of ELT, with the claim originating from John Carswell鈥檚 biography of Ivy in which he writes, 鈥渟he signed a contract for a film about Basic English (it was never made, but she got a substantial advance)鈥� (1983: 154).
However, perhaps somewhat disappointingly, there is no evidence for this agreement in the Warner Brothers archives, putting the claim into dispute. Historian Brigid O'Keeffe notes that Ivy鈥檚 correspondence of the time does mention talks with film studios, but these were more likely to have concerned the possibility of selling the film rights to her novel His Master鈥檚 Voice, also known as Moscow Mystery (1943), or consultancy for studios interested in understanding more about the Soviet Union.
Ivy Litvinov's impact on ELT in the Soviet Union
Media reports from the 1930s certainly portrayed Ivy鈥檚 Basic English mission as a resounding triumph, withTime Magazine reporting:
Ivy won her three-year fight to get Dictator Stalin to order every Red Army soldier to learn 鈥淏asic English,鈥� a simplified vocabulary of 850 words in which it is supposed to be possible to express almost any thought. First English books to be read by Red Soldiers: Robinson Crusoe and 骋耻濒濒颈惫别谤鈥檚 Travels re-written in Basic.
(Russia: Red notes, 1937)
As late as 2001, Ivy鈥檚 children were also claiming that Basic English 鈥渘ot only existed, but was developing quite successfully鈥� in the USSR up until 1939 (Litvinova & Litvinov, 2001). In reality, the long-term success of Ivy鈥檚 work, and the spread of Basic English in the USSR, was minimal. Ivy鈥檚 classes were 鈥渟hort-lived and small-scale ventures,鈥� and were, 鈥渉arassed by claims that Basic was tainted by an inherent bourgeois imperialism鈥� (O'Keeffe, 2021a: 233). In correspondence with Ogden in 1937, Ivy herself admitted she was unsuccessful in persuading the Soviet authorities that Basic English was necessary, evidenced, as we have seen, by the fact so few classes ran that year.
However, despite this ultimate failure, the very fact that classes had opened and that reading and audio materials had been produced and disseminated to the Soviet public not only demonstrates the impact of Ivy Litvinov鈥檚 decade of drive and determination but, I would argue, secures her a rightful place in the history of the pioneering women of ELT.
Key publications by Ivy Litvinov
Litvinov, I. (1930). His master's voice: A detective story. Victor Gollancz.
Litvinova, A. V. (1935). Basic step by step: Uchebnik angliyskogo yazyka na osnove 鈥淏asic step by step鈥� Ch. K. Ogdena[Basic step by step: English textbook based on C. K. Ogden鈥檚 "Basic step by step"]. Izdatel'skoye Tovarishchestvo Inostrannykh Rabochikh SSSR.
Litvinova, A. V., & Carter, A. A. (Eds.). (1936). Angliyskiy yazyk: 6 uchebnykh plastinok[English language: 6 instructional vinyl records]. Izdatel'skoye Tovarishchestvo Inostrannykh Rabochikh SSSR.
Litvinova, A. V. (Ed.). (1936). Slovar' minimum angliyskogo yazyka po sisteme Basic English[A minimum dictionary of the English language using the Basic English system]. Izdatel'skoye Tovarishchestvo Inostrannykh Rabochikh SSSR.
Litvinova, A. V. (1936). Short stories: In Basic English. State Publishing House.
Litvinov, I. (1943). Moscow mystery: A novel. Coward-McCann.
References and further reading
Carswell, J. (1983).The exile: A life of Ivy Litvinov. Faber & Faber.
Gardiner, M. (1976). Moscow winter 1934. New Left Review, (98), 43鈥�58.
Low, I (1942, October 12). Close up: Madame Litvinoff. Life, 13(15), 114鈥�124.
O鈥橩eeffe, B. (2019). The woman always pays: The lives of Ivy Litvinov.The Slavonic and East European Review, 97(3), 501鈥� 528.
O鈥橩eeffe, B. (2021a). Esperanto and languages of internationalism in revolutionary Russia. Bloomsbury Academic.
O鈥橩eeffe, B. (2021b, March 29). Madame Comrade. Aeon.
Russia: Red notes. (1937, March 8). Time Magazine.
Seton, M. (1952). Sergei M. Eisenstein: A biography.The Bodley Head.
Litvinova, T. M., & Litvinov, M. M. (2001). Basic English v Rossii [Basic English in Russia]. Nauka i Zhizn, (7).
To Russia with love. (1976, July 25).The Observer Review, 17.