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Mermaid and Dickens' The Battle of Life appeared in serial form. 

The increasingly interesting content brought about a substantial increase in the number 

of subscribers. In 1892, the paper had 544 subscribers in twelve countries (335 in Russia, 

124 in Germany, 56 in Sweden, and 29 in other countries) and in 1893 the subscriber list 

swelled to 889, a record that was never surpassed by La Esperantisto. 

In the meantime, Zamenhof produced several books about the language, including the 

Universala Vortaro (Universal Dictionary), which translated the Esperanto root words into 

French, English, German, Russian, and Polish. 

In April 1892 La Esperantisto became simply Esperantisto and in January 1893 the 

subtitle in German and French was dropped from the masthead. In the January issue, 

Zamenhof again announced the founding of a League of Esperantists. Its membership 

comprised “all actual Esperantists, i.e. subscribers to our official central periodical”. The 

League's function was to vote on language reforms and organizational proposals put 

forward by the subscribers. Any subscriber could put forward proposals, but “Each 

subscriber making a proposal will be required to pay for it at the rate for advertisements.” 

Zamenhof named himself secretary of the League. 

Since a number of Esperanto speakers felt that Esperanto was failing to make headway 

because of inherent linguistic flaws in the language, with the January 1894 issue of 

Esperantisto, Zamenhof began publishing a revised language project. His intention was to 

show what characteristics he would give it if he “were beginning to create the language 

now, after six and a half years of practical work and trials and hearing so many opinions 

and so much advice from the widest range of people, newspapers and associations”. (3) 

The changes were radical. For example, all accented letters and the letter “j” were 

dropped from the alphabet. Consequently, the alphabet was left with 21 letters, including 

“h”, which Zamenhof said he might well propose dropping in the future. The pronunciation 

of several letters was changed also: the sound [z] completely disappeared, “c” was to be 

pronounced [sh] and “z” was to have the sound [ts]. The article was dropped completely. 

The vocabulary underwent many modifications because of the disappearance of the seven 

letters and in accordance with the proposal “to avoid German and Slavic words and to use, 

in so far as possible, only words from the Romance languages.” 

Once the voting was finished, with 93 in favour of the proposed reforms and 157 

opposed, Esperanto remained unchanged. The vote brought stability to Esperanto, but, at 

the same time, made Esperantists suspicious for a long time of any proposal to found an 

international organization. 

A number of Esperantists, particularly former devotees of Volapük, abandoned 

Esperanto in the years following the vote. Schmidt, Esperantisto's representative in 

Bavaria, along with the entire Mondlingva Klubo of Nuremberg said goodbye to Esperanto 

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and pledged their allegiance to the new language Idiom Neutral.

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 The Nuremberg club's 

defection meant that there would be no Esperanto club in Germany before 1903. Even 

Antoni Grabowski, often called “the father of Esperanto poetry,” abandoned Esperanto for 

almost ten years. 

Trompeter, who had wanted the changes, announced that his financial support for the 

paper would continue only until the year's end. Zamenhof had to take over the running of 

the paper once again and became the editor/publisher. In 1894, the number of subscribers 

fell to 596 and this number threatened to fall yet again in 1895 when those who were 

abandoning Esperanto would fail to renew their subscriptions. In fact the last subscription 

list shows only 425 paid-up subscribers. 

Zamenhof was forced to look for new possibilities. He entered into an agreement with 

the Tolstoyan editors of the Posrednik (Intermediary) publications whereby they would 

have a continuing column in Esperantisto.

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 Perhaps because of this, he won the sympathy 

of the Tolstoyans for Esperanto, but Esperantisto lost its neutrality in the ethical, moral and 

religious spheres. The column, Folieto de “Posrednik” (Posrednik's Leaflet), appeared for 

the first time in the February 1895 issue. It presented Tolstoy's essay Prudento aŭ kredo? 

(Judgment or Faith?), which caused the Russian censors to forbid the importation of 

Esperantisto into Russia, where it had the majority of its subscribers. Tolstoy himself 

intervened and had the ban lifted. Nevertheless, after the May-June 1895 issue, which did 

not appear until August, Zamenhof stopped publishing Esperantisto. 

(La) Esperantisto played an important role in Esperanto's history. it enabled its readers 

to become aware of the activities of Esperantists in other countries, to see the regularly 

updated lists of new Esperantists, to exchange experiences, and to discuss problems with 

the language. The paper became the seed of the Esperantist “people”. Indeed, every 

subscriber from 1893 on had a vote in the League. 

In addition, Zamenhof's work on the only Esperanto periodical at that time helped the 

language, which lacked a basis in tradition, to become stable and unified. The language 

acquired its own style and orthography and its first abbreviations. The literary texts 

published in the paper and translated or written by Zamenhof later became the basis of the 

Fundamenta Krestomatio (Basic Anthology).