[shadowofneptune]

Western Europe is very different from the Europe that Zamenhof grew up in.

You get so many internationalist movements out of Russia because it already was in many ways international internally. Lots of languages and land, but both travel and speech were restricted by authorities, secret police seemed to hover invisibly everywhere. The language of everything important, the language of rulers, was Russian. Vacations were in-country, if they happened at all.

Looking to the UK, France, and the US is in this case misleading.