Who was given the alphabet in the USSR and how?

February 21 is International Mother Language Day. Russia has been a multinational country throughout its history. Pavel Dronov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke to us about how scientists helped different nations acquire a convenient alphabet.

The USSR & the Latin alphabet

One of the goals of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was to eliminate illiteracy. In Tsarist Russia, education was a privilege and the mere fact of receiving it elevated one above others. At the same time, the concept of public education implied a certain simplification: the writing itself needed to be made simpler and more accessible to people. This was also the basis for the 1918 reform of Russian orthography: unreadable letters that had only historical significance were removed.

In the mid-1920s, scholars concluded that all Turkic languages needed to create a unified alphabet based on the Latin alphabet. By 1930, the decision had already been made to create a Latin alphabet for a wide range of languages, including the unwritten languages ​​of the peoples of the Far North, such as the Evenki, the Even, the Udege, the Chukchi and the Itelmen. More than 50 (!) languages ​​received a written form. The Latin alphabet was dubbed the "alphabet of revolution". The Soviet Union was seen as a springboard for world revolution and the Latin alphabet was considered one that belonged to no one.

The unified alphabet for Turkic languages ​​is called ‘Yanalif’ (from the Tatar ‘яңа әлифба’; or ‘yanalifba’ – aka ‘new alphabet’). Linguist Nikolai Yakovlev, armed with mathematical formulas, demonstrated that text set in the Latin alphabet takes up less space on a page than text in Cyrillic, saving paper.

Then the idea arose of converting Russian to Latin script to save space. This fact is even reflected in Ilf and Petrov's novel ‘The Golden Calf’. The logic went as follows: the peoples of the West already use Latin. We'll convert the peoples of the East to the Latin alphabet. And Russian, with its Cyrillic alphabet, will be a wedge between them. It was logical to convert Russian to the Latin alphabet, as well.

But, then another problem arose. When many people are illiterate, the translation from one alphabet to another can generally proceed without any loss. But, when many are literate and need to be retrained, it becomes difficult, because all literate people become functionally illiterate for several years until they have remastered reading and writing again. This sparked protests, especially since literate people were already the majority in the country at the time. Since the USSR had already abandoned the idea of a world revolution and replaced it with the idea of ​​building socialism, the plan to transition to the Latin alphabet never materialized.

The USSR & Cyrillic

In the mid-1930s, discussions began about converting languages ​​that had previously been converted to the Latin alphabet to the Cyrillic alphabet. The transition continued from the late 1930s to the late 1940s. In some places, it was more successful than in others. There was no longer talk of mathematical formulas for saving space: on the contrary, instead of introducing new symbols and diacritical marks, digraphs (combinations of two letters that denote the same sound) began to be used.

In the languages ​​of the Caucasus, digraphs and even trigraphs can be found: for example, the Adyghe Cyrillic alphabet contains the letters ‘Т’, ‘ТІ’ (‘T with a stick’, denoting a sharper and clearer sound than ‘Т’) and ‘Тӏу’ (denoting the same sound, but with a rounded lip during articulation). Other Cyrillic-based alphabets began to use additional letters and diacritics – for example, Tatar, Bashkir and Kazakh use ‘Ә’, ‘Ө’, and ‘Ү’. Some were even taken from the ‘yanalif’.

After the collapse of the USSR

In Tatarstan in the 1990s, there was talk of reinstating the ‘yanalif’. In 2000, the decision was made to switch to a Latin alphabet, close to the Azerbaijani alphabet. However, in 2004, this decision was reversed because it conflicted with federal legislation. Therefore, the Tatar language continues to use the modern Cyrillic alphabet.

Small ethnic groups in Russia use the Cyrillic alphabet. The exception is the Baltic-Finnic peoples (primarily the Karelians), who have historically written in the Latin alphabet.