The Russian alphabet used to have two letters for ‘i’
The letters ‘и’ and ‘i’ carried different meanings and could even be used in the same word. So, what was the point of having both?
Before the 1918 reform, the Russian alphabet had two different letters which, today, we know as one – ‘и’ (‘i’).
The letter ‘i’ was used before vowels (in the word ‘мiръ’ meaning ‘universe’) and in some loanwords (‘исторiя’ – ‘history’). The letter ‘и’ was written before consonants and at the end of words (‘миръ’ meaning ‘peace’). Confusing them would literally change the word's meaning.
The 1918 reform left only ‘и’, in order to simplify spelling. However, the Church Slavonic language has retained the old rules for using both letters.