How Peter the Great reformed the Russian alphabet

What typeface existed in Russia before Peter the Great

In 1563–1564, the first ever printed book was published in Russia – the ‘Acts and Epistles of the Apostles’ (a.k.a. The Apostle). The typeface of this work was cast after the model of the so-called semi-uncial, which was a Cyrillic script used in all church books.

The printed semi-uncial typeface retained the visual features of handwritten fonts. It had a rather archaic lettering system and a system of diacritical marks inherited from the Church Slavonic book tradition.

Why a new typeface was needed

The printed semi-uncial typeface was more standardized and better suited for typographic reproduction than its handwritten predecessor, but it had a significant drawback.

The old typeface was inconvenient to use with Dutch printing presses, which Peter the Great had purchased along with other printing equipment.

However, the emergence of the new typeface was influenced not only by considerations of printing convenience. All things European were in vogue in Russia, including the Latin script.

Thus, the introduction of the new ‘civil’ typeface brought the Russian alphabet closer to Western European printing standards. Nevertheless, they did not abandon the Cyrillic script entirely and settled on a compromise.

How the ‘civil’ typeface was created

In 1707, Kuhlenbach, a military fortification engineer, draftsman and illustrator, created designs for the new alphabet. It is believed that he worked from sketches by Emperor Peter himself. A proof sheet of the alphabet corrected by Peter has even survived: on it, the emperor marked which letters should be retained, which should have their forms altered, and which should be eliminated entirely.

Kuhlenbach produced designs for thirty-two lowercase and four uppercase letters (А, Д, Е, Т).

Initially, Peter wanted to invite Dutch specialists to Russia to create the new typeface, establish printing according to European standards, and teach this skill to Russian craftsmen.

However, this proved expensive. So he ordered a set of matrices and punches for printing in Amsterdam, made according to Russian designs. And when everything was ready, Dutch printers arrived in Moscow to set up operations.

What has changed?

The number of letters in different versions of the civil typeface varied. Initially, the emperor wanted to completely eliminate letters such as Ꙁ (zelo), Ѡ (omega), Ѿ (ligature ot), Ѯ (ksi), Ѱ (psi), Ѳ (fita) and Ѵ (izhitsa). 

But such a radical break with tradition could not but arouse discontent among scribes and the clergy, so the final version of the typeface retained the letters Ѯ, Ѳ, and Ѵ for more precise rendering of words borrowed from Greek.

In addition to certain letters, diacritical marks and abbreviation signs disappeared.

The notation of numbers also changed. The Slavic numeral system (designating numbers with letters according to the Greek tradition) was replaced by the Arabic numerals we are familiar with today.

Punctuation marks were introduced, and uppercase letters, which in semi-uncial texts were used only at the beginning of paragraphs, began to mark the beginning of a sentence. A hyphen was introduced for word division.

In a letter to officials, who oversaw the introduction of the civil typeface, Peter the Great requested that “some prayer could be printed with that alphabet, even the 'Our Father’,” as a trial.

However, the first printed publication using the civil typeface was “Slavic Geometry and  Land Measurement”) in 1708. During Peter's reign, more than 400 books were printed in the civil typeface.

Further adjustments to the typeface were made through trial and error for about another hundred years. New letter forms periodically emerged, only to be replaced by older ones again.

Where was the new typeface used?

The typeface introduced by Peter I is not called ‘civil’ by accident. The alphabet reform affected only secular texts: laws and decrees, administrative documents, textbooks, scientific and literary works, and periodicals.

At the same time, liturgical books, such as the Gospel, the Apostle, the Psalter, the Menaia, service books, as well as many books of spiritual content, were not subjected to ‘graphic secularization’ and continued to be printed in semi-uncial.

The Old Believers have preserved their commitment to ancient semi-uncial writing and printing to this day.

The Russian civil typeface spread beyond Russia's borders. In the 19th century, it was adopted by the South Slavs - Serbs and Bulgarians - who abandoned their archaic alphabet. In addition to the letters present in Peter's typeface, the Bulgarians used ѫ (big yus). It was only abandoned in 1945 as a result of an orthographic reform.

And in 1818, the Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić reformed the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet: he removed 18 "superfluous" letters from the alphabet and introduced j, љ, њ, ћ, ђ, џ.

The full version of the article is published in Russian on the Gramota.ru website.