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Sinitsyn F. “The Uniform Northern Alphabet”: Confrontation of Latin and Cyrillic Alphabets in the languages of the people of the Soviet North, the 1920s–1930s

F. Sinitsyn
Institute of Global History of the Russian Academy of Sciences;
Moscow Power Engineering Institute
Moscow, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0003-2299-204Х.
E-mail: permcavt@gmail.com

 

 Download  |  Go to Issue #1. 2024

 

ABSTRACT. The introduction of the Latin script for the languages of the peoples of the Russian North is perhaps one of the most erroneous campaigns in a series of experiments to create new writing systems in the USSR in the 1920s – 1930s. The early Soviet practice of language construction exercised an indiscriminate Latinization approach. This approach did not take into account the peculiarities of the life of the people of the North. The “Latinizers” applied farfetched, detached from reality, and based on Russophobia, schemes. These schemes deviated from their own principles as they had to include many additional letters in the “uniform northern alphabet” and the alphabets of particular ethnic groups. The renunciation of Romanized writing in the North began in 1933. The reasons for this were political as well as practical. Firstly, the Russian language was banned from Latinization in 1930–1931. Secondly, the Latin alphabet did not take root in the North due to the importance of the Russian language in the region. In 1935–36, a turning point came in the state’s attitude to this problem: the writing system transitioned to the Russian alphabet. In 1937, the state approved the new Northern alphabet based on the Cyrillic script, which is still in use by the people of the North.

 

KEYWORDS: Alphabet, the Far North, USSR, Latinization, Cyrillization

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-860 0-2024-1(23)-148-168
UDC 81’272”1920/1930”

 

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