Michael Mohkamkar LING 5540 Sebba, Mark. 2006. Ideology and Alphabets in the former USSR.

The history of Turkic languages in Russia starts with several societies being literate in their own orthography and nearly all languages eventually moving on to using an Arabic script because of their predominantly Muslim populations. Seeking to unify the Turkic peoples with Russia without ostracizing them through the forced introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet and to facilitate the learning of both Russian and Turkic languages, the government created a unified Latin script for Turkic languages which could be used for all the Turkic languages regularly. After this language was adopted by the Turkic peoples of Russia it soon spread to the people of turkey (being seen as preferable to their own script). While the introduction of the Latin script did lead to unity amongst all Turkic peoples it did not provide significant help in unifying the Turkic people with the Russians. In an attempt to russify speakers of Turkic languages the legislature passed the following law through the Russian parliament in 2002 and later upheld it by a judicial decision, The official language of the Russian Federation and official languages of the constituent republics thereof shall use alphabets based on the Cyrillic. The Tatars of Tatarstan, an autonomous region of the USSR that spoke a Turkic language, provoked the change when they shifted from using the Cyrillic to Latin script. The Tatars have been one of the most outspoken groups in Russia on these orthographic matters. Since the Tatars have autonomous control over Tatarstan they could possibly go entirely back to the Latin script system from the current government mandated Cyrillic; however, over 60% of the Tatar people live outside Tatarstan in Russia where there would be almost no hope of changing from the

Cyrillic system. The outcome of this would only serve to further divide the Tartar people instead of uniting them. Turkic languages voted to move from using an Arabic script to a Latin script in 1926 after debate by the First Turcological Congress; the change was effectively completed by 1936. The shift to the Latin script of all the Turkish languages in the USSR prompted Turkey itself to shift to a Latin alphabet (a change which they feared might unite the Turkic people of Russia among themselves and with those of Turkey). Nearly as soon as the Turkic languages of Russia had shifted to using a Latin alphabet the USSR started to press for the cyrillicisation of Turkic languages. While a unified Latin alphabet had been created that facilitated language learning amongst Turkic peoples and helped to unite them linguistically, the cyrillicisation of the alphabet occurred on a language to language basis. The switch to a Cyrillic alphabet also facilitated the import of Russian loanwords into Tatar and other Turkic languages (Russian law dictates that Russian spelling must be retained for words borrowed into minority languages). This is seen by some as a move meant to force the Russian language on Turkic minority groups. It is important to note the difference between an official state language and alphabet.while state languages are commonplace and usually taken in stride, instituting a state alphabet subverts the cultural heritage of a group and indeed their language itself in a covert fashion that is less readily detectable and fought against than instituting an official language. There is no history in forcing an alphabet on minority groups in Russia; even in Stalins time Cyrillic was submitted to different nations on a nation to nation basis with others being allowed to retain their original alphabets. At this time it would have been an impossible task to force an alphabet on all the many different nations contained within the Soviet Union.

Some speakers of Tatar argue that switching back to the Latin script will allow them to excel in technology by making computers easier to use (surpassing all other Turkic peoples who would continue to use the Cyrillic language and possibly even the Russians in technology) and getting the Tatar language out on the internet. Sebba argues that alphabets are a neutral technology that should be viewed as a tool and that when more than one writing system is available the decision on writing system should be based on which one best represents the phonemes of the language. Sebba believes that both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are about equally suited to representing the Tatar language