Alphabet and religion: Soviet policy and practice in 1920-1930’s

Since ancient times, people have attributed religious origins to writing. After the revolution, a struggle against religion unfolded in the USSR, and at the same time there was a shi-roscale reform of the alphabet by romanization. These stocks were closely intertwined. In the Soviet Union, a well-founded assessment of the alphabet as an attribute of religion was widespread. Therefore, one of the goals of romanization was the open "struggle with the influence of religion". Resistance to Latinization in many regions of the country was strong and took on significant religious overtones. It was especially widespread in areas where Arabic script was previously used. Nevertheless, the “Latinizers,” with the support of the authorities, were able to suppress such resistance and by 1937 transfer the writing of 69 peoples of the USSR into the Latin alphabet. However, the main reason for the extinction of religious resistance was not the activity of the “Latinizers,” but the general intensification of the fight against religion in the USSR. In the end, although the “Latinizers” formally won their battle, their activities were still doomed to failure, which was caused by changes in the state policy of the Soviet Union. In 1933, the USSR authorities decided to return the state-forming role to the Russian people. A harsh criticism of previous trends directed against the Russian language and alphabet was launched. In 1935-1936 a large-scale translation of the written language of the peoples of the USSR into Cyrillic was launched, and by 1941 the writing of almost all ethnic groups of the country had been translated into it.