Wikipedia says in the article on "Languages of the Soviet Union": "After 1937, all languages that had received new alphabets after 1917 began using the Cyrillic

Wikipedia says in the article on "Languages of the Soviet Union": "After 1937, all languages that had received new alphabets after 1917 began using the Cyrillic alphabet." If you've got a bilingual society I can imagine it makes life easier if both languages use the same alphabet, particularly in the days of mechanical typewriters. But think too about road signs, for example, which could be written in the local language but still mostly comprehensible for Russian speakers who don't know the local language if it's the same alphabet (though there's still the classic problem of "Why are half the streets round here called Einbahnstraße?"). Learning to read a new alphabet at speed is surprisingly difficult. I'm surprised by how hard it is for me, anyway.