The Soviets also imposed (badly needed) reforms on the alphabet and spelling of Russian itself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography#The

The Soviets also imposed (badly needed) reforms on the alphabet and spelling of Russian itself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography#The_post-revolution_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography...), getting rid of two pairs and one trio of phonetically redundant letters and the totally unnecessary appending of hard signs to the end of many but not all words that had previously been required.