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Not numerous but specifically Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – all four countries speak Turkic languages, and they chose to do so to align
by inkyoto 14d ago
Not numerous but specifically Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – all four countries speak Turkic languages, and they chose to do so to align themselves with Turkey. The adoption has been rather slow, and previous Cyrillic based scripts remain in wide use, though.
Moldova switched for a similar reason as Moldovans speak Romanian, and they did so to align themselves with Romania.
That is a total of five countries.
The actual history is rather more nuanced, as after the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks – intent, at least in principle, upon eradicating Great-Russian chauvinism and weakening the Russian cultural dominance – introduced the policy of «korenizatsiia», or «nativisation».
The new policy encouraged non-Russian populations to cultivate distinct national identities, use their own languages in administration and education and, where indigenous languages had previously lacked established writing systems, develop scripts and literary standards of their own:
«Politically and culturally, the nativization policy aimed to eliminate Russian domination and culture in Soviet republics where ethnic Russians did not constitute a majority. This policy was implemented even in areas with large Russian-speaking populations; for instance, all children in Ukraine were taught in the Ukrainian language in school. The policies of korenizatsiia facilitated the Communist Party's establishment of the local languages in government and education, in publishing, in culture, and in public life. In that manner, the cadre of the local Communist Party were promoted to every level of government, and ethnic Russians working in said governments were required to learn the local language and culture of the given Soviet republic»[0].
For that reason, nearly all new writing scripts developed between 1920's and mid-1930's were Latin based.
Joseph Stalin, a Georgian himself, ended and reversed the policy in the mid-1930's and instructed the Latin-based scripts to be replaced with the Cyrillic-based ones.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia
- Lumich 13d agoThis somewhat counter-intuitive bolshevist policy of regionalization and decentralisation starts making sense if Richard Poe is right, who says they (them being mostly Jews) were working for the British. How the British invented Communism (and blamed it on the Jews) • Richard Poe @ RTF (Matthew Ehret) • 2h01 • https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw
- inkyoto 13d agoIt is a conspiracy – one of the many for which history has been inconsiderate enough to preserve evidence of.
- Lumich 13d agoWhat are some other noteworthy conspiracies you could cite given History's (or her makers') negligence?
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- Timwi 10d agoFor me, the lightbulb cartel comes to mind in which leading manufacturers at the time agreed to limit the longevity of incandescent lightbulbs. (This is often cited as an egregious case of planned obsolescence, but Technology Connections has a great video on this that explains there's more to it and it potentially reduced overall load on the electric grid.)
- jhbadger 8d agoThat's a huge number given that there were only 26 in total, and many of them had historically used Cyrillic anyway. Basically everybody who weren't Russian (or a close relative) switched.