When was the last reform of the Russian language? Olga Karpova History with spelling

Myth No. 5. The spelling reform of 1917–18 was conceived and prepared by the Bolsheviks.

The reform of 1917–18, as a result of which the letters “yat”, “fita”, “I” were excluded from Russian writing, the spelling of Ъ at the end of words and parts of complex words was canceled, and some spelling rules were changed, is inextricably linked in our minds with October Revolution. The first edition of the decree introducing a new spelling was published in the Izvestia newspaper less than two months after the Bolsheviks came to power - December 23, 1917 (January 5, 1918, new style). Even before the decree on Russia’s transition to the Gregorian calendar! And the pre-reform spelling itself is usually called pre-revolutionary and is associated with old Russia.

Similar associations developed back in the Soviet era. The spelling reform of 1917–1918, largely thanks to which (this fact cannot be denied) illiteracy was eliminated in the shortest possible time in a huge country, was presented as a achievement of the revolution, as a merit exclusively of Soviet power. In well-known popular science books about the Russian language, beloved by several generations of readers, stories about the old spelling were accompanied by corresponding ideological comments. This is how L. V. Uspensky describes the “struggle with a hard sign” in his famous book “A Word about Words”:

It is not surprising, therefore, that when in the last years of the 20th century, in the assessment of many events associated with October 1917, the “plus” sign changed to “minus” (and vice versa), this also affected the spelling reform of 1917–18: after the collapse of the Soviet system, it gave opposite assessments, among them quite harsh ones: “the atrocity of the Bolsheviks,” “the forced simplification of Russian spelling.” Professor V.V. Lopatin recalls that at one of the conferences held in the mid-1990s and dedicated to the problems of Russian spelling, the question of returning to the old spelling was even raised, while “the current spelling was most often called “Bolshevik”, and those who accepted participation in the conference of clergy is “satanic.” The letters “er” and “yat” (especially the first), removed during the reform, in the early 1990s again became one of the symbols of both “old,” pre-revolutionary Russia and resistance to Soviet power. One of the most striking examples of this is the Kommersant in the name of the Kommersant newspaper, which performs both of these functions: “When Kommersant began publishing in 1990, the Soviet government, the Communist Party, the KGB were still alive, and Gorbachev was still called the General Secretary, and not the president. The proud “er” of “Kommersant” looked at the time like a frank challenge to this system of life, a desire to restore the “connection of times” that had disintegrated over seventy-odd years. The “resurrection” of the “era” also meant, in addition, a claim to the “inheritance”: we are not building from scratch, we are the legitimate successors...” (A. Ageev. The Resurrected “Kommersant” // Znamya. 1995. No. 4 ).

So, the assessments have changed, but the judgment about the reform as conceived and prepared by the Bolsheviks remains. And today this is one of the most common myths associated with the history of the Russian language. But what was it really like?

Let us once again pay attention to the publication date of the first edition of the decree - December 23, 1917 (old style). Did the Bolsheviks really manage to prepare a plan for reforming Russian writing in the two months that passed after seizing power? And in general, before drawing up new spelling rules, was he in a country engulfed in unrest?

Of course not. The revolutionary soldiers and sailors did not create any spelling rules. The reform was prepared long before October 1917; prepared not by revolutionaries, but by linguists. Of course, not all of them were alien to politics, but here is an indicative fact: among the developers of the new spelling there were people with extreme right-wing (one might say counter-revolutionary) views, for example, Academician A. I. Sobolevsky, known for his active participation in various kinds of nationalist and monarchist activities organizations. Preparations for the reform began at the end of the 19th century: after the publication of the works of Yakov Karlovich Grot, who for the first time brought together all the spelling rules, the need to streamline and simplify Russian spelling became clear.

It should be noted that thoughts about the unjustified complexity of Russian writing occurred to some scientists back in the 18th century. Thus, the Academy of Sciences first tried to exclude the letter “Izhitsa” from the Russian alphabet back in 1735, and in 1781, on the initiative of the director of the Academy of Sciences Sergei Gerasimovich Domashnev, one section of “Academic News” was printed without the letter Ъ at the end of words (in other words, separate examples of “Bolshevik” spelling could be found more than a hundred years before the revolution!).

In the first years of the 20th century, the Moscow and Kazan Pedagogical Societies proposed their projects for the reform of Russian writing. And in 1904, at the Department of Russian Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences, an Orthographic Commission was created, which was tasked with simplifying Russian writing (primarily in the interests of the school). The commission was headed by the outstanding Russian linguist Philip Fedorovich Fortunatov, and its members included the greatest scientists of that time - A. A. Shakhmatov (who headed the commission in 1914, after the death of F. F. Fortunatov), ​​I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, P. N. Sakulin and others.

The commission considered several proposals, including quite radical ones. At first it was proposed to abandon the letter b altogether, and use b as a dividing sign, while canceling the writing of a soft sign at the end of words after hissing words and writing mouse, night, love. It was immediately decided to remove the letters “yat” and “fita” from the Russian alphabet. A draft of a new spelling was presented by scientists in 1912, but was not approved, although it continued to be widely discussed.

The results of further work of linguists were already assessed by the Provisional Government. On May 11 (May 24, new style), 1917, a meeting was held with the participation of members of the Spelling Commission of the Academy of Sciences, linguists, and school teachers, at which it was decided to soften some provisions of the 1912 project (thus, the commission members agreed with A. A. Shakhmatov’s proposal to preserve soft sign at the end of words after hissing ones). The result of the discussion was the “Resolution of the meeting on the issue of simplifying Russian spelling,” which was approved by the Academy of Sciences. Just 6 days later, on May 17 (May 30, new style), the Ministry of Education issued a circular proposing to introduce reformed spelling in schools from the new school year.

Thus, the reform of Russian writing should have taken place without the Aurora’s salvo. True, it was assumed that the transition to the new spelling would be gradual. “The Bolsheviks,” writes V.V. Lopatin, “as soon as they seized power, they very skillfully and quickly took advantage of the finished project, applying their own revolutionary methods.”

One of these revolutionary methods was the removal from printing houses of all letters with the letter Ъ. Despite the fact that the new spelling did not abolish Kommersant altogether (this proposal, considered in 1904, was subsequently abandoned by the Spelling Commission), but only its spelling at the end of words (the use of Kommersant as a dividing mark was retained), the letters were selected everywhere. “This is how a surgeon cuts out a malignant tumor to the last cell” - these are the words L. V. Uspensky describes these events. Typesetters had to use an apostrophe to indicate a separator, which is how spellings like going up, going down.

The new spelling was introduced by two decrees: after the first decree, signed by the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky and published on December 23, 1917 (January 5, 1918), followed by the second decree of October 10, 1918, signed by the Deputy People's Commissar M.N. Pokrovsky and Managing Director of the Council of People's Commissars V.D. Bonch-Bruevich. Already in October 1918, the official bodies of the Bolsheviks, the newspapers Izvestia and Pravda, switched to the new spelling. At this time, the Civil War was already raging in the country, and the old spelling, abolished by the Bolshevik decrees, became one of the symbols of resistance to the new government; She played the same role for the Russian emigration. Behind the political disputes and ideological guidelines, in the fire of the Civil War, during the decades of fierce hostility between the two systems, the purely linguistic meaning of the reform - the desire of linguists to simply rid the Russian letter of extra letters that denoted sounds that had long disappeared or coincided with others - was almost completely forgotten ...

But today, at the beginning of the 21st century, we have the opportunity to objectively assess the events of the past. Therefore, let us remember the elementary truth No. 5: modern spelling is not a consequence of “Bolshevik tyranny”, “forced simplification of the language,” but the result of many years of work by the best Russian linguists aimed at improving spelling rules. According to V.V. Lopatin, “the new spelling, whatever the history of its adoption, after many years, which removed the political urgency of the issue, has become familiar to native speakers of the Russian language and quite successfully serves the cultural needs of modern society.”

Literature:

Lopatin V.V. The multifaceted Russian word: Selected articles on the Russian language. M., 2007.

Russian language: Encyclopedia / ed. Yu. N. Karaulova. M., 2003.

Uspensky L.V. A word about words. You and your name. L., 1962.

Shaposhnikov V.N. Russian speech of the 1990s: Modern Russia in linguistic reflection. – 3rd ed. M., 2010.

Encyclopedia for children. Volume 10. Linguistics. Russian language. – 3rd ed., revised. and additional M., 2004.

V. M. Pakhomov,
Candidate of Philological Sciences,
editor-in-chief of the portal "Gramota.ru"

First, I plan to understand the history of the Russian language and its reform.

Do we think about what a wonderful inheritance - the Russian language - we have inherited from past centuries? After all, language is the basis of the foundations of spiritual culture, that magical instrument through which the connection of times, the connection of generations is realized.

Scatterings of wise proverbs, riddles, sayings, fairy tales, wonderful epics are studied by folklorists to this day and, like sparkling inclusions, decorate our speech today. They were once built in chicken huts, by the light of a torch, in the wilderness of the forest. Folklore reflects the mind of the people, their historical memory, and their dreams. Russian written literature was not fenced off from folklore either, although it developed quite independently. The language of Russian artistic prose and poetry has absorbed two elements - the element of vernacular, everyday Russian speech, and the element of Church Slavonic language

Words have always been treated with reverence in Russia, from solemn royal decrees to modern sayings and ditties. If we look into history, we will see that the language had its own peculiarity not only depending on the region of Russia, but also on the person’s profession. For example, in old Moscow there were the languages ​​of barbers and cab drivers, tailors and shoemakers, tavern floor workers and bathhouse attendants, restaurant waiters and merchants. Now most of these professions are a thing of the past, but the Russian language has retained elements of the past prowess and ingenuity that Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol admired to this day.

The creator of language is the people, and therefore our world-famous writers enlivened their works with funny, florid, or apt Russian words.

The Russian language is considered one of the most complex and rich languages ​​in the world. It has a long history of development.

The history of the Russian language is rooted in the distant millennia of the Proto-Slavic language, the date of formation of which no one can accurately indicate. Our language came to Rus' from Bulgaria after the adoption of Christianity, along with church and secular books. From the Church Slavonic language came a solemn, majestic, ornate note in literature; thanks to it, an abundance of synonyms arose, an abundance of shades, and many words with an abstract meaning were born. This is how one of the richest languages ​​in the world emerged in terms of vocabulary - free and flexible in syntax, with an abundance of vowels, giving it a special smoothness and melodiousness, with a rare beauty of the dictionary.

According to many famous historians, until the 9th century AD. Rus' was united and had a high cultural level, this is also evidenced by the indisputable existence of the great, unified Old Russian language, which has a more developed phonetics and grammatical structure than the modern Russian language.

The Old Slavic Initial Letter had 49 initial letters. In 863 AD. To translate the Bible into Russian, Cyril and Methodius created the “Cyrillic alphabet” - the Church Slavonic language. According to one version, having remade the ancient Slavic initial letter, they removed 5 letters and changed the meaning of several more.

Over the entire period of the existence of the Russian language, a colossal number of reforms have occurred.

Peter I personally changed and approved the new alphabet and civil font, supposedly to simplify the Russian language, removing five letters and changing the style of several more. He considered five letters redundant: “psi”, “xi”, “omega”, “yus small”, “yus big”. He also changed the styles of the letters “fert”, “earth”, “izhe”, and the styles of the letters were rounded and simplified; the reformed font was called “Civil Font”. It establishes uppercase (capital) and lowercase (small) letters for the first time.

Has the ABC lost its letters? (yat), ? (fita), I (and decimal), instead of them “E”, “F”, “I” were introduced, respectively.

After the release of Decree No. 804, printed publications stopped using the letter V (Izhitsa), thereby eliminating it from the Russian language.

Lunacharsky also removed the semantic basis of our language - images, leaving only phonemes.

After this reform, the Russian alphabet turned into a phonetic alphabet consisting of 33 letters and phonemes. Modern Russian-speaking people no longer understand the difference between the alphabet and the alphabet. And this difference is huge. In the alphabet, letters are just meaningless icons that don't mean anything in themselves. In the alphabet, letters are entities that represent semantic units: Az (I), beeches (letters, Gods), vedi (to know), verb (to speak), good, is, life, etc.

Rice. 1 Russian alphabet

Rice. 2 Russian alphabet

After the revolution, December 23, 1917 A.V. Lunacharsky carried out a reform of the Russian language, according to which our language lost three letters and recognized the new letter “Ё”, unofficially introduced back in 1797 by N.M. Karamzin.

Adopted on October 25, 1991, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR No. 1808/1-I “Declaration on the Languages ​​of the Peoples of Russia” recognized “the linguistic sovereignty of every people and individual”, proclaimed “the right of every person to freely choose the language of instruction, education and intellectual creativity, the right of every person for the free choice of language of communication", etc.

Thus, having considered issues related to the origin, development and changes of language, we can conclude that the Old Russian language had a developed syntactic system, which changed over many centuries to ultimately become the syntactic system of the modern Russian language. The main driver of language change was change in society. Society changes, and the language it speaks also changes.

On January 5, 1918, a decree of the People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky was published, which obligated all printed publications of Soviet Russia to “be published according to the new spelling.” This was the start of the most ambitious reform of the Russian language.

Writer Ivan Bunin said: “...never has a human hand written anything similar to what is now written according to this spelling.”

“Spelling should be economical”

So, on November 7, the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace, and less than two months later they decided that the working people lacked the “correct” Russian language for a normal life.

Let us recall that the key decision was the removal of the letters Ѣ (yat), Ѳ (fita), І (“and decimal”) from the alphabet, as well as the exclusion of the hard sign at the end of words and parts of complex words. Why these letters did not please the Bolsheviks, they did not please them so much that, as soon as they consolidated their hold on power, they hastened to get rid of them. There are probably many reasons for this decision, but the main one is economic. The Bolsheviks received a country with an 80% illiteracy level, which, after the easily predictable departure abroad of a large part of the “literate” population, as well as the pacification of the dissatisfied, threatened to grow into 90-93%.

Even before the capture of the Winter Palace, the Bolsheviks knew that the key to their power was correct propaganda, and their main weapon was the printed word. In other words, they had to eliminate total illiteracy in record time so that the people would be able to simply accept this very propaganda. And this is a billion-dollar investment. Reducing the letters in the alphabet made the standard Russian-language text shorter, which saved thousands of tons of paper, paint, and metal spent on typographic cliches.

However, the reform of Russian spelling pursued not only mercantile goals. Otherwise, she would have limited herself to eliminating a few “unnecessary” letters. The fact is that among the Bolshevik leaders there were not many people with impeccable literacy. Thus, some relaxations of the reform, when, for example, it was allowed to write together and separately in adverbs made up of adding nouns, adjectives and numerals with prepositions (to the side and to the side, in and during, from above and from above, twice and in two), were, according to legend, associated with the private requests of some “leaders of the revolution.”

“The new makes one forget the old”

By changing their language, the Bolsheviks looked far ahead. With the introduction of the new reform, they actually cut off future generations from the “royal book heritage” without destroying it. For a person trained according to the new rules of the Russian language, contact with books printed under the previous regime would be very difficult. Try reading in Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian.

The Russian language was called upon to evolve from the language of Pushkin and Gogol, whom the Bolsheviks did not plan to “translate” according to the “new rules,” to become the language of Lenin, Trotsky and other comrades. It’s even scary to imagine how this could end for Russian culture.

"Old New Reform"

However, one should not think that Bolshevik linguists immediately set about the reform project after the October Revolution. Not at all. The “Soviets,” like classic losers, simply took advantage of the reform project prepared by the “Tsarist” Academy of Sciences in 1912. Then, because of radicalism, the “revolution in spelling” was curtailed, and a few years later it found new supporters who were not afraid of experiments. True, the “tsarist” reformers simply wanted to make the language more convenient, but the new ones saw in it a very effective weapon, replacing the cobblestones of the proletariat.

“I am to eat” and “I am for world peace”

After the elimination of a number of letters, some confusion arose in the element of the Russian language: some homophones (words that sound the same, but different in spelling) turned into homonyms (sound and spelled the same).

Many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, for example, the philosopher Ivan Ilyin, saw in this the evil intent of the Bolsheviks: they say, the same spelling of “eat” (consume something as food) and eat (exist) will create in people from childhood an attitude towards crude materiality. Interestingly, a little later, a number of psycholinguists also confirmed that reading some philosophical treatise in reformed Russian with a large number of words “is” can cause involuntary salivation in a hungry reader. Thus, in the short work “On the Russian Idea” by the same Ilyin, the word “is” (in the sense of “appear”) is used 26 times among 3,500 other words, which is quite a lot. A quote from the treatise “Russia is not an empty container into which you can mechanically, at will, put anything you want, regardless of the laws of its spiritual organism,” should, according to linguists, cause an attack of hunger in an unprepared reader and significantly impede the understanding of the author’s thought .

It is interesting that the opus of Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, “Tasks of Communist Education,” based on this logic, looks like a clandestine “Book about tasty and healthy food.” In terms of volume, it approximately coincides with Ilyin’s text, but is significantly inferior in the use of the word “is”. However, Trotsky compensates for this by aggressively using the phrase “there is a product,” which he uses three times. For example, the phrase “...we know that man is a product of social conditions and he cannot jump out of them” looks like a real sentence for both the philosopher Ilyin and his readers.

However, the “is-is” factor was hardly the malicious intent of the Bolsheviks. Most likely, this was a side effect of the reform. By the way, the Bolsheviks could counter their critics: with the removal of the boundaries between the meanings of “eat” and “appear”, the barrier between the words “mir” (friendship, absence of war) and mir (planet, Universe) also disappeared, which could be interpreted as “natural love of peace” » communists.

The secret of "Izhitsa"

In Lunacharsky's decree on changes in the Russian language there is no mention of the letter V (“Izhitsa”), which was the last letter in the pre-revolutionary alphabet. By the time of the reform, it was extremely rare, and could be found mainly only in church texts. In the civilian language, “Izhitsa” was actually used only in the word “miro”. In the silent refusal of the Bolsheviks from “izhitsi”, many saw a sign: the Soviet government seemed to be abandoning one of the seven sacraments - confirmation, through which the Orthodox are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit, designed to strengthen him in spiritual life.

It is curious that the undocumented removal of “Izhitsa,” the last letter in the alphabet, and the official elimination of the penultimate one, “fits,” were made into the final alphabetic letter, “ya.” The intelligentsia saw in this another malicious intent of the new authorities, who deliberately sacrificed two letters in order to put at the end the letter expressing the human personality, individuality.

Shadow of the Latin alphabet, or too many letters

Few people know that Lunacharsky’s reform was temporary. In 1918, the Bolsheviks were delirious about world revolution, and Cyrillic writing in this situation was not the most effective platform for propaganda. Firstly, most of the proletarians in the world, who should have been united, understood only the Latin script, and, secondly, there are only 26 letters in the Latin alphabet. Wonderful savings in paper and typesetting!

In the first years of Soviet power, there were many ideas for the further development of language reform. Some proposed leaving the Cyrillic alphabet only for peasants, and transferring the urban population to Latin letters. Others said that in general it is not necessary for a working person to know how to read and write: they say, in the era of cinema, reading generally becomes a relic of the past. Still other hotheads argued that it was necessary to invent a new letter, hieroglyphic, where the role of letters would be played by pictograms based on communist and worker-peasant symbols. However, after revolutions in Europe collapsed one after another, the authorities lost interest in the language, and the people began to be content with what they had. More precisely, what is left...

Changes in language under Peter I

On January 29 (February 8), 1710, Peter’s reform of the Cyrillic alphabet was completed in Russia, where Peter I personally changed and approved a new alphabet and font, supposedly to simplify the Russian language, removing five letters and changing the style of several more. The essence of Peter’s reform was to simplify the composition of the Russian alphabet by excluding from it such redundant letters as “psi”, “xi”, “omega”, “Izhitsa” and others. Also, the letterforms were rounded and simplified; the reformed font was called the civil font. It establishes uppercase (capital) and lowercase (small) letters for the first time.

Reform of Mikhail Lomonosov

The following reforms of the Russian literary language and system of versification in the 18th century were made by Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov. He was the author of scientific Russian grammar. In this book, he described the riches and possibilities of the Russian language. Lomonosov's grammar was published 14 times and formed the basis for Barsov's Russian grammar course (1771), who was Lomonosov's student.

Reform 1917-1918

The most important spelling reform took place in 1917-18. Already since 1912, single publications have appeared, printed according to new spelling standards. In accordance with the reform, letters were excluded from the alphabet ѣ (yat), Ѳ (fita), V(Izhitsa) and і (І (Cyrillic)), instead of them the familiar E, F, I should be used. One of the most significant changes is the exclusion of the hard sign Kommersant(er) at the end of a word, it was retained as a separator. The rule for writing prefixes to z, s (s before a voiceless consonant, z before a voiced consonant and vowels) has changed. In the genitive and accusative cases of adjectives and participles, the endings -ago, -yago, were replaced by -ogo, -him (novago - new). The form of the personal pronoun is genitive singular. from her (her) changed to her (her).

Failed reform of 2009

In 2009, a list of mostly spelling changes (yogurt, treaty, etc.) was compiled, which was never adopted due to negative public reaction. This unaccepted reform was widely discussed in the media.

Notes

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Russian language reforms” are in other dictionaries:

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Books

• Controversial issues of Russian spelling, Y.K. Grotto. The reader is invited to the classic fundamental work of the outstanding Russian philologist J. K. Grot (1812 1893), dedicated to the problems of Russian spelling. In this book the author...

On September 24, 1964, “Proposals for improving the Russian language” were published in the Izvestia newspaper. The new rules proposed by the authors were quite radical: “night”, “jury”, “hare” and “cucumbers” shocked the readers of the newspaper, caused a lot of discussion in society and, in the end, were never adopted.

Reforms of Peter I

The first serious reform of Russian spelling was carried out during Peter I and is associated with the transition to a civilian font: the emperor eliminated the letters of the church Cyrillic alphabet (omega and yus) unnecessary for the Russian language. The situation with consonants was interesting at that time: for example, before that the word “fairy tale” was written as “skazka” due to the presence of special vowel sounds of incomplete formation, the so-called “deaf” or “reduced”, which later disappeared from speech.

High "calm"

Work Lomonosov“Grammar” of 1755 was intended to improve the Russian language and resolve many controversial issues. Lomonosov's “Grammar” with its categorical division of speech into “high and low calms” was actively criticized for its stiltedness, cumbersomeness and desire to complicate speech. That didn't stop it from being republished 14 times. At the same time, for example, Pushkin believed that Lomonosov’s influence on Russian literature was rather harmful.

Karamzin's contribution

At the very end of the 18th century, the letter “ё” appeared in the Russian language, replacing the combination io. It is believed that she was introduced Nikolay Karamzin: “е” first appeared in his collection of poems “Aonids”. Disputes about the necessity of this letter in the Russian language are still going on. In addition, Karamzin, who dreamed of simplifying the language, which Lomonosov himself was actively complicating, tried to introduce into the language as many simple accessible words as possible (though many of them were tracings from French), for example, “impression”, “falling in love”, “influence” ”, “touching”, “entertaining”, “moral”, “era”, “scene”, “harmony”, “catastrophe”, “future”.

Should I be a Yatu?

In the 60s, an extended meeting of teachers of Russian literature was held in St. Petersburg, at which a reform project to eliminate unnecessary letters - Ћ (“yatya”) and Ъ (“era”) was discussed. However, the teachers turned out to be conservative people, and the project did not go further.

Remove what is not heard

Another change is the introduction of endings “ee” and “ee” in the nominative case of plural adjectives. Proposals were also made to exclude from the spelling the rule requiring to write “ee” in the genitive case and to convey the sound “o” where it is clearly heard after “ch” and “sch” - “pcholka”, “black”.

Another proposed rule: do not write “ь” in the position after “ch”, “sch” and at the end of words: “night”, “tot point”, “thing”, “help”. In general, make the rules as simple and understandable as possible: it was assumed that this would help students who were lagging behind in grammar to catch up with those who were successful, and in general would increase the general literacy of the population. But this reform did not reach the point of total implementation: war, revolution, civil war. The proposals of imperial linguists will be remembered already under Soviet rule.

New government, new country, and there was no time to carefully study the reform of the new language in 1917-1918. Changes were required, so the Soviet reform, in essence, accumulated the proposals of the commission at the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Only two amendments were added: the existing rules for the use of the letters “o” and “e” after hissing ones were preserved without changes and a hard sign was left in all cases where the letter was used in modern rather than pre-revolutionary spelling: “rech”, “rezh”, “hodish”. " Only later will the hard sign be replaced by a soft one, but for now, so be it.

Even easier!

The Soviet government began to introduce new rules with its characteristic energy, that is, according to the idea, at one point everyone had to relearn. Primers and reference books with explanations were not published, people complained that the new grammar was very difficult for them. At the same time, the level of illiteracy in the country remained extremely high. Soon, advocates began for even greater simplification of spelling: for example, eliminating the letters “ya”, “e”, “ё”, “yu”, replacing them with the letter combinations “ya”, “ye”, “yo”, “yu” after the separating “ ъ" and "ь" at the beginning of a word and after a vowel.

Cultural enlightenment

In the 1930s, another spelling commission was convened, the purpose of which was to carry out a spelling reform that would certainly increase the cultural level of the working people. Here are their suggestions:

The only dividing sign left was the solid one - “congress”, “drink”, “announcement”.

After “zh”, “ch”, “sh”, “sch” write “o” under the accent: “pcholka”, “zsolty”, “yesho”, “zhony”.

After “zh”, “sh”, “sch”, “ch”, “ts” write “s”: “fat”, “socialism”, “revolutionary”.

The project was radical, so it did not receive approval in government circles and the reform was not implemented. In 1932, the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of August 25, 1932 “On the curriculum and regime in primary and secondary schools” was issued, which indicated the need to comply with strict standards, but did not propose any innovations. Finally, in 1956, a truly successful project was created - “Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation”, which is still in force. But attempts at reform did not stop there either.

"News"

In 1963, the Izvestia newspaper published an article Professor Efimov about the low level of literacy in the country and the need to simplify spelling. Soon, a Commission for the Improvement of Russian Orthography was created at the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was ordered to submit its proposals within a short time. In 1964, the same Izvestia published an article “Proposals for improving the Russian language.” The new rules proposed by the authors were quite radical: for example, write “daughter”, “night”, “mouse”, “jury”, “hare”, “dress”, “cucumbers”. Here are some rules:

• After “ts” you don’t write “y”, but write “i”: “tsigan”, “cucumbers”.
• After hissing words, “o” is written under stress: “cheeks”, “yellow”, but “yellow”, “cheek”.
• After Ж, Ш, Ш, Ш, do not write b: “mouse”, “namazh”.
• Eliminate double consonants in foreign words (keep them only in the words bath, sum, gamma).
• Write “wooden”, “tin”, “glass”, etc.

As linguists note, many of the proposals were quite reasonable, but caused such a shock in society that they were immediately subjected to harsh criticism.

The cessation of discussion of the scandalous proposals coincided with the removal from office Nikita Khrushchev. In the future, they tried to forget about the proposals.

One more try

In the early 70s, a spelling commission was again created at the Russian Language Institute, which acted much more carefully than its predecessors. Sufficiently balanced proposals were formulated and submitted to the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, but no progress occurred, and they were soon forgotten.

One of the latest movements was the publication in 1999 of a new “Big Russian Spelling Dictionary” of 160 thousand words, which orthographically regulated hundreds of new words in the Russian language.

Behind closed doors

In 2000, under the heading “Project”, the “Code of Russian Spelling Rules” was released. Spelling. Punctuation”, which has not yet received wide circulation or scientific discussion.

And most innovations are now carried out “behind closed doors” and without public discussions - probably scientists do not want the experience of 1964 to be repeated. New rules simply appear in dictionaries, and the public is introduced to them after the fact. This is how Russians learned in 2009 that neuter coffee is no longer a mistake, but a rule approved by four newly published dictionaries. Equivalent variants of stress suddenly became “on Wednesdays and on Wednesdays”, “yogurt” and “yogurt”, “agreement” and “agreement”.