Foreign Policy Aspects of the Soviet Latinization Campaign, 1920s — 1930s

In the 1920s and 1930s, the foreign policy factor played an important role in the language situation in the Soviet Union. The language policy of the USSR was aimed at solving the existing problems in the language sphere. As part of the implementation of this policy, the translation of writing into Latin has begun in many regions of the country. The Soviet “Latinizers” claimed the “worldwide status” of the Latin alphabet. On the one hand, this idea was true. On the other hand, the “Latinizers” actually ignored the existence and high cultural and historical significance of Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Korean and other traditional scripts. Romanization, which was deployed in the USSR, was declared a “weapon” of the ‘World Revolution.’ However, these ideas were exaggerated. Firstly, this type of writing was most widely used in the ‘bourgeois’ countries of the West. Secondly, the big ‘ideological’ problem for the “Latinizers” was that the Latin alphabet had a connection with religion. In some ‘foreign policy’ moments, the views of the “Latinizers” deviated from the general course of state policy of the USSR. Firstly, there was a widespread cultural orientation towards Western countries (“Westernism”). Another trend of a “foreign policy nature” that manifested itself among the “Latinizers” were pan-Turkism, pan-Mongolism, and “pan-Finnish tendencies”. Soviet “Latinizers” and linguistic scientists planned to spread their activities around the world. Indeed, the practice of Soviet language construction has aroused interest in foreign countries. It was reflected in the emergence or strengthening of the reformation Latinization movement in China, Persia, Turkey and other countries of the world

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History, Culture, and Society · Sociology and Education in Brazil