/ world today news/ Today, Kyrgyzstan is the only independent Turkic-speaking country in Central Asia that has no intention of giving up the Cyrillic alphabet in the near future. The Kyrgyz script created on its basis, approved by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Kyrgyz SSR on September 12, 1941, has just celebrated its 77th anniversary. Another 25 years, undeservedly lost on the pages of the common history of Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, can be added to this impressive figure.
We will hardly be mistaken, dating the beginning of the Cyrillic alphabet in Central Asia in October 1858. It was then that the well-known among Russian converted Tatars (Kryashen) orientalist, translator, Islamic scholar and educator Nikolai arrived in Orenburg with the intention of entering the service of the border commission Ivanovich Ilminsky. Knowing many Eastern languages - Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Tatar, the scientist intends to immerse himself in the study of the Kyrgyz language (that’s how the modern Kyrgyz and Kazakh languages were called in the 19th century) and in this connection asks for access to the commission’s archives . What was the amazement of the researcher who discovered in the archives an abundance of “Tatar forms and turnover”.
From the middle of the 19th century, pan-Turkism, confidently marching across Russia, bet on the creation of a formula for successful all-Turkic consolidation based on “unity in language”, proceeding to the formation of “Turks” – a kind of Turkic Esperanto based on a modernized version of Crimean Tatar language. The path to the “common language” passes through the unity of the vocabulary and the minimization of phonetic differences in the Turkic language. Imperial space has the most favorable conditions for this. From the moment of the establishment of the first diplomatic relations between Russia and the peoples of Central Asia, the Tatars became the first mediators between them and the only translators, thanks to this, the Tatar language managed to firmly establish itself in the sphere of official correspondence between the Turkestan region and St. Petersburg, shaping the view of the Kyrgyz and Kazakh languages as “ugly jargons of the Tatar language”.
The problem of phonetic disagreements was successfully solved by the Arabic script, delivered to the peoples of Central Asia in the twentieth century along with Islam. “Comparing the Tatar and Kyrgyz languages,” we read in one of the references prepared by Ilminsky, “it can be said that the Arabic-Tatar script barely goes with the Tatar language, but it is completely out of the question for Kyrgyz. He even does that, hiding the phonetic features of the Kyrgyz language, for the latter essentially important, he drags it towards absorption by the Tatar language and therefore towards destruction”.
After Alminsky, the theme of rising cultural and linguistic assimilation was picked up by the local periodical press. “Tatar intestines on the feet, Tatar ermolkas on the head, Tatar beshmets on the shoulders – the language itself accepts Tatar words”, wrote in 1895 “Turgayskaya Gazeta” about its contemporary Kazakhs – “After the changes in the external forms of life, it must naturally follow under the influence of the same conditions and a change of the internal order, and then the loss of everything national or, if we can express it that way, to complete depersonalization, but not with merging into the general cultural mass, but deprived of national features and with enslavement by the Tatars” .
In the interest of preserving the originality of the ancient languages of the Central Asian shepherds, Ilminsky, who sincerely admired the Kyrgyz speech, saw the only true way to “bring” the Russian alphabet into it.
In the name of justice, it should be noted that the threat of linguistic assimilation is not the only argument in favor of the upcoming alphabetic reform. The inconvenience of Arabic and the absence in the region until the end of the 19th century of an educational system in the national language made writing the prerogative of the chosen ones, leaving the Kazakh and Kyrgyz languages among the illiterate. The delay in the beginning of the formation of their literary norms and the extremely low level of literacy of the local population (2.6% according to the First General Census of the Population of the Russian Empire in 1897) is a natural consequence of this phenomenon and requires an immediate solution. In addition, the common script can become a good basis for teaching the indigenous peoples of the region in Russian.
For about 20 years, Ilminsky’s correspondence with the authorized bodies that must decide the fate of the Cyrillic alphabet in Russian Central Asia has been going on. Scientists think before reaching an agreement on strictly linguistic issues related to the expediency of introducing additional letters and signs into the Russian alphabet to denote the missing sounds. The reaction of the empire’s multi-million Muslim population to the reform, which can also be interpreted as a “direct attempt on the Islamic religion” given its close connection with the Arabic script, is not entirely clear.
Still, in 1906, the decision was made: the Cyrillic alphabet was officially introduced into the Kyrgyz and Kazakh languages for the first time. Since then, according to the government-ratified “Rules for Primary Schools for Foreigners Living in Eastern and South-Eastern Russia”, textbooks and textbooks must be printed in Cyrillic for non-literate nationalities, and in double transcription for non-literate nationalities.
The changes, as expected, provoked fierce criticism from Islamic authorities. The state’s “illogical” step was called an “insult” to Muslims and an attempt to “eradicate the sacred Arabic language.” At the Third All-Russian Muslim Council held in Nizhny Novgorod between August 16 and 21, 1906, a decision was made to protest against the adopted “Rules for Primary Schools…” The interdepartmental meeting convened in September 1907 at the Ministry of Public Education was forced to make amendments in the “Rules”, authorizing the printing of textbooks for all Muslims in Russia with double transcription.
Despite numerous protests, Cyrillic is confidently making its way in the region. From the middle of the 19th century until 1917, in the Russian-Kyrgyz and Russian-Kazakh schools, where the national languages were first taught, the alphabet developed on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet with the addition of diacritical marks by the pedagogue was successfully used. educator Ibrai Altonsarin.
Thanks to the first grammars, dictionaries and textbooks compiled using the Cyrillic script of the Russian educators N.I. Ilminsky, VV Katarinsky, M.A. Terentiev, L.Z. Bedagov and many others already at the beginning of the 20th century, the Kyrgyz and Kazakh languages managed to enter the tracks of the codification taken up by the Soviet scientists and to form a worthy competition to the foreign guides to the study of the Turkic languages as the foreign ones, using the Latin alphabet to describe their phonetics. The analysis of the latter led in 1864 the free listener from the educational department of Eastern languages at the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire M.A. Terentiev, noted some properties of the Latin alphabet, forcing to “resort to inventing new letters”, which “not only deprives the learner of the opportunity to get acquainted with the language without the help of a teacher, but even to learn to read”.
It so happens that alphabetic reforms have always been the instrument and object of politics, not of linguistics. Their success depends (and still depends) on what the purpose of the changes is: the creation of a new impulse for the development of one or another national culture, or political vanity, ignoring expedient questions.
Alphabetical reforms in modern, post-Soviet Central Asia are a case in which neither the failed experience of neighboring countries, which long ago abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet in favor of the Latin alphabet, nor the historical path of the Cyrillic alphabet in Central Asia are in their favor. Here, the Cyrillic alphabet has justified its superiority over other graphic writing systems for more than a hundred years.
Time will tell if we will learn to absorb the lessons once perfectly prepared and taught by our forefathers.
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