The Language Issue

The six republics gained independence following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and all possessed elites ready and eager to share in nation building. These, whether part of the establishment or outside it, worked towards creating and strengthening a national identity. Most of them did not consider religion an important unifying factor, although a great majority of the inhabitants of these countries are Muslims and Islam continued to be relevant under Soviet rule. However, seventy years of atheism, strongly encouraged by the Soviet administration, had had its effect. The elites, political or intellectual, concerned in promoting a new national identity in state and society, invested huge efforts chiefly in the domain of national culture and its revival, particularly as regards the titular language, that is, the majority language whose name is identical with that of the republic.

In the fields of culture and literature, scholars, writers and poets sought to uncover and publish materials from the past. In the domain of language, a concentrated effort was made to elevate the titular language to a particular standing in public administration and education, generally at the expense of the previously privileged Russian language. Although not always acknowledged as such, these activities aimed at de-Russification as a part of de-Sovietisation and of nationalisation. Each of the six states differed in the intensity of its deployment in this direction, as I shall attempt to explain. Activity in the domain of language was usually expressed under one or more of the following heads: alphabet reform; ‘purifying’ the language of Russian terms; and changes in the planning of education, especially in the emphasis laid on language study and instruction at school and university. Here we shall discuss alphabet reform in the first eighteen years of independence.

Alphabet Reform

Total change from one alphabet to another is, of course, a complicated matter, demanding coordinated efforts directed by the top strata of the government and its agencies along with the mobilisation of public support and participation. History can show only a few instances of a total alphabet change, such as romanisation in the Republic of Turkey since 1928, in the Soviet Union in the 1920s (Cyrillic to Roman) and the 1940s (Roman to Cyrillic), a factor which complicated further the transition to a Roman script.Footnote ² In many other states it was tried, often unsuccessfully. The issue of changing from the Cyrillic script to the Roman is discussed here in the six states, in several of which it was assiduously implemented.

Alphabet change is an arduous enterprise, requiring strongly motivated effort in various areas, primarily economic, cultural and linguistic. Economically speaking, it necessitates considerable investment in new printing machines and computer programmes as well as in new textbooks, the re-education of teachers and the general public, and replacement of public signs. Culturally, it implies a rupture with the legacy of past generations. Linguistically, it requires a trained body of experienced philologists, not always available at the time in all six states.Footnote ³ It is remarkable that the financial argument was little used in the public debate on alphabet change, which was mainly political, with cultural arguments as well often being voiced.

Further, most or very many members of the elites in all six states were educated in Russian culture and find themselves still prone to employ Russian both orally and in writing, as they find it more natural. This is also the situation of the ethnic minorities in each state. Hence certain leading elites in several of the six states tended to oppose romanisation, while others favoured it due to their desire to dissociate themselves from Russian and its legacy, preferring to draw closer to the West.

Those who opted for a change of alphabet did not always agree on romanisation. Iran (and probably Saudi Arabia) attempted to direct script change in the region towards the Arabic alphabet, that of the Qur'an and Islamic tradition. Iran is still sending Qur'ans and other works in Arabic-Persian script as gifts to the six states and most particularly to Tajikistan, whose language and culture are close to the Iranian. During the 1990s certain Islamic groups in Uzbekistan and elsewhere pressed for the adoption of the Arabic-Persian alphabet, conveniently forgetting that this alphabet has fewer vowels than the Turkic languages require (one Kazakh intellectual, Ahmet Baitursunov, suggested the inclusion of musical notes instead of new letters for the lacking vowels when adopting Arabic script). These efforts failed, however, while Turkish moves were more successful.

Turkey provided a model for the new republics whose languages are close to Turkish (this, again, left Tajikistan out) in the first years of their independence, as a westernised state and society which had successfully romanised its script. In Turkey itself, the authorities manifested considerable involvement in the newly independent states in the domains of public administration, economics, business, culture, education, mass communication, and aviation.

During the 1990s, Turkey's leaders also convened several international conferences to which ministers and other high officials of the five Turkic states (as well as representatives of other Turkic groups, the Tatars for example) were officially invited. In these meetings, the Turks energetically attempted to persuade their guests to adopt a common Roman script based on the Turkish alphabet (instead of the Cyrillic), with the addition of a few graphic signs representing the phonetic peculiarities of their respective languages. Several new dictionaries were compiled in Turkey for this purpose.Footnote ⁴ Here an interesting process may be observed: the representatives of the new states acquiesced in the idea, but returned home to select separate Roman alphabets (with differing phonological symbols). For instance, in the Azeri script (the closest to the Turkish), the letter ‘e’ appears as an inverted ‘e’. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan use different symbols in their new romanised scripts for the same phonemes – differing both from Turkish and from one another. The three other states took no serious steps to change their alphabets. These measures were no doubt motivated by a desire to strengthen every separate national identity by distancing it from Turkey and from each neighbour, but in different ways.Footnote ⁵ Nevertheless, official Turkey set up several universities and a number of Turkish schools in the new Central Asian states, in which some Turkish was taught, presumably in its Roman alphabet.Footnote ⁶

The following features may be noted:

1. 1. In each of the six states, specialised committees were appointed to consider romanisation and the principles guiding its essence as well as the graphic rules to be adopted. They also had to watch the timetables of reform (and in this they often failed). The committees’ work was closely supervised by the state president and the government. In practical terms, the six may be divided into two main groups. The first consists of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan; the second of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.Footnote ⁷

   1. a. Tajikistan, torn by civil war in the early 1990s, considered romanisation only briefly. The 1989 Language Law did not mention it at all but raised the possibility of substituting the Arabic-Persian alphabet for the Cyrillic, a return to pre-Soviet days. This possibility was considered for some time and is not totally excluded even today. In effect, this script is used in certain literary journals and some books, but has not been officially adopted. The Soviet Cyrillic alphabet of 1940 is still employed everywhere in Tajikistan today, with some slight modifications introduced in 1998, intended to better represent Tajik phonology and perhaps to somewhat de-Russianise the script. An International Foundation for the Tajik Language, which has been pursuing its work since perestroika, is promoting the Arabic-Persian alphabet, and eliminating differences between Tajik and Persian (which were formerly stressed in the transition to Cyrillic). A periodical, Suman, is being published in both Cyrillic and Persian scripts. All this seems to be part of the cultural debate about Tajikistan's identity.Footnote ⁸

   2. b. Kyrgyzstan has invested hardly any effort in romanisation, perhaps due to the large Slav minorities who have consistently opposed the change. The 1989 Language Law did not mention romanisation. It seems that most Kyrgyz are satisfied with the Cyrillic script, used for both Kyrgyz and Russian, in what is largely a bilingual situation. Public debate about romanisation continues at a leisurely pace and a national commission appointed in 1998 by the then state president, Askar Akaev, is reconsidering the alphabet issue, but for the time being Cyrillic is employed everywhere, except on some road signs where both Cyrillic and Roman characters are in evidence. This is part of an increasingly accommodative policy towards Russian in Kyrgyzstan.Footnote ⁹

   3. c. In Kazakhstan, language debates during the Soviet era, and somewhat later, were a rather delicate issue, since the population of the republic then included more Slavs than any of the other six, both in number and in percentage of population – over 50% of the inhabitants at the time of independence (but only 34%, according to the 1999 census).Footnote ¹⁰ At all events, the 1989 Law on Languages did not mention the alphabet at all, nor did the 1995 constitution and subsequent laws and decrees. During the 1990s, following independence, serious public debates were held about romanisation, proponents arguing that it could be a bridge towards the West and opponents maintaining that Cyrillic was quite suitable for Kazakh while romanisation would further marginalise it; also, they argued that the Roman script was less suitable for Kazakh than the Cyrillic. In the autumn of 2006, the Kazakh parliament recommended romanisation nonetheless. However, in February 2007, President Nursultan Nazarbaev announced that defending the Kazakh language did not necessarily imply that its alphabet should be romanised. The President himself visited Turkey in the summer of 2007 to learn more about romanisation. Thus, even though a feasibility study commission was appointed in the summer of 2007 to investigate the matter, its final recommendations would be influenced largely by the president's attitude. Meanwhile, the issue is pending.Footnote ¹¹

2. 2. Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have already taken steps towards romanisation, each in its own variant; it is these that will chiefly interest us. In all three, the Slav minorities are small in number, a facilitating factor in romanisation.

   1. a. In Azerbaijan, lively debates began in 1989, leading to a law imposing romanisation in 1991; however supporting or opposing argumentation continued. Shortly afterwards, romanisation was adopted in the school system. Starting in 1991–1992 with the first grade, all Azeri textbooks were romanised (except, naturally, those teaching Russian or certain other languages). Each year, another grade went through the same process with new, romanised textbooks, which means that, after eleven school years, all pupils now graduate versed in the Roman script. Hence, a large pool of young people used to the Roman script for the titular language has been created. Adult courses were set up as well. Early in the process, Azeri books continued to appear in Cyrillic, while newspapers dedicated one page, later more, to the Roman script. Following President Heydar Aliev's decree in June 2001, all Azeri official documents, newspapers, books and signs were to employ the new Roman script exclusively. Application of the decree took some time, naturally, but one finds nowadays that only Russian-language publications and newspapers are still to be seen in Cyrillic in the bookstoresFootnote ¹² The near-ubiquity of the Roman alphabet, observed on a visit to Baku in April 2007, was striking, for instance on banknotes, postal stamps and street signs (although the last are sometimes in both alphabets).

   2. b. Uzbekistan is somewhat less advanced than Azerbaijan in romanisation but has gone a long way in the process. At first, near the end of the Soviet Union and early during independence, there were loud calls for changing the Cyrillic script into an Arabic-Persian one. However, President Islam Karimov and his immediate advisers were worried about the rising forces of political Islam. After considerable public debate, parliament decided in September 1993 to adopt the Roman alphabet for Uzbek (with additional signs, phonetically necessary). An appended decree detailed the methods – new textbooks for first-graders, then each year one more grade (as in Azerbaijan), together with intensive adult courses in the romanised alphabet (which, however, did not get the attention they deserved). A revision of the new Uzbek script less than two years later, in May 1995, slowed down the process of romanisation which in any case needed more time than in Azerbaijan due to Uzbekistan's much larger population (about 27 million to Azerbaijan's 7 million). A 24 August 1995 presidential decree replaced the Cyrillic alphabet with the new Uzbek Roman one which was introduced in the 1996–1997 school year, starting with the first grade. The 1995 law laid down that the procedures for introducing the Roman script should be completed by the year 2000, but a new edition of the law postponed the term to 2005. An observer remarked in 2007 that the two alphabets were being used concurrently.Footnote ¹³ Many books and newspapers remain in Cyrillic, although children's newspapers appear in Roman script. Romanisation is increasingly employed in the logos of institutions and firms, in shop windows, billboards and street signs – sometimes side by side with Cyrillic symbols.Footnote ¹⁴

   3. c. Turkmenistan's language debates started late in the 1980s and continued after independence. Very few advocated the adoption of the Arabic-Persian script, despite the geographic proximity of Iran – or perhaps because of it. The Law on Language of 1990 focused on instituting Turkmen as an official language, while a 1992 law in independent Turkmenistan declared the government's intention to switch from the Cyrillic to the Roman script within ten years. In April 1993, President Saparmurat Niyazov announced his support for romanisation in a decree approved by Turkmenistan's parliament the following month. This so-called ‘New Turkmen Alphabet’, revised by parliament in 1995, was followed by another decree and steps to enforce it countrywide. Further decrees in September 1994 and 1997, calling on all Turkmen to employ the new Roman script, were only partly successful, chiefly in bureaucratic use. The first Turkmen book in Roman script was a biography of President Niyazov, published in 1995. Dictionaries and textbooks for the first grade followed, as well as road signs, street names and a new currency. Shop signs and newspapers used both scripts for some time, then one day all Turkmen newspapers appeared simultaneously in Roman script – evidence of a strongly authoritarian regime. We lack detailed information about the situation today, particularly after Niyazov's death on 21 December 2006;Footnote ¹⁵ but it is reported that Niyazov's successor President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov insists, no less than his predecessor, on the general use of romanised Turkmen.

Closely-related Turkic languages, both of independent states and of non-independent communities, like the Tatars,Footnote ¹⁶ are written today in no less than twenty-one versions of the Cyrillic, Roman and Arabic scripts. Another complicating factor is that romanisation in the latterly-mentioned three states was modified after the first few years of its introduction. Azerbaijan made a few changes. Turkmenistan's President Niyazov initially decreed the use of several symbols based on the signs of the United States dollar, the British pound sterling and the Japanese yen – perhaps in order to employ symbols available in computer programmes; then these were altered again. Uzbekistan started with a new Roman alphabet which was improved in 1995, as mentioned above; it comprised the Turkish-style ç and ş, but when relations with Turkey soured, these were changed to English-style ch and sh.

The issue of alphabet change is a particularly difficult one for sub-national allegiances of minorities and tribes. The area under discussion is inhabited by many ethnic minorities, each with its own language and dialects.Footnote ¹⁷ Some of these are large in number, like the Tajiks in UzbekistanFootnote ¹⁸ (although statistics in this matter are not always reliable), or the Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan (about 14% of the inhabitants). Others are smaller, but still numerous; Kazakhstan alone comprises almost one hundred ethnic minorities. Officially, there were declarations of equal status; in practice, there remain serious differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The public discussion of alphabet reform in the six independent states was focused on each titular language alone. This may be perceived as a step towards the legitimation of the titular language, perhaps at the expense of others.

All this means in essence that all non-titular languages would retain, for the time being, their extant scripts in almost all cases Cyrillic, and employ them at school or in the press. An exception is Karakalpak, a language close to Kazakh, used by the community in UzbekistanFootnote ¹⁹ – but this is due to its semi-autonomous status. Otherwise, romanisation has implied that in the near future, at least, two official scripts would co-exist in each state – Cyrillic for the non-titular languages and Roman for the titular in those states adopting it. No wonder that the idea of alphabet change was rejected in toto by some spokesmen of the ethnic minorities.