The First Phase of Romanisation in Azerbaijan

In the early years of the Soviet rule, debates over the alphabet change were discussed among reformists favouring romanisation and conservatives favouring the preservation of the Arabic alphabet.Footnote ² Reformists associated romanisation with modernisation, westernisation and progress. For them romanisation was the prominent symbol and the tool required to achieve these aims. Those who were in favour of the preservation of the Arabic alphabet criticised this suggestion arguing that romanisation would break the ties with the historical, cultural and academic heritage of Azerbaijan and future generations would not be able to benefit from this significant heritage.

The first prominent person to spread extensive propaganda for romanisation was Mirze Fethali Akhundzade (M. F. Axundov), author and play-writer, who was a strong advocate of European and secular values. For him:

As can be seen, Akhundzade considered the Roman alphabet as the precondition for modernisation and scientific development. He criticised those who expressed the likelihood of alienation among subsequent generations from their historical cultural heritage, arguing that “one should not pay attention to the words of those idiots who say that great number of our books would remain unread, that they would perish. They are in total ignorance. What kind of books do we have today? We do not have books of high quality, first-rate in content and representing great sciences”.Footnote ⁴ Not only were they weak in content but also there was a scarcity of books published in the Arabic script. In 1913, the number of books in the Azerbaijani language was 95 whereas the number increased to 525 in 1928 after romanisation.Footnote ⁵

In May 1922, the Committee for the New Turkish Alphabet was established in Azerbaijan.Footnote ⁶ The aim of the Committee was declared as “to abolish the Arabic alphabet which is a chain on the foot of the Azerbaijani workers preventing them from acquiring knowledge and being civilized and to present the new Turkish alphabet in the Roman system as the main important issue”.Footnote ⁷ The prominent figure in the political arena who supported romanisation was Neriman Nerimanov, the first president of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (Az. SRR). He identified the alphabet change as a “revolution” in the meeting of the Azerbaijani Intellectuals on 30 December 1921 arguing for the necessity of romanisation for science: “We have to solve the problem of alphabet change. Most people are in favour of the Roman alphabet. This is a revolution in our lives. Some others say that if we adopt the new alphabet, the literature of our language and that of our religious leaders would be lost. But if we do not change the alphabet today, they would postpone this revolution for another ten years”.Footnote ⁸ He also argued that “an individual should be creative and invent tools which are necessary for the humanity. This could only be possible with knowledge and science. For knowledge, the alphabet should be easy. The teachers would know much better about the difficulties of the existing alphabet and how much time we loose”.Footnote ⁹ In 1922 Nerimanov appointed Samed Ağa Ağamalıoğlu who was “an ardent advocate of romanisation” as the head of the Commission for Alphabet Reform.Footnote ¹⁰ Together with Ağamalıoğlu, Celil Memmedquluzade, V. Xuduflu ve Xalid Seid worked for the shift to the Roman alphabet.Footnote ¹¹ Their main aim was to prepare a new alphabet on the basis of the Roman script for the Turkish language.Footnote ¹² For Ağamalıoğlu, the alphabet issue was a question of civilisation. The Arabic alphabet was a symbol of underdevelopment, backwardness and ignorance and the path to development should follow the Roman alphabet. In his booklet entitled “Where is Our Road?” he stated: “One should highlight the fact that one of the main reasons of the illiteracy in the Muslim world is the Arabic alphabet. We need an alphabet, which would facilitate writing and reading fast and be suitable for technology”.Footnote ¹³ He also thought of the modernisation project of the Soviet rule would be successful through romanisation:

In order to make propaganda for the use of the Roman alphabet, the first Turkish language newspaper, Yeni Yol (New Road) started publication on 21 September 1922. Bilal Şimşir enumerates the slogans covered in the second issue of the newspaper. Among these were “those who are against the new alphabet are the enemies of the nation”, “new alphabet would open the way to the oppressed peoples of the East”, “new alphabet is the alphabet of science, civilisation, technology, electricity and development whereas the old alphabet is the alphabet of darkness, oppression and decrepitude”, “the new alphabet would meet the need for science for Turkish people”, “the new alphabet opens up wider and civilized roads to us”, and “Turkish youth, the elderly, girls and women who like civilisation should learn the new alphabet”.Footnote ¹⁵ As can be seen in these slogans, the Roman alphabet was considered as the vital cure for underdevelopment and illiteracy. According to Rza Süleyman,

On 20 October 1923 the Azerbaijani government adopted the New Turkish Alphabet as the official alphabet of the state and by 27 June 1924 the “Latin alphabet began to be used officially by the administration of the Azerbaijani SSR”.Footnote ¹⁷ On 1 May 1925, the Roman alphabet became obligatory for newspapers and official correspondence and it started to be taught in all schools.Footnote ¹⁸

The Baku Turcology Congress

The Baku Turcology Congress played a particular role in the spreading of the Roman alphabet among the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Soviet Union. The Congress took place between 26 February and 6 March 1926 and provided an excellent platform for the discussion of issues related to the Turkish language, literature and civilisation by prominent intellectuals of their respective republics. There were 131 representatives from all Union republics, Europe and Turkey. The main issues discussed during the Congress were the alphabet, orthography, terminology, language teaching and its methodology, relations among languages, problems of literary language of all Turkic languages, common alphabet, and theories of language and history of the Turkic languages.Footnote ¹⁹ The most hotly-debated topic, however, was romanisation. During the Congress, Kazakh representative Ahmet Baytursun and Tatar representative Alimcan Şerif argued for the preservation of the Arabic alphabet, whereas Celil Memmedquluzade of the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan and Ferhad Ağazade from the Azerbaijani New Alphabet Committee spoke on behalf of those who were in favour of romanisation.Footnote ²⁰ Memmedquluzade highlighted the role of romanisation in increasing the literacy rate in Azerbaijan and its contribution to cultural development there. He said: “We are facilitating learning of knowledge in a short time. We are participating in the European culture and this is very important for us”.Footnote ²¹ He argued that the Roman alphabet was almost a perfect tool to approach the European civilisation and through this alphabet, they could realise the duty of “eliminating illiteracy inherited from the old government among the worker-peasant masses”.Footnote ²² In contrast to Memmedquluzade's arguments, Alimcan Şerif contended that the Arabic alphabet facilitated cooperation among people through creation of cultural unity due to its prevalent use among all Turkic-speaking peoples. In his view, unity should not be disrupted by making possible the use of two different alphabets among the kin groups who also had geographical contiguity and economic relations.Footnote ²³ He also underlined the fact that romanisation could interrupt communication between generations:

As can be seen in these discussions, similar concerns relating to romanisation were expressed as in the early phase of reform in Azerbaijan. The Arabic alphabet was considered the symbol of a bygone culture and civilisation and a tool for the preservation of that now unwanted heritage and to ensure its continuity. The suggested change was expected to result in cutting the ties binding new generations to past and preventing the transfer of that culture to the youth. For those who were in favour of romanisation, the Roman alphabet symbolised change, advancement, civilisation and scientific development.

There were 35 speeches on the question of alphabet change in the Congress and a Declaration on the New Turkish Alphabet was adopted at its conclusion. All Turkic-speaking peoples were called upon to “learn and teach the new alphabet”.Footnote ²⁵ 101 delegates voted for the Declaration, seven were against and seven were noncommittal.Footnote ²⁶ According this declaration it was up to the will of each republic to adopt the new script.Footnote ²⁷ All Union republics would be responsible for the teaching and spreading of the Roman-based New Turkish Alphabet in their own countries.Footnote ²⁸ The new alphabet was called the Unified Turkish Alphabet and it consisted of 33 letters.Footnote ²⁹

While underlining the historical importance of the process of romanisation among the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Soviet Union, it is also necessary to question why the Soviet regime had permitted and even supported romanisation in the Turkic republics. When one considers the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious nature of the Soviet Union, there was a need to create a common Soviet culture and to eliminate, or at least weaken, these differences. When constructing a common culture Russian ought to have been used as the lingua franca at the Union level, and the precondition for this language to become the language of communication was the employment of the Cyrillic alphabet. Why did the Soviet central authorities then promote the use of the Roman alphabet instead of introducing the Cyrillic? In response to this question, we have to stress that the contemporary Azerbaijani intellectuals considered romanisation an instrument of smooth transition to the Cyrillic. According to this view, had the Soviet authorities first initiated a process of adopting the Cyrillic alphabet, it was most likely that they would have had to face the resistance of the native intelligentsia,Footnote ³⁰ since “national sentiments were quite strong in the 1920s among the Turkic peoples”.Footnote ³¹ Preventing potential resistance from those quarters could only be possible during the 1930s which were marked by massive oppression, mass killings and the exile of dissidents.Footnote ³² For Michael G. Smith, “Latinization also offered Moscow the perfect opportunity to begin to undermine the power of the Muslim clerical establishment, as symbolized through the strange and mystical letters of the Arabic script”.Footnote ³³ While promoting the Roman alphabet as a means to increase literacy, party bosses also hoped to create a barrier between Islamic culture and the new Soviet literati.Footnote ³⁴ According to Smith, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, for example, had to choose between the pan-Turkist and Pan-Islamic movement of Kazan favouring the Arabic alphabet and the pan-Turkist and anti-Islamist movement of Baku propagating romanisation.Footnote ³⁵ The choice was obvious. Fowles and Gökay consider the “abolishing of the Arabic script” as one of the “warning signs . . . of a hardening of the Bolshevik position towards Islam”.Footnote ³⁶ In this respect one can argue that Moscow's policy of giving priority to targeting the Islamic roots and heritage overlapped with the choices and priorities of the Azerbaijani political and intellectual elite who also were secular-minded.

The Roman alphabet associated with the discourses of modernisation and development was introduced as a result of the local/national demand and struggle without creating any grounds for potential conflict with the ruling political elite in Moscow. Yet, the fact that the Soviet regime gave them a free hand to implement romanisation was not an expression of respect for the will of the people in a federal system but rather an act of contrivance to distance Soviet Turks from their Islamic past. According to D'Encausse, the Muslims of the Soviet Union “felt it [romanisation] deprived them of their means of religious expression” after the Congress.Footnote ³⁷ When we consider that development was associated with modernisation and westernisation, the Congress “opened a new epoch in the lives of the Turkish-Tatar people” and showed that “the Arabic alphabet did not fit into the new life”.Footnote ³⁸ Moreover the Congress provided a historical opportunity for the representatives of the Turkic intelligentsia to debate the fate of their language, literature and culture. Although romanisation, debated during the Congress, was considered as radically reformist at that time, the intellectual elite in the late 1980s questioned whether it had been right choice.

According to Töfiq Bağırov, “the main aim of romanisation is to distance us from our holy book, the Quran, our religion and to assimilate us”.Footnote ³⁹ The head of the Azerbaijan Writers’ Union, Anar Rzayev (known as Anar only) evaluates romanisation as follows:

There is no doubt that romanisation complicated the access to the previous academic and cultural heritage by subsequent generations yet “the alphabet reform gave a momentum to the drive against illiteracy”, and “Soviet Turkic peoples speeded up radically the growth of their distinct literary languages”.Footnote ⁴¹ Literacy rate increased from 25.2% in 1926 to 31.4% in 1931 and to 50.9 % in 1933.Footnote ⁴² The adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet in place of the Roman by 1940, on the other hand, should be evaluated within its own context of political and social transformation.

The Cyrillic Alphabet in Azerbaijan

The early 1930s in Azerbaijan were marked by the “anti-Islamic campaign”, “collectivisation in the countryside”, “industrialisation in the cities” and “cultural revolution that cut the links to the non-Soviet world”.Footnote ⁴³ These were also the years of violent oppression of “all Turks in the USSR with the former political leaders, communists and others being charged with ‘Sultangalievism’ or ‘national communism'”.Footnote ⁴⁴ The Soviet authorities arrested or killed all nationalists and former Musavat members.Footnote ⁴⁵ Within this environment of radical change and oppression, the shift from the Roman alphabet to the Cyrillic took place on the basis of Moscow's decision to promote the Russian language and Russian culture in all union republics. Unlike the consensus reached among the political and intellectual elites about the alphabet change in the early twentieth century, the new bout of transformation was an integral part of Sovietisation and Russification of all peoples of the Soviet Union. Soviet nationalities policies, which aimed at the creation of a Soviet citizen regardless of ethnicity, religion and language, required a homogenisation among the Soviet people, particularly for those of Muslim and Turkic origins. This could have been best realised by the use of the Russian language as the lingua franca and the Cyrillic alphabet as the main tool to facilitate the widespread use of the Russian language. The fact that the Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual state, and the usage of the Cyrillic, Arabic, Roman, Mongolian, Georgian, Armenian and Hebrew alphabets and their widespread practice of speaking native languages, prevented the construction of a common culture.Footnote ⁴⁶ If Russian could be commonly used both in speaking and writing, this would also lead to the internalisation of the Russian culture.Footnote ⁴⁷ Although the use of the Cyrillic alphabet paved the way for a common alphabet that was going to be used by all Soviet nationalities,Footnote ⁴⁸ the move also meant the disruption of ties with Turkey with whom Azerbaijan, for example, shared significant ethnic and cultural commonalities. The adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet was destined to become the most significant vehicle of integration within the Union and, at the same time, ended once and for all the dream of a pan-Turkist Union among the Turkic-speaking peoples, thanks to the creation of a new Soviet culture and the enhancement of commonalities within the borders of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Roman alphabet, which was supported and encouraged by the Soviet authorities to undermine ties with the Islamic heritage, simultaneously nipped in the bud a potential unity within the Turkic world. Through the adaptation of the Cyrillic, the prevalence of the Turkic heritage was weakened to great extent vis-à-vis the Soviet identity being promoted by the authorities.

While the shift from the Arabic alphabet to the Roman was extensively discussed among the political and intellectual circles, this was not the case when the Soviet authorities introduced—or rather ordered the use of—the Cyrillic alphabet. There was a clear absence of criticism and those who “seemed to be in favour” of the Cyrillic propagated that it was the symbol of development and progress within the Soviet Union. The main reason why there was no criticism at all was due less to the voluntarily acceptance of the alphabet change than the extremely repressive policies of the Soviet ruling elite.

The period between 1920 and 1941 in the Soviet Union is called the age of great terror. Altstadt notes that the purges at the end of 1930s “liquidated the Azerbaijani old Bolsheviks, and pre-revolutionary writers and artists and their works, also threatened to obliterate historical memory”.Footnote ⁴⁹ Swietochowski defines the period as “an unlimited, pervasive exercise in social psychology, under which no one can feel safe”.Footnote ⁵⁰ The age of great terror resulted in the killing or exiling of those who had any kind of dissenting views. Nationalist intellectuals were targeted in particular. “The chief victim” of the Great Terror of 1937 was the intelligentsia, which “in effect ceased to exist as a social force with a sense of historical mission, ethos and esprit de corps”.Footnote ⁵¹ The fact is that groups, who in principle could have voiced strong criticism, were threatened and oppression prevented them from expressing their resentment. Therefore, the script change from the Roman to Cyrillic was ‘legitimised’ on the surface. The main method of this legitimisation was to show that the new alphabet had been approved by the academic circles.Footnote ⁵² In order to show that it was not a top-down policy but rather a grass-roots demand, the Baku Meeting of the Azerbaijani Intellectuals was organised and a proposal to change the script was submitted to the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan.Footnote ⁵³ The Azerbaijani educational commissar Mirze Memmedov defended the superiority of the Cyrillic alphabet in the Second Session of the Azerbaijani Supreme Soviet on 11 July 1939, arguing that “the Roman alphabet which played its constructive role in the cultural production does no longer contribute to the development of the Azerbaijani language. The civilisation of the Soviet Azerbaijan is on a higher level so its writing should be based on new principles”.Footnote ⁵⁴ According to Memmedov, further improvement could be possible only with the Cyrillic alphabet since

In the same meeting, the leading figures of the Azerbaijani literature, Resul Rza (head of the Azerbaijan Writers’ Union) and Semed Vurgun, a prominent writer and poet, also made speeches in which they did not criticise the Cyrillic alphabet.Footnote ⁵⁶ Yet the conspicuous absence of criticism did not necessarily mean that they were in favour of script change, but rather should be taken as a signal of the extent to which they were frightened in this era of repression. The current head of the Writers’ Union Anar, son of Resul Rza, tells the story of how his father was forced to fall in line with the official policy:

He also noted that the Azerbaijani intellectuals had serious concerns about the alphabet change:

Although there were these unexpressed concerns about the alphabet change, a new statute to change the script from Roman to Cyrillic was adopted on 11 July 1939,Footnote ⁵⁹ which came in force by January 1940.Footnote ⁶⁰

Even though alphabet change did not result in the annihilation of the Azerbaijani language, it paved the way for the production of the Azerbaijani literature not only with the Cyrillic alphabet but also in the Russian language. The Russian language became both a medium of interaction and communication among all peoples of the Soviet Union and the language of literature, culture, political and intellectual activity. The fact that there was a considerably high number of works in Russian facilitated the quick spread of Russian culture and a tendency to follow international literature in Russian. Moreover, speaking in Russian became fashionable within the political and intellectual elite, professionals and predominantly urban families. Parents tended to send their children to the Russian language schools in order to increase their promotion in the existing Soviet structures (including the Party cadres). Proficiency in the Russian language and incompetence in the native language were thought to harm national identity. The alphabet change was later considered an integral part in the definitions of national identity and national belongingness in the post-Soviet period.

Post-Independence Period: The Shift from the Cyrillic to the Roman Alphabet and the New Phase of Romanisation

In Azerbaijan, a second phase of romanisation began in 1991 which also marked the third alphabet change in the twentieth century. With the introduction of glasnost and perestroika, debates over the Cyrillic alphabet and the need to return to the Roman alphabet took place in a relatively liberal environment on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the rise of nationalist sentiments, the establishment of the People's Front of Azerbaijan as an alternative political force to the Communist Party of Azerbaijan and its nationalist, pro-independence discourse resulted in questioning of the Russian language, culture and civilisation, in other words, the Russian domination in the country. The Cyrillic alphabet, which until recently had been considered as the symbol of “great Russian civilisation”, was now associated with Russian oppression, Russian cultural and political imperialism and taken for being a tool for weakening the national identity. Re-romanisation would mean both the denial and rejection of everything that had been associated with Sovietness. In line with the debates over the alphabet in the early twentieth century, the Cyrillic alphabet was associated with the previous regime type, its political authority and dominance, characteristics which should not be carried over to the new regime that was expected to be a democratic nation-state. In the new nation-state building agenda, returning to the origins, re-discovery of the national, were processes that implied getting rid of characteristics identified with being anti-national. In other words, mainly the intelligentsia, most of whom also supported the People's Front, “explored the ‘unopened pages’ of history and its restructuring of national literature”.Footnote ⁶¹ In July 1989, one of the very prominent figures of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, a well-known historian, Ziya Bunyatov, “called for a return to the Latin alphabet and in May 1990, the Republic's Supreme Soviet establishes a commission to work on Latinization”.Footnote ⁶²

After more than a year of discussion in the printed media about re-romanisation, a new statute on alphabet change entitled Law on Consolidation of the Roman Alphabet in Azerbaijan, signed by President Ayaz Muttalibov on 25 November 1991, was finally adopted. In the statute, the Cyrillic alphabet was evaluated as a tool of political repression and romanisation was justified as the elimination of a “historical injustice”. It was stated:

This decision was the expression of a political choice rather than the linguistic argument along the lines that the Cyrillic alphabet did not meet the requirements of the Azerbaijani language. This choice was based on Azerbaijan's willingness to initiate a rapprochement and an eventual integration with the West and Turkey as well as the denial of the Soviet heritage in its definition of national identity. In other words, romanisation also symbolised where Azerbaijan defined itself in international politics and in which part of the world it saw itself as belonging in the post-Soviet period. The Cyrillic alphabet was now evaluated as “the symbol of Russification imposed by Stalin and a factor to prevent Azerbaijan's relations with the world outside the Soviet Union”.Footnote ⁶⁴ Occasionally, a lone voice could be heard here and there recommending a shift to the Arabic alphabet, on the grounds that the re-introduction of the Arabic alphabet would not only contribute to the rapprochement between Soviet Azerbaijanis and Iranian Azeris, who according to estimates number many millions, but would also re-consolidate pre-Soviet historical and literary heritage.Footnote ⁶⁵ Yet, this view was not widely accepted among the intellectuals. Apart from the arguments that the Arabic alphabet did not suit the phonetic repertory of the Azerbaijani language and that it was hard to learn, the Azerbaijani political and intellectual elites constructed their future vision of political and social transformation in accordance with integration in the West rather than looking to the East. It would also be quite uncomfortable for the secular-minded Azerbaijani elite to become close to the religious regime of Iran. Moreover, the discourses of the People's Front of Azerbaijan in general and its leader, Ebulfez Elchibey, in particular were marked by a strong emphasis on Turkishness in defining national identity, and attributing special importance and prestige to the country's relations with Turkey. The Front was also an open-advocate and promoter of anti-Russian and anti-Iranian discourses, which in turn facilitated the propagation of the Roman alphabet.

Debates in the late 1980s and early 1990s took place between two diametrically opposed groups: those who were in favour of the preservation of the Cyrillic alphabet and those who were propagating romanisation. In the meeting of the Alphabet Commission under the Academy of Sciences in June 1990, it was argued that “the alphabet reform of the 1920s and 1930s was a cultural-historical necessity whereas the existing alphabet, i.e. the Cyrillic was not in accordance with the rules of the Azerbaijani language”.Footnote ⁶⁶ For participants, “the sovereignty of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic should find its reflection in the issue of the alphabet”.Footnote ⁶⁷ In other words, the alphabet problem was presented as an issue of sovereignty and a requirement for nationalisation. When we take into account the naming of the alphabet of 1927 as the “New Turkish Alphabet”, it can be said that the Azerbaijani intellectuals were now demanding the restoration of their own alphabet rather than using the one that had been imposed by the Soviets.

The issue of the alphabet change was widely covered in newspapers and literary journals between 1990 and 1992, and its advantages and disadvantages were extensively debated. Vekil Hacılı highlighted the problems associated with the use of different alphabets in different periods as follows: “It hurts me to be in the cemeteries, for instance honorary [sic] cemetery. Some of the writings on the gravestones are in the Arabic alphabet, some of them in Cyrillic and some are in Roman. It is as if the representatives of different nationalities are buried in there”.Footnote ⁶⁸ The difference pointed out by Hacılı actually derives from the presence of three different cultures and the rule of three different political administrations rather than three different nationalities. To put it differently, the Arabic alphabet symbolises Islam and its civilisation, the Roman alphabet symbolises western and Turkish links, and finally the Cyrillic writings were the attributes of Russian culture and Soviet rule. Azerbaijani writing systems, then, reflected all historical, political and cultural traditions in themselves.

In the debates on romanisation, there was no absolute consensus. In the newspapers, numerous articles appeared that expressed conflicting views on the topic. Those in favour of romanisation highlighted three main points: 1) romanisation was the symbol of the political and cultural rupture from the Soviet period and its rule; 2) the Roman alphabet was the symbol of the integration with the West and Turkey; and 3) the Roman alphabet was the tool for modernisation and technological development. Those who wanted the preservation of the Cyrillic alphabet argued that 1) the literature produced during the Soviet period would be “lost” and become inaccessible; 2) the Soviet Azerbaijani academic and cultural heritage would not be known by the future generations; and 3) the Soviet period that should not be underestimated would be erased from the Azerbaijani historical memory.

Those who were against romanisation argued that through the change of alphabet, scientific and cultural heritage created during the Soviet rule would be lost and the future generations would not have the opportunity to benefit from the work of their ancestors.Footnote ⁶⁹ Rahim Aliyev argued that the call for romanisation reminded him of “romantic nationalism” and that the debate had been created artificially: “The alphabet change is a lethal coup against the educational system. This would put our already fifty-years backward nation, at a disadvantage compared to the developed nations. If all the enemies of Azerbaijan had united they could not have been able to pose such a lethal threat”.Footnote ⁷⁰ Similarly Kamran Rahimov argued that romanisation after fifty years of the Cyrillic alphabet would mean eradicating all “scientific, cultural, education and technical achievements” at the expense of future generations, which “would eventually lead to the loss of the scientific and cultural heritage of the past”.Footnote ⁷¹ The anti-romanisation group provided examples of countries that did not use the Roman alphabet yet had become integrated with the western world. Rahimov stated: “Our neighbours the Armenians, Georgians, they never changed their alphabets. No need to mention the Japanese, Chinese, Arabs and others. Were they not in a prominent place in international arena?”.Footnote ⁷² He also mentioned that only Turkey among all other Turkic-speaking nations used the Roman alphabet. In a similar vein, Ağamusa Axundov argued: “There are those who anticipate that the Roman alphabet would improve our civilisation dramatically and strengthen our relations with the rest of the world. Is it the case? When, then, would other people having their own national alphabet for instance the Georgians would awake from ignorance?”.Footnote ⁷³ He also contended that the pro-romanisation group confused the issues of language and alphabet, stating that “some people think that neither the Japanese, nor the English, neither the Persians nor the Turks can read our Cyrillic script books; as if all Europeans are going to read Azerbaijani books in the Roman alphabet. This is all about mixing the alphabet and language”.Footnote ⁷⁴

Advocates of romanisation considered the Roman alphabet as ‘national’ and their ‘own’, whereas the Cyrillic belonged to the Russians and was associated with ‘oppression’, ‘imperialism’ and more importantly with ‘foreignness’. Through the use of the Cyrillic alphabet and therefore the Russian language, Azerbaijanis were thought to have become alienated from their historical-cultural roots and their ethnic identities. The ‘New Turkish Alphabet’ of the early twentieth century was, from this point of view, a by-product of the Azerbaijani will and incentive, and hence its sovereign power. Common arguments produced by all those in favour of restoration of the Roman alphabet was the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet had been adopted by ‘force and repression’, that it was the ‘alphabet of a culture foreign to the Azerbaijani people’ and that it aimed at the ‘alienation of the Azerbaijanis from their roots’. M. Cefer believed that the adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet was “a part of the well-thought-out and practiced scenario for alienating Azerbaijan from its historical past, civilisation and spiritual wealth”.Footnote ⁷⁵ Fuad Gasımzade perceived of this imposition as follows:

Moreover, the Cyrillic alphabet prevented the development of national culture since the predominant and widespread use of Russian limited the daily and/or professional use of the native language and it was preferably employed as the language of instruction. Russian language schools offered a better quality of education which increased opportunities in political and professional careers. Although both the Azerbaijani and Russian language schools were available to students, proficiency in Russian was a necessity for upward mobility among the professional and political circles in the urban areas. This paved the way for the use of the Russian language not only for inter-personal communication at the Union level but also for inter-communal communication in the Soviet republics both in public and private spheres. Fluency in Russian rather than Azerbaijani was quite common in urban families of Baku in particular.

Romanisation served also as a bridge of rapprochement and integration with ethnic kin groups in general, and with Turkey in particular since national identity in the early years of independence was associated with Turkism. According to Abbas Abdulla, “in order to solve this problem we have to look at with whom this people (Azerbaijani) would be in political and cultural relationship . . . . Those who are against romanisation are the anti-Turkish actors. These are open and hidden enemies of the Republic of Turkey. Otherwise, they would not say ‘remain with the Cyrillic’ rather than adopting the Roman alphabet”.Footnote ⁷⁷ Finally, the Roman alphabet was presented as a symbol of modernisation and technological development and computerisation.Footnote ⁷⁸

Thus, romanisation in the post-independence period was a political choice. In the construction of a new nation-state, rejection of the Cyrillic alphabet that was associated with Sovietness and Russianness became a component of the re-definition of national identity. Romanisation has a symbolic meaning in the making of new nation-state identity and defining independence and sovereignty. While the shift to the Roman alphabet complicated the use of Azerbaijani literature produced under Soviet rule for younger generations, the rejection of the Soviet heritage with all its attributes was the marker of the definitions of nationness in the post-Soviet period.