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24-770: The population of the South Ossetian AO consisted mostly of ethnic Ossetians , who made up roughly 66% of the 100,000 people living there in 1989, and Georgians, who constituted a further 29% of the population as of 1989. Following the Russian revolution , the area of modern South Ossetia became part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia . In 1918, conflict began between the landless Ossetian peasants living in Shida Kartli (Interior Georgia), who were influenced by Bolshevism and demanded ownership of

48-902: A Latin-based script was viewed as "less odious" than a Cyrillic one. By the end of the decade, the move towards latinisation was in full swing. On 8 August 1929, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued the decree "On the New Latinised Alphabet of the Peoples of the Arabic Written Language of the USSR" the transition to the Latin alphabet was given an official status for all Turko-Tatar languages in

72-737: The Bolsheviks had four goals: to break with Tsarism , to spread socialism to the whole world, to isolate the Muslim inhabitants of the Soviet Union from the Arabic –Islamic world and religion, and to eradicate illiteracy through simplification. They concluded the Latin alphabet was the right tool to do so and, after seizing power during the Russian Revolution of 1917, they made plans to realise these ideals. Although progress

96-668: The Georgia's October elections to the Supreme Soviet , on December 11 1990, the autonomous oblast illegally held rival elections . On 12 December, gunmen driving a car in Tskhinvali opened fire from a submachine gun, killing three Georgians and wounding two in what has been described as a terrorist attack and an act of ethnic violence. The Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR responded to these illegal actions by annulling

120-727: The Latinization campaign of the Soviet Union . This was abandoned in 1938, with nearly every Latinized language switching to a Cyrillic script. Ossetian and Abkhaz were the only exceptions; both used a Georgian script (only in South Ossetia; North Ossetia used Cyrillic). This policy lasted until 1953 when South Ossetia abandoned the Georgian script for a Cyrillic-based one. 42°20′N 44°00′E  /  42.333°N 44.000°E  / 42.333; 44.000 Ossetians Too Many Requests If you report this error to

144-560: The Soviet Union to adopt the Latin script during the 1920s and 1930s. Latinisation aimed to replace Cyrillic and traditional writing systems for all languages of the Soviet Union with Latin or Latin-based systems, or introduce them for languages that did not have a writing system . Latinisation began to slow in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and a Cyrillisation campaign was launched instead. Latinization had effectively ended by

168-630: The 1940s. Most of these Latin alphabets are defunct and several (especially for languages in the Caucasus ) contain multiple letters that do not have Unicode support as of 2023. Since at least 1700, some intellectuals in the Russian Empire had sought to Latinise the Russian language , written in Cyrillic script , in their desire for closer relations with the West . The early 20th century,

192-618: The Caucasus). Sergo Orjonikidze had opposed incorporating the proposed state into Russia, fearing it would lead to unrest in Georgia, so Mikoyan asked Stalin about placing all of Ossetia within Georgia. Stalin initially approved, but later decided against it, fearing it would lead to other ethnic groups in Russia demanding to leave the RSFSR, which would destroy the federation. Thus South Ossetia

216-601: The Cyrillic alphabet in those languages. In 1936, a new Cyrillisation campaign began to move all the languages of the peoples of the USSR to Cyrillic, which was largely completed by 1940. German , Georgian , Armenian and Yiddish remained non-cyrillised from the languages common in the USSR, with the last three never being latinised either. Later, Polish , Finnish , Latvian , Estonian and Lithuanian languages also remained un-cyrillised. The following languages were latinised or adapted new Latin-based alphabets during

240-525: The National Guard to the area. However, the Georgian unit retreated after they had engaged the Ossetians. Ossetian rebels then proceeded to occupy the town of Tskhinvali and began attacking ethnic Georgian civilian population. During uprisings in 1919 and 1920, the Ossetians were covertly supported by Soviet Russia , but even so, were defeated. Between 3,000 and 7,000 Ossetians were killed during

264-679: The Russian Revolution, as the Soviets looked to build a state that better accommodated the diverse national groups that had made up the Russian Empire, support for literacy and national languages became a major political project. Soviet nationalities policy called for conducting education and government work in national languages, which spurred the need for linguistic reform. Among the Islamic and Turkic peoples of Central Asia ,

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288-741: The Soviet Union. Efforts then began in earnest to expand beyond replacing Arabic script and Turkic languages and to develop Latin-based scripts for all national languages in the Soviet Union. In 1929, the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR formed a committee to develop the question of the latinisation of the Russian alphabet , the All-Union Committee for the New Alphabet  [ ru ] ( Russian : ВЦК НА , VTsK NA), led by Professor N. F. Yakovlev  [ ru ] and with

312-573: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 551716170 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:35:25 GMT Latinisation in the Soviet Union Latinisation or latinization ( Russian : латиниза́ция , romanized :  latinizatsiya ) was a campaign in

336-485: The autonomy of South Ossetia and declaring the state of emergency to restore order. The main ethnic group of the South Ossetian AO was the Ossetians . Throughout the entire existence of the region, the Ossetians represented a stable majority of over two-thirds of the population. Georgians constituted the only significant minority, with between 25 and 30% of the population. No other ethnic group constituted more than 3% of

360-451: The crushing of the 1920 uprising; according to Ossetian sources ensuing hunger and epidemics were the causes of death of more than 13,000 people. There was discussion to create a united republic for Ossetians, incorporating both North and South Ossetia. This was indeed proposed by Ossetian authorities in July 1925 to Anastas Mikoyan , the head of the kraikom (Bolshevik committee in charge of

384-421: The development of the question of the latinisation of the Cyrillic alphabet for Russian. Belarusian and Ukrainian were similarly placed off limits for latinisation. Stalin's order led to a gradual slowdown of the campaign. By 1933, attitudes towards latinisation had shifted dramatically and all the newly romanised languages were converted to Cyrillic. The only language without an attempt to latinise its script

408-518: The lands they worked, and the Menshevik government backed ethnic Georgian aristocrats, who were legal owners. Although the Ossetians were initially discontented with the economic policies of the central government, the tension soon transformed into ethnic conflict. The first Ossetian rebellion began February 1, 1918, when three Georgian princes were killed and their land was seized by the Ossetians. The central government of Tiflis retaliated by sending

432-549: The most common literary script for their languages was based on Arabic or Persian script ; however, these were considered a hindrance to literacy, particularly for Turkic languages because of its lack of scripted vowels . In the 1920s, efforts were made to modify the Arabic (such as the Yaña imlâ alphabet developed for Tatar ), but some groups adopted Latin-based alphabets instead. Because of past conflict with tsarist missionaries,

456-576: The participation of linguists , bibliographers , printers , and engineers . By 1932, Latin-based scripts were developed for almost all Turkic, Iranian , Mongolic , Tungusic , and Uralic languages , totalling 66 of the 72 written languages in the USSR. There also existed plans to latinise Chinese , Korean , and Russian , along with other Slavic languages . By mid-January 1930, the VTsK NA had officially completed its work. However, on 25 January 1930, General Secretary Joseph Stalin ordered to halt

480-400: The total population. About half of all families in the region were of mixed Ossetian–Georgian heritage. Considerable numbers of Ossetians lived elsewhere in Georgia as well, with upwards of 100,000 spread across the country. Most people in the South Ossetian AO spoke Ossetian , with smaller numbers using Russian and Georgian ; all three were official languages of the region. Though Georgian

504-480: Was Georgian . In total, between 1923 and 1939, Latin alphabets were implemented for 50 out of 72 languages of the USSR that were written, and Latin alphabets were developed for a number of previously exclusively oral languages. In the Mari , Mordvinic and Udmurt languages, the use of the Cyrillic alphabet continued even during the period of maximum latinisation due in part to a growing body of literature written with

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528-477: Was made subordinate to Georgia, while North Ossetia remained in the RSFSR. In 1989, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union , violent unrest broke out in Tskhinvali between the Georgian independence-minded population of the region and Ossetians loyal to the Soviet Union. In September 1990 Ossetian nationalists in the South Ossetia's regional soviet declared independence from Georgia by announcing "South Ossetian Soviet Democratic Republic" loyal to Moscow. After

552-615: Was slow at first, in 1926, the Turkic -majority republics of the Soviet Union adopted the Latin script, giving a major boost to reformers in neighbouring Turkey . In 1928, when Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk adopted the new Turkish Latin alphabet to break with Arabic script , this in turn encouraged the Soviet leaders to proceed. By 1933, it was estimated that among some language groups that had shifted from an Arabic-based script to Latin, literacy rates rose from 2% to 60%. After

576-473: Was the language of the Georgian SSR, of which South Ossetia was part, most people in the South Ossetian AO did not speak the language; as late as 1989, only 14 per cent knew Georgian, and it was a proposal in August 1989 to make Georgian the only official language of public use that instigated the independence movement. Originally written in Cyrillic, Ossetian was switched to a Latin-based script in 1923, as part of

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