Russia imposes cyrillic alphabet in other languages of its empire

Could some tsar of the Russoan Empire impose the cyrillic alphabet to languages as finnish, polish and the other non-cyrillic script languages of the empire , perhaps as a way of russification? What would be the effects? (Any POD after the Napoleonic wars serves, but it must be akin with the current tsar's policy).
 
Cyrillic was used for a bunch of Turkic languages and part of the Caucuses in the former Soviet Union until very recently.

Russia did their best to stamp down local culture and thwart nationalism so I don't think mandating a cyrillic alphabet would be outside of the realm of possibility. On the other hand I don't know if Russia would have been willing to go through the expense of the follow through to make sure it actually happened.
 
Cyrillic was used for a bunch of Turkic languages and part of the Caucuses in the former Soviet Union until very recently.

Russia did their best to stamp down local culture and thwart nationalism so I don't think mandating a cyrillic alphabet would be outside of the realm of possibility. On the other hand I don't know if Russia would have been willing to go through the expense of the follow through to make sure it actually happened.

Yes, it would cost, but the possibilities a deeper russification are interesting. My special interest is the effects in poland. If sometime after the establishment of Congress Poland, the polish language could be very russified (perhaps becoming more similar to the eastern slavic languages than the western).
 
Yes, it would cost, but the possibilities a deeper russification are interesting. My special interest is the effects in poland. If sometime after the establishment of Congress Poland, the polish language could be very russified (perhaps becoming more similar to the eastern slavic languages than the western).
Only half of Poles lived in the Congress Poland and it was the least literate part of core Polish lands after regaining independence. The result would be people having to learn Polish alphabet in secret and smuggle in books from Galicia and Poznańskie or print "bibuła" in secret.
 
Earlier and stronger Russification would not stop in the alphabet. Realistically, if St. Petersburg is ready to go as far as to make the Finns use Cyrillic, say, changing centuries of tradition, then many other traditional freedoms of the Grand Duchy to decide on its own matters would likely be abolished as well. There would be a lot of political fallout from such Russification effort in the empire's "Western fringe", and that would bring along many knock-on effects and butterflies that would effect developments not only inside the Russian Empire but also on the European level.
 
Of course, Soviet Union did exactly that under Stalin (in Mongolia as well).
However, they would not, and did not, try that on the main historically Christian nationalities that already had established alphabetic writing traditions, namely the Baltic and Christian Caucasian nations. It would have been difficult and fairly pointless, I suppose.
In earlier times, if you want to Russify, you do not offer them a variant of the Russian writing system. You either force Russian (the language, not just the script) down their throats, or, if you can't (and, in Finland and Poland, the Tsars just couldn't) you let them writing their language in whatever script they like to. Also, the vast majority of Finns, Poles, ethnic Russians and pretty much anyone else in the Empire were illiterate regardless of language (possible exceptions including the Baltic Germans, who would of course be literate in German). So again, little point.
 
Could some tsar of the Russoan Empire impose the cyrillic alphabet to languages as finnish, polish and the other non-cyrillic script languages of the empire , perhaps as a way of russification? What would be the effects? (Any POD after the Napoleonic wars serves, but it must be akin with the current tsar's policy).
They did, on the Lithuanian language. And I think Latvian as well.

Didn't work.

Only half of Poles lived in the Congress Poland and it was the least literate part of core Polish lands after regaining independence. The result would be people having to learn Polish alphabet in secret and smuggle in books from Galicia and Poznańskie or print "bibuła" in secret.
Which is exactly what Lithuanians did when forced Cyrillic script was imposed on them. I definitely wouldn't put it past the Poles to adopt their neighbour's strategy in such a scenario.

Unfortunately, it would also mean that "knygnešys" would be replaced with a Polish term in usage outside of Eastern Europe. One less thing we'd be unique with. :p
 
The Russians would rather have forced the Russian language than Cyrillic. Remember the two most oppressed languages already used Cyrillic, Ukrainian and Belarusian.
 
Cyrillic was used for a bunch of Turkic languages and part of the Caucuses in the former Soviet Union until very recently.

It's generally used for languages that either weren't literary, or formerly used Arabic script, and most of those went through an intermediate stage of Latin script imposed by Soviet authorities and some have even gone on to Latin scripts later.

Latin generally imposes itself and cannibalizes Cyrillic, not vice versa.

Russia did their best to stamp down local culture and thwart nationalism so I don't think mandating a cyrillic alphabet would be outside of the realm of possibility.

Of all the major 19th c countries with heterogenous populations, Russia was remarkably bad at it (due to position of Cyrillic in the world, partly, and partly due to low education levels), and not proactive on the state level until the later half of the century, and even there proactive selectively.

So you'd actually have to change quite a bit to get that happening.
 
Of course, Soviet Union did exactly that under Stalin (in Mongolia as well).
However, they would not, and did not, try that on the main historically Christian nationalities that already had established alphabetic writing traditions, namely the Baltic and Christian Caucasian nations. It would have been difficult and fairly pointless, I suppose.
In earlier times, if you want to Russify, you do not offer them a variant of the Russian writing system. You either force Russian (the language, not just the script) down their throats, or, if you can't (and, in Finland and Poland, the Tsars just couldn't) you let them writing their language in whatever script they like to. Also, the vast majority of Finns, Poles, ethnic Russians and pretty much anyone else in the Empire were illiterate regardless of language (possible exceptions including the Baltic Germans, who would of course be literate in German). So again, little point.

EDIT: I stand corrected, they tried (in the Baltics). Predictably, they failed.
 
Of all the major 19th c countries with heterogenous populations, Russia was remarkably bad at it (due to position of Cyrillic in the world, partly, and partly due to low education levels), and not proactive on the state level until the later half of the century, and even there proactive selectively.

So you'd actually have to change quite a bit to get that happening.

When we look at the OTL attempts at Russification in Finland, when it came around in the late 19th century, we can argue that it was all too little and too late. Finnish nationalism was already there as a mature ideology, and what St. Petersburg just ended up doing was fanning the flames with its hamhanded efforts, helping along the process that then during WWI would lead to there being enough popular support and a political power base for Finland declaring independence as soon as the conditions allowed it.

The Russian Empire was late and bad in stomping down and Russifying the minority nationalities in its western fringe. The efforts were lacklustre at best. Happily so, from a Finnish, Polish or Baltic perspective. One can argue that this was because Russian nationalism, in a chauvinist ethno-cultural sense, took off later than in the other major European nations. I think that in Russia, the dominant national frame of reference was for longer a sort of old-fashioned imperial idea, citizenship and loyalty being more tied to allegiance to the crown and the Tsar than the language one spoke or the ethnicity one represented. This belatedness, in comparison to much of western Europe, is, IMHO, what IOTL saved the empire's western minorities from Russification more than anything else.

So: to get earlier, more effective Russification in Poland, Finland and the Baltics, we would need significantly earlier "modern" Great Russian ethnic nationalism to sweep Russia to become a dominant, militant ideology wielded by the Russian state in the interest of (and for measures to achieve) "national unity". Of course if this happened, 19th century history in Russia and Europe in general would likely look a lot different from what we know.
 
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Gian

Banned
Why are we only referring to the western minorities? What about central asia and the caucasus? Those where forcefully cyrillicized otl

It's precisely the fact that they were Russified to such an extent (especially in Central Asia) why we're focusing on the west (especially Poland and Finland)
 
It's precisely the fact that they were Russified to such an extent (especially in Central Asia) why we're focusing on the west (especially Poland and Finland)
How is this? You would expect that Finns/Balts, which are more culturally similar to Russians and less populous than central asians would be Russified easier
 

Gian

Banned
How is this? You would expect that Finns/Balts, which are more culturally similar to Russians and less populous than central asians would be Russified easier

You would assume that ... if you ignore the fact that the Finns were influenced for centuries by Sweden before they were annexed by Russia. Ditto for the Balts (albeit by the Teutonic Order, the Swedes/Danes, and in the case of the Lithuanians, the Poles)
 
You would assume that ... if you ignore the fact that the Finns were influenced for centuries by Sweden before they were annexed by Russia. Ditto for the Balts (albeit by the Teutonic Order, the Swedes/Danes, and in the case of the Lithuanians, the Poles)
What do past influences have to do with it? Central asia was influenced by Mongols, Persians, etc. Didn't stop the russification there.
 
Why are we only referring to the western minorities? What about central asia and the caucasus? Those where forcefully cyrillicized otl

How many printing presses they had? How many literate people, libraries and so on? And do they border countries where printers of their alphabet are in every larger town?
 
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