WI: Russia forces Cyrillic on East Germany?

Similar to what was done in Moldavia. East Germans are forced to write their language in Cyrillic, and it is renamed to distinguish it from main German. Perhaps it is renamed Pomeranian or something.

Would this work? Besides other Russian examples, there is the example of Turkey, which went from the Arab letters to the Western alphabet in the 1920s.
 
Even within the USSR--let alone the "Peoples' Democracies" where Czech, Polish, etc. continued to be written in the Latin alphabet-- Stalin generally didn't require languages traditionally written in the Latin alphabet to switch to Cyrillic. Thus, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian continued to be written in the Latin alphabet. As for Moldovan, remember that Romanian was written in Cyrillic for centuries (until the mid-nineteenth century). Soviet Karelia after 1940 adopted Finnish written in the Latin alphabet. (Only very briefly in 1937-9 was a Karelian written in Cyrillic the official language of the Karelian ASSR. And even that had a precedent in nineteenth-century Karelian being written in Cyrillic the few times it was written at all. Unlike Moldavian/Romanian and Karelian, there was just no precedent for German being written in Cyrillic.)

Anyway, Stalin didn't want the GDR to be "non-German." He wanted it to be seen as German--the "good" "progressive" Germany, the supposed continuation of the revolutionary tradition of the German working class, as the GDR Constitution later put it: "In Fortsetzung der revolutionären Tradition der deutschen Arbeiterklasse…" http://www.documentarchiv.de/ddr/verfddr.html (Part of this was the hope that the GDR could be used for the reunfication of Germany on a socialist basis.) Far from trying to differentiate their language from German, the GDR leaders argued that it was the West Germans who had departed from the best German traditions in language as in other matters. As that noted linguist Walter Ulbricht put it, "There is a big difference between the traditional German language of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Marx, and Engels, which is replete with humanism, and the language as it is used in certain circles of the West German Federal Republic, which is defiled by the spirit of imperialism." https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0198237383&id=AviTvt-cPaUC&pg=PA64
 
Even within the USSR--let alone the "Peoples' Democracies" where Czech, Polish, etc. continued to be written in the Latin alphabet-- Stalin generally didn't require languages traditionally written in the Latin alphabet to switch to Cyrillic. Thus, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian continued to be written in the Latin alphabet. As for Moldovan, remember that Romanian was written in Cyrillic for centuries (until the mid-nineteenth century). Soviet Karelia after 1940 adopted Finnish written in the Latin alphabet. (Only very briefly in 1937-9 was a Karelian written in Cyrillic the official language of the Karelian ASSR. And even that had a precedent in nineteenth-century Karelian being written in Cyrillic the few times it was written at all. Unlike Moldavian/Romanian and Karelian, there was just no precedent for German being written in Cyrillic.)

Anyway, Stalin didn't want the GDR to be "non-German." He wanted it to be seen as German--the "good" "progressive" Germany, the supposed continuation of the revolutionary tradition of the German working class, as the GDR Constitution later put it: "In Fortsetzung der revolutionären Tradition der deutschen Arbeiterklasse…" http://www.documentarchiv.de/ddr/verfddr.html (Part of this was the hope that the GDR could be used for the reunfication of Germany on a socialist basis.) Far from trying to differentiate their language from German, the GDR leaders argued that it was the West Germans who had departed from the best German traditions in language as in other matters. As that noted linguist Walter Ulbricht put it, "There is a big difference between the traditional German language of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Marx, and Engels, which is replete with humanism, and the language as it is used in certain circles of the West German Federal Republic, which is defiled by the spirit of imperialism." https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0198237383&id=AviTvt-cPaUC&pg=PA64
Soviets complaining about imperialism is the height of irony.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Soviets complaining about imperialism is the height of irony.
Well, ... some might say (have said) the same to sentences like :
"US-capitalists complaining about imperialism (of soviets)"
or
"Freedom brought by the US of A (to i.e. Korea/Vietnam/...)"​

There wasn't another writing "forced" upon the western world but a lot of americanisms/anglicisms "slipped" into every countrys language.
... not to speak of cultural influences brought by i.e. Hollywood etc..
 
Well, ... some might say (have said) the same to sentences like :
"US-capitalists complaining about imperialism (of soviets)"
or
"Freedom brought by the US of A (to i.e. Korea/Vietnam/...)"​

There wasn't another writing "forced" upon the western world but a lot of americanisms/anglicisms "slipped" into every countrys language.
... not to speak of cultural influences brought by i.e. Hollywood etc..

The US was absolutely in the right in Korea and Vietnam. Compare South Korea to North Korea for proof.
 
At least the South Koreans had food.

I think one can mount a reasonable moral defense of South Korea despite the dictatorship considering it was a defensive war and Jucheism is pretty insane, but I’m curious to hear how you would defend the righteousness of Vietnam? It was pretty blatantly an American propped dictatorship and a continuation of western imperialism on Vietnam where Americans killed millions of people in bombings raids, massacres, and brutal fighting against the North who had a large scale support among the populace of the south (if they didn’t then the Vietcong wouldn’t have been very effective at all.)
 
Soviets complaining about imperialism is the height of irony.

That certainly may be, but that isn't entirely what Lenin meant when he was talking about Imperialism and the Soviets went to great strides to portray their domination of Eastern Europe in "progressive" terms, of which forcing bizarre unneeded cultural reforms certainly isn't part.
 
I think one can mount a reasonable moral defense of South Korea despite the dictatorship considering it was a defensive war and Jucheism is pretty insane, but I’m curious to hear how you would defend the righteousness of Vietnam? It was pretty blatantly an American propped dictatorship and a continuation of western imperialism on Vietnam where Americans killed millions of people in bombings raids, massacres, and brutal fighting against the North who had a large scale support among the populace of the south (if they didn’t then the Vietcong wouldn’t have been very effective at all.)

Juche wasn't the ideology of North Korea in the time of the Korean War and there was no shortage of Communist guerillas in Syngman Rhee's South Korea, with a substantial counter-insurgency campaign before the North's invasion. Additionally there was a substantial and brutal strategic bombing campaign carried out by the USAF over North Korea.
 
Juche wasn't the ideology of North Korea in the time of the Korean War and there was no shortage of Communist guerillas in Syngman Rhee's South Korea, with a substantial counter-insurgency campaign before the North's invasion. Additionally there was a substantial and brutal strategic bombing campaign carried out by the USAF over North Korea.

Interesting, I was not aware that Juche was only “invented” just after the Korean War and didn’t come into its own until much later.

I was aware of the brutal bombing campaign that destroyed every building of any importance and a ridiculous amount of civilian casualties, which compared to South Korea receiving American aid and economic privileges, does make the whole “no food” argument not even slightly fair in its historical context.
 
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