Petrin script

This article covers the creation of Petrovka or "Petrin script", officially called the "Russian Cyrillic Civic Script". Since this also touches on some aspects of alternate history, this also counts as part of the larger collection of articles about Points of Divergence.

WARNING: because a lot of things in this article cover pre-revolutionary orthography, explaining which would take too much time, at some least knowledge of Russian is required to get a full understanding of what is going on.

Роусьскъ ѩꙁꙑкъ or “A brief intro into the history of Russian language”.
Many a thing has been written about the history and nature of the Russian language, both interesting and straight-up slander. Thus before we delve into the evolution of Petrovka, it is good to explain the circumstances under which it was created.

The Russian language belongs to the so-called “East Slavic” subgroup of Slavic languages. It is the group with the largest number of speakers, that consists of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn languages (though the latter may also be considered a dialect of Ukrainian). All of these languages descend from a common predecessor that is generally called “Old Rus” or “Old East Slavic”, although what exactly constitutes that is a subject of scholarly debate to this very day. Because the people of Rus spread their influence on a considerable distance, as well as due to historical events such as the fall of Kievan Rus’, Old East Slavic split itself into several lects, from which several bigger languages evolved: the Old Novgorodian, that became a part of “Northern Russian dialects” as the Novgorod Republic lost its independence, the Rusian, also known as “Old Ukrainian”, “Old Belarusian” or “Lithuanian” that was created in Rus’ lands under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Rusjsian, usually called “Old Russian”, that was used in Rus’ lands under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy.

There were enough differences between these three to consider them distinct and yet enough similarities to be able to trace a common ancestor. Without going into phonetic details (akanje or ekanje, presence of second palatalization, etc), the languages mostly differed in the lexicon and adherence to Church Slavonic norms. While “rusjka mova” was considered to be the language of the peasantry which took its toll on the local Church Slavonic language, “rusjska molva” kept a distinction between sociolects, which in turn allowed the preservation of elements of the literary language that all but disappeared in Rusian (like “тебѣ, себѣ” instead of Rusian “тобѣ, собѣ”), as well as allowed a larger influx of loanwords from languages that were considered intentional back in the day, starting from Polish (быдло, клянчить, разруха) that was closely tied to Rusjsian science and politics during XVI-XVII centuries.

Over time, arguments between proponents of “folk Russian” and “traditional Russian” have become almost the defining element of the development of Russian literary and simple languages, and many people trace this dispute to the protagonist of our article, Peter the Great.

Rise of Petrovka
The seventeenth century was a good time for the fledgling Tsardom of Muscovy, which started with the ending of Time of Troubles, the establishment of House of Romanov, and the ending of Siberian colonization efforts. The reign of Alexis of Russia, the second of Romanovs, saw several important peasant and cossack uprisings against him, several wars against Iran and Poland, and a schism in the Russian Orthodox Church into the Old and New Believers, but it also saw several important military and political reforms, though not all of them were successful.

His son, Feodor III of Russia, during his short reign, managed not only to lay the foundation for future Petrine reforms (especially military) but also established the first Russian higher education establishment: the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, where people could learn Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, and Polish. The establishment of this Academy is especially noteworthy to us. Feodor was a healthy man, but he was known for his “liberal” views on Russian life and it was during his reign that some nobles began to be inspired by the European culture and way of life. There “Zapadniki” began to shave their beards, dress in European fashion, as well as to conduct public and educational activities: from opening private printing houses and pharmacies to establishing the first Russian theater groups. Some of them also started to write the Russian language with the Latin alphabet, at first for purely decorative reasons or just used Latin words in Russian texts, and more and more these Europe-oriented nobles clashed with more traditional ones, radicalizing each-other.

Pyotr Alekseevich or simply Peter I came to rule exactly at this very time. Russian historiography often calls him a hero, founder of the Russian national identity and not without a reason, mind you, because it was exactly thanks to his efforts Russia has not only began to modernize itself, but even established itself from Muscovy in the first place! But a perfect man he was not, neither has he issued perfect reforms, many of which (specifically the ones inspired by the Enlightenment) the aristocracy and the clergy opposed so vigorously they were ceased to be carried out almost immediately after his death.

The Civil Script – the modernization of the old ustav Cyrillic created by Peter the Great to appease both pro-Slavonic and pro-European nobles – has also suffered the same fate. In the beginning, as is with any compromise, nobody liked it: those preferring Cyrillic called the new alphabet as “Russian letters dressed in German dress”, while those preferring Latin considered it to be Cyrillists conspiring against them. For this reason, new changes to the alphabet began to happen mere two years after its official approval with the Russian Academy of Sciences continuing to tinker with it long after Peter's demise.

But in the world of Ruthenian, some changes do occur. In this world Peter won’t just gaze to the West, but will also be inspired by the work of his predecessors, mayhaps even the fledgling Ruthenian script, understanding the importance of the “Third Rome” mythos and the importance of keeping something traditional for the sake of tradition.

It wasn’t particularly liked by the traditionalists, so in 1710 an additional letter was added to it as appeasement:

After this Peter the Great began to harshly punish any dissent and because of this, the script survived in this way up to his death in 1725. Of course, it would be silly to assume that everyone just went and accepted this script. Just like in our world, books from this period in the World of Ruthenian would be written in a “transnational” variant of Petrin script for years to come, where they’ll return З instead of S, Ꙗ instead of Я or will use the letter Ѿ. A lot of people would on principle reject this writing system (and probably be deported into Siberia or become slave labour to build Saint-Petersburg) and Peter's stubbornness would often be an equal match to the stubbornness of the Orthodox clergy. If not for the Academy of Sciences, created by Peter, maybe his alphabet would too be discarded, just like some other of his projects and ideas.

Further improvements
After Peter’s demise, the Russian Academy of Science makes its first official change in the alphabet in 1729, reforming the letters to their traditional Cyrillic look: letters Б, Р, and У have returned their traditional upper case forms, lower case Д now looks the same as upper case, the letter П loses its roundness and tails of letters Ц and Щ were shortened to the same length. The most radical reform of this period is the removal of Ы as an independent letter. Instead, digraph Ъи is written before consonants, and Ъі is written before vowels: безъимяннъıй (nameless), вечнъıй (eternal)

In 1730, letters Ф, З, Ѯ, and Ѵ were once again returned, out which only Ф, З, and Ѵ remain in 1735, with the former two being used in books related to the church in accordance to Church Slavonic norms and the latter in a small number of words related to church activities.

Somewhere in the middle of the XIX century, the letter “Ӧ”, which denotes the sound /ø/ in German and French loanwords (актӧр, автӧр, шедӧвр, Кӧльн, etc) has begun to be informally used among nobles and scholars. To an average Russian, however, this will sound similar to iotated O and an O after a palatalized consonant, represented by the digraph “ІО” (and letter Ё in modern Russian). Some philologists and authors will even publish books where Ӧ replaces the familiar ІО in native Russian words as well, an action that was viewed unfavorably by both the conservatives and by nobles themselves, who used the letter specifically to distance themselves from the “commoner” ІО. Though popular, “Ӧ” will remain a mere add-on for people that like to add French and German loanwords into their everyday correspondence.



XIX century
Nineteen century was a very important and very turbulent period in Russian history during which the country experienced its most radical reforms, both liberal and conservative since the time of Peter the Great, the biggest victories and the biggest losses, seen the birth of the first-ever terrorist groups as well as the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” slogan, favoured by Russian conservatives and monarchists. It was also the time when the most famous Russian music, literature, and cultural pieces were created. Changes to Russian history in the nineteenth century are the most significant in Keine Zeit, but that is a story for another article. Here were are interested predominantly in changes to Standart Russian orthography and language.

Since the early nineteenth-century Russian writers and linguists tried to if not change Russian orthography entirely, then at least “update” it. Some even proposed to replace Cyrillic script with Latin, though such offers were usually mere thought experiments or made in jest. Broadly, the discussion surrounding the state of the Russian language could be divided into several questions:

Similar opinions were about Ӧ, though most arguments were about its usage in general or as a replacement for IO.
 * The question of “additional sounds” was an important one, such as the distinction between soft “hetmanic h” /ɦ/ and hard “Г” /ɡ/, but there were also discussions about the digraph IO and the “illiterate” replacement of it with Ӧ. Adding a special diacritic above letter Г to denote softness or adding a separate letter “Һ һ” specifically to represent this sound was the most popular opinion of the time. However, most linguists preferred Г to remain contextual and were against any sort of changes. Such argumentation was additionally supported by citing Lomonosov’s “Grammatika” written in 1757:
 * The debates surrounding the usage of “old” letters: Fert (Ф), Zemlia (З) and Izhitsa (Ѵ) were no less heated, but while only the most adamant traditionalists defended the use of izhitsa, the topic of using “Ф” and “З” was less one-sided. The opinions split between those who wanted to remove these letters entirely, as they were mostly written in books related to Church and Jewish-Greek loanwords, and those who thought that these letters should stay, as they are necessary to represent words and sometimes even sounds that are similar to traditionally used letters. Some of these people even wanted to remove the now common Fita and Zelo letters and replace them with Fert and Zemlia, arguing from the point of historical tradition, as even the Church Slavonic language represented /z/ with З and /f/ with Ф. But with the rise of authoritarian nationalism in the Russian Empire many liked the idea that usage of Fita linked the Orthodox Russian to the Greek language, therefore, such ideas were a minority.
 * And finally, the last important debate was about the fates of final Yer (ъ) and Yat (ѣ), which by the end of the nineteenth century was notorious for its sporadic use and positioning based on traditions long gone in the Russian language. A lot of people considered using these letters to be a waste of ink and something that complicated learning of the language. Their opponents argued that Yat helps differentiate words, that would otherwise be homonyms in writing. There were also people against using “same-sounding” І/И or similar reasons.

It is thanks to these issues Jakov Grot writes a book in 1885 called “Russian orthography” that gathers all rules of the Russian language and word formation in one place. This book quickly became the most authoritative source on Russian grammar, though not all of its advice were adhered to. Still, the debate raged on and peasants continued to just remove or not use letters they thought pointless.

Modern Petrovka
Ultimately, the debate turned from strictly a linguistic matter to a political matter. In 1904, the Academy of Sciences gathers the First Orthographic Commission, whose sole job was to create the ultimate, simplified orthography. The work on this lasted till 1910 when the project was finally ratified by the Russian Empire leadership and entered the curriculum a year after.



The reforms issued by the Academy are gradual.

The first stage was the removal of letters “Ѵ”, “Ф”, and “З”, as well as Yer at the end of words, which they did throughout the first ten-twenty years. The next stage was to be started in the 1940-1960s, depending on how well the initial stage went. The most important topics were the removal of the letter I as an independent symbol and its replacement with И in all cases, other then digraphs ЪІ and ІО, as well as solving the Yat issue.

The Commission still hasn’t decided on whether they want to remove Yat entirely or develop stable rules for its usage, which is why the second stage is going to take place after everyone got used to the new rules.

Impact on other languages
Both the Russian language and Cyrillic script served a lot of nationalities, many of which either didn’t have their writing before meeting Russians or it coexisted with Cyrillic. The policy of Russification was largely passive up until 19 century, which contributed to the preservation of local written and linguistic traditions in places where it existed. But in the world of Keine Zeit, where the Hetmanate was independent for 50 years longer than in our world, the relationship between Russian and neighbouring languages will change:


 * Polish, Lithuanian. Having found themselves first in political dependence and later annexed Russia encounters considerable opposition from the local Polish and Lithuanian population as it tries to enact its Russification policies. This leads to the strengthening of Polish-Lithuanian oppression, bans on using their language, as well as official refusal to recognize them as anything but a part of larger Russian national identity. One element of this was the change of traditional Latin Polish into Cyrillic. In our world, such alphabet became unnecessary, once Russia banned the Polish language and replaced it with Russian in the school curriculum, but in the world of Keine Zeit, the hatred of nationalist Russians towards nationalist Poles will be so great that the Polish Cyrillic will continue to be used in Polish books printed in Russia simply out of principle.


 * Ukrainan/Ruthenian, Kryvich. As with Poland, the later history of the Russia-Hetmanate relationship will be bloody and hostile. Though the Orthodox, Cyrillic-using Hetmanate won’t resist as viciously as Poland and Lithuania, the existence of an independent script that doesn’t resemble Petrin will only increase the distrust of the tsarist government. Meanwhile, the Litvin-Kryvich population will be Russified severely. The names of cities and monuments from times of Grand Dutchy of Lithuania will be changed to Russian and the Kryvich language, depending on who’s answering, will either be considered a part of a larger family, in which Russian is the main language, most suitable for all or a mere dialect of Russian. Still, the Petrin alphabet will find its use as Jeryzhka (Ukrainian language written in Russian orthography) and in the Ukrainian alphabets of Carpathian Ukraine and ZUNR, while Russian propaganda will promote the (mostly controlled) development of Galician-Ukrainian and Kryvich identities, although for their benefit.


 * The history of other minorities of the Russian Empire won’t differ too much from what happened in our world: if they had their writing system before their contact with Russians, they will either keep using it (like Arabic of various Muslim minorities in Russia or Finnish Latin script) or it will gradually be replaced with Russian. In some cases, alphabets developed by Orthodox missionaries or local linguists familiar with the language will be used. Even so, some deviations from our world do occur. For example, the Komi people will their Anbur script and continue using it as secret writing up until XX century.