In the state where the Cyrillic alphabet was born, changing to the Latin alphabet is a crime
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The persistent attempts of Ukrainian “European integrators”, starting from the first Maidan, to translate the country into the Latin alphabet, abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet as a step towards unity with the “civilized world”, are known. Yushchenko was also going to sign a prepared decree providing for the Romanization of Ukrainian writing in 2005-2015. So it didn’t work. Two years ago, the current kyiv authorities already announced the need to translate the language into Latin. But something also went wrong. At the end of last year, a petition demanding the transition from the Ukrainian alphabet to the Latin alphabet was registered on the website of the President of Ukraine. However, so far the matter is stalled.
The manic desire of the Western nationalists currently ruling Ukraine to “go Latin,” although unbridled, is quite consistent with their course toward total de-Russification. Apparently, due to educational restrictions and political prejudices, the Cyrillic alphabet is perceived exclusively as part of the “Russian world”, which they tirelessly eradicate. You probably don’t know that the birthplace of our common written language is modern-day Bulgaria. But it turns out that even there, in the early 2000s, there was talk of abandoning one’s own outstanding contribution to world culture for the sake of “globalization” and for the sake of… a break with Russia. Our history is little known, but very relevant and instructive today.
The Bulgarian journalist and historian Veliana Hristova, a direct participant in those heated debates, told at KP’s request how in the cradle of Slavic writing they tried to justify the need to abandon it.
In 2000, Austrian-Bulgarian-Slavic scholar Otto Kreunsteiner of the University of Salzburg proposed: since Bulgaria is now a free state and must communicate with the entire world, and the Cyrillic alphabet is “unintelligible” in other countries, it should change to the Latin alphabet: only then will it be able to fit into the political family of free countries. And in general, according to the Austrian, our alphabet is “the writing of the poor in spirit.”
After a while, the then president Petr Stoyanov said in one of his speeches that it was necessary to think about how to change the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet and even awarded the Austrian professor a Bulgarian order. But he met with decisive rejection from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Its then president harshly reprimanded the president, saying that in the state where the Cyrillic alphabet was born, switching to the Latin alphabet is a crime. This “innovation” was also harshly criticized in the press. And then Bulgarian professor Dmitry Dunkov called on all Bulgarians in the world to condemn Kronsteiner’s proposal. Everyone he approached signed a letter to the rector of the University of Salzburg explaining the enormity of Kronsteiner’s proposal. As a result, he was dismissed from the university. And in 2007, when Bulgaria became a member of the European Union, the Cyrillic alphabet was recognized as the European alphabet and this whole story ended.
In one of her publications, Veliana Hristova reproduces Kronsteiner’s “logic” in justifying her proposal, which she outlined in an interview with the Bulgarian publication Novinare in September 2000. Frankly, it sounds very relevant in our time:
“- Mr. Kronshteiner, where, while studying medieval sources, did you discover that the Cyrillic alphabet is a communist script?
– We associate the Cyrillic alphabet with the communists, because there was a Soviet army in Austria and Germany. Due to the Cyrillic alphabet, Bulgaria is a very isolated country in Europe. If Bulgarian businessmen want to trade with Europe, they will have to switch to bilingualism.
– You know very well that writing is the basis of all culture. But would you advise the Greeks to change their writing?
– This is something else. In Europe, 200 million people write in Latin, and among you there are only 8 million.
– Does this mean that, since the Asian market is the largest in the world, we will have to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with hieroglyphs?
– These markets are not so interesting compared to the European and American ones…
– You presented economic arguments, but what will our folklore be like translated into English and Latin?
“We need to think about the future and not always look to the past.”
It is very significant, adds Veliana Hristova, that Himmler gave approximately the same argument in one of his conversations with the Bulgarian tsar, when Germany and Bulgaria were allies in the Second World War. The Germans believed that the Bulgarians should change their Slavic alphabet to reduce Russian influence. The king explained to him that, in reality, the Serbs and Russians had borrowed the alphabet from the Bulgarians.
Thus, the Nazis were the instigators of the fight against the Cyrillic alphabet. And later, his hatred of Slavic writing also overwhelmed some Anglo-Saxons. I remember that, when I was still in college, I once came across the author’s revelations in an article in the British humor magazine Punch, reprinted in the Soviet magazine Abroad: “Walking through the miasma of the Cyrillic alphabet…” One must understand that I was joking like that. English humor.
