teachers of russian, the revolutionary wave of 1862, and orthographical reform

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Teachers of Russian, the Revolutionary Wave of 1862, and Orthographical ReformAuthor(s): Charles A. MoserSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 422-436Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/307463 .

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TEACHERS OF RUSSIAN, THE REVOLUTIONARY WAVE OF 1862, AND ORTHOGRAPHICAL REFORM

Charles A. Moser, George Washington University

Though it may seem strange to those who must cope with the far greater irrationalities of English spelling, the problem of orthographical reform in Russian has long vexed the minds of its speakers. Even Russian artistic literature provides ample evidence of this. For instance, near the beginning of Besy, while telling of Stepan Verxovenskij's plunge into the life of St. Petersburg in the early 1860s, Fedor Dostoevskij's chronicler begins a list of topics on the cultural agenda of the day with an unexpected combina- tion. The men of the 1860s, he says, argued first of all over the "abolition of the censorship and of the letter

,."' Here the phrase "abolition of the

letter ,"

is a concise way of referring to a more general campaign for orthographical reform involving much more than a single letter. And the fact that orthographical change remained of interest to the advanced intel- ligentsia may be seen from Anton Cexov's story of 1899 "Dama s soba&- koj," where Gurov's wife, we are told, "read a great deal and dropped the letter a in her correspondence."2 All this was part of a sporadic but continuing pressure for alphabetical change which would culminate in the great orthographic reforms of 1917-18.3

The movement for orthographical reform treated in this paper was not of major significance in the overall history of the Russian language, nor was the level of linguistic sophistication among its participants up to late twentieth-century standards. Still, it contributed something of value to the continuing discussion of orthographic reform over the years, and is worthy of our attention for that reason alone. In this article, however, I do not approach it as a linguist primarily concerned with the technical issues which it raised, but rather as a literary and intellectual historian interested in the contemporary literary, political, even philosophical roots, reflections and ramifications of this particular reform effort. In short, I treat the orthographical reform movement of 1862 as intellectual history.

To the superficial observer orthography might seem an unimportant matter, but in fact it is so closely bound up with language-although only in its written form-that it becomes entwined with a people's sense of national- 422 SEEJ, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1985)



Orthographical Reform 423

ity. Too frequent orthographical change can sever a culture from the written roots of its national traditions, as most people instinctively realize. And this explains why, although orthographic reforms have been proposed on many occasions throughout Russian history, they could as a rule win broad acceptance only at times of political upheaval, when many other traditional values were also called into question.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to demonstrate in detail a linkage between the appearance of orthographical reform movements and periods of political unrest except in the instance of the movement of 1862, but a quick overview shows that such a connection could probably be proven over a considerable historical period. Konstantin Kostenecki, fifteenth- century author of the chief theoretical document on the orthographical reforms imported from Bulgaria to Russia at the time of the Second South Slavic Influence and the catastrophic Balkan political upheavals which helped bring it to pass, viewed orthographical disorder as interrelated with more general crises of doctrine and social morality in the Serbian society in which he lived at the time of writing. As the Bulgarian scholar Kujo Kuev phrases it, Konstantin "seemingly wants to say: corrupt morals-corrupt orthography."4 If we translate this argument into modern terms, Konstan- tin maintains that there is a connection between orthography and politics. Such a notion gains support from the fact that the next major orthographical alterations in Russian-the elimination of several letters and the graphic orientation of the Russian alphabet away from its traditional Church Slavic forms-were instituted in 1708-10, under pressure from Peter the Great's sweeping political and social reforms. No major changes occurred thereafter until the monarchy fell; but those changes began to be prepared as early as April-May 1904, during a sustained period of political instability which began in 1902, was especially strong in 1903, subsided temporarily after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in January 1904, but soon gathered strength again to culminate in the revolutionary outbursts of early 1905.5 The proposals of 1904 were further refined in 1910-12, and then again in late 1916 and early 1917-this last obviously a time of political unrest. All these suggested changes served as the basis for the most sweeping orthographical reform in Russian history, finally decreed by the Soviet government in late 1917 and in 1918, although the Provisional Government had taken steps in the same direction. Once that reform occurred-and it is rejected by a segment of the Russian emigration to this day-there remained only a few loose ends to deal with. During the cultural thaw under Nikita XruStev in the early 1960s there was an effort to tidy them up when an Orthographical Commission established in 1962 published a controversial report two years later which recommended, among other things, a considerable reduction in the use of the letter b. However, XruSdev fell from power before anything could be done about the proposals, and nothing has been heard of them since.6



424 Slavic and East European Journal

If there is a certain correlation between political instability and orthographic change over a large span of Russian history, then one might expect a priori to discover a serious movement for orthographical reform during the revolutionary period beginning with the liberation of the serfs in Feb- ruary 1861 and lasting until the outbreak of the Polish insurrection in Jan- uary 1863, which swung Russian public opinion in a conservative direction. And indeed there was such a movement: it came into being and peaked during the short revolutionary spring of 1862, that St. Petersburg spring which witnessed passionate debates over Turgenev's Otcy i deti, published in February; Nikolaj Cernysevskij's sole public apperance in early March, before his arrest that summer; and the mysterious fires of May, which many attributed to radical arsonists. The orthographical reform movement began and reached its greatest intensity in the period from March to May 1862. After a summer hiatus the reformers met again in December, but dis- banded in January 1863, not to be heard from again.

In the eighteenth century, when questions of language and orthography were very much to the fore, the chief debaters were writers such as Vasilij Tred'jakovskij, who wrote an interesting treatise on orthographic reform, and Aleksandr Sumarokov. In the nineteenth century, however, discussion of such subjects took place largely among scholars (especially grammarians) and pedagogues, particularly Russian language teachers. Certainly scholars and pedagogues led the movement of 1862, which, because it occurred in mid-century, involved in one way or another a large number of those who concerned themselves with orthographical problems during the whole of the century.

The guiding spirit behind the campaign of 1862 was Vladimir Stojunin (1826-88), a prominent specialist in general pedagogy, author of a Russian grammar first published in 1855 and other works on the teaching of Rus- sian language and literature, and a noted literary historian, with several studies of eighteenth-century Russian literary figures to his credit.7 At a regularly scheduled teachers' conference in St. Petersburg on 20 January 1862, Stojunin had succesfully proposed to "invite all Russian language teachers employed in St. Petersburg to a meeting for the purpose of reaching agreement on general orthographical principles and, after the clarifica- tion of certain controversial points, on simplifying the orthography itself."' On March 8 the leading newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti announced that the initial meeting would be held at the Second St. Petersburg gymnasium at eight in the evening on Saturday, March 10.9 This began a series of conferences held on Saturday evenings at the same location: March 10, March 24, March 31, April 14, April 28, and May 12. At the end of the sixth meeting, on May 12, it was announced that sessions would be suspended for the summer. They were, but were resumed only much later, on December 8. The eighth and apparently last session occurred on 12 Jan-




uary 1863, by which point the participants were reduced to such unimportant matters as punctuation and whether adverbs containing prepositions should be written as a unit or separately.10 In any case, this chronology makes it obvious that the burst of enthusiasm for orthographical reform coincided with the revolutionary spring of 1862, when meetings took place at two-week intervals, and in one instance with an interval of only a week.

The movement's tenuousness may also be illustrated by the policies of the professional pedagogical journal Ujitel', the only publication to provide consistent and detailed coverage of the conferences." For example, although Ucitel' clearly supported Stojunin's efforts, it could never bring itself to adopt a reformed orthography for its own pages; indeed it made only feeble efforts in that direction when it printed its combined report on the third and fourth sessions in a modified version of the orthography thus far recommended by the meetings, as a demonstration.12 But then it used the new orthography for only one further report before reverting to the standard orthography, without any explanation, in its report on the session of May 12.13 Thereafter it never returned to the new orthography.

That did not bode well for the future of the orthographical reforms, for if the publication most intimately connected with the movement would not adopt the new orthography, other journals could scarcely have been expected to. Not only did UCitel' report faithfully on the sessions, but both its editors and publishers participated directly in conducting the meetings, especially since Stojunin evidently did not wish to chair them himself. To be sure, the first session was chaired, after much discussion, by Petr Perevles- skij, author of a book on orthography dating from 1842, at which time he had been a gymnasium instructor.14 The second session, however, was con- ducted by losif Paul'son (1825-98), one of the editors and publishers of Uvitel'. Like Stojunin, Paul'son was a specialist in education, with a strong interest in such fields as stenography, and also orthography, although he published a work which dealt with orthography in part only much later, in 1892.15 He was also immortalized in Russian literature of the 1890s through Lev Tolstoj's "Xozjain i rabotnik" (1895), in which a peasant family refers to him several times as the author of a Kniga dlja vtenija compiled in the 1860s for use in the schools.'6 In addition, Paul'son's co-editor and co- publisher N. X. Vessel' chaired at least one of the orthographical sessions.

A reading of the reporting on the meetings makes it clear that Stojunin was the driving force behind them, even though many individuals with a strong interest in orthographical reform also participated. Not only did he set the agenda and ensure that it was followed, he also prevailed on most of the "decisions" which the assemblage reached.

Though he was functioning in a radical culture, Stojunin was a moderate in pedagogical and orthographical matters, and he instilled into the meetings a sense of moderation and direction which could easily have been lost




in gatherings open to the general public, as these were. On March 10 he delivered an extensive address to open the business of the first meeting." In it he implicitly defined the objective of the movement as the "simplification of Russian orthography,""'8 and not a "radical transformation" (korennoe preobrazovanie) of the alphabet, which had never enjoyed a chance of acceptance in the past and which, he thought, would in any case be unde- sirable since it would "snap the link between our present and our past." The current effort, he went on, since it sprang from the ranks of Russian language teachers, should be designed to eliminate "orthographical contradic- tions" and unreasonable grammatical rules, and thus ease the difficulties of both teachers and students.

In the past, Stojunin went on, reformers had approached orthography from the etymological and the phonetic points of view. No doubt he sensed the likelihood that his audience might favor the radical alternative of alter- ing spelling to bring it completely into line with current pronunciation, for Stojunin rejected the purely phonetic approach to orthography explicitly, on the grounds that there existed a great many dialects. We should, he argued, seek a middle way, a balanced "historical basis" for the formulation of sensible choices among the available alternatives.

After enumerating several specific proposals for reform, Stojunin ended with a recommendation on procedure, urging that decisions be reached through a general consensus. As the meetings progressed, though, it proved impossible in practice to adhere to that ideal, and some points had to be settled by majority vote.

The participants in the first session dealt with the general problem of whether orthography should be based upon etymology (word-formation)- in which case the historical constituent parts of a word should be visible in its spelling-or should reflect pronunciation alone. After some discussion they arrived at the following formulation:

We should adhere to the etymological principle (word-formation) in those instances where there is a discrepancy between the Russian dialect [govor] and the Church Slavic language U[azyk]; but where they do not contradict each other we may allow a phonetic principle.'9

It is difficult to discern the exact meaning of this formula, but it probably shows that the participants regarded Russian as a dialect of a parent Church Slavic language. If the Russian etymology differed from the Church Slavic etymology, that fact should be reflected in Russian orthography; but if the Russian etymology did not differ from the Church Slavic etymology, then the Russian word might be spelled as pronounced. In either case Church Slavic orthography remained as the standard against which Rus- sian orthography was to be measured. But then no matter how this formulation should be interpreted in theory, it was in fact applied infrequently if at all in the ensuing debates.




The group then reached its first practical decision relatively easily: it excluded the letter 0, which was used solely in words of Greek origin and which could easily be replaced by 4c. Then the consensus collapsed quickly thereafter as the session dissolved into an acrimonious debate over granting the letter e full alphabetical rights (the teachers were for it, the specialists in philology against it) and over eliminating the letters n and 3 from the alphabet.

For a brief time at the beginning of the second session things threatened to get out of hand when the presiding officer himself, losif Paul'son, asked whether the reform movement should not in fact seek "radical transformations" in the orthography rather than content itself with mere simplification of spelling. The subsequent debate yielded entirely illogical results: the meeting agreed that it should work toward such "radical transformations," but it also reaffirmed the importance of Stojunin's "historical basis" for reform as well as the general formulation quoted just above on the inter- connection between the etymological and the phonetic principles in orthography. The remainder of the discussion, on practical points, developed along moderate lines, however.

The session began with a presentation on the history of Russian orthography. The speaker, a certain Kinevic, advocated among other things the abolition of

, and b: he thought the first should be eliminated outright and

the second replaced by a diacritical mark. The scholar Fedor Buslaev, he said, had calculated that some one-twentieth of the space needed for printing was wasted on these "semi-vowels."20 Kinevi certainly had a great deal of outside support for his proposal. For example, the prominent bibliogra- pher G. N. Gennadi contributed to this discussion a bit later in the year by publishing a listing of all those who had publicly criticized the continued use of , along with a bibliography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books published without it.21 Even the conservative Severnaja pcela published an article (itself printed without the letter) advocating its abolition in final position and mentioning that the Kievskij kur'er had already adopted this particular reform.22 One might, then, assume that there would be little opposition to the elimination of

, in particular, but in fact the proposition

stimulated a vigorous debate, primarily at the session of March 31. Indeed the debate was so heated that one of the letter's detractors finally became a bit desperate, and asked aloud what the reform movement could ever accomplish if it could not even assent to the elimination of such a useless letter as this one. "If society rejects our proposal," he said, "that means we have not divined its needs properly; but at least no one can accuse us of doing nothing at a time when we could have done a great deal."23 But his appeal did not quite reach its mark. To be sure, the assemblage agreed to the proposition that a "sign not corresponding to any sound should not be included among the letters, but instead be a diacritical mark," on which




basis it excluded both a and b, with the latter to be replaced by an apos- trophe. But when KineviE observed that replacing b with an accent would be difficult technically, the meeting decided to consult with typesetters before reaching a resolution of the question.24

The fate of , was similar to that of

, and b. Although Stojunin had

denounced it in the strongest possible terms in his opening remarks to the first session,25 he shifted his stand during the serious discussion of it in the second session to make cautionary remarks on the practicalities of its liqui- dation. Consequently the group decided to exclude it from the alphabet in principle, but to delay implementation of the decision26-only to change its mind at the fourth session and call for its immediate elimination.27 It was also decided that the letter 3 should be retained, since it represents a sound which occurs occasionally, and that its use should be extended to words in which /e/ is pronounced initially or after unpalatalized consonants.28 The session also adopted Stojunin's proposal to grant full alphabetical rights to the letter 6. There was, however, a dispute as to what letter should be written under stress and after x, ,, m, and iu; by a majority vote 6 prevailed in these positions.

The fourth session also dealt with the question of 1 and i. Although one participant made a spirited defense of 1i, the group decided to replace the Cyrillic letter with the latinate one.29 In this case it is worth noting that reform proposals for this pair before 1917 consistently recommended the elimination of 1 and the retention of i, but the decrees of 1917 and 1918 adopted a contrary course.

The fifth session on April 28 accepted Stojunin's proposal that 14,

> bI, as for example in the word CbICKaTh.

Once these major questions were settled, the meetings turned their attention to less important matters, and this no doubt caused interest to flag somewhat. For some reason Stojunin fretted over what he considered the incorrect spelling of Myll4HHa as MYKERHHa, arguing at length in favor of the spelling which has since disappeared. He was only partially successful in speaking against doubled consonants not pronounced as such (e.g., iskus- stvo, russkif, rasskaz)-this was, incidentally, almost the only orthographical question which interested Vladimir Dal', then just beginning the publication of his great Tolkovyj slovar'. Stojunin held that doubling should be eliminated especially in foreign borrowings: he believed one should write gramatika rather than grammatika, as is done, incidentally, in contemporary Bulgarian, but not in Russian to this day. He also worried about the spelling of prefixes ending in z (voz-, iz-, niz-, raz-, bez-, c'rez-) before un- voiced consonants: the meeting agreed with him that the final consonants of such prefixes should be changed to s, and left doubled if they occurred before another s (e.g., rasskaz).




The final session of 12 January 1863 dealt mostly with morphological points which Stojunin raised, although the resolutions which he proposed and the group adopted have not stood the test of time. For instance Sto- junin recommended the form -ago/-jago over -ogo/-ego as the approved adjectival masculine-neuter genitive singular ending, but the meeting decided only that -ogo should be written in the genitive if the nominative is end-stressed.30 As for nominative plural adjectival endings, which distinguished -ye in the masculine from -yja in the feminine and neuter, Stojunin successfully argued that -yja be made standard for all genders, though for a rather peculiar reason: "To this day," he said, "when my students make orthographic mistakes they write ja instead of e, and not the other way around."31 The prominent grammarian, in short, was prepared to change the rules to accommodate the spelling errors of grade school students.

In any case, Vladimir Stojunin successfully guided the orthographical reform movement between the extremes of an inert traditionalism on the one hand and calls for radical change on the other. His views did not at all define the paths the language would take in subsequent years, especially in the area of morphology, where he was unduly influenced by the Church Slavic tradition; but he consistently worked toward a sensible simplification of the Russian alphabet which would better serve the needs of teachers and students of Russian.

Those who hew to middle courses, however, must contend with critics to either side. The linguistic conservatives were little in evidence at the sessions themselves, but they nevertheless in some sense contributed to the discussion which reached its climax then. The author and journalist Osip Senkovskij, for example, had died in 1858, but among his last articles was a review of a book proposing a Latin alphabet for Russian by Kiril Kadinskij (Kodinskij), who took quite an active part in the meetings of 1862. In 1857 Senkovskij had ridiculed Kadinskij's ideas while setting forth his principled opposition to orthographical reform. "All alphabets are equally good," he declared then, "all orthographies are equally fine and clear, because no single alphabet or orthography can express precisely what people want to express." He maintained that nations were even more attached to their orthography than they were to their language itself, and consequently "the wise man does not touch such things."32 Had Senkovskij been alive at the time, he would no doubt have denounced the campaign of 1862 most vigorously.

One of Senkovskij's former allies, however, was still on the cultural scene: Nikolaj GreE. Grec was deeply interested in orthographical questions, and in the 1820s and 1830s had exercised his considerable authority in favor of a conservative unification of orthographical practice: in fact he is supposed to have said that "t is necessary in order to distinguish a loyal




citizen from a subversive."33 In view of this it is scarcely surprising that in 1862 the newspaper with which he had long been associated, Severnaja pcela, published an anonymous article in defense of that very letter.34 Per- haps this reflected Grec's interest in the topic, although we have no docu- mentary evidence on the point. On the other hand, Severnaja pc'ela was the principal periodical aside from Ujitel' to report fairly consistently though briefly on the reform movement of 1862, and in that year it printed several articles on orthographical questions which generally endorsed the notion of alphabetical simplification. The paper, in short, was no longer what it had been when GreE controlled it.

At that point Grec's position as orthographical authority was being taken up by Jakov Grot (1812-93), who evidently did not attend the sessions, although he did publish an article on the reform campaign in the conservative Russkij vestnik in the summer of 1862. One of the greatest of Russian scholars of the last century, Grot included orthographical questions in his wide-ranging interests, and in 1885 published probably the most influential orthographical handbook of this time, Russkoe pravopisanie, the book over which the dense Lieutenant Nikolaev labors constantly in Alek- sandr Kuprin's Poedinok.

Fedor Dostoevskij's newly founded journal Vremja, in this as in other areas, pursued an intriguingly independent path in these years. In 1861 and 1862 one of its staff members, a proofreader with literary ambitions named Kapiton Sungurov, published three pieces bearing on orthography, of which the first and third were entertainingly fictionalized sketches.35 In the first of them, the lightly satirical "PlaE korektora" of October 1861, he displays his interest in the entire problem of orthography, complaining of too frequent capitalization and excessive punctuation and concluding that surely it is time to correct the "scandalous arbitrariness" of Russian orthography.36 He argues that Russians stand in sore need of orthographical "unity"-which he thinks should be based upon "analogy" rather than phonetic, etymological, or traditional principles37-and declares his readi- ness to write a book proposing a new orthography himself.38 Sungurov never did any such thing, but his declaration does help to demonstrate the existence of a widely felt need for orthographical reform at that time, even among those who did not consider themselves especially radical.

Sungurov's third piece, "Nepotrebnye bukvy (Iz dnevnika korektora)," appeared in Vremja for July 1862.39 It consists of a series of whimsical sketches dealing with orthographical topics, the conferences of 1862, and the work of proofreaders: for example, the author describes his vain efforts to interest his landlord's attractive daughter in orthographical problems by bringing her to see that "in the orthographical world . .. there is movement and progress; and that it has a history too." At another point a proofreader proposes to a group of his colleagues that when the monument marking




one thousand years of the Russian state was unveiled, as it was to be in Novgorod later that year, there should be a formal execution of the five letters (ui,, 1, ,,

0, v) the reform movement had banished, with Stojunin as presiding officer and KineviE as the "executioner."40

Sungurov's most informative work, however, appeared in Vremja for March 1862 under the title "Ortografiteskaja rasprja."41 This item is fun- damentally reportage on the sessions of March 10 and 24, but written from a very different perspective than that pervading the straightforward ac- counts in U'itel'. The skeptical narrator describes the sessions in a manner which foreshadows Dostoevskij's depiction of the chaotic muddle of the radical meeting in the chapter "At Virginskij's" in Besy. Sungurov informs us that most of the one hundred or so people attending the initial meeting "had a rather gloomy and preoccupied appearance: our profligate orthography obviously must have offended them greatly."42 The entire discussion on that evening as Sungurov presents it was essentially quite fruitless, for when the presiding officer closed the meeting at about half past ten he announced that "we remain in the same situation in which we are at the present time."43 But then Sungurov was versed in the history of efforts at orthographical reform, and so was aware that just such discussions had been going on for a century or more with no concrete results. The second session two weeks later struck Sungurov as yet more pointless than the first; at the conclusion of this meeting the presiding officer summed things up with the words: "We may adopt any of the reform proposals we like ... but we cannot put them into effect."44

In conjunction with the reporting of U'itel', Sungurov's reporting is helpful because it gives us some notion of the role of the radical fringe element which emerged especially during the debate in the second session over whether the meetings should aim for a "radical transformation" of the orthography or content themselves with treating "secondary questions."45 One participant argued in favor of radical reform because of the immense spread of literacy among the common people;46 Kiril Kadinskij, though evidently the meeting's laughingstock, quite specifically linked orthography with politics when he said:

We live in an era of radical transformations; the peasant reform, for example, will no doubt transform our society totally. Therefore it seems to me that our reform of orthography should be a radical one as well.47

Kadinskij went on to weary his listeners most extraordinarily, according to Sungurov, by arguing at length in favor of the truly radical reform he had long advocated, a complete change from a Cyrillic orthography to a pho- netically based Latin one. Although the sessions of 1862 were not prepared to take this seriously, proposals for a Latin orthography formed a persist- ent current within the general nineteenth-century movement for orthograph-




ical reform, and in an orthographical sense they comprised the radical facet of the campaign of 1862.

Kadinskij had publicized his ideas long before, in a small book of 1842, and in 1857 had issued another version of it, entitled Preobrazovanie i upro- gcenie russkogo pravopisanija, which stimulated Osip Senkovskij's sarcastic comments. The earlier edition, however, had prompted a detailed and rather curious review by Vissarion Belinskij.48 Belinskij rejected Kadinskij's proposed solution in no uncertain terms, but he agreed with many of his criticisms of the existing orthography, and himself made two proposals for reform. The first he termed a mere "correction [ispravlenie] of the alphabet,"49 which would have retained the Cyrillic alphabet while eliminating certain superfluous letters and adding diacritical marks for use with the letter e on the French model (e = 3; e = je, be, lie; e = e;

^ = ), for example. But his second proposal-and he admitted it was merely a "dream"-con- sisted of a modified Latin alphabet to which he had added three new letters (for m, *, and io) designed specifically for this alphabet. Thus even the leading critic of the 1840s could succumb to the temptations of the Latin alphabet for a time.

In the late summer and early fall of 1862, while the sessions were suspended, U'itel' printed a series of letters from readers on the proposed reforms. One reader, a certain Fedor Lednin of Ufa, had written as early as May 14 to advocate a Latin alphabet for Russian which closely resembled that now employed by the Slavic and East European Journal, except that it used subscripts rather than superscripts for such letters as c and ', and h instead of x.50

To the best of my knowledge none of these suggestions for a Latin alphabet was ever taken very seriously, and there is no need to discuss them in detail here. One point is worth making, however. Although earlier proposals for Latin alphabets were the work of orthographical radicals who sometimes considered themselves political radicals as well (Belinskij certainly did, and perhaps Kadinskij too), their arguments on behalf of change were grounded to a large extent in esthetic criteria, which by 1862 were anathema to political radicals. In "PlaE korektora" Sungurov remarks that a major foundation of orthographic reform should be "typographical beauty" (krasota pedati), by which he means an orthographic esthetic: one should use as few capitals, punctuation marks, or small and separate words as possible. Although grammarians have never taken esthetics into account before, he asserts, the time has now come to "establish orthographical unity while keeping typographical beauty in mind.""'

We might expect some such viewpoint from a collaborator of Dostoev- skij's, but it is more surprising to find esthetic considerations so prominent in the thinking of a man like Kadinskij, who in his 1857 edition claims that "the Latin alphabet possesses indisputable superiority over ours: it is purer,




more beautiful, more legible and takes up less space."52 Most astonishing of all is Belinskij's adherence to similar ideas in agreeing with Kadinskij that "the modern Russian alphabet is not only not beautiful and not elegant, but even ugly."53 Belinskij-who has in mind not the esthetics of orthography, as does Sungurov, but rather graphic esthetics, a different thing- declares that since the Church Slavic alphabet was based upon the Greek alphabet, it could not be "distinguished by any special beauty." Our contemporary alphabet, he continues, is "merely a latinized Church Slavic alphabet," in which, moreover, many of the Latin letters have been dis- torted.54 Belinskij then analyzes several Cyrillic letters as examples of graphic art. One sample will illustrate the tenor of his entire approach: The letter )K is too wide, takes up too much space, is too elaborate and florid and at the same time boxy because of the straight dash which bisects it in the middle.55

By 1862, however, when esthetics was in disrepute, such opinions carried little weight even when they originated with Belinskij. More than that, not all of Belinskij's intellectual descendants shared his enthusiasm for orthographical reform in general. For instance, the radical poet Dmitrij Minaev, writing in the satirical journal Iskra, published a poem entitled "Pedago- gi'eskij prigovor (Orfografi'eskaja legenda)" which dealt quite unkindly with the entire orthographical reform movement of the spring of 1862.56 Evidently taking his cue from Sungurov's portrayal of the sessions as something resembling a court proceeding, Minaev describes the participants as "radical scholars" (gramotei-radikaly) of "furrowed brow" gathered in an "Areopagus," or high tribunal, under Paul'son to condemn and banish unwanted letters, of which Kadinskij is the "primary opponent." First of all the letter h is summoned, convicted for "causing us all to be called illiter- ate," and driven out; it is followed by 0, then 3, b,, and b. Minaev concludes his poem sardonically:

HoTep5IB Kpacy H cny, BceM HM B rpo6 npHmnoci nenb, H Tenepb Ha HX MorHny XOHUT TaiHO HnnaKaTb Fpe,.

In the short run the efforts of the orthographical reformers of 1862 came to naught. The reason for this is not far to seek: there was no mechanism by which the reforms could have been implemented at that stage. In his "Pla' korektora" of late 1861, Sungurov had remarked that "the regulation of our writing system, orthographical unification, depends exclusively upon our journals,"57 an opinion which Stojunin had echoed in his opening comments at the fifth session on April 28:




However, bringing all these alterations into general use, introducing them into the press, is not within our power, and therefore . . . it is impossible to introduce them into our pedagogical practice so long as they have not been accepted by the press."5

He added, pessimistically but presciently, that the reforms proposed that spring might take effect only in the distant future, if ever. For if the journals were indeed the key to the reforms, in which teachers could not take the lead, then the movement's organizers failed signally (if they ever tried) to obtain the participation of any prominent editors or publishers in their efforts. Even Uditel', as we have seen, gave the new orthography a most limited and gingerly trial, and only a few other journals even considered doing as much.

Beyond that, no one in a position of governmental authority displayed any interest in the matter then, and some such authority would probably have had to be exercised for the reform to succeed. The major previous simplification of the alphabet, that of 1708-10, had gone through with offi- cial backing, and then had not been totally successful. An analogous situation of a later period may be found in a projected Bulgarian orthographical reform attempted by the Agrarian government of Prime Minister Alek- sandar Stambolijski in 1921-22, a reform much like the one actually intro- duced after the communist seizure of power in 1944. Stambolijski strongly favored the reform, which was promulgated as law, but the government had little control over publishing houses and failed to formulate or enforce effective sanctions against those who rejected the reform. Consequently, it remained a dead letter, and one may suspect that any reform of that sort proclaimed by the Imperial government in the Russia of the 1860s might have suffered the same fate.59 The orthographical reform of 1917-18- which the movement of 1862 helped to prepare-occurred at a time of great political unrest and with the backing of a revolutionary government determined to alter the culture of the country which it ruled and which eventually assumed direct control of publishing houses and printing estab- lishments. But it required no less than such a unique concatenation of cir- cumstances for a major orthographical reform to be implemented. That fact, combined with the failure of the reform movement of 1862, should tell us something about the nature of the links between a language and its written expression.

NOTES

1 F. M. Dostoevskij, Polnoe sobranie socinenij (30 vols.; L.: Nauka, 1972-[84]), X, 22. 2 A. P. Cexov, Sobranie socinenij (12 vols.; M.: GIXL, 1960-64), VIII, 389. 3 For a good overall treatment of the problem of orthographical reform, see N. S. Roidest-

venskij, "Kratkij o'erk russkogo pravopisanija," in A. B. Sapiro, Russkoe pravopisanie (M.: AN SSSR, 1951), 160-98. For geater detail on a more limited period, see Jakov Grot,




"O'erk istorii russkogo pravopisanija," in his Filologiceskie razyskanija, 2nd ed., rev. (SPb.: Tip. Imp. akademija nauk, 1876), II, 185-245.

4 Kujo Kuev, "Konstantin Kostenecki," in Istorija na balgarskata literatura. 1. Starobal- garska literatura, ed. Petor Dinekov et al. (4 vols., Sofia: BAN, 1963-76), 319. See also the passage from Konstantin's "Za nabalnoto obu'enie v gramotnost," in Petor Dinekov, ed., Staro-balgarski stranici: Antologija (Sofia: Balg. pis., 1966), 466. This reform, incidentally, was the only one in Russian cultural history to result in orthographical compli- cation rather than simplification.

5 See Bernard Comrie and Gerald Stone, The Russian Language Since the Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 202-203, and Michael T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation (2 vols.; N. Y.: MacMillan, 1955), II, 1168-69.

6 For a good summary of these developments, see Comrie and Stone, 202-208, 213-17. 7 See the biography of Stojunin by N. Tupikov in vol. 31 of the Brokgauz-Efron Enciklope-

dieeskij slovar' (SPb., 1901), 713-15. 8 The text of this preliminary notice, published in Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti for 3

March 1862, is reprinted in K. Su-v, "Ortografibeskaja rasprja," Vremja, no. 3 (March 1862), otd. 4, 58, from which I have taken it.

9 The text of this announcement is also reprinted in ibid., 59. 10 Uditel', no. 2, 1863, 98. 11 Severnaja pdela also reported on them, but much more sporadically and in less detail than

Uditel'. I am indebted to the Helsinki University Library for providing me photocopies from the appropriate articles appearing in these two publications.

12 Ueitel', no. 8, 1862, 344n. 13 Ibid., no. 13-14, 1862, 607-10. 14 Prakticeskaja orfografija s predvaritel'nymi k nej zamedanijami, sostavlennaja Petrom Pere-

vlesskim, starlim u itelem Jaroslavskoj gimnazii (M., 1842). 15 Metodika gramoty po istoriceskim i teoreticeskim dannym. Cast' 2. Pis'mennoe oznacenie

elenorazdel'nyx zvukov, bukvy i ix socetanija (grafika). Orfografija i orfoepija i ix vzaimnoe otnosenie (SPb., 1892), 158-92.

16 His name occurs in chapter 3 and again in chapter 4; see Lev Tolstoj, Sobranie socinenij (20 vols.; M.: Xud. lit., 1960-65), XII, 336, 340-41.

17 Published in UWitel', no. 6, 1862, 265-69. 18 Ibid., 265. 19 Ibid., 269. 20 Ujitel', no. 7, 1862, 302. 21 Grigorij Kniinik [G. N. Gennadi], "Bibliografibeskie spravki po predpolagaemomu iz-

gnaniju iz azbuki bukvy i,,"

Kniinyj vestnik, no. 11, 1862, 253. 22 V. Golovin, "O nepisanii i nepeiatanii bukvy a na konce slov,"' Severnaja pcela, no. 237,

1862. 23 Uditel', no. 8, 1862, 344. 24 Ibid., 346. 25 Uditel', no. 6, 1862, 268. 26 UWitel', no. 7, 1862, 302. 27 UWitel', no. 8, 1862, 346. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Uditel', no. 2, 1863, 97. 31 Ibid., 97-98. 32 The review, published in Syn Otecestva for 11 August 1857, was reprinted in Listki Barona

Brambeusa, East' 2 (SPb.: Tip. I. I. Glazunova, 1858). The quotations are from pp. 636, 635, 638.

33 See Roidestvenskij, "Kratkij o'erk," 181-82.




34 "V zaffitu bukvy ,," Severnaja piela, no. 95, 1862. 35 All three pieces are signed "K. Su-v." In a letter of 24 August 1861, Dostoevskij writes:

"[W]e have a very fine proofreader, a student, who really knows his job" (Fedor Dostoev- skij, Pis'ma [4 vols.; M.: Gos. izd., 1928-56], I, 106); in his "Pla6 korektora" published in October of that year, the author says he has been working as a proofreader for about four months (Vremja, no. 10, 1861, otd. 4, 127). Vera Netaeva identifies Kapiton Sun- gurov as the journal's proofreader (V. S. Netaeva, Zurnal M. M. i F M. Dostoevskix 'Epoxa' 1864-1865 [M.: Nauka, 1975], 264 n. 56). For more on Sungurov, who died an early death in 1866, see the article by G. F. Kogan, "Zurnal 'Vremja' i revoljucionnoe studeniestvo 1860-x godov," in vol. 86 of Literaturnoe nasledstvo, F M. Dostoevskij: Novye materialy i issledovanija (M.: Nauka, 1973), 581-93. I am indebted to Professor William Edgerton for.his assistance in identifying Sungurov.

36 "PlaE korektora," Vremja, no. 10, 1861, otd. 4, 132-36, 137-38. 37 Ibid., 138-39. 38 Ibid., 141-42. 39 Vremja, no. 7 (July 1862), otd. 1, 239-50. 40 Ibid., 239-40, 243-44. 41 Vremja, no. 3, 1862, otd. 4, 57-74. 42 Ibid., 59. 43 Ibid., 61. 44 Ibid., 74. 45 Ibid., 67. 46 Ibid., 72. 47 Ibid., 68. Sungurov presents this as a paraphrase, not a direct quotation. 48 Vissarion Belinskij, Polnoe sobranie solinenij (13 vols.; M.: AN SSSR, 1953-59), IX,

328-45. 49 Ibid., 339. 50 Uditel', no. 17, 1862, 887-88. 51 "PlaC korektora," 139-40, 140-41. 52 Kiril Kadinskij, Preobrazovanie i upros'enie russkogo pravopisanija (SPb.: Imp. akademija

nauk, 1857), 6; italics in the original. 53 Belinskij, 328. 54 Ibid., 330. 55 Ibid., 331. 56 The poem originally appeared in Iskra, no. 16, 1862; I have used the text in Pobty "Iskry"

(2 vols.; L.: Sov. pis., 1955), II, 103-105. 57 "PlaE korektora," 139. 58 Ucitel', no. 9, 1862, 401. 59 On the Bulgarian orthographical reform of 1921-22, see Aleksandkr Velev, Prosvetna i

kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandar Stambolijski (Sofia: Izd. na BZNS, 1980), chap. 2, 94-133.



teachers of russian, the revolutionary wave of 1862, and orthographical reform

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