Г. А. Дзагуров: Новая осетинская графика на латинской основе. Наборное переиздание текста

Notwithstanding its short duration (1923–1938), the new Ossetic alphabet, based on Roman letters, without any doubt deserves to receive more attention in the history of the Soviet language policy. The latinisation campaign was carried on, at the beginning of the ’20, in Turkic speaking Azerbaijan and in the linguistically not homogeneous North Caucasus. In the case of Azerbaijan and its sister languages the choice of the Latin alphabet was perceived and presented as a strong ideological weapon against the Arabic tradition and towards the internationalisation of the October revolution. Ossetian, on the other hand, which had been using a Cyrillic-based alphabet since 1844, became at the same time the terrain of a culturally and ideologically not less relevant latinisation experiment, in which the discussion about the alphabet reform did not involve religious matters, but rather the identitarian and cultural question as reflected in the choice of the script. A “post eventum” account of the debates between the supporters of the Cyrillic script and the proponents of the new alphabet was provided by the cultural activist Grigoriy Alekseyevich Dzagurov in a short essay, here briefly introduced and reprinted.