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3.3 The Latin alphabet as a “modernizing” tool in the Balkans

In the Balkan Peninsula, the diversity of languages, dialects and alphabets, also in the form of local particularisms and syncretic practices, considerably diminished in the post-war period. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Arabic alphabet began to disappear from areas where it had been present for centuries as the writing system of the ruling authorities. Moreover, with the elimination of the Arabic alphabet in the new Turkish Republic, the Kemalists launched a decisive attack on Islam, which also marked the beginning of a new “cultural centralism,” aimed at belittling all local peculiarities from Thrace and Anatolia, whose literary traditions were strongly linked to the Arabic alphabet (Zakhos-Papazahariou 1972: 153-4).

In this connection, it is worth mentioning that only a few decades earlier, in Habsburg-administered Bosnia and Herzegovina, a proposal had been made to adopt Arabic characters for writing the Bosnian language at the official level, by using the so-called arebica, a writing system that had developed locally, and was based on Arabic characters (see, e.g., Huković 1986 and Lehfeldt 2001). The arrival of Habsburg rule and the German language had determined the predominance of the Latin alphabet, and it was in this context that a reformed version of the arebica was formulated by the intellectual Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević, which took the name of matufovica or mektebica. Interestingly, Čaušević implemented his reform on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet, founding it on the phonemic principle proposed by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, by assigning to each of Karadžić’s graphemes a corresponding character in the Arabic alphabet. Čaušević believed that, in order to prevent the overwhelming of this writing system by the dominant Latin alphabet, it was essential to eliminate the orthographic chaos that had accumulated over time and to simplify the use of the Arabic script to transcribe the local Slavic language (cf. Selvelli 2015a: 215). In the hope of saving the Arabic alphabet from its probable disappearance, Čaušević and several other cultural representatives of similar Islamic background began using this alphabet in the bilingual periodical press (in Turkish and Bosnian) aimed at local Muslims (Huković 1986: 19).

Despite such attempts, the Latin alphabet was becoming increasingly welcome in the Balkans as well as in the Middle East as an indicator of modernization and was actively promoted by the more progressive sections of society. In the years following the First World War, rhetoric spread in Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and, of course, Turkey, but also in Palestine, Iran, Egypt and many other countries about the value of this writing system in terms of literacy advancement, as evidenced by the text The Universal Adoption of Latin Characters (L’adoption universelle des caractères latins) (1934), a publication promoted by the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, a body of the League of Nations for the promotion of international communication and peace through mutual rapprochement also in the field of writing.

This context at least partly explains the Greek authorities’ decision to print the didactic text Abecedar in Latin letters (see chapter 2), since the ideologies of Latinization were linked to concrete proposals for a similar reform of the Greek language. Indeed, in the context of the educational reforms implemented by the Venizelos government (1929-1932), influential Greek intellectuals such as Dimitrios Glinos and Menos Philintas held the view that adopting the Latin alphabet would set the country on a path of cultural Westernization and put a definitive end to orthographic chaos by promoting literacy (see Bernal 2007). As stated by Philintas in a 1929 article that contained a practical proposal for the Latinization of the Greek language: “I do not think there is any serious reason (...) why we should not also adopt this reform, since the Turks, the Japanese [sic!] and some other nations have done it before us” (cit. in Bernal 2007: 179; my translation). In a text that appeared in 1931, Glinos similarly observed: “My personal opinion, as I have said before, is that we must adopt the Latin alphabet. I am convinced that this will finally happen ...” (ibid., 180; my translation).

The reasons why a script reform of the Greek language was never carried out are very similar to those which explain its missed adoption in Bulgaria: it would be very interesting to devote a specific study to the comparative analysis of these two cases, highlighting common elements in the national rhetoric and in the factors of resistance to script change. Another important factor, especially for Bulgaria, was the adoption of the Latin alphabet by Romania, which replaced the Cyrillic alphabet previously in use. Yet, although the country’s religious identity was bound up with the Orthodox Christian faith, its language did not belong to the Slavic family, but to the Romance one. The proposal to render it through a suitable writing system had been made on several occasions, and it was not surprising that ideological and pragmatic arguments led the country to opt for a Latin-based alphabet (cf. Edroiu 2015: 237). Significantly, Romania’s transition from Cyrillic to Latin was accompanied in 1873 by an edict affirming the “Latinizing” (or “Romanizing”) and “Christianizing” role of the country in the context of the “pagan” and “Slavic-Muslim” Balkans (Kolarz 1946, cit. in Fishman 1977: xvii). The Latin alphabet, equipped with many diacritical signs, began to be used in the 1860s, but Romanian orthography would not be standardized until 1954 (Wellish 1978: 54).

The last Indo-European language to undergo a process of Latinization in the Balkan area was Albanian (Şimşir, 2008: 38-43). Political emancipation in the country went hand in hand with alphabet reform: when the National Congress gathered in Monastir (now Bitola, North Macedonia) in 1909 decided to fight for autonomy from the Ottoman Empire, of which Albania was still a province, the symbolic choice was the introduction of the Latin alphabet (Elsie 2017). Previously, the Arabic alphabet had been used to write this language, and some local patriots had created original Albanian alphabets by mixing letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets, but without much success (Elsie 2017, Kumnova & Shabani 2010: 70).

Certainly, since the late 19th century, the dynamics of self-representation of ethnic identity in Southeast Europe passed through the choice of the graphic form of the language, which had an extremely significant and legitimizing value for Western eyes. Thus, the Latin alphabet became established in Romania, Albania, and, though not entirely, in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, without Catholicism influencing this in any way: it was also adopted for languages such as Turkish, with which it previously had had no connection (cf. Zakhos-Papazahariou 1972: 149). In this case, its status actually stemmed from the fact that it was perceived as the alphabet of the most “civilized” countries, that is, those of Western Europe.

Nonetheless, there was also strong opposition to various Latinization proposals in the Balkans, and the animated debates in Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia made the implementation of these projects unfeasible. To some extent, this can be explained by the fact that writing systems in the Balkans were never conceived as a kind of impartial technology that could be adapted and changed to suit the needs of its speakers and writers. Most proposals for the introduction of a new script did not meet with any possibility of adoption, which shows that questions of script in the Balkans (as well as in the Caucasus in Georgia and Armenia, the only other examples of “resistance to script change” in the wider Eastern European space) were deeply rooted in discourses of identity linked to irrepressible ideological, religious and cultural dynamics. I will now illustrate the deep-rooted reasons for such ideological positions in the Bulgarian case.

3.4 The positions in support of Latinization in Bulgaria

In the late 1920s, the Abecedar affair (discussed in chapter 2) was still experienced as a fresh and sensitive wound in Bulgaria. In addition, the Turkish alphabet reform most likely came as a surprise: many would not have expected their neighbor and former ruler, seen as culturally “retrograde” and “oriental” (cf. Todorova 1997), to take steps towards the West in such a resounding and symbolic way. Added to this, the defeats suffered since the Balkan wars and the unresolved issues concerning Bulgarian minorities outside the country’s borders constituted a factor of deep frustration for Bulgarian public opinion.

As a consequence, one of the main features of post-war Bulgarian nationalism was its “defensive” stance (Todorova 2009: 182). On the one hand, Bulgarians had to prove that they were worthy of being classified and identified as a nation on the basis of the historical/political criteria adopted by Western Europe; but, on the other hand, they were concerned about losing their own identity, both politically (precisely in relation to the Macedonian question) and, as this case will show, in relation to the possible abandonment of a millennial writing tradition. In short, there was a delicate tension between the issues and forces of “tradition” and those of “modernization.” It is through this lens that we can interpret the important debate on the retention or reform of the Cyrillic alphabet that arose at the end of the 1920s and materialized, in particular, in the survey carried out by the journal Bulgarian Book in 1930, as well as in other texts published in those years.

As for the newly founded journal Bulgarian Book, its editors asked a number of experts and professionals for their opinion on the question of switching to the Latin alphabet. On one side were representatives of the graphics, printing and typography sector such as Aleksander Makedonski, Ivan Kadela, Vassil Zahariev, Stefan Kutinchev, T.D. Plochev; and, on the other, intellectuals and academics such as Stefan Mladenov, Elin Pelin, Petko Stajnov, Sirak Skitnik, as well as the politician Stoyan Omarchevski. However, the investigation did not include the representatives of the religious world or the Slavic paleographers, who actually had the closest relationship with the old Bulgarian book. The introductory words of the text reveal to the reader the reasons why the editorial committee decided to undertake the survey:

The prospect of the possible introduction of the Latin alphabet in Russia [...] brings the question of the alphabet also to our agenda. All the more so since it has recently become known that there is a similar discussion in Yugoslavia about the introduction of the Latin script throughout the country. (Balgarska Kniga 1930: 167; my translation)

The editors of the journal therefore invited a number of competent persons in public life to share their opinion as to whether the adoption of a new writing system was appropriate and opportune. The response of the experts was by no means unanimous, with positions in defense of the Cyrillic script and against the adoption of a Latin-based writing system clearly predominating. In favor of a new Latin script were Aleksander Makedonski, Elin Pelin, Petko Stajnov and Ivan Kadela, who justified their position on the one hand with a number of practical reasons related to the economy and printing, and on the other with cultural and ideological reasons connected with progress and modernity.

As for the reasons belonging to the first category, the most “technical” opinion belonged to the director of the National Printing Office Aleksandar Makedonski, who stated that if such a reform had really taken place in Russia, he would have backed the introduction of the Latin alphabet in Bulgaria (Makedonski 1930: 168). In clarifying this position, perhaps one of the few distinctly “pragmatic” ones among the experts involved, Makedonski noted that the Latin alphabet could be advantageous in the modern printing context, especially by virtue of the much simpler and cleaner forms of its characters. Latin, according to the expert, was not only “more beautiful and readable” but also cheaper in design and print: the same idea, written in Bulgarian, could be expressed by Latin characters, “with an economic advantage of 16 percent over Cyrillic” (ibid.)! In this context, Makedonski also noted that in the general typographic situation at that time, the choice of different Latin fonts seemed limitless, in contrast to that of Cyrillic ones.

It should be noted that Makedonski’s pragmatic arguments were to some extent similar to those used by Yakovlev in the USSR to justify his decision to reform the alphabet: the Russian linguist put forward not only arguments of a purely ideological nature, but also scientific and technical ones. Yakovlev himself had shown that printing with Latin instead of Cyrillic letters was much cheaper and resulted in an easier reading process (cf. Alpatov 2001: 2). In this framework, it must be kept in mind that Bulgaria was in a situation of serious underdevelopment as concerned the availability of typefaces, a fact attributed by Makedonski to the cultural disadvantage suffered by Bulgaria, compared with Western European nations: “[w]hile the Western peoples dedicated themselves to their culture, we were oppressed by a spiritual and political yoke. All our ancient literature went up in flames” (Makedonski 1930: 167; my translation).

Unfortunately for Bulgaria, when Russian graphic designers and printers began to work on Cyrillic fonts, the revolution broke out, followed by the rise of Latinization ideas. For this reason, according to Makedonski, if the Latin alphabet were introduced in Russia, the lack of Cyrillic letters would become even more serious and the Bulgarians would not have been able to fill the gap on their own. Bulgarians and Serbs were indeed small and poor nations, with limited need for typefaces. Makedonski explained that for this reason a Cyrillic-printed page resembled a “cobblestone pavement in whose holes we so often stumble, lost in reading” (ibid.; my translation). Moreover, he felt, the Serbs would probably soon follow the Russian example: “Will the Serbs not take the reasonable step of unifying writing and language in Yugoslavia, through the alphabet that the Croats already use?” (ibid., 168; my translation). In short, under such circumstances, the difficulties of printing with Cyrillic characters would become insurmountable for the Bulgarians, and the country would suffer very serious economic consequences.

In harmony with Makedonski’s opinion was that of Ivan Kadela, another exponent of the world of typography. According to Kadela, in order to judge the question of alphabet reform from the practical standpoint of his profession, it was essential to take into account the spread that Cyrillic and Latin characters would undergo. If the introduction of the Latin alphabet were effectively implemented for the Russian language, its adoption would sooner or later become necessary also in Bulgaria, especially since in neighboring Yugoslavia, within the “advanced Croatian culture,” the question seemed more topical than ever (Kadela 1930: 169). The development of original matrices from which new typefaces could be obtained was, in the opinion of the printer, an extremely laborious task, and so it appeared clear that the production of Cyrillic typefaces would imply much higher costs. Considering these practical reasons, therefore, any attempt to introduce a special Bulgarian alphabet would be doomed to failure.

The second category of motivations in favor of adopting the Latin alphabet were of a cultural and contextual nature, related to ideas and ideologies associated with the progress and modernization of the country. In this respect, Makedonski himself, supporting his “pro-Latinization” position, warned against the possible cultural isolation of the country, in a context where the whole Eurasian space, with the exception of Bulgaria, used the Latin alphabet. In short, the country would stubbornly maintain its tradition of the Cyrillic script, without having the means to print it in a manner appropriate to modern needs:

And, in this way, we will remain alone. Our means are not sufficient and will not be able to meet the needs and concerns associated with writing. And foreigners will not care for our culture. All these conditions are stronger than tradition and we will have to sacrifice it and adopt the Latin alphabet. (Ma-kedonski 1930: 168; my translation)

In his text, Makedonski approached the question of the writing tradition in a rather pragmatic way, without delving too much into its emotional implications, perhaps a little naively, not realizing how much the affective component of the alphabet played a fundamental role in the reception of this reform proposal.

In this regard, the position adopted by the writer Elin Pelin is also interesting: on the one hand, he evaluated the issue in purely technical terms and declared himself open to the possibilities of change; on the other, he referred to what could be considered the “sacred value” of a writing system in the consciousness of a nation. His contribution began precisely with a reminder of this fundamental aspect of writing, its function being not only technical but also symbolic:

The writing system of a people, with its signs and rules, is a tradition that has become sacred, transformed into moral law. And it cannot be so easily overthrown. (Pelin 1930: 178; my translation)

Immediately afterwards, however, he stressed the importance of the modern communication factor, expressing his wide-ranging international vision of the matter:

But today, when the world has become accessible and common to all, when one can travel the globe in a few days, when the radio simultaneously connects the four corners of the world, it will also be necessary to unify alphabetic characters. People are increasingly looking for innovative and simple means of communication to understand and comprehend each other. And in this desire, we should not be so surprised if traditions that are sacred but have a purely technical meaning collapse. (ibid.; my translation)

Curiously, Pelin’s position in favor of the Latin alphabet seems to echo the words used by the linguist Otto Jespersen, creator of the artificial language Novial, in 1928 and, as we shall see, a strong advocate of a universal Latinization campaign:

In these days of cheap travel, of commercial interchange between all parts of the world, of airplanes and broadcasting, of international science and of world-politics, it seems an urgent need for merchants, technical men, scientists, literary men, politicians, in fact for everybody, to have an easy means of getting into touch with foreigners and of learning more from them than is possible by visiting other countries as tongue-tied tourists [...] nowadays we have come to the point of needing an international language. (Jespersen 2010: 400 [1928])

In Pelin’s view, considered strictly as a technical, graphic system that functioned for communication purposes, the Cyrillic alphabet could easily be replaced by another due to historical contingencies. In a sense, this reflected precisely the most representative vision of the “pro-Latinizing” movements of the time, which associated this writing system with principles of modernization and technological advancement. Indeed, in the Soviet Union until the 1930s, attempts to introduce the Latin alphabet were driven by ideals of progress and modernity and by the conviction that it would simplify communication between the various peoples of the Union as well as their literacy practices. It is noteworthy that, in some cases, Soviet linguists also created new Latin-based scripts for the languages of peoples who were not part of the USSR but were ideologically linked to it, such as Mandarin. It was indeed believed that the Marxist revolution was going to triumph in China too, and Chinese characters would be subsequently abandoned, replaced by modern Latin-based literacy practices (Henze 1975: 393, Wellish 1978: 75-77).

Petko Stajnov, an influential intellectual and member of the Bulgarian National Assembly, openly Russophile (cf. Boneva 2001), considered quite rationally the prospect of alphabet reform in Bulgaria, pointing out that his country could not escape the influence of “great Russia,” which had “always and in spite of everything” been decisive for Bulgarians (Stajnov 1930: 175; my translation). However, he did not express the enthusiasm of the more “pro-Latinization” positions, and foresaw that script reform would require in any case a long period of time. Commenting on the technical question of writing the Bulgarian language in Latin letters, Stajnov remarked:

I have never attempted to write in the Latin alphabet, but I suppose it is not impossible for experts to arrange adequate letters or signs from Latin for all the sounds of our language, as has already been done for Romanian and Turkish, though the Slavonic character might be better suited for this purpose. (ibid.; my translation)

In those years, as we have seen, Yakovlev’s belief in the Latinization of the Russian language was itself very strong, and seemed destined to become a reality within a short time. In his vision, the Cyrillic alphabet represented an obstacle to the construction of socialism, both because of its association with the country’s Tsarist past and as a graphic boundary separating the peoples who were already using the Latin alphabet. In short, it was necessary to create a new writing system that would embody the alphabet of socialism:

Hence, in the context of the construction of socialism in the USSR, the existence of the Russian alphabet represents an absolute anachronism—a sort of graphic barrier dissociating the largest group of peoples in the Union from both the revolutionary East and the working masses of the proletariat in the West. (Yakovlev 1930: 35; my translation)

In Bulgaria, Stajnov pointed out that the adoption of the Latin alphabet by neighboring Turkey had already had significant consequences, as the Bulgarian Turks themselves “had to abandon the characters bequeathed to their language over the centuries” (Stajnov 1930: 175; my translation), a statement which seems to manifest a sort of regret at the loss of Arabic characters in relation to the Turkish language in Bulgaria. The fate of the Turkish alphabet reform in Bulgaria, however, as we shall soon see, followed a very peculiar course.

Stajnov also mentioned the case of Yugoslavia, which in those years made both alphabets equally obligatory: thus, Latin had prevailed even in Bosnia (Stajnov 1930: 175). We can note that if Soviet linguists often cited Atatürk’s successful reform as a positive argument for their proposed script change, in the Bulgarian case the proponents of Latinization did not base their argument on the “Turkish model”, since only the Russian one was considered relevant. Rather, this model was used by the opponents to the reform as an example of a different writing context, not comparable to the Bulgarian one.

Like Elin Pelin, Stajnov acknowledged the importance of cultural and more “sentimental” factors in connection with the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, but only to note that, after the adoption of Latin by Russia, the question of the appropriateness of this alphabet reform would arise in the country “in reverse”:

[…] is it appropriate for Bulgaria to persist in remaining a Cyrillic oasis only because of its national originality, because of the tribute to Saints Cyril and Methodius, because of its outward loyalty through the alphabet to the orthodoxy of the motherland? (Stajnov 1930: 175; my translation)

Stajnov commented that, from a personal point of view, he would certainly feel sorry for the loss of the alphabet of his childhood and his ancestors. He conceded, however, that this was a purely personal and above all “emotional” matter, which could not prevail against the dictates of technology, the need for unification and the influence of the surrounding context on his country. For “reasons of rationality,” the same rationality that had led the Bulgarians eventually to “accept Arabic numerals instead of Slavic ones, to eliminate a number of letters, to modify the same signs, to adopt the Gregorian calendar” (ibid.; my translation), Bulgarian culture had to follow the universal course of technology and communication. The personal and emotional desire to remain faithful to the hitherto prevailing traditions had to be sacrificed for the collective good. As for the timing, Stajnov expressed his conviction that the alphabet reform would eventually prevail in the country, though perhaps not in his lifetime, if technology did not find “another way of writing and printing or a special shorthand that would save us from Cyrillic as well as from Latin” (ibid.; my translation)!

In this context, the printer Kadela expressed a similar opinion, giving voice to his displeasure at the demise of a writing tradition characteristic of his country and the Slavic world in general: “It is only a pity that with the introduction of the Latin script one of the peculiarities associated with Slavic culture and preserved for centuries will be lost” (Kadela 1930: 169; my translation). Undoubtedly, this question appeared to be a rather sensitive one and, far from being a mere technical controversy, it implied a series of considerations that were not always easy to deal with.