SUMMARY:

The guest editors of the Ab Imperio special forum on “Alphabet, Language and National Identity in the Russian Empire” introduce in their foreword the general historiographic context for discussing alphabet reforms in the Russian Empire, as well as present the contributions published in this forum. Mikhail Dolbilov and Darius Staliūnas note that the alphabet question in the Russian Empire does not appear to be a narrow subject in so far as alphabet preservation and reforms were intrinsically linked to the symbolic dimension of language as a marker and instrument of national identity. The guest editors trace the history of alphabet reforms in respect to the Russian language and stress the acute character of linguistic debates in the wake of the Great Reforms, when processes of constructing and negotiating national identity swept the emancipated peasantry. The guest editors collate the findings of the articles’ authors, noting the diverse structure of governmental decision making and the impact of governmental policies on the multifaceted competition between different nation-building projects and visions of national and cultural boundaries. They also explicate the rationale for excluding from consideration the language policies and alphabet reforms of the Volga-Kama region, observing that government policy there was to a much greater extent influenced and mediated by an expert community of linguists. Finally, Dolbilov and Staliūnas trace the political and symbolic significance of alphabet preservation and reform in the history of the 20th century and in the context of globalization and contemporary political and legal debates on the Latinization and Cyrillicization of languages in the Russian Federation.