HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 125

turning Russia's future imperial ambitions east-
ward toward Central Asia and the Far East. In
1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, Russia
unilaterally abrogated the clause that prohibited
it from building its Black Sea Fleet.

sounds not found in Russian. The impetus
behind this move was mostly political—another
way to facilitate the integration of these nations
into the Russian-dominated Soviet world. In
areas, like Central Asia or Buriatiia, where a pre-
vious script had been in use, it also meant a break
with their classical traditions. After 1991, some of
these peoples and nations began to turn away
from Cyrillic, as a symbol of Russian colonialism,
and adapted Latin script for their languages.

Cyrillic alphabet
An alphabet originally developed in the ninth
century that has survived with important modi-
fications to serve as the present alphabet of most
Eastern and Southern Slavic peoples. Legend has
it that two Greek missionaries from Constan-
tinople, St. Cyril (after whom it is named) and
St. Methodius, “Apostles to the Slavs,” invented
the alphabet to assist in their efforts to Chris-
tianize the Moravians. Recent scholarship sug-
gests that St. Cyril may have devised the older
Glagolitic alphabet, but that the Cyrillic alphabet
was perhaps devised by one of his followers. The
alphabet, originally consisting of 43 letters, was
based on Greek and Latin letters in the ninth-
century uncial script, with additional letters
invented to represent Slavic sounds not found in
Greek. Its usage eventually spread to the regions
inhabited by the Russians, Ukrainians, Belorus-
sians, Bulgarians, and Serbs, all of whom added
or dropped letters to suit their own languages, so
that modern Cyrillic alphabets in these countries
range from 30 letters in Serbia and Bulgaria to
33 in Russia and Ukraine.
Over the centuries important changes have
been made in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Rus-
sia. In the early 18th century, PETER I the Great
introduced the civil Russian alphabet, a consider-
able simplification of the old Cyrillic alphabet.
Church books continue to use the old alphabet,
but after 1710 all other books had to use the civil
alphabet. At this time, Peter also introduced Ara-
bic numerals to replace the Slavonic ones then in
use. Further changes were made by the Bolshe-
vik government in 1918 to simplify orthography.
Under Joseph STALIN , Central Asian and Siberian
ethnic minorities adopted, mostly under pres-
sure, the Russian-based Cyrillic alphabet for their
written languages, with additional letters for

Czech Legion
A corps of almost 40,000 Czech soldiers of the
Austro-Hungarian army held in Russian pris-
oner-of-war camps, which by the accident of
history came to play a crucial role in the early
stages of the Russian civil war that followed the
Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. The
Czech Legion in Russia was the most prominent
of three such legions formed to fight the Central
Powers and advance Czech interests with the
goal of establishing an independent Czech state
after World War I. Formed in late 1917, after
negotiations between the Czech nationalist
leader Jan Masaryk and the Bolshevik govern-
ment, the Czech Legion in Russia was nomi-
nally under French command and posted to the
eastern front, virtually dormant since the OCTO -
BER REVOLUTION . Their hopes of fighting the
Central Powers diminished considerably after
Soviet Russia pulled out of the war in March
1918, after signing the Treaty of BREST - LITOVSK .
Still eager to fight and help establish Czech
independence, the legion's leaders arranged
with the BOLSHEVIKS to travel eastward along
the TRANS - SIBERIAN RAILROAD to Vladivostok,
where they would then be transported by ship
back to France.
Trouble began in mid-May 1918 soon after
the Czech soldiers had embarked in stages for
Siberia. At Chelyabinsk, a minor clash with west-
bound Hungarian prisoners of war resulted in
the Czech capture of the town. When local
soviet leaders, acting on Bolshevik orders, tried
to disarm the Czechs, more serious fighting