"Гылым" баспасы. Astana, 2016. 682 p. The book under review is a publication of materials on the Romanization of the written languages of the Turkic and other languages of the USSR. Most of it consists of documents published for the first time, first of all, documents of the All-Union Central Committee of the New Alphabet (CCNA), which worked in Baku during these years, then in Moscow, for 1926-1936; to them are added decrees of the Soviet and party bodies relating to 1923-1928 on the adoption of the new alphabet as the state alphabet. Documents are published both in the form of photocopies of the originals (p. 343-638) and in the printed version (p.40-342). Their publication is preceded by a foreword by A. D. Vasiliev (p. 6-9) and his brief outline of the history of the creation and introduction of Latin alphabets in the USSR, primarily for the Turkic languages (p.10-37). Published documents are kept in the archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The first two decades of Soviet power were a period of active state policy for the development of many languages and scripts in the country. This policy was significantly different from the language policy of the tsarist government, which was primarily aimed at spreading the Russian language. V. I. Lenin formulated its foundations even before the revolution: "A democratic state should definitely recognize the complete freedom of native languages and reject any privileges of one of the languages" [Lenin, 1961, pp. 71-72]. I note that the harsh language policy of the tsarist government caused protest not only among the Bolsheviks. The greatest linguist of that time, a left-wing liberal in his views, I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay wrote: "It is not this or that language that is dear to me, but the right to speak and teach in this language is dear to me. I value the right of a person to remain in his own language, to choose it for himself, the right not to be alienated from the comprehensive use of his own language, the right ... Читать далее