BTW, in USSR in 1920s-1930s 66 languages were latinised (including Kazakh): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinisation_in_the_Soviet_Uni...
Latinization of Russian language was also planned, (wikipedia in Russian): https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA...
Later all that was canceled and Cyrillic was used instead.
Was something else used for Russian prior to Cyrillic?
Also here is an English language version of your Wikipedia link:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinisation_in_the_Soviet_U...
Earlier versions had a few more characters, and Old Slavonic / Church Slavonic has different vocabulary and verb forms vs. today's Russian. Similar to the differences between Olde English and today's English.
I think that you're thinking of the Modern English of Shakespeare's era or Middle English (e.g. 'Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote'), not Old English (e.g. 'Hwæt we Gar-dena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon').
Middle English is very similar to Modern English, and can be read with relative ease. Old English has to be studied as a foreign language.
The comparison to Old English with ash ⟨æ⟩, eth ⟨ð⟩, thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ sounds appropriate.
Note, however, that OCS does not have an ancestral relationship to Russian - it is a Southern Slavic language, most similar to ancestors of today's Bulgarian. Old Russian texts (such as The Tale of Igor) are written in a different language - Old Russian (which existed long before the split into Russian, Ukrainian and so on, so the name "Old East Slavic" is sometimes used).
No, it's a different article, and I link to it too.
> Was something else used for Russian prior to Cyrillic?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script It's elder than Cyrillic, but it was very little used in ancient Rus and was mostly used by south and western Slavs where Slavic writing was originally created.
Later, when Stalin ditched all that, and came up with "socialism in one country" and revival of imperial patriotism, these attempts were scrapped, and Cyrillic became the common script for all Soviet languages instead (even those that were already Latinized). This was in line with the new national policy, which presented the Russian nation as the "bigger brother" of other ethnicities, e.g.: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945...