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Comment by revengerwizard | Hacker News Reader

Cyrillic has been used as a political weapon under the Soviet Union.

For example, in soviet Moldova it was mandatory to learn to read and write cyrillic at schools. They effectively wanted to eradicate the local language and culture in favor of russian.

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No, you're wishfully thinking. What made people absorb the Soviet version of history and politics, was school curriculum, and central TV, and teaching Russian to keep them in orbit. Cyrillic alone won't allow this.

It was one of multiple tools that were used to reinforce each other. The alphabet, of all things, obviously plays a huge role in cultural indoctrination and assimilation. You're being strangely defensive about this.

Oh, yes, the alphabet is used to write texts to convey evil empires' messages! Why am I so strangely defensive, really? Well, it's the most ridiculous argument people use here. Somebody is conquered, governed -- you may say colonized, -- there's army and police, but you all are pointing at the alphabet.

Like, if you're on the USA/Israeli side in the current conflict, well, maybe quit using Arabic numerals, switch to Roman?

Being a person grew up in Soviet Moldova I can't stop laughing at the nonsence you have just produced. In 1980s we had two types of schools - those with education in Russian and those with education in Moldavian language. "Russian" schools had obligatory 4 academic hours for Moldavian language classes, "Moldavian" schools had same amount of hours for Russian language classes. All banners, all documents, everything was written in two languages - it was OBLIGATORY. There was no single official document without two language versions of the same text. And btw, educate yourself - first alphabet of Medieval Moldova was... CYRILLIC!

When Moldova Adopted CyrillicMedieval Era: The Cyrillic script arrived between the 9th and 10th centuries. It was introduced alongside Christianity, primarily through the influence of the First Bulgarian Empire. This script became the official writing system for the Principality of Moldavia when it was founded in the 14th century.

Oldest Romanian document was written in Cyrillic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neac%C8%99u%27s_letter

My parents also grew up in Soviet Moldova, I don't know what you want to educate me about.

The Soviet Union specifically pushed the idea that "Moldovan" was separate from Romanian and imposed the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet in the MSSR while Romania itself used the Latin script. This was of course only one part of a broader [0] russification effort, alongside deportations and population transfers.

I'm also not sure how Cyrillic having been adopted in medieval times is relevant to this topic, unless you're trying to justify or connect older usages.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#Bessarabia/Moldo...

"The Soviet Union specifically pushed the idea that "Moldovan" was separate from Romanian and imposed the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet in the MSSR while Romania itself used the Latin script."

You forget very important point - what you all MSSR or "Moldova" or "Moldavia" was never a part of Romania (except Romanian occupation 1917-1944).

That territory has been annexed by the Russian Empire from Ottoman Empire around 1812, LONG BEFORE such thing as "Romania" appeared on the World' map...

During that time western regions of Moldavia and Wallachia were still using... CYRILLIC alphabet, derived from the Old Church Slavonic (or Bulgarian) alphabet.

So, please, as I said - educate yourself.

Didn't Romania use Cyrillic at a point in time?

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