One does wonder how soviets ever managed to program their computers.
Министерство здравоохранения => Минздрав (Ministry of Health => Minheal)
Министерство юстиции => Минюст (Ministry of Justice => Minjust)
etc, etc. As a foreigner, I found that quite peculiar though it doesn't seem to be as common now as it was before but it's still noticeable in everyday life.
Yep, that's one way. But it make things harder. If you set up Alt to use as English layout modifier to type {} you need to press two modifiers now: Alt + Shift. However I agree it's not the main issue.
> The English alphabet isn't the Latin/Greek alphabet either.
At least it's Latin.
> And I am absolutely astounded that Russians apparently have never invented the concept of an abbreviation or contraction.
Of course such things do exist.. they just don't work very well. English's short words is a relatively distinctive feature which it has developed being a mix of Latin/French/Germanic. For Russian words usually are complex. Var - переменная - prefix пере- + root мен. Yes, you can contract it to `перем.` But it also sounds like contraction of `перемещенная` which is `moved` or `перемещать` which is `move` or `переменный’ which is `variable(meaning: alternating)` and so forth.