Chinese Writing: Soviet Experiments of the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Attempts to translate Chinese writing from a hieroglyphic basis to a phonetic one have been known since the 19th century. In the 1920s in the Soviet Union, for political, “technical” and other reasons, a course was taken to transfer hieroglyphic writing to a Latin basis. This process also affected the Chinese language. The second reason for the course towards the romanization of Chinese writing was the hope of the USSR authorities for the development of the revolutionary movement in China — the Latin alphabet was considered to be one of the “revolutionization” aspects for Chinese population. In 1929, the “Project of the Chinese alphabet on a Latinized basis” was published in the USSR. In 1931, the revised project was approved at a conference in Vladivostok. However, the subsequent introduction of the new Chinese alphabet in the USSR gradually turned into clashes “with political overtones”. The main “stumbling block” was the orientation of this alphabet towards “foreign” (“English”) standards, which some Soviet experts considered a “gross political mistake.” After gradual shift away from romanization in the USSR in 1935 and Japan’s attack on China in 1937, the romanization of Chinese writing lost its relevance. In general, the experiment with Chinese writing was an original page of “language construction” in the USSR, although in fact it ended in failure.