I was inspired by the recent interview of Olzhas Suleimenov (he is introduced there as a "historian, linguist, Slavicist, turkologist, poet", which is true) to the Israeli weekly 'Okna', where he repeats the common misconception that "the Latin alphabet of the Soviet Turks appeared in imitation of the Turks."
In fact, things were different: the Turkic peoples of the USSR, including the New Turkey,got the Latin alphabet in Soviet Baku, at the Universal Turkic Congress in the late 1920s. And this might sound odd, but the initiators of the transition from the Arabic script to the Latin alphabet were the Russian orientalists who believed that the adoption of the Cyrillic by the Turks, and there were such cases in imperial Russia, could be perceived as a continuation of the old colonial policy of the czarist regime, an evidence of assimilation. Paradoxically, they even thought in the Soviet Union, for a very short time though, to switch to the Latin alphabet from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, in order to ... speed up the "world revolution," which the Bolshevik leaders were crazy about, choosing the strategy and tactics of the forcible export of the revolution worldwide throughout the following Soviet years.
But Turkey and the Turkic peoples of the USSR went in different ways: after a little more than ten years, the Latin decree from above was abolished in the USSR with the replacement of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
Turkey, as a result of rejection of the Arabic script (and the abolition of the caliphate) and the adoption of the Latin alphabet, became rapidly Europeanized, becoming a secular state, which was also facilitated by the gradual, but increasingly accelerated replacement of Arabic words, amounting to one-third of the vocabulary of Turkic languages, with Turkic words or largely by neologisms, as a result of which the percentage of native Turkic words in Turkey amounted to 70% by the end of the 1960s (the process, largely artificial, is now suspended).
Due to ideological reasons, contacts with the Turkish language - and with Turkey in general - were forbidden in the Soviet Union, and even the use of Turkish neologisms by Soviet Turks (in particular, Azerbaijanis), largely successful and appropriate to the nature of the language, was punished as a manifestation of nationalism or Pan-Turkism.
Turkic languages and peoples were increasingly coming under the influence of the Russian language in terms of style and vocabulary, while the replacement of Turkic words by the Russian ones was viewed as a manifestation of internationalism, the interaction of "related" languages with each other was replaced by the connection of each language only with the Russian.
Today, the Turkic languages of sovereign states (judging by Azerbaijan) under conditions of free development on their own basis, interaction with other Turkic languages, and, first of all, with the Turkish language, have been given an opportunity for comprehensive enrichment.
Along with this, the process of forming a vivid and original Russian-language creativity among representatives of non-Russian peoples - these are the positive aspects of assimilation - is underway, and not in the third or fourth generations, as Pushkin or Lermontov, but already in the second generation in the 20th century there were foreign masters who, along with ethnic Russians, develop great Russian literature. So many names here - not only Olzhas Suleimenov, but also many others, it's easy to start, but it's difficult to stop - Osip Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, Chingiz Aitmatov, Fazil Iskander, Vasil Bykov, Bulat Okudzhava, Timur Zulfikarov, Ion Druță, Friedrich Gorenstein ...
