Vehicularizing the vernacular: using the periodical press to popularize vernacular languages in Soviet Turkic communities

ABSTRACT The study of language and script change among the Turkic communities of the Soviet Union often focuses on the switch from Arabic to Latin scripts. Less attention is paid to adaptations of the Arabic script to Turkic vernaculars, and to attempts aimed at convincing the literate masses of their usefulness. In the current paper, I aim to do just that. By making use of Turkic-language periodicals from Crimea, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, I throw light on the era before Latin. I explore writers’, editors’ and other intellectuals’ efforts to vernacularize written languages and enforce national boundaries along Soviet lines through changes to the dominant script. More than this, I investigate these actors’ use of magazines to convince their readers of new vernacular, language- and territory-based national identities. In doing so, I demonstrate that periodicals became implements of national consciousness creation targeted at the Turkic citizens of the early Soviet Union.