The Soviet Union (USSR) is an immense multinational and multilingual country. At the time of the Revolution (1917) there were 150 national languages spoken in the USSR and 180 recognized linguistic groups, however, 70% of the total population of the USSR was illiterate and the literacy rate of the Middle Asia varied from 1% to 5%. After 1917, mass…

This article reports on the language planning efforts in the non-Russian republics of the USSR, where the Turkic languages spoken are highly divergent from Russian. Specifically described are the cities of Baku in Azerbaijan, the language in question being Azerbaijani, and Ashkhabad, in Turkmenistan, the language being Turkmen. The chief language…