Editing Soviet Union (section)

=== Language ===
{{Main|Languages of the Soviet Union|Reforms of Russian orthography}}
Under Lenin, the government gave small language groups their own writing systems.{{sfn|Comrie|1981|pp=3–4}} The development of these writing systems was highly successful, even though some flaws were detected. During the later days of the USSR, countries with the same [[multilingual]] situation implemented similar policies. A serious problem when creating these writing systems was that the languages differed [[dialect]]ally greatly from each other.{{sfn|Comrie|1981|p=4}} When a language had been given a writing system and appeared in a notable publication, it would attain 'official language' status. There were many minority languages which never received their own writing system; therefore, their speakers were forced to have a [[second language]].{{sfn|Comrie|1981|p=25}} There are examples where the government retreated from this policy, most notably under Stalin where education was discontinued in languages that were not widespread. These languages were then assimilated into another language, mostly Russian.{{sfn|Comrie|1981|p=26}} During World War II, some minority languages were banned, and their speakers accused of collaborating with the enemy.{{sfn|Comrie|1981|p=27}}

As the most widely spoken of the Soviet Union's many languages, Russian ''de facto'' functioned as an official language, as the 'language of interethnic communication' ({{langx|ru|link=no|язык межнационального общения}}), but only assumed the ''[[de jure]]'' status as the official national language in 1990.<ref>{{cite web |script-title=ru:ЗАКОН СССР ОТ 24 April 1990 О ЯЗЫКАХ НАРОДОВ СССР |publisher=[[Government of the Soviet Union]] |date=24 April 1990 |url=http://legal-ussr.narod.ru/data01/tex10935.htm |trans-title=Law of the USSR from 24 April 1990 on languages of the USSR |access-date=24 October 2010 |language=ru |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160508201331/http://legal-ussr.narod.ru/data01/tex10935.htm |archive-date=8 May 2016 |url-status=dead}}</ref>