Alphabet War

The name may be derived from the discussions that took place in the early 1830s about the orthography of the Slovenian language ― the term (in German: ABC-Krieg) was first used by Matija Čop in an article of the same name, published 27 July 1833 in the magazine Illyrisches Blatt.

Its second stage began in 1859 after the publication of a proposal by Josef Jireček to remake the Ukrainian writing system on the basis of the Czech alphabet.

[6] Despite its small scale, the Alphabet War somewhat revived the cultural life of Galicia[7] and became an important event in both the scientific and socio-political arenas.

Russophiles believed that the introduction of Latin was aimed at destroying the "all-Russian unity" of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians, which, in their opinion, was ensured through the use of Cyrillic.

[25] Both Moscophiles (including Bohdan Dedyckiy)[26] and intellectuals who initially spoke in favor of Jireček's project opposed the reform.

To counter allegations of inconsistency of the Church Slavonic script with the vernacular Ukrainian language, they proposed to reform the Cyrillic alphabet "like Karadžić," rather than replace it.

However, not long afterward a decree was issued by the Kaiser on 10 April 1861, stating that the administration and courts of the Austrian Empire did not have to, but could use Cyrillic in Ukrainian-language documents.

This permissive wording allowed the Galician imperial authority (staffed mostly by Poles) to resist using the Cyrillic alphabet even in Ukrainian-language documents.