1917-2017 One hundred years of graphic (r)evolution in the Soviet space

Deadline for submitting proposal: 30th of August 2016

The last century has witnessed dramatic changes in the written history of many communities of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, first of all the elimination of illiteracy (ликвидация безграмотности), which consisted in the creation of new alphabets for unwritten languages and the change or simply reform of already existing ones (вооружение или перевооружение письменностью in SUCHOTIN 1932: 95).
As it is well known, this ideologically-driven activity (SEBBA 2006) involved different strategies: Latinisation campaign in the 20s and 30s (BALDAUF 1993), Cyrillicisation from 1938 (FRINGS 2012), again Latinisation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Aiming at the creation of a national identity based on language (GRENOBLE 2003: 20), this process was accompanied by a significant development of linguistic and sociolinguistic research work (SIMONATO 2008, BRANDIST 2003), which was carried out by such eminent linguists as E. D. Polivanov, N. F. Jakovlev and others.

These questions will be looked at from different perspectives in the special issue of «Studi Slavistici» (volume 14 – 2017). We invite therefore to submit papers dealing with the following topics:

Contributors are expected to discuss theoretical and/or descriptive issues using data from different languages of the USSR and its successor states.

Proposals, with title, a short abstract (no more than 2,000 characters with spaces) and a brief profile of the author (300-600 characters) should be sent to studislavistici@associazioneslavisti.com by the 30th of August 2016. Accepted languages are Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and any of the Slavic languages.
Notification of acceptance or non-acceptance will be communicated by the end of September 2016.

The deadline for the submission of the accepted papers, which should not exceed 60,000 signs, spaces and bibliography included, is the 30th of March 2017.

Studi Slavistici
ISSN 1824-7601 (online);
ISSN 1824-761X (print)
Info: dott.ssa Giuseppina Larocca (studislavistici@associazioneslavisti.com)
Print Issues: Firenze University Press, Via Cittadella, 7 – 50122 Firenze – Italy