The Russian spelling reform of 1917-1918 was very successful – so successful that many young Russians, when confronted with a pre-1917 Russian text, do not know how to read ???, ??? or ?ея?. However, many reforms of writing systems have not met with success. Among them are the 1930 attempt to convert Russian to the Latin alphabet; the Second Chinese Character Simplification Scheme of 1977, which the PRC government had to withdraw in 1986; the French spelling reform of 1990, which is still ignored by most of the public; and the Latinisation of Uzbek of 1993-1995, which, even twenty years later and after the end of the twice extended ‘transitional period’ of altogether fifteen years, has not been implemented by newspapers and magazines.
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