PETER THE GREAT REFORMS
Author: Stjepan Fileki

translation into English: Vesna Janković

At the end of the 17 th century Peter 1st the Great liberated the Russian territories from the Swedes thus creating big and powerful state. Besides, he also deserves credit for the renaissance of Russia, for his endeavors to make underdeveloped, rigid, traditional society closer to the European standards in culture, economy, trade, education, technology and manufacture. Some of the orders he passed referred to the dress code and obligatory beard shaving both among the civilians and military.

One of his important merits was reform of the script used in book printing. In the period between 1707 and 1710, as to his order, essentially changed Russian typeface was prepared and produced. The then used old Church-Slavonic semi-ustav typeface was not suitable for the needs resulting from many scientific and cultural fields. (Ustav and semi-ustav are the Cyrillic letterform evolved from Greek Uncial) His reform proved to be important for the further development of the typefaces of other Orthodox nations.

The first considerably modified typeface was designed and made in the Dutch printing works Jan Tessing and Kopiewicz . This new typeface was soon used for printing important documents, making geographic maps and on copper-plate-engravings used for printing illustrations.

Peter the Great himself worked together with the Dutch masters in making drawings for some types' shapes. The work was finalized by the boyar Musin-Pushkin and typographer Mikhail Yefremov. The final form contained eight different sizes of the types and forms (see the picture). The first and the fourth columns represent the forms of the Cyrillic decorative ustav, while in between them are newly shaped types made as to Dutch antiqua.

Peter the Great himself drew the shapes of the Cyrillic decorative ustav based on which a new script was made. It was promulgated on January 29, 1710 and it was called civil script. The civil script did not have developed forms of lowercase letters which until today has been problem of printed Cyrillic letters.

In the Serbian Cyrillic the forms of 20 lowercase letters are only in size reduced, forms of the uppercase letters. The characteristics of the letters are: vigorous, strong basic vertical strokes, very thin horizontal strokes and serifs which infuse into basic stroke under right angles; round letters are designed on the principle of slightly slanted axes. These two shortages, rudimentary forms of lowercase letters and letters' design as to two different axes has remained till today in the cast letters for books printing.

The Peter's script was used, without being essentially modified, until 1740 when in the printing works of the Petersburg Academy of Science it underwent reshaping and got new form. That new script contained no decorative elements which were inherent to the Russian alphabet applied in printing Russian books in the Amsterdam printing works. This very fact speaks about the originality of Peter's civil script resulting from Russian national culture improvement that characterized Peter's the Great era.

The changes in the Russian civil script after Peter's era are found in the shapes of letters of the Petersburg Academy of Science Typography. This typography could be compared to the best western typographies as to its wide assortment. In those days it was already possible to make matrixes and letters castings which quality equaled those produced in the West. Peter's civil script was based on the Dutch antiqua. New Academy's script was based on the engraved letters of the Elizabethan period, late baroque of the 18 th century thirties and forties. In that time an engravers school was founded at the Academy. In special editions cursive was used, which appeared in the Russian printing at the end of the thirties. The links with the west regarding the style were still uninterrupted. At the end of the 18 th century a fruitful cooperation with the French publisher Didot was achieved which, naturally, influenced the typographic face style.

The changes that appear at the end of the 18 th century are found in the Moscow University editions; they are recognized by the forms of the antiqua letters of the “old style”. Some letters are the same as the Latin ones. Many standardizations of the civil script letters in accordance with the Latin models done at the beginning in the printing works of the Moscow University defined further development in the first half of the 19 th century.

With the final establishing of the shape of the Russian civil alphabet letters, Russian script relied and developed further stylistically on the model of Latin typographic style.

LITERATURЕ

Васил Йончев: Шрифтът през вековете, Български художник, София 1964.

А. Шицгал: Графическая основа русского гражданского шрифта, Москва – Ленинград, 1947.

We are grateful to
PRO HELVETIA
Swiss Cultural Programme
Serbia and Montenegro
for the support which enabled this translation.