In January 1918, Russia deleted four letters from its alphabet overnight: ѣ (yat), і (decimal i), ѳ (fita) and ѵ (izhitsa). If you have ever searched for an "old russian font" to read a pre-revolutionary book, a church inscription or a family document, this guide is the decoder you need.
Before 1918, Russian was written with a 35-letter alphabet. The 1918 reform of the Russian alphabet — decreed December 1917, compulsory from 1 January 1918, with a second decree that October — removed four letters and the silent word-final hard sign, leaving the 33 letters still in use today (Wikipedia, "Reforms of Russian orthography").
So "old Russian font" usually means one of three things: text in the pre-revolutionary orthography with its extra letters; a vintage-styled modern typeface (the "old Slavic font" look of wedding invitations and book covers); or the decorative vyaz tradition of Church Slavonic manuscripts. This guide covers all three — with the letters' real history.
Here is the lost set of the pre-revolutionary Russian alphabet: the four eliminated letters, their names, what they sounded like by 1917, and what replaced them:
| Letter | Name | Sound by 1917 | Replaced by | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ѣ | Yat (ять) | /e/ — identical to е | е | дѣти → дети (children) |
| і | Decimal i (и десятеричное) | /i/ — identical to и | и | Россія → Россия (Russia) |
| ѳ | Fita (фита) | /f/ — identical to ф | ф | мараѳонъ → марафон (marathon) |
| ѵ | Izhitsa (ижица) | /i/ — identical to и | и (sometimes в) | Сѵнодъ → Синод (synod) |
A fifth change: the silent word-final hard sign (ъ) was dropped — Петроградъ became Петроград — making text roughly one-thirtieth shorter.
Every eliminated letter had become a pure memorisation burden — it marked no sound another letter didn't already cover:
Yat was the worst offender. By the early 20th century it was pronounced exactly like е, so there was no phonetic way to know which words needed it — children memorised long lists of yat-words, and spelling guides contradicted each other. Abolishing it was the reform's single biggest simplification.
Decimal i was mechanical but fragile: it appeared before vowels and before й (Іисусъ, раіонъ). Its one famous virtue was distinguishing міръ ("world, universe") from миръ ("peace") — a distinction the reform sacrificed, creating the homograph мир.
Fita was the Greek letter theta, used only in Greek-origin words and pronounced /f/ — indistinguishable from ф. By 1917 it was already rare (ѳеатръ had largely become театръ), so its removal raised few objections.
Izhitsa, from the Greek upsilon, had essentially died on its own: by 1900 only two common words still used it — мѵро ("chrism") and сѵнодъ ("synod"). The reform merely finished it off; it wasn't even mentioned in the decree.
Rather than guess, I tested the actual font files the Russian tool loads: I downloaded the regular-weight Cyrillic and Cyrillic-extended subsets for each of the tool's 30 font families and checked each file's glyph coverage for the four pre-1918 letters (fontTools, 2026-10-15). The results:
That last point matters in practice: Marck Script is the tool's signature script style, and it cannot display ѣ, ѳ or ѵ. For old-letter text, switch to Old Standard TT, PT Serif or Cormorant, which include the full historic set. (Bold and italic weights were not tested; browsers download the Cyrillic-extended subset automatically when such a character appears.)
The old letters survive in several places:
One common confusion: vyaz (вязь) lettering. Vyaz — from вѩзати, "to bind" — is a decorative Cyrillic tradition in which letters fuse into a continuous ornament. It appeared in South Slavic monuments in the 13th century, flourished in Russia from the late 14th century, and developed considerably under Ivan the Terrible (Wikipedia, "Vyaz (Cyrillic calligraphy)"). It is a style of decoration, not the same thing as pre-1918 civil-script spelling. For the full vyaz tradition and the other classic Russian lettering styles, see our guide to Russian calligraphy styles.
Decoding pre-revolutionary Russian is a substitution exercise — apply these rules:
| You see | Read it as | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ѣ | е | глѣдѣлъ → глядел (glyadel) |
| і | и | usually before a vowel or й: Іисусъ → Иисус |
| ѳ | ф | Greek loanwords: Ѳедоръ → Фёдор |
| ѵ | и (rarely в) | Егѵпетъ → Египет |
| ъ | nothing at word end | волнъ → волн; kept inside words (подъемъ → подъём) |
Watch adjective endings too: pre-revolutionary -аго became modern -ого, so новаго reads as нового.
One worked example — the opening of Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman in its original spelling: «На берегу пустынныхъ волнъ / Стоялъ онъ, думъ великихъ полнъ». Strip the terminal hard signs and you get the modern text: «На берегу пустынных волн / Стоял он, дум великих полн».
For the 33 surviving letters and how they look in handwriting, see our guide to the Russian cursive alphabet.
The old letters are Unicode characters, not a font — Unicode is a character-encoding standard, and any font that includes the glyphs can display them. Their code points: ѣ U+0463, і U+0456, ѳ U+0473, ѵ U+0475 (capitals: U+0462, U+0406, U+0472, U+0474).
Four letters were removed: ѣ (yat, replaced by е), і (decimal i, replaced by и), ѳ (fita, replaced by ф) and ѵ (izhitsa, replaced by и). The reform also eliminated the silent hard sign (ъ) at the ends of words, shrinking the alphabet from 35 to 33 letters.
By 1917, yat was pronounced exactly like the letter е (/e/). There was no phonetic way to tell which words needed it, so schoolchildren had to memorise hundreds of spellings — which is why removing it was the reform's single biggest simplification.
In pre-revolutionary spelling, міръ (with decimal і) meant 'world' or 'universe', while миръ (with и) meant 'peace'. The 1918 reform eliminated і, so both are now spelled мир — one of several homographs the reform created.
The word-final hard sign was silent — a leftover from an older open-syllable system. Dropping it (Петроградъ became Петроград) made Russian text roughly one-thirtieth shorter and saved significant typesetting effort.
Yes — they are Unicode characters, not a font: ѣ is U+0463, і is U+0456, ѳ is U+0473 and ѵ is U+0475. You can enter them via a character map (Windows Character Map, macOS Character Viewer, Linux Ctrl+Shift+U) and paste them anywhere, including the Russian calligraphy generator — but only in fonts that include those glyphs.
Vyaz (вязь, from 'to bind') is a decorative Cyrillic lettering tradition in which letters are fused into a continuous ornament. It appeared in South Slavic monuments in the 13th century and flourished in Russia from the late 14th century, especially under Ivan the Terrible. It is a decorative style, not the same thing as pre-1918 civil-script spelling.
Paste ѣ і ѳ ѵ into the Russian calligraphy generator and preview them in 30 Cyrillic fonts — from historic Old Standard TT to modern serifs — then copy your text or download a PNG.
Open the Russian calligraphy generator