Vasily Adodurov, Adjunct of the Academy of Sciences and a contemporary of Lomonosov, played a weighty part as early as the 1730s in establishing the norms of Russian orthography

Vasily Adodurov, Adjunct of the Academy of Sciences and a contemporary of Lomonosov, played a weighty part as early as the 1730s in establishing the norms of Russian orthography. True, many of his ideas were too progressive and remained no more than a project. He thought it sensible to rid the Russian alphabet of the letter «ъ» (yer), «which signifies no sound whatever». Adodurov would also have abolished fita and izhitsa from Russian orthography, and replaced «i» with «и». As you know, after 1918, that is, almost two hundred years later, these proposals were indeed put into practice.