It was known that, in the period of tsar Russia Azerbaijani people used Arab alphabet. Also, during Bolsheviks power in Azerbaijan cosmopolitical experiments were carried out connected with many customs and traditions, as well as the language and alphabet of Azerbaijan people.

Soon the Russian language became the state language in fact.

The Arab alphabet was replaced with the Latin alphabet in the late 1920s. Cyrillic was adopted less than ten years later.

Publishing-printing work in the country had carried out parallel by two alphabets: half of the newspapers were published in the Latin graphic alphabet, half of them in the Cyrillic alphabet.

On 18 June, 2001 national leader Heydar Aliyev signed a decree “On improvement of state language application”. According to the degree, the transition to Azerbaijani alphabet on Latin letters started from August 1, 2001.

According to Haydar Aliyev’s decree dated August 9, 2001, August 1 - is celebrated as the Day of Azerbaijani Alphabet and Azerbaijani language every year.