Early Changes
The Old Russian language adopted the Cyrillic script, approximately during the 10th century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. An earlier rune-like and possibly syllabic script (common among pre-Christian Slavs, if the attestation of the monk Khrabr is to be believed) was simultaneously discarded, and so thoroughly discouraged that today there are no uncontested specimens of it in existence.
In this way, no sharp distinction was drawn between the vernacular language and the liturgical, though the latter was based on South Slavic rather than Eastern Slavic norms. As the language evolved, several letters, notably the yuses (Ѫ, Ѭ, Ѧ, Ѩ) were gradually and unsystematically discarded from both secular and church usage over the next centuries, and not one of several attempts at linguistic standardization properly succeeded.
Read more about this topic: Reforms Of Russian Orthography
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