From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography

"The most recent large reform of the Russian spelling was prepared by Aleksey
Shakhmatov and carried out shortly after the 1917 Revolution. The Russian
orthography was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and pronominal
inflections, replacing the letters ѣ (Yat) with е, і (depending on the
context of Moscovian pronunciation) and ѵ with и, ѳ with ф, and
dropping the archaic mute yer ъ (hard sign) in the terminal position following a
consonant (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old
Slavonic open-syllable system). For instance Рыбинскъ for Рыбинск ("Rybinsk")."

... a rather simplistic explanation, but accurate. I recommend reading the whole
Wikipedia article to understand the reform in a clearer context. The loss of the
direct historical connection was a linguistic tragedy, but it did make the goals
of public literacy quite a bit more attainable. The spelling rules are
admittedly easier, but it's a rather utilitarian and inelegant system compared
to what we had previously.

Nikita

--- In ustav@yahoogroups.com, Philip Silouan Thompson <himself@...> wrote:
>
> Nikita Simmons wrote:
> > ...most texts available on the web are in modern orthography.
>
> Besides the obvious cosmetic presentation of the typeface, what is the
> difference between the old orthography and the modern? I read Serbian
> badly, Russian and Slavonic *very* minimally, and had assumed the modern
> Cyrillic orthography was simply an updating of the look of the letters.
> Is there a more significant difference?
>
> Silouan
>