had presented a short report, in which he poked fun at the new spelling rules of 1918 and urged that they be "reformed" by restoring the banned letter "Yat". After his arrest, Likhachev was confronted with the paper by a Soviet secret police interrogator, who screamed, "What do you mean by language reform? Perhaps we won't even have any language at all under Socialism!"

After nine months in jail, the young scientist was unlawfully exiled