A similar change happened in Moldova (which first was Autonomous Moldovan Republic as a part of Ukraine and then Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic within USSR after WWII).
Moldovan was declared a language similar to, but different from Romanian, and was given a Cyrillic script [1]. Even though Moldovan is at most a dialect of Romanian.
The Soviet Union was very direct but also very effective in changing entire cultural substrates of millions of people over a very short period of time. Giving languages under its influence Cyrillic scripts was a part of that.
Note: it's not all bleak and bad, as many indigenous people got their alphabets for the first time in history.
Moldovan was declared a language similar to, but different from Romanian, and was given a Cyrillic script [1]. Even though Moldovan is at most a dialect of Romanian.
The Soviet Union was very direct but also very effective in changing entire cultural substrates of millions of people over a very short period of time. Giving languages under its influence Cyrillic scripts was a part of that.
Note: it's not all bleak and bad, as many indigenous people got their alphabets for the first time in history.
[1] Wikipedia has a very detailed page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language?wprov=sfti1