How did Russian affect the roles of Tajik and Ossetic during the Soviet period?

During the Soviet period, both Tajik and Ossetic received official encouragement as languages of their respective cultures, and both were adapted to use a modified Cyrillic alphabet. Despite this official recognition, the Russian language effectively displaced them as the primary language of administration.12

As European Russians migrated into cities across Central Asia, Russian became the dominant urban language, while native languages like Tajik were increasingly confined to rural areas. Furthermore, Tajik faced additional pressure from Uzbek, an unrelated Turkic language, which competed with it for prominence in the region. While these languages were utilized in literature and cultural life, their functional roles in public and administrative spheres were significantly curtailed by the imposition of Russian as the lingua franca of the Soviet state.31