One story about the Russian alphabet (part 2)

Alexander Sumarokov, a famous Russian poet and playwright, called the letter Э a fright. Mikhail Lomonosov, the greatest Russian polymath, scientist and writer, in his Russian Grammar (a book about the Russian language) noted that "we do not need a newly-invented or, to be more accurate, an old Е, turned inside out, as if we have got started creating new letters for foreign accents.  We are close to making our alphabet a new Chinese. In fact, the letter Э was used in loanwords mostly (except for traditional Russian pronouns and interjections, such as этот, этакий, эхма, эвон, эге-ге, etc.). However, it was helpful to read, for example, proper names: Эврипид (Euripides), Эвклид (Euclid), Эрмитаж (the Hermitage). In the past, when the letter Э didn't exist, Russian people couldn't differentiate the initial sound of these words from that of Египет (Egypt) or Европа (Europe), which included a [ j ] at the beginning.
The necessity of bringing the letter "Й" into the Slavic alphabet has been discussed by philologists more than once as well.
At the start of of the XIX century, the Russian alphabet had 37 letters, but there were still doublet letters: I (Dotted I), Ѵ (Izhitsa), Ѳ (Fita), and Ѣ (Yat). These "excess" letters weren't excluded from the alphabet until 1917-1918 only.

Again, fine work!