Today’s type designers routinely adopt the familiar shapes of Cyrillic letters that predominated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A variety of alternate historical forms remains untapped. This presentation will investigate key milestones in evolution of the Cyrillic typographic letter over the past two centuries. We hope the increased awareness of the variety of historical character shapes will provide type designers a greater opportunity to find precise and period-appropriate design solutions. Resulting solutions could go a long way to expand stylistic range in Cyrillic typography while maintaining historical integrity.