change of russian orthography after 1917?

[Clemence]

I found this in the imdb trivia on The Barber of Siberia, I never heard of changes in russian orthography, only in the calandar. maybe someone here knows more, why did they have to make changes and if those were important or not?

[Forum Admin]

There some small changes to the orthography after the Revolution. One "ye" symbol was deleted and the soft-sign was changed.

[Sarushka]

From indiana.edu:

The orthographic reform [of 1917-18] eliminated 4 letters (I i, Ѣ ѣ, Ѳ ѳ, Ѵ ѵ) from the Russian alphabet, and greatly restricted the use of ъ (tverdyi znak)


Much more information here:
http://www.indiana.edu/~libslav/slavcatman/RussianSpellingCheatsheet.html