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I have searched the Internet and found that that was a side effect of 1918 spelling reform, as part of which the use of "ъ" at the end of the word was abolished. Communist viewed the reform as a way...

AFAIK because communists tried to abolish "ъ" from the alphabet and replace it with apostrophe. In soviet times (even in late 80's) you could often see writings like "об'явление", "под'eзд" and so...