According to the scholar Peremilovskij (translated):

"There was in [Rus'] a time when, by a simple glance, one could unerringly tell from another's writing what political orientation the author possessed...

"In reality, neither side cared any great deal about the hard sign (yer) itself; for neither was it the hard sign (yer) of Russian spelling - it was but the written symbol of a political worldview for which some stood, and which others fought to topple." ("New or Old Orthography?" p. 8)

In On Russian Orthography, Kul'man notes (translated):
"Opposition and revolutionary sentiments grew...in the old orthography many began to recognize one of the methods by which the government held the people in darkness. This notion was especially strong among village teachers..." (p. 9)

Granted, these particular authors are making reference to sentiments of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, respectively. However, based on the rather obvious sloppy treatment of spelling in earlier lubki, it can be inferred that rebellion against the Tsar almost always included the notion that proper spelling mirrored the hauty, privileged, Western atmosphere of the capital.

A note: the "Western" image predates even Peter, as Tsar Alexis had ventured to introduce theater and other forms of foreign culture to Russia, and Moscow in particular. The impression of an invasion by things alien to Russia certainly enveloped the Old Believers sect, as Patriarch Nikon's reforms borrowed almost exclusively from Greek liturgical texts.

The political spelling in the lubok is of a somewhat cynical nature. Letters like jat' or izhitsa (v), for which memorization of usage posed a particular hardship to provincial learners, are entirely abandoned, while the extremely simplistic jer, or hard sign, is maintained. This may serve to highlight the ridiculousness of this entirely silent letter, especially in the absence of its similarly redundant fellows (jat' and so forth).

It is also interesting to note the almost total lack of words written with the 'f' sound. No originally Slavic word contains an 'f' sound, and most words with 'f' that are not names were specialized and would not be widely embraced by the unskilled laborer (e.g., fakel, filosofiia, flanker, fliaga, forbant).