Where East Meets West: The Last Stand of Finns and Karelians in Contemporary Karelia?

Abstract

The northwestern flank of the Slavic expanse of settlement, the territory of today's Russian Karelia, constitutes an age-old site of Slavic-Baltic-Finnic contact. The Karelians and Vepsians, two Finno-Ugrian groups, are a part of the indigenous population of Karelia. The settlements of the former are found mainly in the western half of the present-day Karelian Republic. The Vepsians live on the southwestern coastal strip of Lake Onega, south of the capital of the republic, Petrozavodsk. Vepsian settlements are also found outside Karelia, in Vologda and Leningrad provinces. For several centuries, the Russians have formed a majority of the inhabitants both near Lake Onega and on the west coast of the White Sea. In contrast to the Karelians, Vepsians and Russians, Finns can be considered newcomers to Karelia.

Promoting Heritage Language in Northwest Russia

“…The growth in the urban population of Karelia was also due to the construction of the railroad, which was built from St. Petersburg to Murmansk through Karelia (Laine 2001). As a consequence, many loggers moved north for work, especially from Belorussia and Ukraine (Yegorov 2006).…”

“…The Soviet army had defeated the Finnish forces, which accepted the peace proposals made by the USSR. With the end of the war, Finland lost the Karelian Isthmus and Northern Ladoga (Laine 2001). Only a couple of months after the end of the Winter War, KASSR was transformed into Karelian and Finnish SSR (Kolesov et al 2007).…”

“…Alongside the policy of liquidation of the villages without prospects, most of the kolkhozy disappeared, while the number of the centralizing sovkhozy increased (Laine 2001). And this meant leaving the sense of unity and community, sebr , which had long characterized the Vepsian rural lifestyle.…”

“…A total of 53 primary schools and seven secondary schools were opened (Strogal'shchikova 2008a, 220). Indeed, the Soviet aim to reach out to the various ethnic groups in order to form the Soviet citizen initially involved the creation of an alphabet, the creation of a standard language, followed by the production of teaching material (Hirsch 2000(Hirsch , 2005Laine 2001;Zamyatin 2013). Under the Soviets the peoples of the North had similar experiences in regard to literacy (Vakhtin 2005).…”

Monolingual and Bilingual Practices: Reversing Power Relations during a Festivity in Pondala

“…In Karelia, the urban population rose by 325,000 (Conquest 1986). The growth in the population of Karelia was also due to the construction of the railroad, which was built from St. Petersburg to Murmansk through Karelia (Laine 2001). This enabled many loggers to move north for work, especially from Belorussia and Ukraine (Yegorov 2006).…”