KARELIYA

Kareliya: translation

Anethnic republicof the Russian Federation. Covering lands annexed from Sweden in the 18th century, Kareliya was created as anAutonomous Soviet Socialist Republic(ASSR) in 1923. In 1940, the region was enlarged with territory fromFinlandand renamed as the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) as part of a larger effort to reincorporate all territories lost to Russia after World War I (1914–1918).

Kareliya holds the distinction of the onlyunion republicto be downgraded to an ASSR within Russia (Abkhaziawas demoted to an ASSR ofGeorgiain 1931), which occurred in 1956. Kareliya is part of the NorthwesternFederal Districtand the NorthernEconomic Region. It is bordered by theMurmansk,Archangel,Vologda, andLeningrad oblasts, as well as sharing a 723-kilometerlong international border with Finland.

It is washed by the White Sea, and sits on Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. Kareliya covers 172,400 square kilometers. Half of the territory is forestedtaiga, and the northwestern areas are generally marshy. It is considered one of the most pristine areas of the Russian Federation and has attracted an increasing number of eco-touristsfrom Europe. The regional capital is Petrozavodsk (pop. 266,000). Kareliya’seconomyis dependent on forestry (particularly pulp and paper manufacture) and animal husbandry. It is also a site of rare ores such as chromium, titanium, molybdenum, vanadium, and uranium.Its population of more than 700,000 includesethnic Russians(77 percent),Karelians(9 percent), Belarusians (5 percent),Ukrainians(3 percent), Finns (2 percent), and Vepsians (1 percent). Many “Red Finns” came as settlers from Finland after the Bolshevik Revolution, occupying an important political niche untilJosephStalin’s political purges of the 1930s. Further internal migrations of Finns from Murmansk and Leningrad occurred during the 1940s and 1950s, swelling the Finnish population of the region. While Finnish was once an importantlanguagein the republic, it was dropped from officialdom in the 1950s.Russianhas long been the dominant language in the republic, but Karelian—a Finnic tongue closely related to Finnish, but written in Cyrillic—has seen a revival since 1989.

The first premier of the republic was Viktor Stepanov, a member of the Sovietnomenklatura>; he was succeeded by the current head of the republic, Sergey Katanandov. The former mayor of Petrozavodsk (1990–1998) and the region’s prime minister from 1998 to 2002, Katanandov was reappointed byVladimir Putinin 2006. His recent efforts have focused on establishing a reliable legal climate in the republic. He is a close ally ofYury Luzhkov, and has signed a number of lucrative deals with Moscow, particularly on construction materials.Unemploymenthas been reduced to 3.3 percent, one of the lowest rates in the Russian Federation. He has taken a strong stance against the return of portions of Finland annexed to Kareliya during World War II (about 12 percent of Finland’s pre-1940 territory), a policy advocated by some right-wing Finns but not endorsed by Helsinki. Regardless, nearly half of all residents of Kareliya (Russians included) favorseparatismfor the republic.