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rfmcdonaldRussia Profile's Nadezhda Sorokina recently reported news of the very recent Finno-Ugric summit held in Saransk, capital of the Russian autonomous republic of Mordovia.
The Finno-Ugric languages that have served as the basis for this reunion are associated with a group of a couple dozen peoples dispersed across northeastern Europe, from the Danubian plain and the Baltic Sea to the Urals and beyond.
The Hungarians of the Danubian basin and the distantly related Khanty and Mansi of northwestern Siberia, speakers of Ugric languages all, are associated with a branch of the Finno-Ugric language family separate from the geographically and culturally more diverse community of Finnic language-speakers. The relationship of the Ugric languages with the Finnic languages might be more distant still, as The Economist's 2006 article, "The dying fish swims in water" suggests. (The article itself takes its name from what an Estonian linguist thought was the only sentence intelligible in both Finnish and Hungarian, but turns out to be actually unintelligible after all.) Over the 20th century, Finland and Estonia have turned out to be the countries most involved with the Finno-Ugric movement, using it to connect with the vast and diverse assortment of distant ethnic kin described by the Estonia-based Information Centre of Finno-Ugric Peoples.
The Finnic minority peoples in what is now Russia seemed on the verge of independence after the collapse of the First World War, when Ingrians constituted their own state in the hinterlands of St. Petersburg, Karelians associated themselves with Finland, and the Mari, Udmurts, and Mordovians in the middle Volga area federated with Turkic populations like the Tatars under the banner of Idel-Ural regionalism. The reunification of Russia under the Soviet Union abruptly ended this period, the subsequent seventy-odd years seeing the constitution of autonomous republics with their own state institutions for many of these nationalities, policies of Sovietization through industrialization-driven immigration and Russian-medium immigration which tended to Russify local populations as in the Komi Republic, and Stalinist state terror that targeted the cultural leaderships of many populations as potentially disloyal. The Finno-Ugric movement took off again after the Cold War, following Hungary's transition to democracy, Estonia's return to independence, and the emergence of federalism in the Russian Federation, but the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia lack the strong identities--and, it should be noted, the supportive state apparatuses, most visibly in Mari-El--that have driven the successful nationalism of Tatarstan. By and large, the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia are assimilating into the general population of the Russian Federation, through intermarriage, language shift, and the depopulation of the rural areas of Russia where so many of these peoples are concentrated.
The Finno-Ugric movement isn't going to disappear. Putin supports the idea of a relatively harmless gathering of distant ethnic kin, even attending the summit in Saransk, promoting it as a way to attract investment and encourage trade in Russia. Sorokina claims that for Finland, "a country with a population that is growing old at a brisk pace and is also enduring the twin onslaughts of European integration and American culture, the related peoples of the Volga and Urals have a romantic connotation and represent an opportunity to rejuvenate its population." Estonia may come to the same perspective in time, for the moment seeing these smaller populations as ethnic kin who (unlike the Estonians) are still being repressed by a Russian empire, as the existence of the Estonia-hosted The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire hints. Perhaps these two countries might even try to promote immigration from these populations, under somewhat the same principle that promoted Ingrian immigration to Finland after the end of the Soviet Union--half of the students recruited from these populations to Estonia under a scholarship program in 1999, The Economist reported, ended up staying in Estonia. Anything more substantive--say, the redefinition of these small peoples, as Udmurt Konstantin Zamyatin suggested in 2004, as "Eastern Finns" so as to ensure foreign support--is exceedingly unlikely in the face of Finnish disinterest, Russian hostility, and the separate histories of these peoples. Given another century, I wonder whether any of these populations will survive as culturally separate populations, as anything more than annotations and other obscure references in geography textbooks and people scattered over the Eurasian landmass who say (when prompted) things like "My grandmother was ...".
This year’s festival of national cultures of the Finnish-Ugric peoples promises to be one of the largest in the event’s history. For the first time in the history of this annual event organized by the Finno-Ugric world the Russian President Vladimir Putin will be taking part. At previous events he sent representatives who read words of greeting from the head of the Russian state.
Now, however, Putin intends not only to hold a three-way Russian-Hungarian-Finnish meeting with the participation of Finnish president Tarja Halonen and the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany. He also intends to attend one of the cultural exhibitions being held in Saransk as part of the event.
Putin’s interest in the festival in Mordovia is no coincidence. Over half the Finno-Ugric peoples live in Russia, with a total world population of this ethnic group of around 20 million. The group includes Hungarians, Veps, Votes, Izhorians, Karelians, Kvens, Komi, Komi-Permyaks, Livonians, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Nenets, Sammi, Selkups, Udmurts, Finns, Finno-Ingermanlands, Khanty, Erzyas and Estonians.
In Russia, the Finno-Ugrics are the third major component of the Russian people, along with ethnic Russians and Tartars. According to some estimates, half of the Russians are related to Finno-Ugrics. Members of this ethnic group reside in 12 regions in Russia and are the native inhabitants of the Volga and the Urals, Karelia and the Kola Peninsula.
The Finno-Ugric languages that have served as the basis for this reunion are associated with a group of a couple dozen peoples dispersed across northeastern Europe, from the Danubian plain and the Baltic Sea to the Urals and beyond.
The Hungarians of the Danubian basin and the distantly related Khanty and Mansi of northwestern Siberia, speakers of Ugric languages all, are associated with a branch of the Finno-Ugric language family separate from the geographically and culturally more diverse community of Finnic language-speakers. The relationship of the Ugric languages with the Finnic languages might be more distant still, as The Economist's 2006 article, "The dying fish swims in water" suggests. (The article itself takes its name from what an Estonian linguist thought was the only sentence intelligible in both Finnish and Hungarian, but turns out to be actually unintelligible after all.) Over the 20th century, Finland and Estonia have turned out to be the countries most involved with the Finno-Ugric movement, using it to connect with the vast and diverse assortment of distant ethnic kin described by the Estonia-based Information Centre of Finno-Ugric Peoples.
Regarding the type of culture, Estonians, Finns and Hungarians are typical Europeans, while the culture of Volga-Finnic, Permian and minor Balto-Finnic peoples is agrarian, since due to several historic, political and cultural reasons they have had no opportunity to create their own urban culture. Throughout the centuries the culture of the Khants, Mansis and Samoyeds, which has based on hunting, fishing and reindeer raising, has adapted itself to the life under extreme Siberian conditions, nevertheless, it is most vulnerable to the European industrial culture.
As to their religion, Estonians, Finns and Western Lapps are Lutheran, whereas Hungarians are mostly Catholic (Calvinists and Lutherans can also be found). Finno-Ugrians living in the European part of Russia are mostly Orthodox, but the Udmurt and Mari people have preserved the ancient nature religion (i.e. animism). The Finno-Ugrians in Siberia as well as the Samoyeds are shamanists.
The Uralic peoples differ in their political fate and status. Hungarians have a thousand-year-long independent state. Finland with its own Parliament and currency was autonomous in the czarist Russia already. Estonians gained their independence only in 1918. After World War II, Estonians and Hungarians were part of the so-called socialist sphere, whereas Finland succeeded in maintaining its market economy and democracy.
The Finnic minority peoples in what is now Russia seemed on the verge of independence after the collapse of the First World War, when Ingrians constituted their own state in the hinterlands of St. Petersburg, Karelians associated themselves with Finland, and the Mari, Udmurts, and Mordovians in the middle Volga area federated with Turkic populations like the Tatars under the banner of Idel-Ural regionalism. The reunification of Russia under the Soviet Union abruptly ended this period, the subsequent seventy-odd years seeing the constitution of autonomous republics with their own state institutions for many of these nationalities, policies of Sovietization through industrialization-driven immigration and Russian-medium immigration which tended to Russify local populations as in the Komi Republic, and Stalinist state terror that targeted the cultural leaderships of many populations as potentially disloyal. The Finno-Ugric movement took off again after the Cold War, following Hungary's transition to democracy, Estonia's return to independence, and the emergence of federalism in the Russian Federation, but the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia lack the strong identities--and, it should be noted, the supportive state apparatuses, most visibly in Mari-El--that have driven the successful nationalism of Tatarstan. By and large, the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia are assimilating into the general population of the Russian Federation, through intermarriage, language shift, and the depopulation of the rural areas of Russia where so many of these peoples are concentrated.
The Finno-Ugric movement isn't going to disappear. Putin supports the idea of a relatively harmless gathering of distant ethnic kin, even attending the summit in Saransk, promoting it as a way to attract investment and encourage trade in Russia. Sorokina claims that for Finland, "a country with a population that is growing old at a brisk pace and is also enduring the twin onslaughts of European integration and American culture, the related peoples of the Volga and Urals have a romantic connotation and represent an opportunity to rejuvenate its population." Estonia may come to the same perspective in time, for the moment seeing these smaller populations as ethnic kin who (unlike the Estonians) are still being repressed by a Russian empire, as the existence of the Estonia-hosted The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire hints. Perhaps these two countries might even try to promote immigration from these populations, under somewhat the same principle that promoted Ingrian immigration to Finland after the end of the Soviet Union--half of the students recruited from these populations to Estonia under a scholarship program in 1999, The Economist reported, ended up staying in Estonia. Anything more substantive--say, the redefinition of these small peoples, as Udmurt Konstantin Zamyatin suggested in 2004, as "Eastern Finns" so as to ensure foreign support--is exceedingly unlikely in the face of Finnish disinterest, Russian hostility, and the separate histories of these peoples. Given another century, I wonder whether any of these populations will survive as culturally separate populations, as anything more than annotations and other obscure references in geography textbooks and people scattered over the Eurasian landmass who say (when prompted) things like "My grandmother was ...".
