Paul Goble
Staunton, June 7 – Faced with declines in their overall numbers and in the use of their national language, the Karelians, the titular nationality of the Republic of Karelia, are increasingly looking to European institutions in general and Finnish ones in particular to help them combat assimilation and ensure their national survival.
Olga Zharinova, the director of Karelia’s National Archive and the chairman of the plenipotentiary representatives of the Karelians for the past four years, told the Seventh Congress of Karels of the Republic of Karelia yesterday that unless certain trends are reversed, the prospects for the Karelians are bleak (finugor.ru/node/41386).
According to the 2010 Russian Federation census, she said, there are now 60,815 Karelians living in the country as a whole, 30 percent fewer than there were only eight years earlier. In Karelia itself, they number 45,570 or about 7.4 percent of the total population of the republic.
Ever fewer of ...