Soviet Karelian: The Language That Failed

• Published in: Slavic Review
• Main Author: Austin, Paul M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1992
• Subjects: karelian
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2500259; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S003767790007827X

On January 1, 1938 virtually every trace of anything Finnish, including the language, disappeared in the Karelian ASSR, where until the day before Finnish had been one of the two official languages (with Russian) and the language of instruction in schools and of a wide variety of published materials—newspapers, literary journals and almanacs, J educational texts, translated belles lettres (both Russian and foreign) and official documents. The history of Finnish in the Karelian ASSR dates from the Peace of Tartu (1920) which established the Finnish-Soviet border. It also stipulated that the "language of administration, legislation and public education" in the newly formed Karelian Workers Commune should be the "local popular language and designated Finnish that language. This might seem strange, since in 1923 there were in Soviet Karelia only 1,051 Finns, half of whom lived in the capital, Petrozavodsk.