General view of the city of Tver, 1783. Image by Nicolas Louis de Lespinasse via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Novaya Vkladka published an article about the Tver Karelians, a minority group in Russia whose population has decreased 50 times in the last 100 years. Global Voices translated the article and is publishing it, edited for clarity, with permission from Novaya Vkladka.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 140,000 Tver Karelians living in what is now the Tver region. By that time, they had lived side by side with Russians for three centuries but had preserved their culture, language, and traditions. However, collectivization, repressions, war, and later the mass migration from villages to cities changed everything. Since then, the Tver Karelians have gradually become almost invisible, and many have ceased to identify as such.

 Novaya Vkladka reporters visited the home of Tver Karelian Oleg Evgrafov, who is a tour guide.

Oleg describes a short period of autonomy for his people.

From 1937 to 1939, there was the Karelian National District, a brief moment of statehood, almost. Then everything was shut down, including [Karelian language] education in schools, and this lasted until the 1990s.

At that time, local schools taught in the Tver Karelian language, and residents used it in everyday life. Not everyone even knew Russian. A Karelian-language newspaper was published in Likhoslavl, and books in Karelian were printed.

Tver Karelian is one of the dialects of the Karelian language, the official language of the Karelian National District, which existed from 1937 to 1939. It belongs to the Baltic-Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric language family and, unlike other Karelian languages and dialects, has retained a more archaic form.

However, in February 1939, the Karelian National District was abolished, and school instruction switched to Russian. It was only in the 1990s that schoolchildren were once again offered elective classes in the Tver Karelian language. This became possible due to the establishment of the Tver National-Cultural Autonomy of Tver Karelians in 1997.

Marina Evgrafova, Oleg's wife, shows us old photographs of her great-great-grandmother, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother. The old pictures are hung on the wall alongside photos of Evgrafova’s parents. She tells tourists about her family while they have lunch — eating lohikeitto, a traditional Karelian fish soup.

Salmon soup at Löyly, Helsinki. Image by Marty B via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0

In any conversation with a Tver Karelian about history, the name Anatoly Golovkin inevitably comes up as the main historian of this ethnic group, and an ethnic Tver Karelian himself. His book “The History of the Tver Karelians” includes a chapter called “50 Years of Oblivion,” which describes the period from 1940 to the 1990s. By 1959, only 59,000 Tver Karelians remained in the region — down to half the number from 1939. Golovkin lists the reasons: forced collectivization, deportations, resettlement to other regions, repressions, and World War II.

Now, after decades of assimilation, intermarriage with the Russian population, and the depopulation of Tver villages, fewer than 3,000 people can confidently say, “I am a Tver Karelian.” According to the 2021 census, only 2,764 people identified as such.

The former center of Tver Karelians is the town of Likhoslavl. According to the 2021 census, about a thousand Tver Karelians live in the town — 4 percent of the population and more than a third of all Karelians in the Tver region. 

“Many people are of Tver Karelian descent. The question is how a person identifies,” explains Andrey Chumin, a pensioner from Chamerovo. “If we were to trace the ancestry of our village residents, we'd find that there's no one here except Karelians. My father, mother, grandmothers, and grandfathers were Karelians. But people here all [seem] Russian. In short, assimilation has happened.”

Karels 1928, Leningrad Oblast. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

In the 1990s, when the village school was moved to a new brick building nearby, the old schoolhouse was converted into a two-apartment residence. One of these apartments is home to the Chumins. Now both are retired, though Andrey still teaches technology at school.  Andrey's passion is preserving the ethnic heritage of Tver Karelians. Instead of a regular gate, the entrance to their yard features a tall structure with a tower — an unfinished Sampo mill.

“Karelians have their own epic, ‘Kalevala.’ In it, the Sampo mill is a magical artifact,” Andrey explains.

Photo of the painting “Ilmarinen Forges the Sampo” by Berndt Godenhjelm via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

In Karelian-Finnish mythology, Sampo was a mill that produced endless prosperity and happiness. Chumin has spent much time studying “Kalevala,” keeps editions of it in both Russian and Karelian, and tells locals and visitors about the epic when invited to speak at the local history club in Vesyegonsk.

A staff member at the House of Culture in Chistaya Dubrovka tells us that they organize Karelian festivals in the village and shows us traditional costumes — brightly colored shirts and sarafans. It is difficult to discern Karelian ethnographic motifs in them; they seem more like imitations of festive rural clothing from the northwestern and central regions of Russia.

On the second floor, there is a library and a small local history museum. The librarian and museum curator is 28-year-old Tver Karelian Nikita Snetkov. 

The museum's stands are adorned with old photographs of Tver Karelians, books about them, and printed articles on Tver Karelia written by Nikita and other local authors. Snetkov says:

Collectivization and dekulakization steamrolled through Tver Karelia. But Karelians are a stubborn people, as researchers note. They managed to find ways to hold religious services on holidays, despite restrictions, and resisted the destruction of churches. Because of this, they suffered [at the hands of the authorities]. 

According to him, some people return to their native villages from the cities upon retirement. But the number of young people here is steadily decreasing: about ten years ago, when Snetkov graduated, the school in Chamerovo had more than 110 students — now it has half that number.

Under these circumstances, Snetkov and his like-minded peers are striving to pass on the memory of the Tver Karelians to future generations. For instance, they hold dictations in the museum in the nearly forgotten Tver Karelian language.

Andrey Chumin from the village of Chamerovo is not only a teacher and local historian but also a politician. From 2008 to 2012, he served as the head of the Chamerovo rural settlement (which was dissolved in 2019 when settlements were merged into the Vesyegonsk municipal district). He believes, “There’s plenty of work to do [in administration].”

In the Kamyen tract, for example, a good hiking trail could be laid, and there was even an idea to build a suspension bridge. It’s a beautiful area. We [along with like-minded people] maintain it ourselves: we put up a worship cross and built a gazebo. When I worked in administration, we managed to secure a small sum for improvements, but overall, it's sustained by enthusiasm.

Until recently, Chumin was the chairman of the district branch of the Tver National-Cultural Autonomy of Tver Karelians. He believes that cultural development alone is not enough to preserve the people and revive their heritage. Yet, when officials talk about preserving small ethnic groups, they usually focus only on culture.

Andrey Chumin does not speak his native language but understands it. Among the remaining Tver Karelians in the region, barely half can communicate in it even at a basic level.

After the war, during the Soviet era, speaking Tver Karelian became a source of embarrassment — it was associated with rural life and “traditional” ways, which clashed with Soviet ideology. Tver Karelians were mocked in schools and vocational colleges for their mistakes when speaking Russian. Another reason for the language’s decline was the fear of the Karelian elders for their children’s and grandchildren’s future after the period of Stalin’s repressions. 

In the museum of the village of Chistaya Dubrova, there is a dedicated display about the repressed Tver Karelians. Nikita Snetkov grew up with his grandmothers, who spoke Tver Karelian to each other, but, like his parents, he cannot speak it himself. He regrets that the older generations did not pass the language on to their children and grandchildren. Marina and Oleg Evgrafov had to learn Tver Karelian on their own so they could explain its features to visitors and recite works in the language.

In the 1990s, when Tver Karelian was reintroduced in schools, a “Dictionary of the Karelian Language (Tver Dialects)” was published, along with textbooks and grammar books. But in the 2000s, everything started to decline again. In 2017, UNESCO listed the Karelian language in its Red Book as endangered.