Elsewhere in this issue of Ab Imperio, I discuss the establishment of the Karelian Labour Commune (KTK) in mid-1920 and the conflict which followed between ethnic Karelian officials and the Finnish émigrés on whose initiative the autonomous territory had been founded and to whom Lenin had entrusted its leadership.^[1] A particular point of contention was the language question. The Karelians believed that the language of local administration and education in Karelian-populated districts should be Karelian (although at this time a written language did not exist, and the spoken tongue was differentiated into several distinct sub-groups, some of which were closer to eastern Finnish dialects, but others of which had been strongly influenced by Russian). The Red Finns were equally resolute that Standard Finnish should be used. In their opinion, the Karelian vernacular was in any case merely a Finnish dialect (perhaps its ur-dialect), just as the Karelians were merely ethnic Finns who had missed out on several centuries of economic and cultural development within the borders of ‘western’ civilisation.^[2] Finnish-language education would raise the Karelians to a higher level of national and class consciousness, which in the longer term would serve the cause of both Scandinavian socialist revolution and of Finnish national unification. The Red Finns’ ‘revolutionary nationalism’, supported by powerful central institutions (in particular, the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs), prevailed over ‘petty’ local interests. On 6 March 1922 the Bolshevik Party Central Committee’s Organisational Bureau (Orgbiuro), chaired by Stalin, approved all the main points of a resolution drafted by the Karelian leader, Edvard Gylling. This document included a clause which sanctioned the use of one third of the regional education budget for introducing Finnish-language education in Karelian districts of the autonomous region.^[3]
This authoritative decision temporarily quelled formal Karelian opposition to the Red Finnish leadership. V. M. Kudzhiev, the leader of the ethnic Karelian opposition to Gylling, was transferred to party work in Omsk. From 1924, when the Karelian TsIK finally gave full backing to Gylling’s nationalities policy, the republican leadership, apparently seeing neither paradox nor irony in its actions, energetically pursued a policy of ‘karelisation’ (‘karelizatsiia’) through the promotion of Finnish language and culture.^[4]
Nearly four times as many Soviet Karelians, however, lived outside the autonomous republic (mainly in Tver region) as within its borders and jurisdiction. Teachers and party activists began to conduct their work among these populations in the local dialects, which were even more heavily russified than those of southern Karelia, and were incomprehensible to most Finns. By 1926, one hundred and thirty-one educational institutions outside the autonomous republic were using forms of spoken Karelian.^[5] Representatives of these Karelian groups now began to press for the introduction of Karelian language education and administration in the Karelian autonomous republic as well, so as to unify the Karelian ‘ethnos’ within Soviet space and make the development and production of written materials more cost efficient. The only question they needed to resolve was which Karelian dialect to choose as the spoken norm and as the basis for devising a literary language.
In response, the Red Finns reiterated their denial that the Karelians constituted an ‘ethnos’ distinct from the Finnish people, and that the Karelian vernacular constituted a separate language. “If you take all the pure Russian words out of the dialect,” wrote the Chair of the Karelian Central Executive Committee (TsIK), the Red Finn Santeri Nuorteva in 1926, “and replace them with words derived from Finno-Ugric roots, you simply end up with Finnish.” Because of the diversity of Karelian dialects, “any attempt to create a special ‘Karelian’ written language,” he continued, “is doomed in advance to failure.” Moreover, promoting “Karelian” was contrary to the “goals of our Revolution” and “reactionary”: the tsarist regime, Nuorteva asserted, had promoted “Karelian” precisely in order to retard the development of Karelian national culture and to facilitate russification. Only the Finnish language, he concluded, was truly revolutionary.^[6]
The following year, the Department of Finno-Ugric National Education of the Central Council for the Education of National Minorities attached to the RSFSR’s Commissariat of Education convened a ‘Methodological Congress’ in Leningrad to try to reach some resolution of this debate on scientific rather than political grounds. Representatives of the Karelian republic were ready to support this venture, so long as the resolution vindicated their approach to the problem. It was important to achieve some understanding now, stated an official of the republican Commissariat of Education with foresight, since “in future Moscow might not show such a sympathetic attitude to questions of Karelia.”^[7] The position of the Red Finns, however, was not conducive to a settlement: “In Karelia,” stated one Finnish émigré uncompromisingly, “We do not have the problem of a national minority.”^[8]
The dispute continued. Outside the autonomous republic, the ethnic Karelians found a particularly strong champion in Professor D. V. Bubrikh, a linguistics professor at Leningrad State University who in 1926 had founded a Finno-Ugric Section and who was committed to both scientific research and political activism on their behalf. In 1930, he led a linguistic expedition which investigated and recorded the various Karelian dialects, on the basis of which he undertook to develop a unified written Karelian language (he published the first Karelian language primer later the same year, in Latin script). Bubrikh argued strongly for a Karelian linguistic and cultural identity distinct from both Finnish and Russian, and he was not shy of promoting his views among the highest state and party authorities, nor of employing incendiary rhetoric to argue his case. The theory of Finnish-Karelian ethnic unity, he claimed, was nothing but a justification for Finland’s capitalist ambitions to control Karelia’s abundant forest resources. The “Finnish bourgeois monopoly” over Karelian linguistic studies, which his work was intended to demolish, had hidden defining differences between the Finnish and Karelian languages, or explained them away as Russian “invasions.” Karelian and Finnish, Bubrikh believed, were less similar than Great Russian and Ukrainian; he compared the difference to that between Russian and Polish.^[9] His vitriolic assault on Finnish ‘bourgeois’ science, of course, was intended also to refute the Red Finns’ justification for their linguistic policy in Karelia; more radically than this, however, his attacks called into question the basis of the Red Finns’ ideology of ‘revolutionary nationalism’ and thus the legitimacy of their authority in the autonomous republic.
Within Karelia, resentment against the Red Finns began to re-emerge in the later 1920’s both among ethnic Karelian (as well as Russian) party members, who attempted, but failed, to win regional power at a particularly bitter 1928 Party Plenum, and among the indigenous population in general. To many Karelians, the Red Finnish leadership’s language policy was not a realisation of ‘karelisation’ but its betrayal for the nationalist cause of a predatory bourgeois power. “They make the same laws as in Finland,” declared a Karelian peasant woman in Petrovskii district, “and over there the laws are a burden. It would be better if we had the Russians in charge.”^[10] Some feared (not wholly without grounds, as we have seen) that Karelia was undergoing covert ‘finnicisation’ in preparation for its transfer to Finland. In southern Karelia (the area of the republic which had been most heavily russified over preceding centuries), there were twenty-one incidents in the first half of 1928 of ‘poor’ and ‘middle’ peasants protesting against the teaching of Finnish language in schools.^[11] Others attacked the Red Finns’ authority in racial terms: “We haven’t got the zhidi up here holding all the power, but we’ve got the Finns cutting strips off our backs for belt leather.”^[12] There was still evidence of Karelian separatist feeling: a district militia report in mid-1929 noted that many people believed that ‘karelisation’ should mean sacking not only all Finns but also all Russians from the regional leadership.^[13]
These conflicts could not go unnoticed in the centre, particularly given Bubrikh’s energetic proselytising of the Karelian language. On 12 July 1930, the Presidium of the Soviet Central Executive Committee (TsIK)’s Council of Nationalities met to discuss a number of questions concerning the Karelian economy. Gylling took the opportunity to raise the language issue, hoping for an authoritative resolution which would silence his opponents. The Ukrainian communist leader N. A. Skrypnik, however, made some sharp comments which suggested that perhaps the centre was indeed no longer so well disposed to the Red Finns as it had been. As he recalled, Skrypnik declared, Karelian autonomy had been established in order to free Karelia from the ambitions of the Finnish bourgeoisie. But then “certain comrades” had performed an about-turn and began to speak of a “Karelo-Finnish land.” He was reminded of the situation in the Ukraine, where Moldavian and Romanian communists had clashed over whether the Moldavian language existed. It may well be the case, he concluded, that the Karelian republic was indeed undergoing ‘finnicisation’ but he recommended no decision should be taken until the Council of Nationalities had heard the views of all sides. It was agreed to invite the Karelian republic and the Leningrad and Moscow Regional Executive Committees to present reports arguing their positions.^[14]
During the next months, the Red Finns lost no opportunity to promote their cause. In January 1931, Gylling again addressed the Council of Nationalities, proclaiming the achievements of republican government during its ten years of rule. Among its successes, he noted, was the fact that all schools in Karelian districts now worked in Finnish. “But not in Karelian,” came Skrypnik’s belligerent voice from the floor of the hall. “No, in Finnish, which is the written language of the Karelians,” Gylling replied patiently (he had been a don at Helsinki University before 1917).^[15]
At the same time, the Karelian republic’s party boss, the Red Finn Kustaa Rovio, wrote a long article in a regional journal presenting the case for the Finnish language. He not only advanced scholarly linguistic arguments, and asserted the political significance of using a language shared by the working-class of neighbouring Finland, but also denigrated those who called for a Karelian language as “kulaks, agents of Finnish White Guardists and other class alien elements.”^[16] This was the Red Finns’ counter-offensive against Bubrikh’s equally violent rhetoric.
Finally, in April 1931, the Presidium of the TsIK Council of Nationalities convened a meeting to settle the language question once and for all. The Moscow and Leningrad regions and the Karelian government submitted written reports – in Russian, of course (the Karelian report was based closely on Rovio’s published article), and a draft resolution was drawn up calling for the use of Karelian in cultural work among all ethnic Karelians, including those in the autonomous republic. The stenogram of this meeting, which is published in the archival section of the current issue of Ab Imperio, offers a series of fascinating insights not only into the issues under debate and contemporaries' understanding of their wider implications, but into the character of contemporary political discourse and dispute.
Rovio opened the session by declaring Karelia’s absolute opposition to the draft resolution and expressing his astonishment that “Moscow [region] thinks it better knows the condition and mood of our population regarding the Finnish language [than we do].”^[17] He denied that there was any opposition to the Red Finns’ policy within Karelia, and cited the decision of the 6 March 1922 Orgbiuro meeting and Stalin’s personal role in determining Karelian policy. Doubtless he hoped that his evocation of Stalin’s name would be sufficient to silence opposition.
The mood of the meeting, however, was against him. First Ginzburg, the ‘instructor’ appointed by the Council of Nationalities to investigate the question and present an opinion to the session, spoke out in support of a written Karelian language, and then Kantor, the Moscow region’s representative made his case for using the dialect of the Tver Karelians (which was, as I noted above, incomprehensible to Finns) as the basis for developing this language. V. P. Zatonskii, a leading Ukrainian communist, drew an analogy between the Karelian and Ukrainian language questions (which Rovio later rejected, along with all the further analogies offered by other speakers). He needed only to substitute “Ukrainian” for “Karelian” and “Russian” for “Finnish”, Zatonskii claimed, and the Red Finns sounded just like the Ukrainian “russifiers” in the early 1920’s. This was, he asserted, “Luxemburgianstvo with a hearty dose of great power chauvinism, in this case Finnish,” and if Stalin had supposedly decided to the contrary in 1922, it could only have been on the basis of “misinformation”, since it was unlikely that he knew Karelian himself.^[18] A. A. Belyakov, editor of the Karelian language newspaper Za Kholkhozy claimed to have already compiled a Karelian dictionary of five thousand words, of which only about twenty-five per cent have Finnish roots.^[19] Another delegate admonished the Red Finnish leadership of Karelia to “remember Sultan-Galiev” who had aspired to unify all Turkic languages as the basis of an Iranian Republic.^[20] To Rovio’s evident shock, even the Karelian republic’s own permanent representative in Moscow, the ethnic Karelian A. V. Kochanov, spoke out against the Red Finns (he was sacked almost immediately after the meeting).
Soon Skrypnik, who had already established his credentials as a resolute opponent of Gylling’s government and its policy, took the floor and delivered a long, articulate and sharply argued speech, adducing numerous historical and contemporary situations which in his view were analogous to the problem under discussion. In particular, he again drew a parallel with the language conflict in the Moldavian ASSR. There, he declared, the Comintern had decided on the use of Moldavian, since it considered that the use of Rumanian would “objectively aid the Rumanian bourgeoisie.” The use of Finnish in Karelia and the proclamation of a unified “Finnish race”, he admonished, would similarly “arm the Finnish bourgeoisie.”^[21] Later in the session, he challenged Rovio’s renewed attempt to evoke Stalin’s 1922 intervention. Skrypnik’s acerbic comment succinctly expressed a problem facing not only political actors operating in a system regulated in part by the oral transmission of authoritative ‘signals’, but also scholars researching such a system: “That’s what history might say, but it’s not written down anywhere.”
In his concluding statement, the Chair of the meeting, the Uzbek A. Tadzhiev, reprimanded Rovio for publishing the January article in which he had branded any attempt to create a Karelian language reactionary. This attempt to pre-empt the Council’s decision, Tadzhiev stated, misrepresented the party line on national languages, as articulated by Stalin himself at the Tenth Party Congress. “Perhaps comrade Rovio hasn’t yet read this decision and still insists on his own opinion,” he enquired. With slippery logic, Tadzhiev then proceeded to argue that a Karelian language could and should be formed from its diverse dialects (as had happened, he said, with both the Uzbek and Finnish languages), and that a distinct Karelian nationality already existed (“if there is no such nationality, then there was no reason to create the Karelian republic”).
He then warned Rovio to be careful of his terminology. The Karelian party leader’s article had stated that the use of Finnish permitted Karelia “to enjoy the fruits of Finnish cultural development,” whereas, Tadzhiev pronounced, it would have been better to write “of Finnish proletarian literature.” At that, Rovio interjected belligerently “we’ve got heads on our shoulders to tell us that.” Tadzhiev was not amused, and responded with a prophetic and insightful observation which laid bare the Stalinist manipulation of discourse:

If you make authoritative statements on this question, which is being discussed by the Presidium of the Council of Nationalities and in future will be discussed in the Central Committee, you should be a bit more careful, you should formulate your phrases so they are clear, precise and definite. If today you use words such as “reactionary”, calling the “invention” of a special Karelian language reactionary, etc., then in future you’ll make matters worse for yourself, and soon you will find yourself having to renounce all these errors, to make an official recantation, and maybe several times. For that reason you should avoid such sharp language – it’ll be more constructive and healthier that way.^[22]

Unsurprisingly, the meeting decided against the Karelian government’s stance, and approved the draft resolution calling for the development of a written Karelian language and its introduction in the autonomous republic in place of Finnish. The Presidium of the Council of Nationalities published the resolution on 13 May.
On 14 May, Pravda published an editorial (possibly written by Bubrikh, though he claimed later it was written by Stalin himself) proclaiming that “the creation of a Karelian written language and literature is a political necessity, wholly in line with party policy on the national question.” Hailing the Council of Nationalities’ decision, the article declared bombastically, “before our very eyes the Karelians, a national minority, have received their own literature, their own language.”^[23]
With the legislation promulgated and this intervention by the party newspaper, it might have been thought that the matter was at last definitively resolved. However, that would have been to ignore the tenacity of the Red Finnish politicians and their political connections in the centre. On 12 May, a commission elected by a plenary meeting of the Karelian regional aktiv issued a resolution condemning the Council of Nationalities’ decision as “badly thought out, failing to consider the evidence and ignorant.” In particular, it stressed the importance of retaining Finnish as a “unifying language” for the local dialects, to promote close ties with the Finnish proletariat and to realise the “revolutionising” task of the autonomous republic. It insisted “on the right of the Karelian autonomous republic to decide for itself whether or not to introduce a Karelian written language.^[24]
It is not known what happened next, but it is likely that the Red Finns appealed to powerful party patrons in the Central Committee and Komintern. On 16 June, Stalin himself asked the Politburo to review the recent Council of Nationalities decision, and on 30 June the party’s highest decision-making body annulled the paragraphs of the 13 May resolution which called for the introduction of the Karelian written language in the Karelian republic. Moscow and Leningrad regions were free to proceed with elaborating a written Karelian language for themselves. The Presidium of the TsIK Council of Nationalities passed at least further resolutions conceding that its initial decision had been “inappropriate.”^[25]
It is unnecessary to spend much time on the subsequent history of the language question in Karelia. As is well known, Soviet nationalities policies underwent radical transformation in the 1930’s, and language policies changed accordingly.^[26] Ukraine was the first national republic to be targeted (Skrypnik committed suicide on 7 July 1933 after being accused of Ukrainian nationalism).^[27] The Red Finnish leadership of the Karelian republic was removed in late 1935, after its nationality policy had been subjected to increasingly vicious criticism by the Leningrad Obkom (both Gylling and Rovio were later shot). The following year, Karelian was introduced as a third official language in the republic. In September 1937, the Politburo resolved (on the request of the Karelian party organisation) to transfer all teaching in the Karelian republic from Finnish to Karelian^[28] From the start of 1938, the Finnish language was effectively proscribed in the republic, and even its private use became dangerous.
This did not represent an unqualified victory for Bubrikh, however. At the end of 1937, the Politburo had also decreed that the development of written Karelian in Latin script had been an error, since it failed to take account of the Karelians’ close ties with Russians. It resolved to change the script to Cyrillic, which would enable Karelian “to serve as a transitional stage to mastering fluency in Russian.”^[29] In February 1938, the NKVD rounded up a nearly seventy of ethnic Karelians in Tver region. In June 1939, charges were finally brought against the alleged members of this “bourgeois nationalist, terrorist, counter-revolutionary organisation” (including A. A. Belyakov, who spoke at the April 1931 meeting). One of the accusations was that this group had promoted the use of the Karelian language in Latin script, on orders of the Finnish government transmitted by three agents, two of whom were Gylling (who had already been executed) and Bubrikh (who was under arrest). On appeal to the procuracy, this whole group was released, except six who had died during investigations.^[30] In a final irony, the use of Karelian was suspended and the Finnish language was reintroduced into Karelia after the Winter War of 1939-40, when the republic was promoted to Union status and it took in extensive territories captured from Finland. Finnish remains the second official language of the Karelian republic to the present.