COMMENTARY: The Economist predicts doom for Russia's Finno-Ugrics

By Kirsikka Moring
     
      "The dying fish swims in water" was the headline to a piece in the double issue of The Economist with which the magazine wound up 2005. It sat atop a special on the plight of Russia's Finno-Ugrian ethnic minorities.
      The headline plays with a sentence created by an Estonian philologist, Mall Hellam, which purports to be the one phrase that all the main Finno-Ugric language groups can conceivably understand: Elävä kala ui veden alla, or loosely translated, "The living fish swims in water".
      At a pinch, Estonians, Finns, and Hungarians can all understand this, as all the five words can be found in some form from all the languages.
     
The quality British weekly seized on a highly flammable topic. It is a shame that the article will have evaded most Finns over the Christmas break, since it would have provided material for debate, even in the Presidential campaign discussions.
      Two of the candidates, Henrik Lax (Swedish People's Party) and Heidi Hautala (Greens), did attempt specifically to bring up the issue of Russia's human rights record.
      And a good deal earlier, last summer, incumbent Tarja Halonen raised the question of linguistic human rights in her talks with visiting Vladimir Putin, who in turn invited his colleague over to the bend in the Volga to assess things for herself.
      Might such an invitation be worth taking up?
     
The Economist writers have performed a fairly painstaking piece of investigative journalism, and have made use of both conspicuous and not so obvious sources.
      In its two-page review, the magazine notes the theory - quoted also in Finland - held by one of Putin's advisers, Vladislav Surkov, to the effect that the Finno-Ugric peoples would be engaged in some kind of clandestine operation to found a Volga-Ural state-within-a-state.
      The paper amusingly - and in perfectly correct Finnish - describes the best way of embarrassing a Finn and rousing a Russian to anger.
      You just take your vodka shot glass and raise a toast to "Suuri Suomi - Uraliin asti!" ("Greater Finland - to the Urals and beyond!").
     
The joke dies on the lips, however, since after hearing from Estonian Finno-Ugrians, the paper is convinced that Russia's Finno-Ugric minority tongues and the other minority languages in the Federation are not long for this world.
      Examples are given of the twenty remaining speakers of Votian, a Finno-Ugric language found in the north-west of Russia, and the sole surviving poet writing in Shor, a Turkic language formerly spoken in south-central Siberia.
      The problems of the people of the central republic of Mari-El are documented in depth, but so, too, is the effort - torpedoed by Moscow - of the people of Tatarstan to replace Cyrillic with the Latin alphabet in which their language is normally written.
      According to the article, the only people who are doing well are the Georgians, who are already discarding Russian (for English) as their second language of choice.
      The Economist states that the Russian government's reactions are so "allergic" that it is unlikely to spell good news for the Finno-Ugrics' language aspirations.
     
What the magazine's journalists did not know was how things have developed for their Finnish colleagues after writing similar articles.
      The most recent case was of reporter Ville Ropponen. Ropponen was accused on the website of the news agency News12.ru of being an agent of one or another Western intelligence service, who on a visit to the Mari Republic had incited Mari activists into illegal acts and had also passed on foreign currency to fund civil disobedience projects there.
     
As a result of the reports, which allegedly emanated from the Federal Security Service, the Foreign Ministry rejected his request for a visa for a return trip.
      On his visits, Ropponen has written about the Mari Republic for such papers as Ilta-Sanomat.
      Finnish documentary makers have likewise been waiting in vain for permision to film in Russian Karelia or up in the Kuola Peninsula.
      Like that fish, freedom of speech in Russia is threatened with lack of oxygen.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.1.2006


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Mari people face more oppression in Russia (4.10.2005)
  Russian security forces keep tight rein on Finno-Ugric congress in Mari Republic (30.8.2005)
  Election result brings wave of political reprisals against indigenous intelligentsia of Mari Republic (8.3.2005)

Links:
  Window on Eurasia: FSB Denounces Finnish Journalist as Western Intelligence Agent
  The Economist 24.12.2005 (may require registration - some articles for subscribers only)
  Ugri.info
  Finno-Ugric Languages (Wikipedia)
  Shor (Wikipedia)
  Information Center of the Finno-Ugric Peoples