Shifting Alliances: The Impact of Finland’s NATO Membership on Karelia’s Cultural and Economic Landscape

On Saturday, Finland and Britain concluded the Northern Axe 25 joint military drills, one of several early winter exercises conducted by the Northern European country with participation from NATO allies this year.

The Northern Axe 25 exercise involved around 3,000 troops, including 70 soldiers from the UK, who were assessed for their combat readiness at the remote Vuosanka training area located in Finland’s eastern Kainuu region.

About 70 kilometers to the west lies Karelia, a Russian republic that covers an area comparable to Uruguay and is home to just over 530,000 residents.

Known for its stunning natural landscapes featuring unspoiled glacial lakes and taiga forests, Karelia has historically enjoyed strong cultural and economic ties with Finland.

However, following Finland’s accession to NATO in 2023, Karelia became a significant frontier for Russia, drawing local residents into the broader geopolitical tensions between Moscow and the West.

Karelia’s Governor, Artur Parfyonchikov, commented on Finland’s NATO membership in 2023, stating, “We see the U.S. creating tensions along all of Russia’s borders. Finland has chosen not to remain neutral.”

He further lamented, “It seems the state of our friendly relations no longer satisfies our Finnish neighbors. We regret that the Finns did not embrace our path towards the complete demilitarization of Karelia.”

Since 2023, Russia has been swiftly enhancing its military presence near Karelia’s 723-kilometer border with Finland—this border is the longest that any Russian region shares with a NATO member.

In anticipation of this year’s military exercises in Finland, authorities in Karelia intensified efforts to safeguard the border against perceived threats from NATO, forming volunteer border patrol groups.

“A narrative is now taking hold among politicians in our republic that Finland poses a military threat… Despite the strong propaganda, I haven’t observed a significant shift in public sentiment,” stated Valeriy Potashov, a journalist from Karelia who fled the country earlier this year due to fears of arrest.

“Among the older generation, there are revived feelings of Finland being an enemy, a remnant of past conflicts—but the younger and middle-aged population doesn’t view Finland this way,” Potashov explained to The Moscow Times.

Post-Soviet Union, Finland has become Karelia’s primary trading partner, with mutual trade surpassing $378 million in 2021.

For many Karelians, Finland has also been a favored tourist destination and a valuable route to gain access to higher-quality European education. Every year, hundreds of Karelia residents traveled to Finland for studies at vocational schools and universities, where education in the Finnish language was free of charge, with few exceptions.

During a period of generally favorable relations between Karelia and Finland, Finnish language classes were even offered voluntarily in local state schools throughout Karelia.

“I believe half of my classmates are residing here now,” shared a woman from Olonets, a town in Karelia, who has now moved to Finland.

“We are a border region, so it’s not unusual. My grandmother worked at a hotel and had many Finnish friends, so I visited Finland as a child too,” she recounted to The Moscow Times.

Wishing to remain anonymous, the woman noted that back in the 2010s, Finnish colleges would visit Karelia’s capital Petrozavodsk to recruit potential students.

“They would hold admission interviews open to everyone—that’s how I got in. You didn’t need a strong command of Finnish or financial backing to study in Finland; entry was accessible to many,” she reminisced.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Finland was among the first European nations to restrict visa issuance to Russians, although student visas were exempted.

In 2023, Finland closed all its border crossings with Russia amid a perceived rise in asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, which it attributed to Moscow’s influence.

Despite the growing challenges to relocating to Finland, interest among Karelians in studying there has intensified since the onset of the Ukraine conflict, according to journalist Potashov.

“Parents aspire for their children to obtain a European education and have broader opportunities, particularly as the Iron Curtain appears to be re-emerging,” Potashov observed. “It’s also a means to shield their children from conscription into military service for the war.”

While Finnish education has served as a crucial lifeline for some, it has also contributed to brain drain among ethnic Karelians, the main Baltic Finnic indigenous group in the republic, leading to a decline in the indigenous population. However, it has also provided a chance to preserve their nearly extinct language.

Ethnic Karelians have historically faced divisions shaped by cultural influences and borders—a legacy of the medieval Novgorod Republic and a situation that has continued since the Cold War’s conclusion.

Eastern Karelia has been part of the Russian Empire since 1323, while Western Karelia was ceded to Russia from Sweden in 1721. In the 19th century, it became administratively reunified with Finland, only to be annexed by the Soviet Union later on.

“Numerous specialists in Karelian culture and language have left the republic to live and work in Finland. These individuals are proficient in both Finnish and Karelian,” a language activist from Karelia told The Moscow Times.

“There has been significantly faster development of the Karelian language in Finland compared to the republic itself,” they added, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

With a mere 25,900 residents identifying as ethnically Karelian, this indigenous group constitutes less than 5% of the overall population in Karelia, marking the lowest percentage of indigenous residents found in any Russian republic.

The overall number of ethnic Karelians in Russia has seen nearly a 50% decline over the past decade, one of the most severe decreases among all indigenous groups, attributed to both Kremlin’s russification policies and the migration of ethnic Karelians to Finland.

The Karelian language itself has lost over 74% of its speakers in the same timeframe, making it the fastest-disappearing minority language in Russia.

One factor contributing to the swift decline of the Karelian language is its unique legal position. While it is recognized as the republic’s “official language,” it lacks the status of a “state language,” prohibiting its use in legal contexts or as the principal language for government affairs.

Contrastingly, other ethnic republics in Russia maintain legal provisions for indigenous languages, allowing their use alongside Russian in official contexts—at least in theory.

Karelian was neglected by both the Soviet and subsequent Russian administrations, primarily because its speakers did not transition to a Cyrillic script, unlike many other minority languages that succumbed to pressure from Soviet authorities.

In Finland, scholars and language advocates have been working over the last two decades to revitalize the Karelian language and secure its identity as a distinct language, separate from Finnish.

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “the Finnish side supported the publishing of both fiction and educational material in the Karelian language, along with scientific publications and journals” that made their way into Karelia, as noted by the activist.

Nevertheless, while those committed to the Karelian language remaining in the republic have managed to maintain personal relationships with their Finnish counterparts, the geopolitical divide has interrupted regular cross-border exchange of knowledge.

This situation has also cut off access to critical resources produced in Finland, including a unique six-volume dialect dictionary of the Karelian language.

“This dictionary was invaluable for us linguists and activists in Karelia; it contains extensive information on all Karelian dialects, with samples collected across the entire territory of Karelia,” said the Karelian activist.

While others from Karelia who spoke to The Moscow Times maintained hope for eventual improvements in relations with Finland, the language activist expressed a more somber outlook for their community, grappling with a pervasive sense of “fatigue and disappointment.”

“It seems to me that no measures can sufficiently alter the unfortunate trajectory of the Karelian language’s decline. We must face reality: those invested in this issue and capable of fostering the language most likely no longer reside in Karelia or are now advanced in age,” they concluded.