Mari El Groups Warn of Social Explosion if Moscow Proceeds with Amalgamation Plans

Suggestions emanating from Moscow that the Russian government plans to amalgamate portions of Mari El with Tatarstan have infuriated many of the Finno-Ugric nation’s members who see this plan whether formal or informal via agglomeration as “the death knell” of their people.

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Russia withdraws from the World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples

The Association of the Finno-Ugric Peoples of the Russian Federation announced their representatives will not participate in the next World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples, due to take place this June in Estonia; the association called into question the need for congresses in the future and blamed them for “interfering in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation and its peoples”.

Inspired by traditional Mari costume

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Kremlin’s Strategy for Non-Russians: Make Their Languages and Then Their Speakers Unnecessary

Vasily Nikolayev, the founder and moving spirit behind the Estonia-based Mari language website MariUver, says that the greatest threat to his Finno-Ugric nation is not the direct attacks on its language by making its study voluntary but rather the ways in which Moscow works to make the Mari language “unnecessary” to its speakers.

Mari songs from German concentration camps published as a book

On January 26 at 3 pm in the department of national regional literature and bibliography in the Sergei Chavain National Library, the book “Chetlykyse muro” (Song of the Barbed Wire) will be presented. The book’s contents were compiled by Oleg Gerasimov, a musicologist, folklorist, and Doctor of Arts.

The collection includes songs recorded in the concentration camps of Wilhelmine Germany in 1914-18 where prisoners of the Tsarist army, including representatives of the Mari people, were detained.

Tartu to be the Main Venue for Estonia’s Kindred Peoples’ Days

This year, the main event for the Kindred Peoples’ Days in Estonia will be focused around the new building of the Estonian National Museum (ENM).

On Saturday, October 15th at the ENM from 10:30 to 17:00 the conference “Finno-Ugric museums – what’s next?” will be held. Employees from the Finno-Ugric museums of Russia, Latvia, Hungary, and, of course, experts from Estonia will be participating.

Human Rights Groups in Kazan Targeted

Police and tax auditors raided the offices of two human rights organizations in Kazan, the capital city of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, on 20 July 2009. The raids targeted the interregional human rights association AGORA and the Kazan Human Rights Center, disrupting their work.

The authorities confiscated the computer of AGORA’s chief accountant and more than 2,000 documents.