Marina Sadova and the group “Kuat” from Mari El

At the gala concert of the VI International Finno-Ugric Festival of Youth Ethno-culture “Palezyan” (Rowan). Izhevsk, 23 September 2016.

Source: Национальная библиотека УР

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Day of National Minorities is Celebrated in Estonia

As part of the festival “Week of National Cultures,” the city of Tallinn celebrated the Day of Estonian National Minorities.

On the program of the festival were concerts, exhibitions, lectures, and workshops, reported Sputnik News.

On September 23, the Working Party of National Minorities Minority Folklore Council of Estonia and the National University of Tallinn held the Roundtable of Estonian Peoples.

Defenders of Mari School to Hold a Protest Meeting

Activists for the preservation of the Vasinko comprehensive school in the Perm Krai (Russia) are planning to carry out a protest action on 1 December.

The protest meeting is planned at 12 o’clock in the district center, the settlement of Suksun, on Victory Square. At this public event, the organizers intend to “protest against the illegal closure of the Vasinko comprehensive school and the Ivankovo kindergarten “Silver Bell””.

Discrimination of Mari ethnic minority in Perm krai (Russia)

The residents of the three Mari villages decided at the general meeting to attempt to preserve the Vasinsko primary school and to give it the status of a school with in-depth study of the native Mari language. In their letter titled «Cry of the Soul», they stated that they would not send their children to a school where people conversed only in Russian and where Mari was not taught.

Russia’s unorthodox worshippers

Alexandre Billette pays a visit to forest worshippers of the remote Mari El republic on the Volga, who have maintained their religious traditions despite pressure from the Tsars, the Soviet regime and the Orthodox church.

On a poor road across the Mari El Republic, the village of Mari-Turek is barely distinguishable from thousands of others in rural Russia that time has forgotten. With no industry, it dozes peacefully away from the main thoroughfares of the Volga federal district.

‘Europe’s Last Pagans’ Worship in Marii El Grove

More than 50 worshippers gathered in a sacred grove on a hot June afternoon outside the village of Marisola. The crowd, mostly women dressed in national costumes and colorful headscarves, stood on a glade opposite a spruce where men were busy conducting prayers.

The congregation kneeled while the men under the spruce, dressed in suits, white felt hats and linen towels cast over their shoulders, said prayers in a low, monotone murmur.

Moscow’s Russification Policies Lead Non-Russians to Cooperate

Moscow’s increasingly harsh assimilatory policies, welcomed by many ethnic Russians as a defense of their dominance, not only are angering members of non-Russian groups but leading various minority groups to cooperate in new ways, a development that has the potential to become a nightmare for the central authorities.