We are looking for allies both at home and in exile

Free Nations League activists went on protests in the USA and Lithuania to draw international attention to involuntary servitude of captive peoples in the Russian Federation.

Mari El Flag No Longer Being Flown at Schools in that Middle Volga Republic

One of the most important symbols of the non-Russian republics, their own distinctive flags, is now under attack, so far only in Mari El but supposedly there on orders from Moscow, a report that if true suggests that what has occurred in that Middle Volga republic will soon take place elsewhere.

Russian Nationalist Denounces Adding Karelian to Street Signs in Petrozavodsk as Step toward Secession

The city government of Petrozavodsk, the capital of the Karelian Republic, has begun putting up street signs with names in both Russian and Karelian, even though ethnic Russians form 80 percent of the city’s population and even though Karelian is not a state language in the republic.

Hill Mari wedding from matchmaking to post-wedding rutes

Mountain Mari are a sub-ethnic group of the small Finno-Ugric Mari people. Most of the mountain Mari live on the land of their ancestors in the mountainous regions of the Republic of Mari El, located in the center of the European part of Russia. Many interesting and distinctive rituals have survived to this day in the traditional culture of this ancient people, one of which is marriage ceremony.

ECHR sided with the Mari

On January 14, the European Court of Human Rights made the decision in the case of journalist and civil activist from Mari El Georgy Pirogov, he was awarded compensation in the amount of 10,500 euros.

Like Zhirinovsky, Tishkov Wants a Mono-Ethnic, Mono-Linguistic Russia

Tagirov Says

Valery Tishkov

LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Academician Valery Tishkov are people of very different caliber and scholarly attainment, Indus Tagirov says; but they share a common commitment to a future Russia that will be mono-ethnic and mono-linguistic rather than a country displaying ethnic and linguistic diversity.

Non-Russian Languages Being Pushed Out of Schools in Five Middle Volga Republics

New Study Says

Since the adoption of a Russian law making the study of non-Russian languages in the republics voluntary, 7×7 blogger Nail Gyylman says on the basis of a new study, the authorities have used various means to reduce the opportunities pupils have to study them.

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.

European linguists’ statement on behalf of Russia’s minority languages

STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF RUSSIA’S MINORITY LANGUAGES

On 19 June 2018, the State Duma of the Russian Federation approved a law that would make the study of all minority languages spoken in the territory of the country voluntary. The law is being discussed again in the Duma on 24 July, but still there is no evidence that this law will protect minority languages rather than weaken their situation.

Now ‘a National Republic in Name Only’

Shows Where Putin is Heading, Theater Director Says

Many people assume that the situation with non-Russian languages in the non-Russian republics was just fine before Vladimir Putin began his campaign to make the study of non-Russian languages there voluntary while insisting that the study of Russian be compulsory.