Variants and dialects

Karelian Proper denotes the North and South Karelian dialect groups, the latter of which also include Tver’ Karelian. Karelian Proper is spoken in the northern and central parts of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, with enclaves in Tver, Novgorod and Leningrad.Kolga, 2001.

Tver’ Karelian is a South Karelian dialect and a variant of Karelian Proper. The Tver’ Karelians emerged from Eastern Orthodox Karelians migrating in the seventeenth century. The enclave is geographically isolated from the other Karelian dialects and occupies a region north of the city of Tver’, approximately 180 km northwest of Moscow.Koivisto, 2023, pp. 141–160. Due to the many orthographies developed specifically for Tver’ Karelian, it is treated as unique and separate from Karelian Proper in our archives.

Olonets-Karelian, or Livvi-Karelian, is a so called supradialect“Supradialect” is a linguistic term designating a dialectological category between the levels of language and dialect. of the Karelian language. The Olonets Karelians live along the Olonka river and in the town of Olonets, south-west of Petrozavodsk and east of Lake Lagoda.Fenno-Ugria, n.d. An Olonets Karelian newspaper, Oma Mua (Own land), is published since 1990, merging with the Karelian Proper newspaper Vienan Karjala (White Karelia) in 2014.Tánczos, 2015, p. 91–110.

A possible fourth variant, Ludic, is devoted a separate entry in the archives. Ludic is variously classified as a transitional dialect between Olonets-Karelian and VepsItkonen, 1971. or as a dialect of Karelian.Pahomov, 2011.

Early history of written Karelian

A birch bark letter cataloged as Novgorod 292, dated to the beginning of the 13th century, is indisputably the oldest existing complete text in any Finnic language. The text is written in Cyrillic script, with ca. 50 characters spanning across three lines. The text is conventionally interpreted as a Karelian charm against lightning. While it is impossible to determine the exact dialect, some characteristics point towards the Olonetsian–Ludian–Vepsian area.Laakso, 1999, pp. 554–555.

Some Karelian words and proper names are included in the Treaty of Nöteborg, 1323.Taagepera, 1999, p. 111. The original text is lost to history, but partial (and occasionally conflicting) copies are preserved in Russian, Swedish and Latin.Bagger, 1991, pp. 186–200.

Simon von Salingen, a Dutch bookkeeper and envoy for Cornelis de Meyer’s trade business in Northern Russia, visited Karelia in 1566–68 where he met the Orthodox monk Feodor Zidenova. Salingen’s recollections, originally written in 1591, are reproduced in Magazin für die neue Historie und Geographie. Salingen reports that Zidenova showed him his graphic invention: an alphabet for the Karelian language, and – according to Zidenova – the first of its kind.Büsching, 1773. p. 343. Sadly, no material is left to substantiate this story.Barantsev, 2016.

As a prisoner in the Monastery of Solovetsky Island from 1666–68, the archimandriteThe superior of a large monastery or group of monasteries in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Theophanes of Athos compiled a handwritten dictionary of Karelian words taught to him by one of his co-prisoners, most likely during the last year of his imprisonment, when four Karelian prisoners were incarcerated on the island. On the night of 1 October 1668, Theophanes and two other prisoners managed to escape, but their boat was caught in a storm and the three men drowned.Mullonen & Panchenko, 2013, pp. 16–30. Fragments of Theophanes’ Karelian notes were discovered in the monastery in the late 19th century. Two of them are found today in a manuscript called the Patericon alphabet (Russian: Патерик азбучный), on the reverse folio 273 and folio 274.Feofam, ca. 1668.

In Linguarum totius urbis vocabularia comparativa – also known as the Dictionary of Empress Catherine the GreatPallas, 1787–89. – the Prussian ethnographer Peter Simon Pallas compiles a list of 300 Russian words, translated to 200 different languages, among them Karelian (Proper) and Olonets-Karelian.Taagepera, 1999, p. 111. Pallas’ transcriptions are cataloged in the online database The Digital Pallas from Instituut voor de Nederlandse taal.Van der Sijs et al, 2024.

Early religious and educational literature

In 1804, a catechism and a selection of prayers was translation into Olonets-Karelian by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was printed in 800 copies and distributed among the Karelian parishioners of Novgorod diocese.Berdasheva, 2017. The translation is only referenced in two Church letters dated July 14St. Petersburg Spiritual Consistory, 1816. and 22, 1816.Novgorod spiritual consistory, 1816. It is unclear if the documents themselves are preserved.

Following the 1804 catechism, the Gospel of Matthew was translated to the South Karelian Tver’ dialect by the two priests Matvey Zolotinsky and Grigory Vvedensky, and published in 1820.Vvedensky & Zolotinsky, 1820a. A handwritten manuscript is preserved at the National Archive of the Republic of Karelia.Vvedensky & Zolotinsky, 1820b. The writing is Cyrillic, extended with a large number of diacritical marks to transcribe the sounds of the Tver’ dialect.

A prayer book with translations from Russian to Olonets-Karelian was published in St. Petersburg in 1870.Tikhonov, 1870.

An 1887 primer compiled by the native Karelian teacher Anastasia Tolmachevskaya, and published by the Tver’ local government includes short texts and dictionaries for translating Karelian to Russian, and vice versa.Tolmachevskaya, 1887.

The Orthodox Missionary Society produced a primer for the “Vienan Kemi” – Karelians of Kem, Arkhangelsk, in 1894Userdova et al, 1894. and a translation of the Gospel of Matthew followed in 1895–96.Cherepanova, 1895–96.

In 1908, the V. D. Smirnov. printing house published a Russian-Karelian dictionary written by Georgievsky Mikhail Dmitrievich and Fortunatov Philip Fedorovich.Georgievsky & Fortunatova, 1908.

Русско-карельский словарь (Russian-Karelian Dictionary) was published in 1913 by V. Korolev, a school teacher from the small village of Vidlitsa.National Archive of the Republic of Karelia, 2014.

Grammatical descriptions of Karelian

The Finnish lingust Arvid Genetz is an important figure in Karelian language studies. Having visited Suojärvi in 1867,Genetz, 1870. Genetz produced grammatical descriptions of Karelian ProperGenetz, 1880. in Tutkimus Venäjän Karjalan Kielestä [A study on the Karelian language of Russia], VepsGenetz, 1882. in Wepsän Pohjoiset Etujoukot [The northern vanguard of Veps], and Olonets-KarelianGenetz, 1885. in Tutkimus Aunuksen kielestä [A study on the language of Olonets].Novak et al, 2022.

The Karelian Workers’ Commune and Finnish as the official language of Karelia

In 1918, civil war broke out in Finland between the revolutionary Red Guard and the burgeois Valkoiset (White Finns) over the leadership and control of the newly independent Finnish state.The Grand Duchy of Finland was an autonomous state under the Russian Empire from 1809 until 1917. After the Red Guard were defeated in May of 1918, about 20 000 Finnish communists fled to Russia, of which 2000 settled in Soviet Karelia.Oldberg, 2021.

During the Russian civil war of 1919, the Finland tried to annex Olonets and even proclaimed an independent republic in Uhtua, but these attempts were fought back by the Russians. The Peace of Tartu in October 1920 specified the Finnish-Soviet border, and promised a high degree of autonomy to East Karelia. The same year, Finnish communists formed the Karelian Workers’ Commune, which in 1923 was transformed into the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Karelian ASSR).Oldberg, 2021.

The treaty also stipulated that Karelia should use the “local popular language” – namely Finnish,Austin, 1992, p. 17. which in its contemporary orthography was defined by Elias Lönnrot in his double-volume Finskt-svenskt lexikon.Lönnrot, 1874 & 1880.

Growing dismay with Finnish influence and the Great Terror of 1938

The Karelian ASSR, formally established on 27 June 1923, was marketed abroad as a socialist worker’s republic. To the Finns, Karelia was the Kalevala, the land of the Kaleva from Elias Lönnrot’s national epicLönnrot, 1835–36. – an inalienable part of Finland, untainted by Swedish and European culture. In a phenomenon dubbed the “Karelian fever”,Kero, 1983. thousands of people of Finnish descent – coming from Canada, the United States and Finland – converged on Soviet Karelia during the 1920s and 30s.Austin, 1992.

Although the few thousand Finns living in Soviet Karelia at the height of the Karelian fever only amounted to one percent of the population, they were highly educated, attained powerful administrative roles and enjoyed a great deal of influence. They set up schools and established newspapers with the aim of bringing Karelian closer to Standard Finnish, considering it just another Finnish dialect. New schools were established in the districts and existing Russian schools were replaced by Finnish schools – to the point where, by 1932, 99,6% of Karelian children received a Finnish education.Austin, 1992.

Their disproportionate influence backfired as Soviet sentiment started to turn against the Finns in the mid-1930s. A Tver’ Karelian alphabetAll-Union Central Committee of the New Alphabet, 1931, p. 78. was developed by the All-Union Central Committee of the New Alphabet in 1930,Used in Tver’ Karelian educational material and newspapers. (All-Union Central Committee of the New Alphabet, 1931, p. 78.) largely in response to the growing dismay with the Finnish dominance. Karelia, it was argued, represented a separate and unique culture from Finland. In the eyes of Soviet, Standard Finnish was the language of “capitalist Finland and Greater-Finland nationalists”.Austin, 1992.

The tension culminated in 1938, when – almost overnight – everything Finnish disappered from Karelia. A recent Olonets-Karelian grammarAthia, 1936. by the Finnish linguist Edvard Vilhelm Ahtia was buried. The Standard Finnish alphabet was replaced by Cyrillic. Schools were shuttered, all literary publication and spoken Finnish outlawed, and prominent Finns were removed from positions of power. The full extent of the purges first came to light in the late 1980s, through the work of Karelian activist Yurii Dimitrev.Oldberg, 2021. Thousands were sent to Gulags or deported, and almost all Finnish members of the Communist Party were executed – including Edvard Gylling, the leader of the Karelian ASSR.Oldberg, 2021.

Bubrikh’s orthographies of 1937 and 1938

The Russian dialectologist Dmitrii Vladimirovich Bubrikh had been a fierce critic of the language policies in the Karelian ASSR already since 1932.Bubrikh, 1932. He was given a leading role in the development of a new Karelian orthography, and on 23 December 1937, just before the new Soviet language policy was set in motion, his first draft for a Karelian grammar was made public. Bubrikh’s orthography was based on the northern Karelian Proper dialect and it was quickly determined that the proposal was too close to the Standard Finnish it was meant to replace. A new draft was prepared and formally accepted in 1938, this time closer to the southern dialects.Austin, 1992, pp. 23–24.

The rushed work, it was later revealed in archival documents, proved largely unusuable to Karelians, who could not understand their own literary language.Afanas’eva, 2014. Nevertheless, the new orthography was strongly promoted through literature, newspapers, educational and lingustic material, and Communist Party propaganda.Austin, 1992.

Return to Finnish as the official language in 1940

This all came to a halt when Soviet once again restored Finnish as the official language in April of 1940, now in the new Karelo-Finnish Republic which incorporated Finnish territory won in the Winter War (1939–40) into the former Karelian ASSR.Austin, 1992, pp. 32.

The purge of 1938 had so completely eradicated all Soviet Finnish material that there was no educational material available for the schools.Austin, 1992, pp. 32.

Finnish remained the national language during Finland’s control of the area between 1941 and 44, through the Russian victory in 44 and until the establishment of the Karelian Autonomous Republic in 56, when Finnish-language instruction ended and the number of Finnish schools were reduced to 27.Austin, 1992, pp. 32–33.

Modern developments

Building on the work of Genetz, Lönnrot and Ahtia, the first volume of the Dictionary of Karelian was published in Helsinki in 1968.Institute for the Languages of Finland, 1968–2005.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the opportunity arose once again to codify the written language. In May of 1989, the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History at the Karelian Research Centre Russian Academy of Sciences (ILLH KarRC RAS) hosted a linguistic conference in Petrozavodsk with special focus on Karelian language revivalization.Boiko, 2019.

Resulting from the conference, the institute began work on orthographic proposals for the Olonets-Karelian and Karelian Proper dialects. The work on the Olonets-Karelian orthography was led by the current vice director of ILLH KarRC RAS, Lyudmila Fyodorovna Markianova, and the development of the Karelian Proper orthography was headed by the philologist Petr “Pekka” Mefod’evič Zaiko.Boiko, 2019.

In Markianova’s Olonets-Karelian spelling the close front unrounded vowel /i/ is marked by the letter “ü”, constrasting with Zaikov’s “y”.Boiko, 2019.

The two orthographies were approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Karelian ASSR later that same year, followed by the publication of school primers for Olonets-KarelianMarkianova & Dubrovina, 1990; Boiko, 1993. and Karelian Proper,Zaikov, 1993a & 1995. grammars,Zaikov, 1992–93; Markianova, 2002. dictionaries,Markianova & Boiko, 1996; Zaikov & Rugoeva, 1999. as well as additional linguistic material.Boiko, 2019.

Work on the Unified Karelian Alphabet was undertaken by the Terminology and Spelling Commission, established in 1999, reconciling the 1989 orthographies of Markianova and Zaikov.Boiko, 2019. It was officially approved in 2007.Republic of Karelia, 2007. A Finnish-Karelian Dictionary, Sanakirja suomi-karjala, followed in 2008,Markianova & Pyöli, 2008. and the Russian-Karelian General DictionaryMarkianova & Boiko, 2011. in 2011. The Unified Karelian Alphabet was slightly modified in 2014, adding the letters “C” and “c”.Republic of Karelia, 2014.