After the Red Guard were defeated in the Finnish civil war in May of 1918, about 20 000 Finnish communists fled to Russia, of which 2000 settled in Soviet Karelia.Oldberg, 2021.
After the peace treaty of Tartu in October 1920, the 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 stipulated that Karelia should use the “local popular language” – namely Finnish, which in its contemporary orthographyIn Lönnrot’s orthography, “v” and “w” are treated as equivalent. was defined by Elias Lönnrot in his double-volume Finskt-svenskt lexikon.Lönnrot, 1874 & 1880.
Lönnrot, E. (1874). Finskt-svenskt lexikon [Finnish-Swedish Encylopedia] (Vol. I). Retrieved 20 September 2026 from books.google.no
Lönnrot, E. (1880). Finskt-svenskt lexikon [Finnish-Swedish Encylopedia], vol. II. Retrieved 20 September 2026 from google.no
Oldberg, I. (2021). The Case of Yurii Dmitriev and the Case of Russian Karelia. In Baltic Worlds, vols. 1–2, pp. 109–117. Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Stockholm. Retrieved 20 September 2026 from balticworlds.com