Karelia (Karelian and Finnish Karjala; , Kareliya; ), the land of the Karelian peoples, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden. It is currently divided between the Russian Republic of Karelia, the Russian Leningrad Oblast, and Finland (the regions of South Karelia and North Karelia).
The Republic of Karelia is a Russian federal subject, including the so-called "East Karelia" with a chiefly Russian Orthodox population.
Within present-day Finland, Karjala refers to regions of South and North Karelia.
Karelia has been bitterly fought over by the Finns and the Novgorod Republic for a period starting in the the 13th-century Swedish-Novgorodian Wars. The Treaty of Nöteborg (Finnish: Pähkinäsaaren rauha) in 1323 divided Karelia between the two. Viborg (Finnish: Viipuri) became the capital of the new Swedish province.
The Treaty of Nystad (Finnish: Uudenkaupungin rauha) in 1721 between Imperial Russia and Sweden ceded most of Karelia to Russia. After Finland had been occupied by Russia in the Finnish War, parts of the ceded provinces (Old Finland) were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1917, Finland became independent and the border was confirmed by the Treaty of Tartu in 1920.
Finnish partisans were involved in attempts to overthrow the Bolshevists in Russian Karelia (East Karelia) in 1918–20, such as in the failed Aunus expedition. These mainly private expeditions ended after the peace treaty of Tartu. After the end of the Russian Civil War and the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922, the Russian part of Karelia became the Karelian Autonomous republic of the Soviet Union (ASSR) in 1923.
In 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, thus starting the Winter War. The Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940 handed most of Finnish Karelia to the Soviet Union. About 400,000 people, virtually the whole population, had to be relocated within Finland. In 1941, Karelia was re-conquered for three years during the Continuation War of 1941 to 1944 when East Karelia was also occupied by the Finns. The Winter War and the resulting Soviet expansion caused considerable bitterness in Finland, which lost its second biggest city, Viipuri, its industrial heartland along the river Vuoksi, the Saimaa canal that connected central Finland to the Gulf of Finland, access to the fishing waters of Lake Ladoga (Finnish: Laatokka), and made an eighth of her citizens refugees without chance of return.
As a consequence of the peace treaty, the Karelian ASSR was incorporated with the Karelo-Finnish SSR 1941–1956, after which it became an ASSR again. Karelia was the only Soviet republic that was "demoted" from an SSR to an ASSR within the Russian SFSR. Unlike autonomous republics, Soviet republics (in theory) had the constitutional right to secede. The possible fear of secession, as well as the Russian ethnic majority in Karelia may have resulted in its "demotion." In 1991 the Republic of Karelia was created out of the ASSR.
According to a Finnish nationalist source, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an economic collapse. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the area has experienced massive urban decay. The hastily and poorly constructed buildings from the Soviet era, as well as older houses remaining from the Finnish era, are being abandoned.
There are some small but enthusiastic groups of Finns campaigning for closer ties between Finland and Karelia. The political expression of these irredentist hopes is called the Karelian question and is about Finland's re-acquisition of the ceded Finnish Karelia. These hopes live on, for instance, in the Karjalan Liitto and ProKarelia. These ambitions for closer ties with East Karelia do not include territorial demands. However, much of the original Finnish population of the Russian side of Karelia has been either resettled and integrated to inner Finland, Russified or dispersed into Russia as victims of Soviet internal population transfers.
Karelia stretches from the White Sea coast to the Gulf of Finland. It contains the two largest lakes in Europe, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. The Karelian Isthmus is located between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga.
The border between Karelia and Ingria, the land of the closely related Ingrian people, has originally been the Neva river itself but later on it was moved northward into Karelian isthmus to follow the Sestra River (), today in the Saint Petersburg metropolitan area, but in 1812–1940 the Russo-Finnish border.
On the other side of Lake Ladoga, River Svir is usually thought of as the traditional southern border of Karelian territory, as Lake Saimaa marks the Western border while Lake Onega and the White Sea mark the Eastern border. In the North there were the nomadic Samis, but no natural border except for huge woods (taiga) and tundra.
In historical texts Karelia is sometimes divided into East Karelia and West Karelia, which are also called Russian Karelia and Finnish Karelia respectively. The area to the north of Lake Ladoga which belonged to Finland before World War II is called Ladoga Karelia, and the parishes on the old pre-war border are sometimes called Border Karelia. White Karelia is the northern part of East Karelia and Olonets Karelia is the southern part.
Tver Karelia denotes the villages in the Tver Oblast that are inhabited by Karelians.
Category:Barents Sea Category:White Sea Category:Geography of Finland Category:Divided regions
af:Karelië ar:كاريليا bg:Карелия ca:Carèlia cs:Karélie da:Karelen de:Karelien et:Karjala el:Καρελία es:Carelia eo:Karelio (geografia) fr:Carélie (région) ko:카리알라 io:Karelia ie:Karelia os:Карели it:Carelia he:חבל קרליה la:Carelia ms:Karelia nl:Karelië ja:カレリア no:Karelen nn:Karelen pl:Karelia (kraina) pt:Carélia ro:Carelia ru:Карелия (историческая область) se:Gárjil simple:Karelia fi:Karjala sv:Karelen tr:Karelya uk:Карелія fiu-vro:Kar'ala zh:卡累利阿This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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