Karelia
Autonomous republic in the northwest of the Russian Federation, bordering on Finland to the west; area 172,400 sq km/66,550 sq mi; population (1997) 780,000. The capital is Petrozavodsk. The republic is extensively forested with numerous lakes, of which Ladoga and Onega are the largest in Europe. Industries include fishing, timber, chemicals, coal, and mineral and stone quarrying.
History
From the 12th century Karelia belonged to the Novgorod Republic; the southwest of the region was contested by Swedes and Russians until 1721, when Karelia was annexed to Russia by Peter the Great as part of the grand duchy of Finland. In 1917 part of Karelia was retained by Finland when it gained its independence from Russia. The remainder became an autonomous region in 1920 and an autonomous Soviet republic in 1923. Following the Russo-Finnish conflicts of 1939–40 and 1941–44, Finland ceded 46,000 sq km/18,000 sq mi of Karelia to the USSR. Part of this territory was incorporated in the Russian Soviet Republic and part in the Karelian autonomous republic in 1956. A movement for the reunification of Russian and Finnish Karelia emerged in the late 1980s.
| In Tsarist Russia, political dissidents were exiled to Karelia. In 1940, when the Soviet Union invaded the Karelian isthmus north of St Petersburg, some 400,000 Karelians were evacuated to Finland. In 1946 the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was set up, but in 1956 the greater part of the republic returned to its former status as an autonomous Soviet socialist republic. |
Karelia
| Former independent Finnish state that came under Swedish rule in the 17th century and was annexed by Russia in 1721. The greater part of Karelia remaining in Finland after it gained independence in 1917 was ceded to Russia in 1944. That part still within Finland comprises the eastern Finnish province of North Karelia, area 21,585 sq km/8,331 sq ft; capital Joensuu; population (1990) 176,800. Folk tales of the Karelian people inspired the Finnish epic Kalevala. |
Karelia
| Incidental music in nine movements by Jean Sibelius, composed in 1893 and first performed in Viipuri, Karelia (Gulf of Finland), on 13 November 1893. The suite for orchestra in three movements, Op. 11, was also composed in 1893. |
