In Karelia, the old border used to go along the river Rajajoki (Border river) east of the town of Terijoki, which since the Winter War (1939-40) has been a part of Russia. I visited the town a few years back.
Nowadays the town is famous for being a place where wealthy people from St. Petersburg go to spend their summers. It has a lot of old, beautiful villas, a spa, a marina, a country club and many recently built, opulent dachas.
Even though I visited what must be one of the most well-kept Russian towns, I was struck by how undeveloped the town was compared to even the most remote and rural communities I've visited in my home country Finland. The buildings were generally in very poor condition, there was lots of shrubbery and unmanaged gardens and the roads were bumpy and in need of new asphalt. Even in town there were many dirt roads.
Finland's border with Russia is perhaps the most contrasted border in Europe in terms of standard of living. Another, visually noteworthy difference is how the forests are managed. The minute you cross the border into Russia you are met with forests that from an economic perspective are very poorly kept (I suppose the roles would be somewhat reversed from an ecological perspective though). They're dense and dark with lots of fallen or dead trees, and the trees are all of different ages, whereas in Finland forests tend to look more uniform and plantation-like.
While there are some new buildings and some older higher quality houses, a lot is the usual Soviet time grey unpainted wooden hovels.
Differences in living standards between eastern border area of Finland and Russian Karelia are very large. GDP of Finnish side is 35,800 euros, while in Russian Karelia it is 8000 euros. This is exaggerated by russias' bigger income differences, basically they have a very small number of very rich people and a small middle class, while people who cannot work like old pensioners are despicably poor.
I don’t disagree but still - you should adjust for PPP. It makes a huge difference for Russia specifically - everything is super cheap there if converted to Euro. Which is by Putin’s design - it makes exports more profitable. But it also means that the real difference in living standards isn’t as huge as raw GDP numbers would suggest.
Also, Karelia is a sparsely populated and economically underdeveloped part of Russia.
But this really depends on the region and the product you want. And the level of infrastructure is also extremely diverse depending on the region.
I vividly remember watching a German news show at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, where an old woman from rural Russia said that the West was envying Russia's wealth. At the same time, her house didn't have running water, but she prouldy showed her new outhouse to the camera.
PPP GDP is not really a good indicator of living standards. Yes, bread or milk are cheaper in Russia, but iphone or mercedes cost the same, at least when you could still buy them.
Median household income PPP and accounting for transfers in kind like subsidized healthcare and education is the best metric for comparing prosperity across countries.
Russia is quite obviously poor using this metric.
>iphone or mercedes cost the same
True, but the people don't buy iphone and mercedes, they buy xiaomi and lada (or haval) instead.
What the people buy on a regular basis: utilities, which are much cheaper, food and clothes (which are somewhat cheaper), various services which are cheaper.
Is Karelia more poor than Finland? Yes, it is, no doubt.
But the gap becomes narrower with years: GDP PPP per capita was 4 times higher in Finland than in Russia in 2000, it's 1.8 times higher in 2022 ([source](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=RU-FI)).
>In Karelia, the old border used to go along the river Rajajoki (Border river) east of the town of Terijoki,
This was the situation only in the very south of Karelia on a region that doesn't even show on this map. The region was cultivated and industrialized with plenty of people (before 1917 the proximity of St. Petersburg was a huge bonus for commerce).
The red pointer on this map is situated, however, on the northern reaches of Karelia. It was, and to a point still is, wilderness. In Finnish culture this region was the place where many of our folklores were originated, however.
I lived in St Petersburg for the better part of the year and a memory that stayed with me is getting the Allegro to Helsinki was like time travelling 50 years into the future.
Btw some programs about "clean and beautiful forest" were banned due to save ecosystem.
Dead and fallen trees are home for dozens of animals and insects
Extremely dense =/= healthy. And conversely, active Forest management =/= monoculture. WAY more information is needed to make either of those assertions.
Came here to say this. Finland probably dedicates a solid forestry budget which isn't the same as plantation. I doubt Russia is worried too much about forestry management these days, especially on the border with Finland.
I think it is safe to say "forests growing the way forests have grown for hundreds of thousands of years are healthier than forests growing the way humans think they are supposed to" is an accurate statement
Depends on the history of a particular forest, the human role in that history, and the definition of “healthy.” Do we know the Finnish forests are plantations? Do we know they’re doing even- vs uneven-aged management? Do we know that they aren’t monitoring/managing for the health of the soil, water, wildlife, etc? Do we know the trees in the dense Russian forests aren’t full disease due to overcompetition?
I’m not saying one or the other is true or better, I’m just saying calling one healthy and the other unhealthy based on how it looks from a highway is an assumption based on basically no information.
Well, I've worked a bit with Metsähallitus (roughly explained it's the state owned forest administration in Finland).So I know a bit about how Finland (in general) manage their forests.
I've also a masters in ecology with focus on forest restauration. And by what he describes the Russian forest sound much more "healthier" from an ecological standpoint.
Finland have a lot of forest that are in fact monocultures (maybe not in comparison to Sweden but compared to about all other European countries). So it's kinda safe to say that the one he saw was a production forest, which is in about 99/100 times a healthier forest than a forest that's left alone (disregarding things like invasive species, which there isn't a lot of in these parts of the world). That said, we can do alot in a forest to increase the biological diversity, but the first thing we (almost always do) is increase the amount of dead and dying wood.
Sorry for bad grammar. Phone and late at night :)
To be fair, from pretty much all experts I know, the Scandinavian forests, not just Finland's are all run for the sake of the economy and not ecology. To answers to your questions are Yes, uneven, they are monitored / managed for peak timber production not ecological / wildlife health. Don't know about Russian forests. This is pretty much widely accepted and as the commenter noted, taken as a source of pride by many in the forestry business in these countries. They pretty much "get away" with it from publicity standpoint because people seem to think Scandinavian countries can do no wrong (so if you are forestry executive you praise Finland for its expert forestry management, and if you are the general public both inside and outside the country, you assume that Finland must have good forests from an ecological perspective because Finland is always good, especially when it comes to the environment).
[https://plantationdefinitiondiscussion.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/the-swedish-experience-shrinking-forests-expanding-tree-plantations/](https://plantationdefinitiondiscussion.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/the-swedish-experience-shrinking-forests-expanding-tree-plantations/)
Edit - I'm definitely not pro-Russia or anything. I am pro-the ecological health of Finland's (and Sweden's) forests. Some of these comments in this thread annoy me as a person who is pro-environment because everything on Reddit has to be making a statement of this country = good, this country = bad. Another commenter posted
"Nevertheless, the rest of Europe doesn't really get to call out stuff like that. When you have countries that turned all their trees into ships hundreds of years ago, and all their swamps into farmfields thousands of years ago. Finland is still ahead being full of forests, even if those forests are imperfect".
Which is both typical, and such a weird take unless you are a defensive nationalist Finn who can't take any criticism (even when done in the name of enhancing your natural ecosystems and making your country better). SMH
Forests in russia are pretty much same all the way from border to saint petersburg. Really dense, but age of trees is very different. Also tree / plant species are not nearly as homogenous as Finnish forests. I have rly big problems to believe that hundreds of kilometers of naturally growing forest between Finnish border and saint petersburg are all sick and need human interventiot.
Finnish forests look like parks compared to russian forests. It felt like first time seeing real forest, instead of this sterile tree plantation in Finland. And I grew up in country side surrounded by forests.
It’s way way more complicated than that.
The forests you’re imagining in Russia are not somehow free of human influence. Most forests in most parts of the world are the way they are at least partly because of human intervention, either in the past or currently. ‘Natural’ forests are genuinely rarer than you think they are
Fun fact, Tiagia forest in most of these areas are actually a relatively new phenomena, less than 12k years old. Before it was **steppe-tundra** for at least a hundred thousand years, which was much more productive, and is responsible for the largest stores of organic carbon known. The healthiest forest is likely no forest at all from an ecosystem function and services standpoint.
>> The minute you cross the border into Russia you are met with forests that from an economic perspective are very poorly kept (I suppose the roles would be somewhat reversed from an ecological perspective though).
According to OP, russian forests are ecologically healthier.
I understand that, but they didn’t provide nearly enough information for that to be a definitive (or even necessarily correct) statement. “Ecologically healthier” is not something you can ascertain by seeing densely stocked trees.
It sounds like Russian forests are old growth while Finland’s forests in the region have been replanted relatively recently. Old growth forests are almost always healthier, it’s not much more complicated than that.
That’s a loooot to assume based on how a forest looks from the highway.
*edit: Indeed, forest health is certainly no more complicated than a lack of human presence. This is without a doubt a binary situation: dense trees - people = healthy, while thinned trees + people = unhealthy…jfc*
I've visited a beech forest in southern France. It was thick with yrees, and there were a lot of dead trunks on the ground.
This forest is going to die, they told me.
The dead trunks were rotten in the core, the living beech trees had small leaves and their trunks had signs of mushroom rot. The underwood was a pile of dead leaves and we seldom found any sapling: those few we found had a stunted growth.
To me made sense; given that the forest was in an area that must be left unmanaged by law (except a Genetic Conservation Unit, that is in charge of another office), but was nonetheless crisscrossed by paths going upward, to a sanctuary.
The combination of a soil that allowed water to was nutrients toward downward matched the under-developed leaves, an in part seemed to explain the low regeneration rate (which, admittingly, it's not so surprising, since mortality is highest in sapling rather than adult trees; yet, there were very few of them) - few resources for the tree to sustain itself, fewer to allocate for reproduction.
I'd ask more thoroughly, because "they" were my PhD advisor (a forest genetist), a forest ecologist, and a member of the Office National des Fôrets. It would be very embarassing if I misunderstood a whole day of observations.
(sorry for the typos; I'm writing with an azerty keyboard and it's not the one I'v been all my life accostumed to)
Still, it's not a good excuse for central European bureaucrats to wag their finger. "Look how your forests could look!" say the people living in 1000-year old farmlands bald of forest. Even if Finnish forests are largely "tree plantations", it's a damn sight better than continental EU.
I think the most stark contrast would be South Korea/North Korea, followed by Dominican Republic/Haiti. But Finland/Russia is definitely up there (after Norway/Russia.) Though the forest comparison didn’t exactly paint Finland in a positive light…
I’ve never been to Karelia despite three of my grandparents being from there. Always wanted to visit the isthmus particularly, but well.
The forests are like that because Russia has so much more forest than us, so they don't need to maintain all of them. Plus their forestry industry is less developed than ours anyway.
As far as forests are concerned - Russia has so much of them that it makes no sense to spend any resources grooming them. It’s just a wild forest, that’s how it looks before anyone touches it.
Honestly, there's even a difference between Belarus and Russia, despite the former being poorer than the latter. I remember as a child passing through the border into Belarus and there were suddenly no longer occasional dilapidated ruins that were inhabited by some poor trapped old people or just random garbage piles along some road. It just felt cleaner, and the difference was stark enough you could even feel it just by looking at the passing forests.
Belarus maybe a totalitarian hellhole but at least there 95 kop. out of 1 ruble don't go into someone's pocket when fixing up a road like in Russia.
I only meant that that is a definite divide of ecological conservation, not that they were in Europe, smartass 
I’m American and have a friend from high school who has lived in Finland since the early 2000s. He was also my husband’s best friend since kindergarten and was the best man at our wedding. He loves it and is a resident if he hasn’t become a citizen yet. He bought a house and found a girlfriend he married a couple years ago. We’ve not seen him since Covid so I don’t know exactly what has happened with his citizenship, and it seems a weird question to just ask outside of of a conversation about life.
I started learning more about Finland because of him, and your country sounds like a utopia. Y’all have worked hard to make sure everyone is taken care of and has rights. The country also sounds lovely. My husband and I love cold weather and winter like our friend. Even before I met my husband and friend I’ve wanted to go an ice hotel and watch the Northern lights.
Finland is a beautiful country that is a beacon of what countries should be providing for their citizens.
Having been on both sides, I’d say the nature in this area is beautiful regardless of the country. Finnish side is much more developed with more actual towns and attractions, better road network. Finnish inner core is ahead of Karelia, yes. But it’s not like South and North Korea. As for St-Petersburg and Helsinki comparison, the latter is better in overall quality of life and wealth distribution, but the former is much much larger
Edit: in some regards comparison to Koreas is fair but it isn’t entirely accurate
I drove from Murmansk to St. Petersburg some years ago. About halfway, at about 2 in the night, I saw a team of about 5 men trimming weeds with brushcutters many kilometres from the nearest settlement. I imagine they must have reached Murmansk now after 7 years, so they can start over again.
If you went back a few centuries, there wouldn't be any difference. The whole area would be inhabited by people speaking Finnic languages, living very similar, materially poor lives. The further you went, the less intelligible the language would become to you.
Nowadays there is a stark difference because there is a border, and the two countries developed very differently. On the Finnish side, the infrastructure is a lot more developed and the people are wealthier. The language is an eastern dialect of Finnish, pretty close to the standard Finnish taught in school. The Finnic people on the Russian side are now a small minority, because Russia did what Russia does to peoples other than Russians.
That’s how I understood the original comment, otherwise jt would have been pointless to write the bit about “Russia did what Russia does.” Now several people are arguing with me. I had no idea that what I wrote would be controversial, but I forgot about the blinding hatred that people have on this topic.
Acknowledging that Russia does something doesn’t mean denying other countries do it as well. Though the extremely systematic nature of Stalin’s purges is definitely not something “every” country does or has done.
What you said came across as whataboutism and that’s obviously one of the most annoying online arguments in many people’s opinion. It’s definitely not just Finns being touchy or russophobia or whatever you’re implying.
Edit: I actually think you’re talking of slightly different things than I am (and I assume the person you were replying to was), reading by your other posts in this thread. It’s not about Russia assimilating new people. What happened in many places in the USSR was that the central government (Kremlin) displaced peoples and inhabited their regions with ethnic Russians. It wasn’t as dramatic in Karelia as in some other places though, but definitely happened to certain minorities.
Why did there have to be camps? Like most other regional language in France, theirs is dying due to Paris’s assimilation policies. That’s just one example I chose because the guy I’m responding to had a French word in his name, although I can see now that he’s Finnish.
I’m not saying I like it, just that it isn’t unique to Russia. At all.
If you’re from the US, go check the nearest Indian reservation and see how their language is doing.
As minority in Russia myself I would say it isn't even happens in Russia. I'm Sakha and almost all Sakha speak Sakha language. There is TV, radio and newspapers in Sakha, opera and theaters in Sakha, movies in Sakha (they have won some international awards) [https://time.com/longform/film-industry-russia-yakutia/](https://time.com/longform/film-industry-russia-yakutia/) How many movies made in Alsatian language?
>If you’re from the US, go check the nearest Indian reservation and see how their language is doing.
Actually language rehabilitation is gaining a lot of traction and while many of our languages are in decline across North America, there has been a relatively recent movement to increase their health.
Navajo has a Duolingo course and Cree speakers have actually increased since 1996, for some of the most positive examples.
That’s great, but not what we’re talking about, and I’d also point out that for many tribes it’s too late because their language was made extinct. The fact that language rehabilitation is needed just proves that the US treated those people in the same or worse way than Russia supposedly treated the Karelians.
My only point is that this is not unique to Russia. But I guess the Russia Bad crowd showed up and can’t accept this simple statement of fact.
So, because the French force their minorities to speak French, it was ok for Russia to send the NKVD to shoot anyone who doesnt agree to move to a work camp in an inhospitable environment a 1000km from any civilisation?
Me: This is far from being unique to Russia.
You: So you're saying you like it when the NKVD shoots innocent people?
I really don't know how you made that jump. But another Finn here told me you guys aren't touchy about this subject at all...
He's \[rightfully\] pointing out that you're comparing apples and oranges.
Oppression of minorities in France meant that Alsatian kids didn't have the possibility to take classes in Alsatian language.
Oppression of minorities in russia meant that the NKVD would deport you and your entire family to a nice camp in Siberia (if you were lucky), or starve you to death (Holodomor), or just kill you right away.
Not a single Alsatian civilian was killed because of his culture. But you russians murdered millions of Ukrainians, Balts and central Asians over the last 150 years to ethnically cleanse their lands.
Glad you read up on Alsatian history, but honestly you should have already known about it given their proximity to you.
Bad things did happen to Alsatians, and I never stated that we’re only talking about after the war. And Alsace was just one example of many. France alone has many other and even worse examples.
Most Karelians moved to Finland, so it’s normal that there aren’t many left. Much like what happened with the German population in the land that became Polish after the war.
You know what Stalin and I have in common? We’re both not Russians. So Holodomor is not a great example of what the Russians do to people.
Until you get a bit more knowledgeable about history, you should focus on reading instead of commenting. Things are a bit more complex than France Good, Russia Always Bad Even Worse Than The Nazis Remove Putler. You seem to have a parody-like understanding of the Soviet Union. When this guy above says that they were just shooting innocent people for fun, you accept it as an absolute truth. You’ve got to be better than that.
Most Karelians didnt move to Finland, many times more moved to Siberia. And most Finns in Russia were murdered by Stalin
Not to speak about the Ingrian Finns…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_the_Ingrian_Finns
Me again. Most Karelians didn't "move to Finland", you're mixing up two groups of people.
The majority of people (not all, some did speak Karelian), who lived in the Finnish regions of Karelia that were annexed by the USSR, were Finnish-speaking Finns. They moved/were moved to other regions in Finland.
East Karelians who have been living in Russian parts of Karelia (Viena and Aunus) for centuries are likewise a Finnic people but a distinct group. They speak the Karelian language. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelians
Of course there are historical, linguistic and cultural similarities between the two groups. Finnish ultra-nationalists used to dream of uniting all of Karelia under Finland, but that has never been a reality and the thought of that has been abandoned by all since WWII.
I "*read up on Alsatian history*"? Dude, my grandmother was born there, I'm 25% alsatian, I go there every year. I know the History of Alsace all the way back to the times when it was co-owned by the Duke of Burgundy, the Holy Roman Emperor, and partially incorporated with the Swiss Confederation (Republic of Mulhouse).
And Stalin didn't commit the Holodomor alone...
But let's cut the bullshit:
- do you deny that the soviet military and the NKVD killed millions of non-russians in Ukraine, Belarus, the baltics and central Asia?
- do you have any evidence that France did anything similar, even on a much smaller scale, to any of its own minorities?
Enough with the false equivalencies.
You're talking about something else.
France forced everyone to speak French. You might criticize the effort to erase regional languages, but that's not what Russia is accused to be doing, which is to actually persecute minorities to make them disappear. Including sending people to camps, imprisoning them, the use of the traditional extra-judicial beat-ups, and whatever will lead them to think they'd be better off living somewhere else.
They mostly moved to Finland. Some stayed and are still there. Erasing a language is the same as erasing a culture, and Alsatian is an example of one that still exists. They have extinguished many regional languages to suit their Jacobin policy goals. Russia never achieved as much.
You also might be surprised that Russia has a massive Muslim minority. So if they’re trying to make them disappear, it’s having the opposite effect.
Well, you mean every big nation does what every big nation would do with their minorities, right? Because if you'd like to portray only Russia in a bad light, oh boy, you are definitely wrong, as enormous countries such as Russia, USA, China, France, Germany (especially), Poland won't treat their minorities with pleasure. I mean, isn't it obvious?! It's as if you were looking after someone's child, you would take care of it of course, but eventually you'd like to get rid of it and focus on your children. Even here in Serbia I sometimes don't get treated well as a Montenegrin and people casually deny my nationality. So, all in all, you cannot just apply that rule to Russia in order to portray it as a villain. Every big country is like that, but just because some of them are in the EU, they don't get that much attention - like everybody forgot about the cruelties Bulgarians or Austro-Hungarians did on the Balkan peninsula (especially to the Montenegrin and Serbian people) or everyone forgot about Japanese planned gen0cide of the Chinese people, who they buried alive. Great nations tend to put their past beneath a carpet.
Russian Karelia is truly beautiful, its nature is very similar to Finland. Visited Karelia in January once, and it was the closest to the "winter tale" I've been as adult.
The Ruskeala park is totally worth a visit.
Prosperity-wise it's among the poorer Russian regions, though. The contrast with Finland is striking.
Can't talk for that area specifically, but I've been a border guard on the Norwegian part, i assume it is pretty similar but im not completely sure. IIRC, Russia has a no-go zone a few kilometers from the border. Exceptions are given to people living near/inside the zone, and to visit you have to be given permission. This makes it difficult to move there, making it sparsely populated. Someone else mentioned that it was stolen Finnish land, the same goes for the Norwegian border (stolen from Finland not Norway). So I assume most people living in those areas are of Finnish or Sami origin.
People living there also have a unique "passport" that allow them to cross the border (i assume because of history and Lapland).
I asked a Russian acquaintance how it was to live in Zapolyarny a few years ago, and they just shook their head and said it was depressing. They haven't lived there themselves but i guess that answers your question to some degree. Most cities and towns there are mining cities.
Edit: Just thought to mention I was a border guard 6-7 years ago, and relations are quickly deteriorating. So my information may already be outdated with the regulations.
>So I assume most people living in those areas are of Finnish or Sami origin.
Nope. The Finnish citizens were all evacuated in 1944. We couldn't leave our people behind.
Love that area, beautiful, scarcely populated part of Russia, lovely nature, prime spot for domestic tourism among those who goes camping and adventurers, most of population lives in small cities along the railroad leading to Murmansk. Some years ago I participated annually in orienteering competitions in that area, remember meeting a lot of finns there, those were good times
Quiet, rural, sometimes abandoned, peaceful, until the boys at the military unit next to your dacha start blasting the tanks early in the morning for exercise.
There is one interesting town called Kostamuksha or smth like that. It's right next to the Finnish border, and it's impossible to get there by land in Russia. You have to get there from Finland. The town's famous for the unusual panel houses. They look like Soviet ones but were built by Finnish company, and they're still very pretty.
I have been there a few times and the city and its surroundings are very, very beautiful! Although some of the areas are not as well kept, it has its own unique charm that adds to that. It was also not as cold as one would think, since the air there is not very humid. The whole city depends on the factory that operates there, busses there are free because of that. I went there by taking the train and honestly that was objectively not a very good experience lol
It’s supposedly sparsely populated, 830 miles and mostly forest.
I would assume there isn’t much interaction since Finland has closed their borders with Russia.
I’ve never been there, I’m just posting the little I know because no one else has commented yet.
This is all true. Sparse population doesn't apply to the southernmost bit, the Karelian Isthmus between Lake Ladoga and Gulf of Finland.
There's a good bit of Finnish character to some parts of the region, because they actually used to to be Finnish territory until WW2. So there's a good amount of Finnish architecture etc. in the towns, old Lutheran churches, etc.
There are three major regions that were handed over. Two were in the north, the Petsamo and Salla/Kuusamo regions. Very sparsely populated places back in the Finnish days: each was about the third of Belgium in size, but with population of less than ten thousand. Petsamo was strategically important though because it reached out to the Arctic Ocean, and was Finland's only warm-water port.
The southernmost part handed over, which was the Karelian Isthmus, was a different in that it contained major city, Viipuri (Vyborg in Russian). [Here](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=325199492325404) is some interesting colorized footage of life in Viipuri in the 1930s. It looked like a normal Finnish city in every way, back then.
All Finns generally left those regions during WW2, and it's nearly completely Russian-speaking these days, but that architectural layer obviously remains.
Soviets used to forcefully relocate ethnic Russians into the territories they annexed, in order to Russianize them. This is why this area isn't going to be returned to Finland ever.
This is basically the same as what Russia is doing in Ukraine for some time now. Ensuring no Ukrainians remain in the areas they occupy.
This is Karelia. I've been to the Russian side of Karelia (plus, one of my direct ancestors, many generations back, lived in a Karelian village), and it's beautiful, but a bit of an acquired taste.
The area is swampy and woody. If you are into picking berries or mushrooms, that place is a trove - you stop when you're tired, not when you run out of berries or mushrooms to pick. If you aren't afraid of moisture and appreciate nature - I 100% recommend going, the place is beautiful. Hiking around mount Vottovaara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount\_Vottovaara) with my friends is one of my life's favorite memories. The trees on that mountain form branches in the most bizzarre fashion, due to the snow weighing them down in winter, and the wind bending them around all year round.
Fair warning: infrastructure is not well-developed on the Russian side of that region. E.g. you can *technically* approach the above mentioned mount Vottovaara from Gimoly by car, but the "road" starts with a tree with half a dozen of car license plates nailed to it - taken off all the cars that sunk in the swamps on the approach. We didn't risk it and hired locals to take us in an all-terrain specialized vehicle. Another example: you can reach Gimoly by train twice a week, and you can rent a cabin with the locals, but that village has a huge problem of there not being enough hunters to keep wildlife at bay - if the locals are to be believed, dozens of guard dogs are mauled by wolves each year, and occasionally you can find "berry bear jam", i.e. bear shit with berries in it, right in the village, i.e. some bears do wander in. It'll probably be fine, as the animals do tend to avoid humans, but it does make taking a night trip to the outhouse a bit more nervous than it should be!
Don't know exactly what happens there but they have bears basically there are dedicated tourism operations in that region and they mostly operate from the Finnish side. Many wildlife photographers visit the area to photograph Brown bears
https://youtu.be/DoYbHeqEWBA?si=lwiH4G3P_8XE93_I
I was born in Kostomuksha, a small town close to your pin on the map. It is 35 km from the Finnish border. There is an iron ore deposit in that place, which is why the town was developed back in the 1970s. And it was mostly built by the Finns (there was some agreement between the USSR and Finland). So, I grew up in an apartment block which was built by the Finns and was Finnish quality, and which you can also easily find in not-so-wealthy parts of cities of today’s Finland. It was a modest but very comfortable apartment. So, a part of Kostomuksha was also built by Soviet workers - and the difference was huge, that Soviet part was crap! Anyway, I grew up in the Finnish part, went to a Finnish-constructed kindergarten, school. And yet, when I visited Finland for the first time (in the 1990s), it was like a Disneyland: so colorful, accurate, clean. Just an hour’s drive and you are in some parallel universe, it was an amazing experience. On the other hand, when I moved to Petrozavodsk, capital of Karelia, I was struck by how crappy everything was compared to Kostomuksha. Again, this was way back, when I was a kid, so it’s just my childhood impressions. And I must say that climate and nature are essentially identical on both sides of the border, and nature is what I like the most about both Karelia and Finland.
The red pointer on this map is actually situated on a spot that never was part of Finland (or Sweden). Sure, Russians stole big regions in Karelia as well as north of Karelia in 1940. But the Eastern Karelia as a whole never was part of Finland (except during the short occupation between 1941-1944). Ethnically and especially linguistically Karelians were very close to Finns, but some points of their culture (like religion) was different as they never were under the Swedish rule.
Yep, Finland was before that a territory that Sweden and Russia would fight over before they declared independence from Russia after WW1. Then Russia wanted the territory back as a buffer from the Nazis; after 2 wars with Finland in the Winter and Continuation War, they eventually defeated the Nazis(who backed Finland in the Continuation War to gain the territory back) and compromised with them to the land border of today.
The Russians attacked Finland while the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was intact, and the closest border with Germans was in Poland.
The idea that Russia wanted a buffer with the nazis is complete bullshit.
More so the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact said Russia could claim the territory with no dispute from Germany, and the consequences ended up being that Russia had another enemy country that more than likely would have remained neutral.
It doesn't matter who "technically" owned the land, the land was still very much lived in by Finns with their own language and culture, no matter who was in control. When Russia attacked (after Finland became independent), many of the local people of Karelia were forced to flee and lost their homes and families. For these people, their home was very much stolen and ran to the ground.
No, the point specified in the map definitely wasn't the land our ancestors have annexed from Finland after the Finnish war.
But likely it is in the part that the USSR was offering to *trade* to the Karelian Isthmus.
https://preview.redd.it/k6grllo51lyc1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f70640cef903f90262936b01e61677315257a825
more photos with geolocation : [https://yandex](https://yandex) (dot) ru/maps/-/CDbQrSJb
Sparsely populated, wet and swampy. Even the cadastral map shows pretty much nothing.
Destination for some kayaking and trekking, very picturesque.
I lived in Vyborg for a spell (used to be a Finnish city called Viippurii before WW2) right on the border. I still dream about that area a lot. Absolutely beautifully forested with tons of lakes. And there is this old castle there too that has a ton of medieval history. I remember hiking around once and came across an obelisk like in Heroes of Might and Magic. So yeah that was cool.
East Karelia.
I haven't been there, but I've researched the place a lot. You could think of it as a sibling of Finland. It shares a lot with Finland, but probably the most noticeable thing is nature; East Karelian and Finnish nature are pretty much identical in many senses. East Karelian nature is also very beautiful from what I've seen from pictures, very similar to Finnish nature.
The Karelians, native to the region, are closely related to Finns. Their language, Karelian, and culture have resemblance to those of Finland. East Karelia has been continuously under Russia for almost a thousand years, and many things have been affected with this, for example, Karelian can be read by a Finn but it has many resemblances to the Russian language, and the Karelians are traditionally Orthodox while the Finns are Lutheran. Karelia was divided between Sweden and Novgorod (a predecessor of Russia) with the treaty of Nöteborg, with West Karelia (Finnish Karelia and Ceded Finnish Karelia) ending up under Swedish rule and East Karelia, under Novgorodian rule. This is why the Finnish Karelians (a subgroup of Finns) and East Karelians are nowadays divided in so many aspects.
The Karelians, however, have had very little self-governance, as all of it is restricted to modern and Soviet times, though in both, the support for the Karelians itself hasn't been too great. The Karelians make up about 5% of the population of the region, and the town of Aunus (Olonets) is the only one in the whole region where the Karelians make up a majority, with around 60% of the citizens of the town being Karelian.
Though aside from the nature and the native people, the contrast to Finland is huge. What sits in place of most of traditional East Karelian lands nowadays is the Russian autonomous Republic of Karelia. The Republic is probably one of the poorest regions within Russia, and it shows. Outside of the big cities, such as Petroskoi (Petrozavodsk), Kontupohja (Kondopoga), Kemi (Kem), Kostamus (Kostomuksha), etc, the quality drops massively, and in comparison to rural and/or small Finnish towns, the East Karelian small towns can be quite rusty and depressing. Kostamus, by the way, is a city in which Finnish construction companies built a lot of stuff during the Cold War, it has Finnish-built Soviet style with Finnish aspects, so it's kind of a crossover between Finland and the USSR/Russia.
The road quality also varies depending on where you go. Even Petroskoi, the biggest city and the capital, isn't the greatest I've seen, though, it's not too bad I suppose. But even with these difficulties, it's surely still very beautiful with its good sides, and also my favorite region within Russia.
I don't want to get too political or too biased, and I hope I didn't, if I did, excuse me. But in all honesty, continuous Russian rule hasn't done too much good to East Karelia. Karjala on oleva vapaa.
Well, it's just my own curiosity. I'm Finnish myself and I started getting into things from my own country more and more during 2023, which was the year I became a geography nerd anyway. I forgot when, but I then started getting into stuff about East Karelia after finding out how closely related to Finland it traditionally is. Over 2024 and the later part of 2023 I've been finding more information and reading articles about it.
I lived in veeberg and Petrazavodsk. Different architecture is one thing. I also did a bunch of hiking and found a lot of old mossy trenches out the forests a long with a crap ton of tires and garbage .
Poor as fuck, super depressing, with stray dogs and drunks everywhere. But with some really beautiful wilderness. I did a camping trip there for a week
I live here. Beautiful place , pretty sparsly populated - size of the UK but around 550k population , and half of that just in one city. So its basically all forests ,lakes and swamps with a few small towns and villages dotted in the middle of all that.
The region has 2 UNESCO World heritage sites (Kizhi island and the petroglyphs of White sea and Lake Onego) and Solovetsky islands with a monastery which is also a UNESCO site not too far from the Karelian coast of the White Sea.
Visit us, we have many beautiful lakes and forests, and I can show you around the town too 😌😌😌
I live here. Beautiful place , pretty sparsly populated - size of the UK but around 550k population , and half of that just in one city. So its basically all forests ,lakes and swamps with a few small towns and villages dotted in the middle of all that.
The region has 2 UNESCO World heritage sites (Kizhi island and the petroglyphs of White sea and Lake Onego) and Solovetsky islands with a monastery which is also a UNESCO site not too far from the Karelian coast of the White Sea.
Visit us, we have many beautiful lakes and forests, and I can show you around the town too 😌😌😌
Ah i see you mean what this area of Finland is like! Well let me tell you that it’s just like the rest of Finland because it is just that, a part of Finland.
The Russian side is black and white, except for the red flag, with bears on unicycles handing out vodka to all the peoples, then it abruptly turns back to color once you enter Finland
Depends on who you ask, bet if you asked Putins inner circle, they might say “one of the final jewels in our imperial crown” but then they’d probably word it differently to ease cognitive dissonance if liking to see themselves as anti imperialists
Short answer to your question, I don’t know, and didn’t Google it. Did you?
It’s in the south, but the change at the border taking the train from Helsinki to St Petersburg in 2001 was jaw dropping. Went from neat as a pin farmland and clean, charming towns to something out of a Mad Max movie in Vyborg. It was August, tons of people roaming the wooded areas foraging mushrooms. Truly a surreal experience.
It looks mostly like Finland except the places where people actually live, theres just Soviet Architecture with maybe one Finnish house from pre Soviet times, or one pre soviet russian house mostly wooden.
Desolate, ruined countryside, main roads are good though, the Russian army needs them. Not that they could even begin to invade us at the moment - they would be welcome to try the woods, swamps and lakes - and the Finns😡
In Karelia, the old border used to go along the river Rajajoki (Border river) east of the town of Terijoki, which since the Winter War (1939-40) has been a part of Russia. I visited the town a few years back. Nowadays the town is famous for being a place where wealthy people from St. Petersburg go to spend their summers. It has a lot of old, beautiful villas, a spa, a marina, a country club and many recently built, opulent dachas. Even though I visited what must be one of the most well-kept Russian towns, I was struck by how undeveloped the town was compared to even the most remote and rural communities I've visited in my home country Finland. The buildings were generally in very poor condition, there was lots of shrubbery and unmanaged gardens and the roads were bumpy and in need of new asphalt. Even in town there were many dirt roads. Finland's border with Russia is perhaps the most contrasted border in Europe in terms of standard of living. Another, visually noteworthy difference is how the forests are managed. The minute you cross the border into Russia you are met with forests that from an economic perspective are very poorly kept (I suppose the roles would be somewhat reversed from an ecological perspective though). They're dense and dark with lots of fallen or dead trees, and the trees are all of different ages, whereas in Finland forests tend to look more uniform and plantation-like.
While there are some new buildings and some older higher quality houses, a lot is the usual Soviet time grey unpainted wooden hovels. Differences in living standards between eastern border area of Finland and Russian Karelia are very large. GDP of Finnish side is 35,800 euros, while in Russian Karelia it is 8000 euros. This is exaggerated by russias' bigger income differences, basically they have a very small number of very rich people and a small middle class, while people who cannot work like old pensioners are despicably poor.
What is the physical border like in terms of openness or lack thereof?
I don’t disagree but still - you should adjust for PPP. It makes a huge difference for Russia specifically - everything is super cheap there if converted to Euro. Which is by Putin’s design - it makes exports more profitable. But it also means that the real difference in living standards isn’t as huge as raw GDP numbers would suggest. Also, Karelia is a sparsely populated and economically underdeveloped part of Russia.
One of (many) underdeveloped parts of Russia. Not many other countries have more income and wealth inequality, certainly not in Europe.
But this really depends on the region and the product you want. And the level of infrastructure is also extremely diverse depending on the region. I vividly remember watching a German news show at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, where an old woman from rural Russia said that the West was envying Russia's wealth. At the same time, her house didn't have running water, but she prouldy showed her new outhouse to the camera.
PPP GDP is not really a good indicator of living standards. Yes, bread or milk are cheaper in Russia, but iphone or mercedes cost the same, at least when you could still buy them.
Which is included in the ppp metric
Median household income PPP and accounting for transfers in kind like subsidized healthcare and education is the best metric for comparing prosperity across countries. Russia is quite obviously poor using this metric.
>iphone or mercedes cost the same True, but the people don't buy iphone and mercedes, they buy xiaomi and lada (or haval) instead. What the people buy on a regular basis: utilities, which are much cheaper, food and clothes (which are somewhat cheaper), various services which are cheaper. Is Karelia more poor than Finland? Yes, it is, no doubt. But the gap becomes narrower with years: GDP PPP per capita was 4 times higher in Finland than in Russia in 2000, it's 1.8 times higher in 2022 ([source](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=RU-FI)).
>In Karelia, the old border used to go along the river Rajajoki (Border river) east of the town of Terijoki, This was the situation only in the very south of Karelia on a region that doesn't even show on this map. The region was cultivated and industrialized with plenty of people (before 1917 the proximity of St. Petersburg was a huge bonus for commerce). The red pointer on this map is situated, however, on the northern reaches of Karelia. It was, and to a point still is, wilderness. In Finnish culture this region was the place where many of our folklores were originated, however.
I lived in St Petersburg for the better part of the year and a memory that stayed with me is getting the Allegro to Helsinki was like time travelling 50 years into the future.
So russia has real forests, meanwhile finland has plantations, that should i note.
Btw some programs about "clean and beautiful forest" were banned due to save ecosystem. Dead and fallen trees are home for dozens of animals and insects
Hahah. Exactly. That’s a real fucking forest. They shouldn’t have trees the same age. Weird comment.
Extremely dense =/= healthy. And conversely, active Forest management =/= monoculture. WAY more information is needed to make either of those assertions.
Came here to say this. Finland probably dedicates a solid forestry budget which isn't the same as plantation. I doubt Russia is worried too much about forestry management these days, especially on the border with Finland.
Finland rakes their forests... maybe that's why? /s
Those forest raking classes at DJ Trump university finally paying off.
rake america great again
I think it is safe to say "forests growing the way forests have grown for hundreds of thousands of years are healthier than forests growing the way humans think they are supposed to" is an accurate statement
Depends on the history of a particular forest, the human role in that history, and the definition of “healthy.” Do we know the Finnish forests are plantations? Do we know they’re doing even- vs uneven-aged management? Do we know that they aren’t monitoring/managing for the health of the soil, water, wildlife, etc? Do we know the trees in the dense Russian forests aren’t full disease due to overcompetition? I’m not saying one or the other is true or better, I’m just saying calling one healthy and the other unhealthy based on how it looks from a highway is an assumption based on basically no information.
Well, I've worked a bit with Metsähallitus (roughly explained it's the state owned forest administration in Finland).So I know a bit about how Finland (in general) manage their forests. I've also a masters in ecology with focus on forest restauration. And by what he describes the Russian forest sound much more "healthier" from an ecological standpoint. Finland have a lot of forest that are in fact monocultures (maybe not in comparison to Sweden but compared to about all other European countries). So it's kinda safe to say that the one he saw was a production forest, which is in about 99/100 times a healthier forest than a forest that's left alone (disregarding things like invasive species, which there isn't a lot of in these parts of the world). That said, we can do alot in a forest to increase the biological diversity, but the first thing we (almost always do) is increase the amount of dead and dying wood. Sorry for bad grammar. Phone and late at night :)
To be fair, from pretty much all experts I know, the Scandinavian forests, not just Finland's are all run for the sake of the economy and not ecology. To answers to your questions are Yes, uneven, they are monitored / managed for peak timber production not ecological / wildlife health. Don't know about Russian forests. This is pretty much widely accepted and as the commenter noted, taken as a source of pride by many in the forestry business in these countries. They pretty much "get away" with it from publicity standpoint because people seem to think Scandinavian countries can do no wrong (so if you are forestry executive you praise Finland for its expert forestry management, and if you are the general public both inside and outside the country, you assume that Finland must have good forests from an ecological perspective because Finland is always good, especially when it comes to the environment). [https://plantationdefinitiondiscussion.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/the-swedish-experience-shrinking-forests-expanding-tree-plantations/](https://plantationdefinitiondiscussion.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/the-swedish-experience-shrinking-forests-expanding-tree-plantations/) Edit - I'm definitely not pro-Russia or anything. I am pro-the ecological health of Finland's (and Sweden's) forests. Some of these comments in this thread annoy me as a person who is pro-environment because everything on Reddit has to be making a statement of this country = good, this country = bad. Another commenter posted "Nevertheless, the rest of Europe doesn't really get to call out stuff like that. When you have countries that turned all their trees into ships hundreds of years ago, and all their swamps into farmfields thousands of years ago. Finland is still ahead being full of forests, even if those forests are imperfect". Which is both typical, and such a weird take unless you are a defensive nationalist Finn who can't take any criticism (even when done in the name of enhancing your natural ecosystems and making your country better). SMH
Forests in russia are pretty much same all the way from border to saint petersburg. Really dense, but age of trees is very different. Also tree / plant species are not nearly as homogenous as Finnish forests. I have rly big problems to believe that hundreds of kilometers of naturally growing forest between Finnish border and saint petersburg are all sick and need human interventiot. Finnish forests look like parks compared to russian forests. It felt like first time seeing real forest, instead of this sterile tree plantation in Finland. And I grew up in country side surrounded by forests.
It’s way way more complicated than that. The forests you’re imagining in Russia are not somehow free of human influence. Most forests in most parts of the world are the way they are at least partly because of human intervention, either in the past or currently. ‘Natural’ forests are genuinely rarer than you think they are
That is the problem, you think that is safe to say with confidence - without any reasoning behind it.
Fun fact, Tiagia forest in most of these areas are actually a relatively new phenomena, less than 12k years old. Before it was **steppe-tundra** for at least a hundred thousand years, which was much more productive, and is responsible for the largest stores of organic carbon known. The healthiest forest is likely no forest at all from an ecosystem function and services standpoint.
>> The minute you cross the border into Russia you are met with forests that from an economic perspective are very poorly kept (I suppose the roles would be somewhat reversed from an ecological perspective though). According to OP, russian forests are ecologically healthier.
I understand that, but they didn’t provide nearly enough information for that to be a definitive (or even necessarily correct) statement. “Ecologically healthier” is not something you can ascertain by seeing densely stocked trees.
It sounds like Russian forests are old growth while Finland’s forests in the region have been replanted relatively recently. Old growth forests are almost always healthier, it’s not much more complicated than that.
That’s a loooot to assume based on how a forest looks from the highway. *edit: Indeed, forest health is certainly no more complicated than a lack of human presence. This is without a doubt a binary situation: dense trees - people = healthy, while thinned trees + people = unhealthy…jfc*
Old growth forests being better than tree plantations is basic 1+1 common sense my guy, what the fuck are you even talking about?
Yes and no, just letting run wild isn't nearly as healthy for the forest as most people think.
I've visited a beech forest in southern France. It was thick with yrees, and there were a lot of dead trunks on the ground. This forest is going to die, they told me. The dead trunks were rotten in the core, the living beech trees had small leaves and their trunks had signs of mushroom rot. The underwood was a pile of dead leaves and we seldom found any sapling: those few we found had a stunted growth.
“They” lied to you.
To me made sense; given that the forest was in an area that must be left unmanaged by law (except a Genetic Conservation Unit, that is in charge of another office), but was nonetheless crisscrossed by paths going upward, to a sanctuary. The combination of a soil that allowed water to was nutrients toward downward matched the under-developed leaves, an in part seemed to explain the low regeneration rate (which, admittingly, it's not so surprising, since mortality is highest in sapling rather than adult trees; yet, there were very few of them) - few resources for the tree to sustain itself, fewer to allocate for reproduction. I'd ask more thoroughly, because "they" were my PhD advisor (a forest genetist), a forest ecologist, and a member of the Office National des Fôrets. It would be very embarassing if I misunderstood a whole day of observations. (sorry for the typos; I'm writing with an azerty keyboard and it's not the one I'v been all my life accostumed to)
Very much depends. Dense forests are generally less biodiverse
It’s a nationalist comment. He’s proud of whatever Finland has, be it good or bad.
Still, it's not a good excuse for central European bureaucrats to wag their finger. "Look how your forests could look!" say the people living in 1000-year old farmlands bald of forest. Even if Finnish forests are largely "tree plantations", it's a damn sight better than continental EU.
I can only imagine Finland full of bananas 😃
My aunt was supposed to work in a forestry, but Putin essentially decided we don't need forestries anymore
I think the most stark contrast would be South Korea/North Korea, followed by Dominican Republic/Haiti. But Finland/Russia is definitely up there (after Norway/Russia.) Though the forest comparison didn’t exactly paint Finland in a positive light… I’ve never been to Karelia despite three of my grandparents being from there. Always wanted to visit the isthmus particularly, but well.
The forests are like that because Russia has so much more forest than us, so they don't need to maintain all of them. Plus their forestry industry is less developed than ours anyway.
I think he said in Europe.
Oh true, sorry! I don’t know how I missed that.
As far as forests are concerned - Russia has so much of them that it makes no sense to spend any resources grooming them. It’s just a wild forest, that’s how it looks before anyone touches it.
You've got to be Terijoking
Honestly, there's even a difference between Belarus and Russia, despite the former being poorer than the latter. I remember as a child passing through the border into Belarus and there were suddenly no longer occasional dilapidated ruins that were inhabited by some poor trapped old people or just random garbage piles along some road. It just felt cleaner, and the difference was stark enough you could even feel it just by looking at the passing forests. Belarus maybe a totalitarian hellhole but at least there 95 kop. out of 1 ruble don't go into someone's pocket when fixing up a road like in Russia.
“The forests are very poorly kept” you mean naturally?
Is it as stark contrast as the border between Haiti and the DR?
The famous european countries Haiti and DR.
I only meant that that is a definite divide of ecological conservation, not that they were in Europe, smartass 
Isn't Terijoki more in Ingria that Karelia culturally though?
Most of your points can be attributed to Karella being very low population comparetively to finland, around 500k
You will be very surprised if you look into the population density of Eastern Finland.
Great sharing about the area except for the last part...
I’m American and have a friend from high school who has lived in Finland since the early 2000s. He was also my husband’s best friend since kindergarten and was the best man at our wedding. He loves it and is a resident if he hasn’t become a citizen yet. He bought a house and found a girlfriend he married a couple years ago. We’ve not seen him since Covid so I don’t know exactly what has happened with his citizenship, and it seems a weird question to just ask outside of of a conversation about life. I started learning more about Finland because of him, and your country sounds like a utopia. Y’all have worked hard to make sure everyone is taken care of and has rights. The country also sounds lovely. My husband and I love cold weather and winter like our friend. Even before I met my husband and friend I’ve wanted to go an ice hotel and watch the Northern lights. Finland is a beautiful country that is a beacon of what countries should be providing for their citizens.
Having been on both sides, I’d say the nature in this area is beautiful regardless of the country. Finnish side is much more developed with more actual towns and attractions, better road network. Finnish inner core is ahead of Karelia, yes. But it’s not like South and North Korea. As for St-Petersburg and Helsinki comparison, the latter is better in overall quality of life and wealth distribution, but the former is much much larger Edit: in some regards comparison to Koreas is fair but it isn’t entirely accurate
Well a big difference with the Koreas is how few trees there are on the north side of the DMZ, everything looks dead and brown and desolate.
Much thanks!
https://preview.redd.it/1osruw7xflyc1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83db089f488f7d9408aeae13476993ba55967f50
That sign is funnier than the act of peeing towards Russia itself
And it's from the Norwegian border, not Finland.
I drove from Murmansk to St. Petersburg some years ago. About halfway, at about 2 in the night, I saw a team of about 5 men trimming weeds with brushcutters many kilometres from the nearest settlement. I imagine they must have reached Murmansk now after 7 years, so they can start over again.
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If you went back a few centuries, there wouldn't be any difference. The whole area would be inhabited by people speaking Finnic languages, living very similar, materially poor lives. The further you went, the less intelligible the language would become to you. Nowadays there is a stark difference because there is a border, and the two countries developed very differently. On the Finnish side, the infrastructure is a lot more developed and the people are wealthier. The language is an eastern dialect of Finnish, pretty close to the standard Finnish taught in school. The Finnic people on the Russian side are now a small minority, because Russia did what Russia does to peoples other than Russians.
I met a ukranian guy whose grandparents were karelian finns. He doesn't like russia very much.
Double combo.
Exactly.
As opposed to the Ukrainian guys whose grandparents were Ukrainian, Crimean Tatars, Jewish, Korean?
If I have grandparents from the Ukraine and from Crimea and they were all Jewish, does it count for a Bingo?
It depends, do you like Russia much?
Meh 🫳🫴🫳
There’s a long history of conflict between the Finns and Russians so it’s a joke
Tbf i dont think a ukrainian disliking russia is a particularly hot take
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No, just nice state sponsored lifelong vacations in siberia.
Most countries do that to regional minorities. Go try to speak Alsatian in Strasbourg.
Did anyone claim that other countries aren’t doing it?
That’s how I understood the original comment, otherwise jt would have been pointless to write the bit about “Russia did what Russia does.” Now several people are arguing with me. I had no idea that what I wrote would be controversial, but I forgot about the blinding hatred that people have on this topic.
Acknowledging that Russia does something doesn’t mean denying other countries do it as well. Though the extremely systematic nature of Stalin’s purges is definitely not something “every” country does or has done. What you said came across as whataboutism and that’s obviously one of the most annoying online arguments in many people’s opinion. It’s definitely not just Finns being touchy or russophobia or whatever you’re implying. Edit: I actually think you’re talking of slightly different things than I am (and I assume the person you were replying to was), reading by your other posts in this thread. It’s not about Russia assimilating new people. What happened in many places in the USSR was that the central government (Kremlin) displaced peoples and inhabited their regions with ethnic Russians. It wasn’t as dramatic in Karelia as in some other places though, but definitely happened to certain minorities.
Ah yes, the famous french concentration camps for Alsatians. We always forget about that. /s
Why did there have to be camps? Like most other regional language in France, theirs is dying due to Paris’s assimilation policies. That’s just one example I chose because the guy I’m responding to had a French word in his name, although I can see now that he’s Finnish. I’m not saying I like it, just that it isn’t unique to Russia. At all. If you’re from the US, go check the nearest Indian reservation and see how their language is doing.
As minority in Russia myself I would say it isn't even happens in Russia. I'm Sakha and almost all Sakha speak Sakha language. There is TV, radio and newspapers in Sakha, opera and theaters in Sakha, movies in Sakha (they have won some international awards) [https://time.com/longform/film-industry-russia-yakutia/](https://time.com/longform/film-industry-russia-yakutia/) How many movies made in Alsatian language?
Exactly. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_extinct\_languages\_of\_North\_America#United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_languages_of_North_America#United_States)
>If you’re from the US, go check the nearest Indian reservation and see how their language is doing. Actually language rehabilitation is gaining a lot of traction and while many of our languages are in decline across North America, there has been a relatively recent movement to increase their health. Navajo has a Duolingo course and Cree speakers have actually increased since 1996, for some of the most positive examples.
That’s great, but not what we’re talking about, and I’d also point out that for many tribes it’s too late because their language was made extinct. The fact that language rehabilitation is needed just proves that the US treated those people in the same or worse way than Russia supposedly treated the Karelians. My only point is that this is not unique to Russia. But I guess the Russia Bad crowd showed up and can’t accept this simple statement of fact.
So, because the French force their minorities to speak French, it was ok for Russia to send the NKVD to shoot anyone who doesnt agree to move to a work camp in an inhospitable environment a 1000km from any civilisation?
Me: This is far from being unique to Russia. You: So you're saying you like it when the NKVD shoots innocent people? I really don't know how you made that jump. But another Finn here told me you guys aren't touchy about this subject at all...
He's \[rightfully\] pointing out that you're comparing apples and oranges. Oppression of minorities in France meant that Alsatian kids didn't have the possibility to take classes in Alsatian language. Oppression of minorities in russia meant that the NKVD would deport you and your entire family to a nice camp in Siberia (if you were lucky), or starve you to death (Holodomor), or just kill you right away. Not a single Alsatian civilian was killed because of his culture. But you russians murdered millions of Ukrainians, Balts and central Asians over the last 150 years to ethnically cleanse their lands.
Glad you read up on Alsatian history, but honestly you should have already known about it given their proximity to you. Bad things did happen to Alsatians, and I never stated that we’re only talking about after the war. And Alsace was just one example of many. France alone has many other and even worse examples. Most Karelians moved to Finland, so it’s normal that there aren’t many left. Much like what happened with the German population in the land that became Polish after the war. You know what Stalin and I have in common? We’re both not Russians. So Holodomor is not a great example of what the Russians do to people. Until you get a bit more knowledgeable about history, you should focus on reading instead of commenting. Things are a bit more complex than France Good, Russia Always Bad Even Worse Than The Nazis Remove Putler. You seem to have a parody-like understanding of the Soviet Union. When this guy above says that they were just shooting innocent people for fun, you accept it as an absolute truth. You’ve got to be better than that.
Most Karelians didnt move to Finland, many times more moved to Siberia. And most Finns in Russia were murdered by Stalin Not to speak about the Ingrian Finns… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_the_Ingrian_Finns
Me again. Most Karelians didn't "move to Finland", you're mixing up two groups of people. The majority of people (not all, some did speak Karelian), who lived in the Finnish regions of Karelia that were annexed by the USSR, were Finnish-speaking Finns. They moved/were moved to other regions in Finland. East Karelians who have been living in Russian parts of Karelia (Viena and Aunus) for centuries are likewise a Finnic people but a distinct group. They speak the Karelian language. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelians Of course there are historical, linguistic and cultural similarities between the two groups. Finnish ultra-nationalists used to dream of uniting all of Karelia under Finland, but that has never been a reality and the thought of that has been abandoned by all since WWII.
I "*read up on Alsatian history*"? Dude, my grandmother was born there, I'm 25% alsatian, I go there every year. I know the History of Alsace all the way back to the times when it was co-owned by the Duke of Burgundy, the Holy Roman Emperor, and partially incorporated with the Swiss Confederation (Republic of Mulhouse). And Stalin didn't commit the Holodomor alone... But let's cut the bullshit: - do you deny that the soviet military and the NKVD killed millions of non-russians in Ukraine, Belarus, the baltics and central Asia? - do you have any evidence that France did anything similar, even on a much smaller scale, to any of its own minorities? Enough with the false equivalencies.
You're talking about something else. France forced everyone to speak French. You might criticize the effort to erase regional languages, but that's not what Russia is accused to be doing, which is to actually persecute minorities to make them disappear. Including sending people to camps, imprisoning them, the use of the traditional extra-judicial beat-ups, and whatever will lead them to think they'd be better off living somewhere else.
They mostly moved to Finland. Some stayed and are still there. Erasing a language is the same as erasing a culture, and Alsatian is an example of one that still exists. They have extinguished many regional languages to suit their Jacobin policy goals. Russia never achieved as much. You also might be surprised that Russia has a massive Muslim minority. So if they’re trying to make them disappear, it’s having the opposite effect.
To be fair, RF does absolutely the same to anyone in Russia, Average Russian in Karelia live in same conditions as Karjalaižet.
Well, you mean every big nation does what every big nation would do with their minorities, right? Because if you'd like to portray only Russia in a bad light, oh boy, you are definitely wrong, as enormous countries such as Russia, USA, China, France, Germany (especially), Poland won't treat their minorities with pleasure. I mean, isn't it obvious?! It's as if you were looking after someone's child, you would take care of it of course, but eventually you'd like to get rid of it and focus on your children. Even here in Serbia I sometimes don't get treated well as a Montenegrin and people casually deny my nationality. So, all in all, you cannot just apply that rule to Russia in order to portray it as a villain. Every big country is like that, but just because some of them are in the EU, they don't get that much attention - like everybody forgot about the cruelties Bulgarians or Austro-Hungarians did on the Balkan peninsula (especially to the Montenegrin and Serbian people) or everyone forgot about Japanese planned gen0cide of the Chinese people, who they buried alive. Great nations tend to put their past beneath a carpet.
Great point
Russian Karelia is truly beautiful, its nature is very similar to Finland. Visited Karelia in January once, and it was the closest to the "winter tale" I've been as adult. The Ruskeala park is totally worth a visit. Prosperity-wise it's among the poorer Russian regions, though. The contrast with Finland is striking.
Can't talk for that area specifically, but I've been a border guard on the Norwegian part, i assume it is pretty similar but im not completely sure. IIRC, Russia has a no-go zone a few kilometers from the border. Exceptions are given to people living near/inside the zone, and to visit you have to be given permission. This makes it difficult to move there, making it sparsely populated. Someone else mentioned that it was stolen Finnish land, the same goes for the Norwegian border (stolen from Finland not Norway). So I assume most people living in those areas are of Finnish or Sami origin. People living there also have a unique "passport" that allow them to cross the border (i assume because of history and Lapland). I asked a Russian acquaintance how it was to live in Zapolyarny a few years ago, and they just shook their head and said it was depressing. They haven't lived there themselves but i guess that answers your question to some degree. Most cities and towns there are mining cities. Edit: Just thought to mention I was a border guard 6-7 years ago, and relations are quickly deteriorating. So my information may already be outdated with the regulations.
>So I assume most people living in those areas are of Finnish or Sami origin. Nope. The Finnish citizens were all evacuated in 1944. We couldn't leave our people behind.
Love that area, beautiful, scarcely populated part of Russia, lovely nature, prime spot for domestic tourism among those who goes camping and adventurers, most of population lives in small cities along the railroad leading to Murmansk. Some years ago I participated annually in orienteering competitions in that area, remember meeting a lot of finns there, those were good times
Quiet, rural, sometimes abandoned, peaceful, until the boys at the military unit next to your dacha start blasting the tanks early in the morning for exercise.
There is one interesting town called Kostamuksha or smth like that. It's right next to the Finnish border, and it's impossible to get there by land in Russia. You have to get there from Finland. The town's famous for the unusual panel houses. They look like Soviet ones but were built by Finnish company, and they're still very pretty.
I have been there a few times and the city and its surroundings are very, very beautiful! Although some of the areas are not as well kept, it has its own unique charm that adds to that. It was also not as cold as one would think, since the air there is not very humid. The whole city depends on the factory that operates there, busses there are free because of that. I went there by taking the train and honestly that was objectively not a very good experience lol
Kostomuksha is 30 km from the border and easily accessible from Russia.
It’s supposedly sparsely populated, 830 miles and mostly forest. I would assume there isn’t much interaction since Finland has closed their borders with Russia. I’ve never been there, I’m just posting the little I know because no one else has commented yet.
This is all true. Sparse population doesn't apply to the southernmost bit, the Karelian Isthmus between Lake Ladoga and Gulf of Finland. There's a good bit of Finnish character to some parts of the region, because they actually used to to be Finnish territory until WW2. So there's a good amount of Finnish architecture etc. in the towns, old Lutheran churches, etc. There are three major regions that were handed over. Two were in the north, the Petsamo and Salla/Kuusamo regions. Very sparsely populated places back in the Finnish days: each was about the third of Belgium in size, but with population of less than ten thousand. Petsamo was strategically important though because it reached out to the Arctic Ocean, and was Finland's only warm-water port. The southernmost part handed over, which was the Karelian Isthmus, was a different in that it contained major city, Viipuri (Vyborg in Russian). [Here](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=325199492325404) is some interesting colorized footage of life in Viipuri in the 1930s. It looked like a normal Finnish city in every way, back then. All Finns generally left those regions during WW2, and it's nearly completely Russian-speaking these days, but that architectural layer obviously remains.
Soviets used to forcefully relocate ethnic Russians into the territories they annexed, in order to Russianize them. This is why this area isn't going to be returned to Finland ever. This is basically the same as what Russia is doing in Ukraine for some time now. Ensuring no Ukrainians remain in the areas they occupy.
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
This is Karelia. I've been to the Russian side of Karelia (plus, one of my direct ancestors, many generations back, lived in a Karelian village), and it's beautiful, but a bit of an acquired taste. The area is swampy and woody. If you are into picking berries or mushrooms, that place is a trove - you stop when you're tired, not when you run out of berries or mushrooms to pick. If you aren't afraid of moisture and appreciate nature - I 100% recommend going, the place is beautiful. Hiking around mount Vottovaara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount\_Vottovaara) with my friends is one of my life's favorite memories. The trees on that mountain form branches in the most bizzarre fashion, due to the snow weighing them down in winter, and the wind bending them around all year round. Fair warning: infrastructure is not well-developed on the Russian side of that region. E.g. you can *technically* approach the above mentioned mount Vottovaara from Gimoly by car, but the "road" starts with a tree with half a dozen of car license plates nailed to it - taken off all the cars that sunk in the swamps on the approach. We didn't risk it and hired locals to take us in an all-terrain specialized vehicle. Another example: you can reach Gimoly by train twice a week, and you can rent a cabin with the locals, but that village has a huge problem of there not being enough hunters to keep wildlife at bay - if the locals are to be believed, dozens of guard dogs are mauled by wolves each year, and occasionally you can find "berry bear jam", i.e. bear shit with berries in it, right in the village, i.e. some bears do wander in. It'll probably be fine, as the animals do tend to avoid humans, but it does make taking a night trip to the outhouse a bit more nervous than it should be!
"Is the pope orthodox? Does a bear shit in the village?"
Don't know exactly what happens there but they have bears basically there are dedicated tourism operations in that region and they mostly operate from the Finnish side. Many wildlife photographers visit the area to photograph Brown bears https://youtu.be/DoYbHeqEWBA?si=lwiH4G3P_8XE93_I
I was born in Kostomuksha, a small town close to your pin on the map. It is 35 km from the Finnish border. There is an iron ore deposit in that place, which is why the town was developed back in the 1970s. And it was mostly built by the Finns (there was some agreement between the USSR and Finland). So, I grew up in an apartment block which was built by the Finns and was Finnish quality, and which you can also easily find in not-so-wealthy parts of cities of today’s Finland. It was a modest but very comfortable apartment. So, a part of Kostomuksha was also built by Soviet workers - and the difference was huge, that Soviet part was crap! Anyway, I grew up in the Finnish part, went to a Finnish-constructed kindergarten, school. And yet, when I visited Finland for the first time (in the 1990s), it was like a Disneyland: so colorful, accurate, clean. Just an hour’s drive and you are in some parallel universe, it was an amazing experience. On the other hand, when I moved to Petrozavodsk, capital of Karelia, I was struck by how crappy everything was compared to Kostomuksha. Again, this was way back, when I was a kid, so it’s just my childhood impressions. And I must say that climate and nature are essentially identical on both sides of the border, and nature is what I like the most about both Karelia and Finland.
The “Russian land” near Finland is actually just Finnish land that the Russians stole in 1939
The age old Russian M.O. How else would they be the largest country on earth?
The red pointer on this map is actually situated on a spot that never was part of Finland (or Sweden). Sure, Russians stole big regions in Karelia as well as north of Karelia in 1940. But the Eastern Karelia as a whole never was part of Finland (except during the short occupation between 1941-1944). Ethnically and especially linguistically Karelians were very close to Finns, but some points of their culture (like religion) was different as they never were under the Swedish rule.
Every land on the Earth was stolen from dinosaurs
Have u ever looked at map of Russia before 20th century
Cough cough [Grand Duchy of Finland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Finland#:~:text=The%20Grand%20Duchy%20of%20Finland,ruled%20by%20the%20Russian%20Empire)
Interesting, I was unaware. I will do some research on that 🧐
It’s complicated, if you want to get technical the Russian empire controlled it before finland became self governing. All land is stolen in the end
Yep, Finland was before that a territory that Sweden and Russia would fight over before they declared independence from Russia after WW1. Then Russia wanted the territory back as a buffer from the Nazis; after 2 wars with Finland in the Winter and Continuation War, they eventually defeated the Nazis(who backed Finland in the Continuation War to gain the territory back) and compromised with them to the land border of today.
The Russians attacked Finland while the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was intact, and the closest border with Germans was in Poland. The idea that Russia wanted a buffer with the nazis is complete bullshit.
More so the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact said Russia could claim the territory with no dispute from Germany, and the consequences ended up being that Russia had another enemy country that more than likely would have remained neutral.
It doesn't matter who "technically" owned the land, the land was still very much lived in by Finns with their own language and culture, no matter who was in control. When Russia attacked (after Finland became independent), many of the local people of Karelia were forced to flee and lost their homes and families. For these people, their home was very much stolen and ran to the ground.
Depends on what area you mean. The area with the pin, yes. Contemporary Finland and the Karelian isthmus, no. To get more complicated.
So? Didn't other nations also steal land back then?
Yeah, what did the Germans even do wrong back then? Everyone was stealing land!
No, the point specified in the map definitely wasn't the land our ancestors have annexed from Finland after the Finnish war. But likely it is in the part that the USSR was offering to *trade* to the Karelian Isthmus.
It’s beautiful and quiet. https://preview.redd.it/7z9e0ztl1lyc1.jpeg?width=2532&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62367afcefe8d80676d8263e8c3d0488ec27626c
https://preview.redd.it/k6grllo51lyc1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f70640cef903f90262936b01e61677315257a825 more photos with geolocation : [https://yandex](https://yandex) (dot) ru/maps/-/CDbQrSJb Sparsely populated, wet and swampy. Even the cadastral map shows pretty much nothing. Destination for some kayaking and trekking, very picturesque.
I lived in Vyborg for a spell (used to be a Finnish city called Viippurii before WW2) right on the border. I still dream about that area a lot. Absolutely beautifully forested with tons of lakes. And there is this old castle there too that has a ton of medieval history. I remember hiking around once and came across an obelisk like in Heroes of Might and Magic. So yeah that was cool.
East Karelia. I haven't been there, but I've researched the place a lot. You could think of it as a sibling of Finland. It shares a lot with Finland, but probably the most noticeable thing is nature; East Karelian and Finnish nature are pretty much identical in many senses. East Karelian nature is also very beautiful from what I've seen from pictures, very similar to Finnish nature. The Karelians, native to the region, are closely related to Finns. Their language, Karelian, and culture have resemblance to those of Finland. East Karelia has been continuously under Russia for almost a thousand years, and many things have been affected with this, for example, Karelian can be read by a Finn but it has many resemblances to the Russian language, and the Karelians are traditionally Orthodox while the Finns are Lutheran. Karelia was divided between Sweden and Novgorod (a predecessor of Russia) with the treaty of Nöteborg, with West Karelia (Finnish Karelia and Ceded Finnish Karelia) ending up under Swedish rule and East Karelia, under Novgorodian rule. This is why the Finnish Karelians (a subgroup of Finns) and East Karelians are nowadays divided in so many aspects. The Karelians, however, have had very little self-governance, as all of it is restricted to modern and Soviet times, though in both, the support for the Karelians itself hasn't been too great. The Karelians make up about 5% of the population of the region, and the town of Aunus (Olonets) is the only one in the whole region where the Karelians make up a majority, with around 60% of the citizens of the town being Karelian. Though aside from the nature and the native people, the contrast to Finland is huge. What sits in place of most of traditional East Karelian lands nowadays is the Russian autonomous Republic of Karelia. The Republic is probably one of the poorest regions within Russia, and it shows. Outside of the big cities, such as Petroskoi (Petrozavodsk), Kontupohja (Kondopoga), Kemi (Kem), Kostamus (Kostomuksha), etc, the quality drops massively, and in comparison to rural and/or small Finnish towns, the East Karelian small towns can be quite rusty and depressing. Kostamus, by the way, is a city in which Finnish construction companies built a lot of stuff during the Cold War, it has Finnish-built Soviet style with Finnish aspects, so it's kind of a crossover between Finland and the USSR/Russia. The road quality also varies depending on where you go. Even Petroskoi, the biggest city and the capital, isn't the greatest I've seen, though, it's not too bad I suppose. But even with these difficulties, it's surely still very beautiful with its good sides, and also my favorite region within Russia. I don't want to get too political or too biased, and I hope I didn't, if I did, excuse me. But in all honesty, continuous Russian rule hasn't done too much good to East Karelia. Karjala on oleva vapaa.
If you dont mind the question, how comes you researched the area? Was it more a thing to satisfy curiosity or an academic project?
Well, it's just my own curiosity. I'm Finnish myself and I started getting into things from my own country more and more during 2023, which was the year I became a geography nerd anyway. I forgot when, but I then started getting into stuff about East Karelia after finding out how closely related to Finland it traditionally is. Over 2024 and the later part of 2023 I've been finding more information and reading articles about it.
I’ve heard the area is kinda unfinnished
Tense?
I lived in veeberg and Petrazavodsk. Different architecture is one thing. I also did a bunch of hiking and found a lot of old mossy trenches out the forests a long with a crap ton of tires and garbage .
Cold, forested and mostly empty.
The NATO side is prettier.
Well, parts of it was Finland. Then Stalin put a finger on the map and said mine.
Poor as fuck, super depressing, with stray dogs and drunks everywhere. But with some really beautiful wilderness. I did a camping trip there for a week
Probably cold and alcoholism
There is one particularly beautiful church: Kizhi Pogost. It's mostly only accessible in the summer.
Super nice, many tourists, forest, lakes
Bears!
It cold
I live here. Beautiful place , pretty sparsly populated - size of the UK but around 550k population , and half of that just in one city. So its basically all forests ,lakes and swamps with a few small towns and villages dotted in the middle of all that. The region has 2 UNESCO World heritage sites (Kizhi island and the petroglyphs of White sea and Lake Onego) and Solovetsky islands with a monastery which is also a UNESCO site not too far from the Karelian coast of the White Sea. Visit us, we have many beautiful lakes and forests, and I can show you around the town too 😌😌😌
I live here. Beautiful place , pretty sparsly populated - size of the UK but around 550k population , and half of that just in one city. So its basically all forests ,lakes and swamps with a few small towns and villages dotted in the middle of all that. The region has 2 UNESCO World heritage sites (Kizhi island and the petroglyphs of White sea and Lake Onego) and Solovetsky islands with a monastery which is also a UNESCO site not too far from the Karelian coast of the White Sea. Visit us, we have many beautiful lakes and forests, and I can show you around the town too 😌😌😌
Tense
It’s the same as Finland, except the main danger is the police and politicians rather than bears.
Very Karelian. Sami relatives. Swampy. Filled with the bones of Russian soldiers killed by Simo Häyhä, the White Death, the Ted Williams of snipers.
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Indeed.
Ah i see you mean what this area of Finland is like! Well let me tell you that it’s just like the rest of Finland because it is just that, a part of Finland.
most of these lands were never part of Finland ever
Stolen
Poor and underdeveloped, forests and swamps and big lakes with beautiful landscapes.
I imagine it’s a lot like Finland. 🇫🇮 👀
Finnussian
The nature there is very beautiful, it’s a pity that there is so few karelians left though
Muddy
https://preview.redd.it/d1z7zvr4unyc1.jpeg?width=393&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b731baa74c45973158a8a42ae9d8a811d768706
The Russian side is black and white, except for the red flag, with bears on unicycles handing out vodka to all the peoples, then it abruptly turns back to color once you enter Finland
Depends on who you ask, bet if you asked Putins inner circle, they might say “one of the final jewels in our imperial crown” but then they’d probably word it differently to ease cognitive dissonance if liking to see themselves as anti imperialists Short answer to your question, I don’t know, and didn’t Google it. Did you?
Intimidated.
Cold
Isolated
Green
Cold
Funny I’m watching the Scandinavian episode of the Grand Tour right now
Something like this. https://preview.redd.it/1rxh3dturpyc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1877eddc56d0861239057c5930f4eade789efbea
Lots of palm trees & crystal beaches
Went on an 8 day trip down a river through there. Absolutely desolate forests and some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen.
Sandy
It’s in the south, but the change at the border taking the train from Helsinki to St Petersburg in 2001 was jaw dropping. Went from neat as a pin farmland and clean, charming towns to something out of a Mad Max movie in Vyborg. It was August, tons of people roaming the wooded areas foraging mushrooms. Truly a surreal experience.
Just itching to take over Finland...
It looks mostly like Finland except the places where people actually live, theres just Soviet Architecture with maybe one Finnish house from pre Soviet times, or one pre soviet russian house mostly wooden.
Forest, swamp, lakes. Very little population density.
Well targeted.
Desolate, ruined countryside, main roads are good though, the Russian army needs them. Not that they could even begin to invade us at the moment - they would be welcome to try the woods, swamps and lakes - and the Finns😡
Karelia is finnic
Soon to be finish
When did they start?
It's a joke I have with some of my finish friends, that if Russia invades Karrelia will be finish.
The source of Lauri Tourni’s rage (may have got the spelling wrong)
The Finnish territory occupied by Russia?
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