Paul Goble
Staunton, July 7 – The international Finno-Ugric movement for the first time ever has declared a city in the United States long associated with Finland to be its cultural capital for 2026, the result of increasing Moscow repression on Finno-Ugric nations within current Russian borders and the impossibility of holding such a celebration there.
In making the announcement, Oliver Loode, the head of the Estonia-based URALIC Center, says that his group, which has been naming such a city each year since 2012, decided to reach out further than in the past because of Russian oppression (idelreal.org/a/v-sovremennoy-rossii-finno-ugorskie-narody-ne-imeyut-buduschego-oliver-loode-o-tom-pochemu-gorod-v-ssha-stal-novoy-finno-ugorskoy-stolitsey-/33463363.html).
The city he and his colleagues have chosen is Hancock, Michigan, long viewed as the Finnish cultural center in North America, something Loode says will hold it in good stead as a center for focus of the entire Finno-Ugric world at a time when Moscow has created a situation where “the Finno-Ugric peoples do not have a future” – or “even much of a present.”
In giving a US city this honor, Loode says, the Finno-Ugric peoples will gain new allies in diaspora communities further away, something that will in part compensate for Russia’s closing off of the Finno-Ugrics and the inability of the three Finno-Ugric independent countries – Estonia, Finland, and Hungary – to maintain close contact with their co-ethnics there.
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