Narva Becomes Cultural Capital of Finno-Ugric World and Gives that Title New and Expanded Meaning

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 6 – Narva has become the cultural capital of the Finno-Ugric world for 2025 and because of its own ethnic heritage has given that title a new and expanded meaning, one likely to encourage the smallest Finno-Ugric peoples in the region and spark Russian anger about what Moscow will seek to present as evidence of Western interference.
    When people discuss ethnic relations in Estonia, they typically focus on the relative size of the Estonians and the ethnic Russians, ignoring the fact that there are also small percentages of Finno-Ugric peoples (other than Estonians) including Vods, Izhors, Ingermanland Finns and Narva Finns, Ekaterina Kuznetsova says (region.expert/narva2025/).
    But the designation of Narva as the cultural capital of Finno-Ugric nations this year has the effect of throwing into high relief their role, dispelling myths about them and giving them hope for survival, the head of the Ingria House and director of the Vod Cultural Center in that eastern Estonian border city says
    “Many know that in 1641 to 1654, that city was the administrative center of the Swedish province of Ingermandland; some even call Narva the historical ‘capital’ of Ingria; but unfortunately, few recall what took place there before and afer that period, Kuznetsova continues.
    Few know that the Ida-Virumaa region is “the historic motherland at one and the same time of five Finno-Ugric peoples” or that there existed in the 20th century both an Estonian Ingermanland and a Soviet version of that region as well, histories that have every chance to affect the future.
    “Estonian Ingermanland – Eesti Ingeri in Estonian – is part of the historical district of Ingria located in the western section of present-day Kingisepp Districtof Leningrad Oblast in the valley of the Narva River.” It became part of Estonia as a result of the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty and included Ivangorod, the Rosson River and 13 villages where some 1800 people lived.
    The Soviet government annexed it in 1944; but even before that, there had been what may be called Soviet Ingermanland, although many today are convinced that Moscow always denied the existence of such a place. But during korenizatiya in the 1920s, the Soviet authorities promoted Finnish and even Ingrian languages, although they suppressed them in the 1930s.
    The fact that so few people know about all this, Kuznetsova says, is the result of Stalnist repressions against these minorities and Moscow’s unceasing Russification campaign that led many Ingrians and others to reidentify as Russians and forget their national pasts, even though they would quickly discover it if they could look back a generation or two.
    Indeed, Kunetsova argues, such people who think they are Russians would soon learn that “in the first third of the 20th century, the majority of the population of present-day Leningrad Oblast did not know Russian and that the native languages for them were Vod, Izhor, Karelian, Vepsy, and Ingermanland-Finnish.
    (For additional background on these groups and especially on the Ingria movement, see Ott Kurs , “Ingria: The Broken Landbridge Between Estonia and Finland,” GeoJournal 33.1 (1994): 107–113; Ian Matley, “The Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns,” Slavic Review 38:1 (1979): 1-16; windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/ingermanlanders-launch-podcast-to.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/ingermanland-activists-open-house-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/09/ingria-will-be-free-petersburg-hip-hop.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/two-other-baltic-republics-remembered.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-new-aspirant-to-be-fourth-baltic.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/regionalism-threatens-russia-today-way.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/05/by-attacking-free-ingria-leader-moscow.html, and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/10/window-on-eurasia-ingermanland-is-ready.html.)