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Finno-Ugrians of Russia: Vanishing Cultural Communities?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
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In 1990 a Mordvin scholar released an alarming forecast about the fate awaiting his people: provided that those adverse demographic trends that had established themselves over the course of the twentieth century continued, the last member of his million-strong nation would disappear by the year 2135. This statement was not the only one of its kind. During the final years of Soviet rule, the recently realized opportunity to speak out about the concerns of the non-Russian groups was being utilized speedily. Journalistic and scholarly reports on the various problems of Russia's minority groups, often painted in highly dramatic language, became common in both regional and central publications.
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