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The Vepsians: An Administratively Divided Nationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ott Kurs
Ott Kurs*
Affiliation:
Institute of Geography, University of Tartu, Estonia
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Extract

The administrative division of late imperial Russia made few concessions to minority populations, who often found themselves divided among several provinces. The Bolshevik ascendancy to power changed the situation; Vladimir Lenin's “federal compromise” marked a breakthrough from the tsarist unitary practice to a system of governance which, at least on paper, made allowance for the ethnocultural diversity of the population. The chief designers of the Bolshevik nationality policy believed that a federal arrangement would offer a framework for controlling undesirable national sentiments during the transitional stage when class identities would gradually replace ethnic attachments. However, it turned out that for non-Russian groups the national-territorial autonomous units were not simply empty containers, free of cultural and emotional meaning, in which their political socialization would occur. These units became an integral part of their national identity; ethnicity obtained “legal” territorial roots and the various territorial units began to function as vessels of ethnic consciousness.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 69 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

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39. Pimenov and Strogal'shchikova, “Vepsy: rasselenie, istoriia,” p. 23; Strogal'shchikova, “Ob etnodemograficheskikh tendentsiiakh,” pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

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49. Three in Karelia (Rybreka, Sheltozero and Shoksha), nine in Leningrad province (Kurba, Ozera, Iaroslavichi and Vinnitsy in Podporozh'e district; Podporog and Khmelozero in Lodeinoe Pole district; Alekseevo in Tikhvin district; Sidorovo and Radogoshchi in Boksitogorsk district) and three in Vologda province (Kuia and Piazhozero in Babaievo district; Oshta in Vytegra district).Google Scholar

50. Problemy ekonomicheskogo i sotsial'nogo razvitiia vepsskoi narodnosti Karel'skoi ASSR, Leningradskoi i Vologodskoi oblastei (Otdel ekonomiki Karel'skogo filiala AN SSR, Nauchno-issledovatel'skii institut ekonomiki i organizatsii sel'skokhoziastvennogo proizvodstva Nechernozemnoi zony RSFSR, Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet nauchno-issledovatel'skii institut geografii, 1989, unpublished manuscript).Google Scholar

51. Kurs, “Indigenous Finnic Population,” p. 449.Google Scholar

52. Kurs, Ott, “Baltic Finnic and Sami ethnic areas in North-West Russia,” Estonia. Geographical Studies (Tallinn: Estonian Academy Publishers, 1996, p. 197.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., pp. 193–197.Google Scholar

54. Zinaida Strogal'shchikova, “Dorogu osilit idushchii …,” Kodima, No. 8, 1996.Google Scholar