East Karelia and West Karelia with borders of 1939 and 1940/1947. They are also known as Russian Karelia and Finnish Karelia respectively.
East Karelia, also Eastern Karelia or Russian Karelia, is a name for the part of Karelia that since the Treaty of Stolbova in 1617 has remained Christian Orthodox under Russian supremacy. It is separate from the western part of Karelia, called Finnish Karelia or historically Swedish Karelia (before 1808). Most of East Karelia is now part of the Republic of Karelia within the Russian Federation.
Small elitist circles in newly independent Finland advocated before and during the Continuation War the conquest of East Karelia in order to rescue the Karelians from Bolshevist and, later, Stalinist oppression. Most of East Karelia was occupied by Finnish forces 1941–1944. The war conditions were accompanied by hardship for the local ethnic Russian civilians, including forced labour and internment in prison camps as enemy aliens.
External link
The Many Karelias (http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/karjala.html) at the web-site of Finland's government
Most of Finnish Karelia was ceded by Finland to the Soviet Union in 1940, after the Winter War, and today is divided between the Russian autonomous Republic of Karelia and the Russian Leningrad Oblast.
Western Karelia, as an historical Province of Sweden, was religiously and politically distinct from the eastern parts that were under the Russian Orthodox Church.
The traditional culture of "Ladoga-Karelia", or Finnish Karelia according to the pre-Winter War borders, was by and large similar to that of Eastern Karelia, or Russian Karelia.
In the west Karelia borders on Finland, in the south on Leningradskaya and Vologodskaya regions, in the north on Murmanskaya and in the east on Arkhangelskaya regions.
Karelia is often called a stony lake-and-forest land, which stresses the main elements of the landscape.
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