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
However, autonomous East Karelia [both current and soviet] is just a small part of RussianKarelia, known as White Sea Karelia, or in other words, the area between the White Sea and the Finnish border.
According to the present constitution, Russian is the only official language in the Republic of Karelia despite the efforts of the ethnic Karelians (ca 10% of population) to have their language made co-official.
Karelia is the land of the Karelian and Finnish peoples and is a vast inhabited area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden.
Karelia streches from the White Sea coast to the Gulf of Finland.
Tver Karelia denotes the villages in the Tver Oblast that are inhabited by Karelians.
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