Paul Fryer

At the 1995 World Congress for Central and East European Studies in Warsaw, Henry R. Huttenbach, at that time the editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers, proposed that we begin collecting a range of articles devoted to the Finno-Ugrian peoples of Russia which would form a special topic issue. This seemed to offer a unique opportunity to disseminate among the Western scholarly community information about a group of minority peoples which has largely remained uninvestigated outside of Russia and the Finno-Ugrian world. Huttenbach' s initiative launched a long and complex project, which now comes to a conclusion. Despite many shared historical experiences within Russia, the eastern FinnoUgrian peoples of that country constitute a heterogeneous entity, whose members differ from each other in several key defining aspects. However, to one degree or another, they can all be considered under threat of assimilation. While this process of ethnic loss was largely ignored in the Soviet period, it has become increasingly recognized in the Russia of today, forced onto the political stage by the country's non-Russian minorities. Under the Soviet regime, the representatives of Russia's Finno-Ugrians first succeeded in speaking out about their concerns for the future to a partly foreign audience at the International Congress of Finno-Ugrian Writers held in Ioshkar-Ola in Mari El in May 1989. In her address to the congress, Mari poetess Al'bertina Ivanova noted that perestroika had brought Mari culture the chance for revival in the nick of time. Without doubt Ivanova and several other speakers with similar messages represented a position that had quickly won popularity among the Finno-Ugrian creative intelligentsia in the Soviet Union. Today perestroika has long disappeared, as has the USSR. But did the eastern Finno-Ugrians grasp their chance? Looking at the developments of the 1990s, a divided picture emerges, and one can point to both positive and adverse developments. This rather contradictory setting forms the framework in which the contributions in this present volume of Nationalities Papers examine the issue of ethnic survival. From the very beginning of the project, one of our underlying ideas has been to offer the academic stage to authors who themselves represent Russia's FinnoUgrians, that is to say, to individuals who speak with the peoples' voices and who are, to some extent, involved in determining the destinies of their peoples. The authors writing in this issue represent a variety of disciplines, including ethnographers, geographers, historians, and linguists. Moreover, they represent different

The deteriorating demographic situation, the growing risks of “personnel shortage” pose threats to the sustainable geo-economic development of Russia. One of the promising sources of replenishment of the country’s labor potential can be educational migration, in particular, immigration of foreign students. The obvious advantage of foreign students over other categories of migrants determines the problem of attracting foreign students to Russian universities with their subsequent integration into Russian communities. This requires a detailed analysis of the learning processes of foreign students, analysis of patterns, factors influencing the migration choice. This article aims to highlight the spatial structure and territorial features of student immigration in Russia. The research information base is built on the basis of official statistics data for 2008–2020. The article presents new empirical data characterizing the main features of the formation of the immigration educational fl...

The paper is devoted to ethno-cultural landscapes of the Republic of Tuva. Ethnocultural landscapes (ECLs) are specific socio-environmental systems that developed as a result of the interaction of ethnic groups with their natural and social environments and are in a constant process of transformation. An attempt is made to identify the mechanisms of the formation, functioning and dynamics of ethnocultural landscapes in the specific conditions of the intracontinental cross-border mountain region, as well as to establish the main factors-catalysts of their modern changes. For the first time an attempt is made to delimit and map the ethnocultural landscapes of Tuva. For this, literary sources, statistical data and thematic maps of different times are analyzed using geoinformation methods. The results of 2014-2018 field studies are also used, during which interviews with representatives of different ethno-territorial, gender, age and social groups were taken. It is revealed that the key...

This paper examines how the republics of the Russian North (Karelia, Komi and Sakha-Yakutia) have begun to construct national development strategies as “sovereign” territorial sub-units within the post-Soviet Russian Federation. The paper highlights the important role that boundaries and peripheries have played in the institutionalisation of ethnicity in these former autonomous republics of the Russian Union republic of the USSR. It adopts a historical perspective on the construction of national-territoriality in the three republics and emphasises the importance of Soviet ethno-federalism in establishing a fundamental link between the titular groups' national-identities and their territorial “homelands”. Soviet disintegration and post-Soviet transformation have encouraged an even more intensive process of national-state formation in the republics of the Russian Federation and this paper highlights the importance of “territoriality” in that process of change. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved