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Soviet Finnish: The Language of Neuvosto Karjala (Soviet Karelia)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Paul M. Austin
Paul M. Austin*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

The Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic provides a unique opportunity for an examination of Soviet linguistic policy. Part of the difficulty in the analysis of the development of Soviet languages has been the lack of a control language or suitable basis for comparison between a language in its Soviet and non-Soviet environment. While it is impossible to determine how a language would have developed had there been no revolution or had it not been in the Soviet Union, some very general observations seem clear. The example of Turkish and Azerbaijani is instructive in this respect. The entire orientation of these two languages has changed drastically since their respective revolutions, particularly in the replacement of the Arabic alphabet by Latin and Cyrillic respectively, the handling of traditional arabisms and Persianisms, and the sources for neologisms (Western European languages and native roots for Turkish and Russian for Azerbaijani). There are, however, very few situations where a realistic comparison can be made between different versions of the same language, for the language abroad may represent only an emigre community or may exist in totally different circumstances, such as Iranian Azerbaijani, or the Soviet language may itself represent only a rump, such as Soviet Yiddish.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 1981 , pp. 171 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (USSR and East Europe) Inc. 

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References

Notes

∗ This paper is a revised version of one presented in the session Soviet Linguistic Policy at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Slavists at the Université du Québec à Montréal in June 1980. The author is grateful to McGill University's Humanities Research Grants Sub-committee and the Finnish Ministry of Education for financial support and also to Mr. Erkki Kuutti of SAS and the Montréal office of Finnair for their kindness in supplying useful materials.Google Scholar

1. For a good concise history of this period in Finnish history see D.G. Kirby, Finland in the Twentieth Century (London: C. Hurst, 1979).Google Scholar

2. G.N. Makarov, “Karel'skii iazyk,” in V.I. Lytkin et al., eds., Finno-ugorskie i samodiiskie iazyki (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo “Nauka,” 1966), p. 62.Google Scholar

3. Peter Hajdu, Finno-Ugrian Languages and Peoples, trans. and ed. G.F. Cushing (London: Andre Deutsch, 1975), p. 198.Google Scholar

4. Makarov, p. 78.Google Scholar

5. For a discussion of this question see Hajdu's chapter “The Baltic Finns,” pp. 177–203.Google Scholar

6. Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia, Moscow 1965, s.v. “Karely.”Google Scholar

7. G.M. Maksimov, ed., Vsesoiuznaia perepis'naseleniia 1970 goda (Moscow: “Statistika,”1976), p. 197. The census notes that 51% speak Finnish as their first language.Google Scholar

8. Ian M. Matley, “The Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns,” Slavic Review, Vol. 38 (1979), No. 1 (March), pp. 13–14. After the war 500,000 people were relocated in Finland from the area ceded to the USSR. Some Ingrian Finns who were on territories occupied by Finland returned to the USSR voluntarily after the war while some several hundred Soviet Ingrians Finns who had served in the Finnish or German army were forceably returned. See the interesting commentary on these northern victims in Jörgen Eriksson, “Finsk tragedi,” Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm), July 13, 1980.Google Scholar

9. Perepis’ 1970, p. 196.Google Scholar

10. “Karjalan ASNT:n väestö,” [The Population of the Karelian ASSR], Neuvosto-Karjala [Soviet Karelia], (Petroskoi), April 11, 1980.Google Scholar

11. Matley attempts to document the fate of the Soviet Finns and in particular of the Ingrian Finns whose territory is now completely within the Leningrad ob-last. The Karelian isthmus between Lake Laatokka and the Gulf of Finland appears now to have few Finns left. See Sakari Määtänen, “Vanha Kannas on kadonnut,” [Old Kannas Has Disappeared”]. Helsingin Sanomat, September 28, 1980 for the first report since the war by Finnish Finns about this area, known as Aunus, ceded to the Soviet Union in 1944.Google Scholar

12. Yearbook of Nordic Statistics 1979, Nordisk Statistik årsbok (Copenhagen: Nordic Council, 1980), pp. 300–303.Google Scholar

13. L. Bobrov, “1500 käännöskirjaa vuodessa” [1,500 books in Translation in a Year], Neuvosto-Karjala, March 23, 1980.Google Scholar

14. Contrary to normal Soviet practice the number of copies (tirazh) of each issue of Punalippu is not always indicated. The sporadic references to the tirazh put the number of copies from 10,495 to 11,365. No information is available for Neuvosto-Karjala.Google Scholar

15. A. Sauvageot, Esquisse de la langue finnoise (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1949), p. 16 ff.Google Scholar

16. For a detailed description of the development of literary Finnish see L. Hakulinen, The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language, trans. J. Atkinson (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1961), p. 284 ff. and especially A. Sauvageot, L'elaboration de la langue finnoise (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973). Hakulinen's basic study is also available in an unabridged Russian translation, Razvitie i struktura finnskogo iazyka, trans. Iu. Elisee (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo inostrannoi literatury, 1955).Google Scholar

17. Sauvageot discusses the origins of Finnish purism in the XVI century and especially the development of literary Finnish in the XIX century, mainly by intellectuals, many of whom were in fact Swedish-speaking. Even today most neologisms are based on native roots.Google Scholar

18. Colloquial Finnish is another matter. Luthy notes the deformation of many Finnish words and the large-scale borrowing into the colloquial language from foreign sources: M. Luthy, Phonological and Lexical Aspects of Colloquial Finnish (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1973).Google Scholar

19. P.M. Austin, “Russian Loanwords in the Proposed Reforms of Soviet Turkic Alphabets,“ General Linguistics, Vol. 13 (1973), No. 1 (Spring).Google Scholar

20. K. Karttunen, Nykyslangin sanakirja [The Dictionary of Modern Slang] (Porvoo-Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1979), p. 14.Google Scholar

21. Austin, pp. 21–23.Google Scholar

22. Karttunen, p. 308.Google Scholar