Russians

The Russian, or Russian-speaking, population of Finland is often said to consist of the Old Russians and the New Russians. The ancestors of the Old Russians came to Finland in three waves. The first Russians in Finland were serfs who were relocated from the cities of Jaroslavl, Tula and Orel to the Province of Karelia, which had become Russian after the great Nordic War (1700-1721). This group is known for its famous brown earthenware, Kyyrölä pottery. The second wave were Russians who obtained permission to settle in the autonomous Duchy of Finland as civil servants, military officers and merchants. The third wave consisted of Russians who fled the Russian Revolution and did not move on to the large emigrant centres in Paris, Nice, Berlin, Brussels and Novi Sad. The number of Old Russians reached its peak of 19,000 in 1921. It is difficult to estimate their present number as they have largely been assimilated into the Finnish-speaking majority or (to a lesser extent) into the Swedish-speaking minority. The number of Old Russians has been estimated as between 3,000 and 5,000. The Old Russian communities are in the urban areas around Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.

As a result of recent immigration from the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States, the total number of Russian speakers is now estimated to be about 20,000. Due to their very mixed ethnic and religious backgrounds the Russian speakers constitute a basically linguistic and cultural community. Many of the ethnic Finns of Russia, known as Ingrians, as they originally settled in the region called Ingria, have, since the end of the 1980s, been allowed to settle in Finland under a simplified procedure. Many of them spoke only Russian when they arrived in Finland.

The Russian Secondary School in Helsinki (Gel’singfórskiy rśsskiy litséy.) houses today both a comprehensive school and a senior secondary school and it has 750 pupils. (Virtual Finland, 2001, electronic).

Russian language newspaper Spektr was founded in 1998 and Russian language radio channel Radio Sputnik (Russkoje Radio Helsinki) sends Russian language program. Many small Russian Orthodox Churchs have been founded in around Finland. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Finland, 6.10.2011)