East Karelia
East Karelia, also rendered as Eastern Karelia or Russian Karelia, is a name for the part of Karelia that is beyond the eastern border of Finland and since the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617 has remained Eastern Orthodox and a part of Russia. It is separate from the western part of Karelia, called Finnish Karelia or historically Swedish Karelia. Most of East Karelia has become part of the Republic of Karelia within the Russian Federation. It consists mainly of the old historical regions of Viena Karjala and Aunus Karjala.
Culture and ideology
19th-century ethnic-nationalist Fennomans saw East Karelia as the ancient home of Finnic culture, "un-contaminated" by either Scandinavians or Slavs. In the sparsely populated East Karelian backwoods, mainly in White Karelia, Elias Lönnrot collected the folk tales that ultimately would become Finland's national epic, the Kalevala.The idea of annexing East Karelia to Finland as part of a "Greater Finland" had wide support in newly-independent Finland after 1917. It was especially popular during the Russo-Finnish Continuation War of 1941–1944, when such annexation seemed feasible in the wake of an expected German conquest of the Soviet Union. Finnish forces occupied most of East Karelia from 1941 to 1944. The war meant hardship for the local ethnic-Russian civilians, including forced labour and internment in prison camps as enemy aliens. After the Moscow Armistice of September 1944, calls for the annexation of East Karelia to Finland virtually disappeared.