The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the peoples who speak Finno-Ugric Languages and have titular republics or autonomous regions within the post-Soviet Russian Federation. Information on the subject was screened by Soviet censors, and only recently have alternative sources of information become available. The principal threat facing the Finno-Ugrians in the post-Soviet World is as much environmental as political. Communism has gone, but exploitation of natural resources threatens the region's ecology, while the tendency of latter-day rulers in the Kremlin seems to be to continue their predecessors' oppressive policies towards the Finno-Ugrians. The book has been written with a deep commitment to the threatened human and political rights of these endangered peoples.