Free Republic

Two deputies from the Republic of Karelia’s regional parliament have released a letter calling for Vladimir Putin to sign an order officially ending Russia’s mobilization campaign. Their request notes that the absence of such an order is “affecting society’s psychological state and is a source of concern and heightened anxiety in Russian families and workplaces in addition to causing health problems for many children.” Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Putin had not yet seen the statement. On October 28, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told Vladimir Putin that Russia’s mobilization drive was complete. The Kremlin reported...

A Russian historian whose exposure of Soviet leader Josef Stalin's crimes angered state officials is due to begin enforced psychiatric testing this week amid fears he will be falsely declared insane, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is on trial in northwest Russia on charges brought by state prosecutors of involving his adopted daughter, then 11, in child pornography, of illegally possessing "the main elements of" a firearm, and of depravity involving a minor. Some of Russia's leading cultural figures say Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin's crimes - he found a mass grave with up...

A new genetic study carried out at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku demonstrates that, at the end of the Iron Age, Finland was inhabited by separate and differing populations, all of them influencing the gene pool of modern Finns. The study is so far the most extensive investigation of the ancient DNA of people inhabiting the region of Finland. In the study, genes were investigated from archaeological bone samples of more than one hundred individuals who lived between the 4th and 19th centuries AD. Most of the samples originated in the Iron Age and the Middle...

In wooded northern Russia, near the Finnish border, archaeological digs by a patriotic historical group are unearthing controversy. The Russian Military History Society, which was created by the Kremlin, says it is seeking the remains of Soviet soldiers who died when the region was occupied by Nazi-aligned Finns during World War II. But human rights activists allege the organisation is trying to cover up Stalin-era repressions in the Sandarmokh forest, in Karelia. “The search for the remains of soldiers from the Second World War on the site of mass executions by the NKVD...looks like an attempt to manipulate memory," Memorial...

Medieval slave trade routes in Eastern Europe extended from Finland and the Baltic Countries to Central Asia April 15, 2014 University of Eastern Finland Summary: The routes of slave trade in Eastern Europe in the medieval and pre-modern period extended all the way to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. A recent study suggests that persons captured during raids into areas which today constitute parts of Finland, the Russian Karelia and the Baltic Countries ended up being sold on these remote trade routes. The routes of slave trade in Eastern Europe in the medieval and pre-modern period extended all the...

Artefacts are usually displayed in museums but sometimes there are some that just can’t be put on exhibition – as is the case with one that is hidden deep in the Russian forests. It was known that there were rock carvings on some islands in Lake Kanozero, and Jan Magne Gjerde, project manager at the Tromsø University Museum, went out there to document them as part of his doctoral work however, when he and his colleagues had completed their work, the number of known petroglyphs had risen from 200 to over 1,000. “I still get chills up my spine when...

The northwestern industrial town of Kondopoga was consumed by ethnic violence over the weekend, with angry and often drunken bands of Slavs waging an uncoordinated series of attacks on natives of the Caucasus. The violence included mobs with Molotov cocktails burning down Caucasian-owned businesses and natives of the Caucasus being forced out of town. An air of fear and uncertainty permeated the town Sunday The angry mobs, which left the town of 37,000 pockmarked with storefront fires and shattered glass, stemmed from a fight Wednesday evening outside the Chaika restaurant in which two ethnic Russians were killed. A group of...