Talk:Republic of Karelia

How about merging the articles Karelo-Finnish SSR and Karelia (republic)? Both are essentially about the same entity. Mikkalai 00:29, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• ... and rename to Republic of Karelia? Mikkalai 00:31, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • I really don't know. Maybe we shold do it. The only intresting (?) trick I could invent was a redirect page Karelija. That is closer to the Russian pronunciation of this country name, that is different from Karelia (I didn't know about this finnish Karelia at all before reading wikipedia - can you imagine?? And i swear that most of Russians do so, and that they would most likely use Karelia as an English name for Russian Karelia, if they have a chance...) And it's certainly easier to write "..., a town in Karelija, Russia" than to create a (( | )) construction.
    
    OK, what's about your question... It looks like we should. Yes, I think we should =) Arseni 11:42, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Or maybe no?.. Sorry, I think I changed my mind. Karelija is a nice, beautiful article. It's about a contry, a land, about people who live in it. And the Karelo-Finnish SSR is about the war, the invasion, about something nasty and terrible. I think it would be really better to keep these 2 articles separated, but linked with each other, however. Arseni 11:48, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Arseni, I don't really understand what you mean. The name "Karelia" is quite well known, so using "Karelija" or the finnish "Karjala" might just confuse people. And just because there are some nasty things involved in the Karelo-Finnish SSR doesn't mean we should leave it in a different article. :) Jniemenmaa 13:42, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think they could be merged without problems. Basically they are the same entity that just changed names for a while. And "Republic of Karelia" seems to be the official english translation. But note that there are separate articles for Estonia and Estonian SSR for instance..

PS. Whoever moved the Karelia article should have fixed all the links that now lead to the disambiguation page insted of the Historical province Karelia. By the way, I think the article about the historical province should be about both the "Swedish" and "Russian" parts of Karelia. Now the history section is mostly from the swedish and finnish POV (mostly because I wrote it... :). We could also use a nice map that displays all the "different" Karelias. -- Jniemenmaa 13:42, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Basically I agree with Jniemenmaa; the English name, Karelia is well known and should be used. The articles for "Republic of Karelia" and "Karelo-Finnish SSR" could be merged as they are essentially the same entity or in any case successors. If there is a decision to keep both it would also provide an argument to create a third article for the Karelo-Finnish ASSR which existed in time between the two others and I'm not sure that it would be the right way to go.

I'm more bothered with the move of the article which was formerly located at "Karelia" but was moved to "Historical province Karelia". I see two problems with this. First the name is less well chosen and secondly some 60-70 links which properly pointed to the article have now been redirected to the disambiguation page. A disambiguation page is needed, but ideally there should be no pages linking there, except as a reference. An obvious sollution would be to move the article about the historical province back to "Karelia". Or are there any better suggestions? Remember, finding a better name also includes moving all the links which are now pointing to "Karelia". -- Mic 19:45, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

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My dear friends, from my point of view the worst thing about all these Karelias is that any average Russian, writing in English, will certainly call our part of Karelia as Karelia. Without any suffixes and prefixes like 'The republic...' or 'Autonomous...' or even 'Russian...'. So, when a new Russian will contribute to Wikipedia he (or she) will probably use a reference Karelia without much thinking about it. You know - I didn't even heard about the Finnish Karelia before reading Wikipedia! Of course it's because I do not live in Karelia, I live in Moscow, and I was there only once. But, nevertheless, that is the fact.

So - from the my point of view - the best solution will be to kill all these different Karelias and to make one great article about them. With one shared section History and several sections about the parts of the splited country.

And - indeed - I think it's a marvellous idea to make a map of the Karelia for both Karelias. With a thick Russian-Finnish border crossing it, but still one map for two Karelias. It's a good slogan for our project, what do you think? One Article For Both Karelias! =)

And thank your for your participation. It's extremely pleasant for me to find out that somebody is interested in Pegrema and Kondopoga =) Arseni 08:40, Jan 30 2004 (UTC)

As a general concept I'm pro integration, however I can not see a comprehensive merger taking place. The article on the historical province has its place in making the series of historical Provinces of Sweden complete, and I'm unable to see the merit in deviating from it on this point. However I don't see any problems in relating the historical province to the current "Republic of Karelia" in the same way as the other historical provinces relate to current political subdivisions in Sweden and Finland. In fact the situation could be compared with Lapponia which today is split between a Swedish County and a Finnish Province. The difference is that Karelia is split between the political subdivisions of Eastern Finland, Southern Finland and the Republic of Karelia. More indepth entries like Culture of Karelia, History of Karelia and Geography of Karelia all could be, and probably ought to be, shared no matter if it is linked from one article or the other. -- Mic 21:59, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

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Because of this article split the whole "country" was lost: Finnish Democratic Republic. I inserted it somewhere (see its backlinks). So... I am moving Karelia (republic) back to Republic of Karelia. Next step is to referece KFSSR and others from it. Mikkalai 09:04, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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OK, so here's a really tough one, a bit of a tangent but please be kind anyway: Which Karelia is the one from whose population's oral history the Kalevala was gathered and eventually derived in its modern finished Finnish form? Not that I care too much, but there are at least some easy-to-find authoritative-sounding Web pages out there that make it sound ironic ("ho ho, the great Finnish national epic is really of Russian territorial origin!")--I'm really curious and hope Wikipedia can provide the real info, or real enough. I'd guess that if the Karelian peoples were at all nomadic it's a distinction without much value. But I'm ignorant. :) Please feel free to pass this on to your folkloric domain experts.

I can only say that Karelia is not unique in its fate. Take for example, Mongolia, Poland, Belarus. Mikkalai 09:37, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I believe Karelians would still be Karelians regardless of which side of the border they were living. Trying to answer a question like "who's" Karelians are more genuine does not only amount to moot, but is also seems completely pointless. -- Mic 21:59, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

There is a separate article, Karelians, to discuss these issues, as well as to present the whole history of the people, with references to histories of various countries. *This* article pertains to the *country*, and as such, its history is pretty straightforward. Mikkalai 22:51, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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I have recently had reason to ponder this kind of questions with regard to Pomerania and several other former states, lands, cities, and territories on Continental Europe that from time to time have been parts of different sovereign states. I would strongly urge for Wikipedia trying to follow similar principles in all articles. It can't do to take this kind of decissions individually and differently for each land or province. My question is then: Where should such a discussion be pursued?

I do, personally, not believe disambiguation pages to be such a great idea in this case. I would rather like to see a "main article" on Karelia, which in turn linked to more specialized pages.

By the way: It might be a good habit to sign with four tildes, i.e. "~~~~", which expands to date, time and writer.
--Ruhrjung 18:26, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Contents

1 Should Karelia become a disambiguation page? 2 Maps 2.1 Current political division of Karelia 2.2 Traditional Karelia 2.3 Karelia during WW2 2.4 Other maps 3 Karelia/temp 4 Help 5 Lakes

Should Karelia become a disambiguation page?

This article about Karelia, the historical province of Sweden should not be the main article. I demand we make Karelia a disambiguation page. This article is in the past, the current Russian republic is NOW.

Okay, this is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. When no one replies, I take matters into my own hands. Now, PLEASE, can we talk about this???? --User:Dagestan

Nobody appreciates demands. Try calming down, stop using all caps, and be a reasonable contributor. RickK | Talk 16:11, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh, please. Why don't you try to change an article for months. --Dagestan

Can you please explain what that means? RickK | Talk 03:06, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you could try a more constructive and cooperative mode?
--Ruhrjung 01:08, 2004 Mar 26 (UTC)

There already exists a Karelia (disambiguation) page. Some time ago the situation with Karelia articles was much more confusing. IMO today nothing prevents from doing what our nervous friend demands: move Karelia into Karelia Province and move Karelia (disambiguation) to Karelia.
Any votes against? (10 days for casting a vote is IMO reasonable.) Mikkalai 04:21, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I fully agree that we need comprehensible and transparent structure on the topics relating to and for the different articles on Karelia. However, the nature of a disambiguation page is not to be a central point or hub for a topic, in fact it is quite the contrary since links should not even be pointing there. What we are discussing here is the need for an article, which can act as a gateway to the various Karelia articles. There are several aspects of Karelia that maybe ought to be covered more properly or differently from today, like the Ladoga Karelia, Olonets Karelia, Border Karlia, Karelian Isthmus, etc. Whether they may or may not warrant separate articles they would find their place in such an article.

The reason why earlier I suggested that the present article would be able to fulfil this role also for Karelia is that the series of articles to which it belongs fulfils just this role within Finland and Sweden. They were even designed specifically with the consideration to handle this in mind. For Sweden and Finland this is hardly controversial though matters may be different for Karelia since it extends also into the Russian sphere. I believe that we are sensing some tension on the issue from our less that eloquent friend. An effort to replace a valid article by a mere disambiguation page seems like a senseless, not to say pointless exercise. However, given that consensus after the discussion here has been concluded, should give that matters would be better served by an article that isn't specifically part of a series on the Swedish historical provinces, but a separate as suggested below by Ruhrjung, I would also believe that it could be a workable sollution. -- Mic 13:51, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Karelia to Karelia (province), that's all right.

But there are plenty of links today to Karelia, so maybe Karelia (disambiguation) better live on for some time — at least until someone has taken on the project to change all links to Karelia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Karelia).

Then one might argue for keeping the Karelia page as an introductory article rather than as a disambiguation page. Maybe we should try not to over-emphasize the difference between East- and West-Karelia (or whatever we now like to call these entities)? Culture and language and history must to some extent be the same, mustn't it?

One might compare with the land/province/whatever of Pomerania, of which today the most lies on the Polish side of the German-Polish border, and with Lapponia as mentioned by User:Mic above.
--Ruhrjung 04:51, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I believe that the current Karelia article actually could be adapted to serve as a gateway to other articles on Karelia. This is the case with Lapponia today and one could even mention Åland as an example of the flexibility to adapt to specialized templates. Though, I think the issue here is not so much on what is feasible as on what is uncontroversial. The mere fact that the article is part of a particular series might prove a point of controversy with some. If discussion should conclude a solution, which involves updating the links now pointing to Karelia, it would be important that the agreement has settled naming, unless the job should have to be done twice. -- Mic 13:51, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I vote for Mikkalai's idea. Although the guy who said that there are many links to Karelia has a point. Who is willing to fix them? Dagestan

Before altering the location of a page one has to consider what effects this will have. Any action without this in regard creates disruption making a restoration inevitable. Disregarding available information and not listening to others is not only ignorant but also rude. -- Mic 13:51, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I would also like to see a "full" article at Karelia which would be about all aspects of Karelia, instead of a disambiguation page. So we could start a new article at Karelia/temp, and when that is finished move the existing Karelia to Karelia (province). Karelia (disambiguation) would be kept where it is now. Do we need to make a actual poll? (see Wikipedia:Polling guidelines) -- Jniemenmaa 15:11, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am volunteering to fix the links when we are done. There are not so many. Seen worse. Mikkalai 19:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea to make Karelia a general, summary article. But please don't make it "full", to avoid too much duplication, which would make further edits difficult to keep consistent. Mikkalai 19:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Maps

I've made some maps for the Karelia articles. These are probably from a Finnish POV, so please advice me on how to improve them! (The colour-set is from the wikiproject maps)

Current political division of Karelia

This one shows the Karelian Republic and the two finnish regions, shouldn't be much problems here

Since no-one has protested, I'll add this to the three related articles. -- Jniemenmaa 05:47, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Traditional Karelia

The second one shows the different "traditional" areas of Karelia. Some of these names are a bit tough. Border Karelia (Rajakarjala) for instance is a fuzzy term, mostly meaning the municiplaities on the old Finnish-Soviet border. It can be interchangable with Ladoga Karelia in some contexts. Aunus Karelia is probably the wrong name to use (Olonets Karelia?). Ingria just sneaked in by mistake and should be removed.

Depending on where the map is to be used, I'm not sure the removal of Ingria would be any good. The Ingrians were "Finnic" and sometimes considered "ancient Karelians". As Olonets Karelia still is in Russia's sphere of influence, it might be a good choise to use their name instead of Aunus.

Would you maybe like to make a map suitable for East Karelia? I think it has to stretch further north, to cover all of White Karelia.

The concept of "Border Karelia" is such a ephemeral subject, that to me it can rather be neglected. Borders of 1812 and 1920, and maybe the locations of a few towns, are more important. /Tuomas 21:58, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I'll change Aunus to Olonets and merge Border Karelia with Ladoga Karelia.

How far north does White Karelia extend? My grandmother is from Salla and she has never described it as part of Karelia, maybe it would be best to just give it the same extent as the current republic of Karelia.

I'll try to change the maps this week and also make one for the East Karelia article (shouldn't be that hard). Also we need a map highligting the "Tver Karelia" villages [1] (http://minunkarjalani.susiraja.net/alue/karjala.htm). -- Jniemenmaa 14:53, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Would you care to make one for the Karelian Isthmus too, now when you're at it?
Please!
--Ruhrjung 14:03, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try, but that really should be on a different scale. -- Jniemenmaa 14:53, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Your wish has been granted! :) I found a pretty good map on the net that I used as a base for my own map. I also updated Media:Many Karelias.png. -- Jniemenmaa 16:48, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Please draw it further north. You all have forgotten Salla and Kuusamo parts from maps when drawing 1939/44 borders. Kahkonen 07:10, 2004 May 25 (UTC)

Karelia during WW2

Oh, and you probaly want to take a look at this map for the Continuation War article -- Jniemenmaa 13:36, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Splendid!
Maybe a somewhat bigger dot for Leningrad would do? We have no reason to make the Pietarinlaiset upset, do we?

Are you inserting the map yourself, so that caption and place becomes quite correct?
--Ruhrjung 14:02, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I added the map to the Cont.War article. I'll try to find a map that shows how large Leningrad was at the time. Any further comments for this map should go to Talk:Continuation War or the images talk-page. -- Jniemenmaa 14:53, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I put it on the stub for River Svir also. /Tuomas 21:07, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Other maps

I uploaded two more maps, see Karelian Isthmus and East Karelia. Comments should go to their respective talk pages. -- Jniemenmaa 16:48, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think the maps are are excellent. The new version of the Many Karelias also settles my initial query on Ladoga Karelia. -- Mic 18:20, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! You've the one who inspired me to start making maps in the first place with those maps of the Swedish historical provinces! :)

I'am actually a bit uncertain about the extent of Ladoga Karelia. It should maybe not extend so far inside current day Finland. -- Jniemenmaa 05:47, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Having asked a non-expert Karelian, I was told that "Ladoga-Karelia" didn't extend so very far north. ...but better try to get in touch with a real experts somewhere. :) (Oh, ...and thank you!) /Tuomas 06:05, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Karelia/temp

I made an attempt at Karelia/temp. Anyone want to make my Finnish POV text more neutral? :) -- Jniemenmaa 12:39, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think it is time to move Karelia/temp to Karelia! If I read the comments above correctly, it seems that we (almost) have a consensus, on that we want to have a proper article at Karelia, instead of a disambiguation page. Dagestan seems to be the only one still wanting the disambiguation option? Correct me if I am wrong.

As Mic pointed out at Talk:Karelia, Karelia (province) is not a good name for the current article at Karelia (the one about the Swedish/Finnish historical province). The other proposals were Finnish Karelia and Swedish Karelia, these are not perfect either. How about West Karelia? -- Jniemenmaa 06:21, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

How about Karelia (Swedish Province)? I agree, it's time for the Swedish province of Karelia to stop hogging the Karelia page. It's not the only Karelia around. -- Dagestan

Karelia (Swedish Province) is a bad choice, since the province of Karelia is seen as a historical province of both Finland and Sweden. (The rest of this discussion should probably be at Talk:Karelia). -- Jniemenmaa 09:24, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Help

" Occupied terriotories incorporated into Karelo-Finnish SSR after Winter War but not after Continuation War." This is a sentence fragment, and I don't know what it's supposed to me. Someone who knows please fix it. --Golbez 21:39, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It should tell that Karelia incorporated into Karelo-Finnish SSR after Winter War. After Continuation War it was parted between Leningrad oblast and Karelo-Finnish SSR. Kahkonen 08:20, 2004 Aug 15 (UTC)

Lakes

Vuo changed the names of the lakes, removing the "ozero" part from the name. I just wanted to confirm that the resulting names are proper names in Karelian (I do not know Karelian myself). The way I originally listed the lakes was per Russian transliteration of the names (in Russian, for example, Topozero Lake is called "озеро Топозеро", which transliterates to "ozero Topozero", thus repeating "ozero" twice). If the "ozero" part was removed as a duplicate, it was so done in error, as it does not correspond to the name in Russian. Could Vuo please confirm the changes?—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 21:28, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Good point. Let's remove the English word "Lake" instead, because as a list of lakes and thus those will not be confused for anything else. Also, is that English "Lake" mandatory in the first place? In Finnish, lakes are usually not marked with a word meaning "lake", unless the root can be confused for something else, in which case -järvi is added. So, Ääninen (Onega), Laatokka (Ladoga), but Oulujärvi (Oulu is a town, too) and Pyhäjärvi ("Holy Lake") --Vuo 13:01, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am not aware of any Wikipedia policy or WikiProject mandating the use of the word "lake" when providing the names of lakes. It looks, however, that pretty much all of other lakes are named with the word "Lake" in the title (see, for example, the names of lakes listed in the subcategories of the Category:Lakes by country). It is, of course, possible, to remove the word "lake" solely for the purpose of this particular list (writing it out as [[Pyaozero Lake|Pyaozero]], for example), but the main lake article will still be name with both "ozero" and "lake" in the title, leaving the roots of the problem unsolved. I tried checking other encyclopedias, but only found that Encarta refers to Pyaozero Lake as "Ozero Pyaozero", which is basically a full transliteration from Russian. Any ideas as to how this can be handled better? Maybe it would be the best just to restore original designations? Anyway, I'd prefer to hear what you think before making any changes.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 15:27, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)