Regular readers of both these printed pages as well as of the on-line edition - which contrary to what may be presumed does not carry all the material found in the weekly print edition and is in fact quite independent in the materials selected for posting - have certainly noticed that a lot of articles have appeared on the plight of the Mari people. This in both languages of the paper, though more so in English.
Paul Goble, who is eminently qualified to comment due to his vast experience, has written quite a few of these articles. A brief listing: he has served as Senior Advisor to the Director of the Voice of America, Communications Director at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Special Advisor on Soviet Nationality Problems and Baltic Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Trained at Miami University and the University of Chicago, he is the editor of four books and author of more than 150 scholarly articles and, at last count, well over 1100 op-ed articles. Goble has been decorated by the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for his involvement in the struggle for the recovery of Baltic independence. He is now writing for the protection of Mari cultural and political rights.
Who better to tell the world how Russia is doing its utmost to stomp out a nation? Fluent in Russian, Goble has access to original information. We hear that his Estonian is better than that of many Russians in Estonia. Fortunately for us, Goble writes in the lingua franca of the information world, and we are extremely fortunate - and grateful to Goble for allowing us to have his in-depth analyses appear here.
This point of writing about a Finno-Ugric nation in English cannot be overemphasized. While Valeri Kalabugin and others at the Tallinn based Information Centre of Finno-Ugric Peoples (
http://www.suri.ee/) distribute regular press releases about the latest attempts to have the teaching of the Mari language curbed, not all of these make it to print. Thus some material only reaches the already converted who are on the suri.ee mailing list. Such as Eesti Elu Online.
Goble's work is regularly picked and published up by various news organizations, noting here but two: RFE/RL and Johnson's Russia List, an e-mailed project of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) in Washington. David Johnson has industrious and analytic habits, similar to that of the prolific Goble. No Russia watcher can do without a daily fix of JRL (As a reader service, a partial web archive for Johnson's Russia List is available at
http://www.cdi.org/russia/john...)
This background information may mollify the few curious who wonder why we keep printing material on a kindred people. (And those who kvetch about Adu Raudkivi's recent focus on China - it's all about communism, and keeping the world informed of that system which is still oppressing the world's most populous country.)
While the Russians have been returning to an increasingly authoritarian form of rule, which they call "guided democracy", it is, of course, not textbook communism. The methods, however, sure seem familiar. Murder, assault, denial of instruction in schools in the (predominant) mother tongue. Estonians recall similar stories from the lengthy Soviet occupation of their country.
As the 10th International Congress of Finno-Ugric Studies opened this Monday in Yoshkar-Ola, capital city of the Mari El Republic, still within the clutches of the Russian Federation not all Finno-Ugrians dared to attend. The number of delegates from Estonia and Hungary has dwindled. This is casting a small shadow on the Congress who have not forgotten the recent suspicious death of Congress President Prof. Yuri Anduganov. A mysterious car crash that seems from afar as murder was the cause of his passing, just months before the conference was to be held.
Consider how Finnish Professor Pauli Sakkonen worded his decision to not attend. He cancelled participation as a "PROTEST against President Markelov's administration and the Russian Foreign Ministry. The answer of the Russian Foreign Ministry to the resolution of the European Parliament, concerning the oppression against the Maris and other Finno-Ugric people included lies and support for Markelov's policy" (of Russification).
Sadly, at least one Estonian politician, Education and Science Minister Mailis Reps failed to see through the Russian claims that all is well in Mari El. There for the Congress, arrangements were made for her to visit a rural Mari language school in Kundusturi. Indeed, she turned back the statement of Prof. Janos Pustay from Hungary that authorities have erected a Potemkin village for Finno-Ugrian visitors from abroad. She actually chided Estonia's press (both Russian and Estonian language) for not pointing out these wonders of the Mari El nation, saying that the elite school, where instruction is given in both Mari and Russian to 240 students - which she called a "beautiful, optimistic moment in Mari El daily life" needs singling out more than alleged cultural and human rights violation. Something the Russian Foreign Ministry might have dreamed up.
She further went on - almost like a Soviet politician (then again, she belongs to the Edgar Savisaar-led Center Party) by saying that "if children are singing in the Mari language, then this certainly can be no Potemkin village… and I was convinced that the people's faces were happy."
Reps acknowledged that certainly had not seen every aspect of life in the Republic of Mari El, but so what? She was quoted as saying "and I don't even need to see them. In Estonia as well we do not show our visitors poor people." It seems that some serious sensitivity training seems to be in order for the woman that runs Estonia's education ministry.
We should be grateful that thanks to Goble and Kalabugin, among many determined others, that the truth is being revealed in English about what is going in the Mari El.
On a closing note, please be reminded that many cultural figures and scientists from all over the world have signed the Appeal on Behalf of the Mari People, also published earlier this year on these pages. It is to be found at
http://www.ugri.info.mari 