Colossal resource base and low level its development. Wide transit opportunities and insufficient use of them. Large gas production and gas processing projects and an average gasification level of 10%. It's about about Karelia. These and other problems were discussed at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation in Moscow at a forum presenting the investment potential of the republic.
What is there in the Karelian depths! These are bauxites, non-ferrous metal ores, iron ore, phosphorites, healing mineral water peat. There are also rich reserves of hydroelectric power and timber.
The pulp, paper and iron ore industries of the region, created during the Soviet period, still remain the locomotives of social economic development republics. But the area of industrial development is still mostly in the plans.
In terms of resources, Karelia can provide hydropower to its own needs and to many neighboring regions, but only recently two new medium-power hydroelectric power stations were built (after an almost 40-year break). “In mid-October,” the head of the republic, Alexander Khudilainen, told the author, “the construction of hydroelectric power stations (“Beloporozhsky cascade”) began in the central region of Karelia. The BRICS Bank and Chinese investors are participating in the financing of this project. These hydroelectric power stations are capable of almost completely providing Karelia with cheap electricity. Further development of the region’s hydropower potential, along with the development of geological exploration, transit infrastructure, timber processing and the resort and tourism sector, are among the priority economic areas in the republic.”
Let us recall that back in the early 1950s, a program was developed for the large-scale development of hydropower and non-ferrous metallurgy in Karelia, as well as a railway network with new connections to neighboring Finland. Moreover, in the mid-1940s - early 1950s there was a project to connect the White Sea-Baltic Canal and, therefore, the Volga-Baltic water transport system via inland waterways Suomi to its North Baltic port of Oulu near the Finnish-Swedish border. But these projects were mothballed after 1953.
The republic at that time was the Karelo-Finnish SSR (KFSSR), and the increasingly active economic development of Finland in the 1950s - 1960s. demanded, let's say, a nationally adequate response from the Soviet side. At the same time, in the republic the share of Karelians themselves and related ethnic groups in the total population of the region did not exceed and today does not exceed 30% against 60-65% of the Russian population.
The Karelo-Finnish SSR existed from March 31, 1940 to July 16, 1956. It then became the ASSR within the RSFSR, but after the Great Patriotic War, the first large foreign investments in the economy of the USSR in the early and mid-1950s were primarily Finnish , as well as Swedish.
By the way, Finnish investments still account for almost 60% of foreign investments. This trend, which began back in the 1950s, could not but strengthen Finland's comprehensive presence in Karelia.
The rapprochement was also facilitated by the ethno-cultural kinship of the Finns and the Karelians. Then central authorities decided to lower the administrative and legal status of Karelia. In Finland and Scandinavia they understood why this was done. But when, on the initiative of Sweden, a regional customs and economic Northern Council was created at the beginning of 1952 (consisting of all the countries of Northern Europe), the Scandinavians invited the USSR to be an associated participant in this association, and with associated participation in it on behalf of the USSR - the Karelo-Finnish Republic .
The USSR and Stalin personally supported the creation of the Northern Council. But the Khrushchev leadership decided the issue differently, lowering the status of Karelia. Since then, its economic development has been limited to the aluminum, pulp and paper industries, iron ore mining (at least half of its production was and is being exported), local construction raw materials and the resort and medical sector. By the way, it was in Karelia, not far from Lake Onega, back in early XVIII century, Peter I founded the first mineral water resort in Russia (“Marcial Waters”). But until recently, this area in the republic developed slowly, fragmentarily or, as modern experts say, unsystematically.
Major projects in the tourism and medical sectors, covering most of the region's territory, were presented at the forum. Some projects are already being implemented in the southern and eastern regions Karelia with the participation of Finnish investors. There is also the aluminum industry - one of the oldest in the republic, first of all, the Nadvoitsky aluminum smelter, one of the largest in Northern Europe in the 1970s - mid-1980s. But the well-known problems of the subsequent period in the country led to a serious decline in production in the early 2000s. But within the framework of the Russian import substitution program, qualitative changes have recently begun. As A. Khudilainen clarified to the author, “in September 2016, the government of the Russian Federation decided to create a territory of advanced socio-economic development in Nadvoitsy. This will significantly change the socio-economic climate in the region for the better, especially since the Nadvoitssky plant will launch the production of modern aluminum products that are in demand in Karelia, other regions of the country and abroad.”
The head of the republic also noted that in the medium term it is planned to complete the reconstruction international airport in Petrozavodsk, reconstruct checkpoints across the border with Finland, bring roads, especially in the central and northern regions of Karelia, in accordance with modern requirements. And in the energy sector, “in particular, more active development of the energy potential of small rivers and the use of local fuels, especially wood pellets, are planned. In addition, “large-scale work on gasification of the republic is planned; this work is already very active in the south of Karelia.”
As noted, the level of gasification in Karelia barely reaches 10%, while Finland has had 100% gasification with Soviet (Russian) gas since the mid-1970s.
Near Karelia, i.e. on the Leningrad shores of the Gulf of Finland, are being created near Murmansk and Arkhangelsk large factories for gas processing. And by 2019, it is planned to build a medium-capacity gas liquefaction plant in Petrozavodsk, which will accelerate the gasification of the republic.
The transit advantages of the region were especially noted at the forum. According to the head of Karelia, its most important land and water arteries connect the industrial regions of Russia with the Murmansk port and the Northern Sea Route. These communication advantages “can be more widely used for interregional connections in the country and for its foreign trade».
A. Khudilainen also told the author: “Back in 1913, a trial transportation by rail was organized from Petrozavodsk to the border part of eastern Finland - to the city of Joensuu. For various reasons, this project was not implemented, but due to the more active economic ties of the republic with Suomi and the importance for the Scandinavians, especially for the Finnish side, of transit through Karelia, the same project, as well as plans for the development of transportation along the White Sea-Baltic Canal, are of growing interest among both sides. This situation is also typical for projects of railway communication between northern and central Karelia with neighboring regions of Finland and its Baltic ports. Moreover, many of these projects were also developed a long time ago” (in the 1960s - 1970s).
IN last years The fishing industry is also actively developing in the region based on the richest reserves of salmon, whitefish and other types of fish raw materials. In particular, red trout caviar in Karelia is produced on the basis of highly effective environmental technologies, and these products are known not only in Russia. “In the republic,” notes its head, “there are good prospects development and fishery complex, including projects for the development of biological resources White Sea».
In the last two or three years, a variety of Karelian berries, mushrooms (frozen, chilled), honey, healing herbs. According to expert calculations, the production of these products will at least double by 2020 due to the commissioning of new capacities and farms. But for now, the Russian Federation imports many thousands of tons of lingonberries, blueberries, blueberries, blackberries from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and not only from there.
The region also has significant scientific and educational potential. For example, the IT park of Petrozavodsk State University, as A. Khudilainen emphasized, “without exaggeration, one of the best intellectual incubators in the world. And it is not surprising that his cooperation with scientific centers both in Russia and abroad.” The head of Karelia stated at the forum that in terms of economic rates, especially industrial development The republic is ahead of many subjects of the Federation.
Let us note in this regard that many national autonomies of Russia receive more state budget funds than other regions of the country. In addition, they have much lower levels of government and commercial debt.
The point, first of all, is that the development of most national autotomies has been a priority since the Soviet period. For the rest, as a rule, the residual principle was used.
This trend continued in 2016. Thus, the leading subjects of the Federation in terms of approved state subsidies to equalize local budgetary security (i.e., in terms of the level of replenishment of missing budget revenues) were Dagestan (46.7 billion rubles), Yakutia (over 43 billion rubles), Kamchatka (37. 5 billion rubles), Crimea (22.3 billion rubles) and Chechnya (22.2 billion rubles). The Russian regions of the North-West of the Russian Federation are closer to the end of this list, Karelia is slightly higher.
As for the state debt of the regions, in 2015 this figure for Karelia was about 19.1 billion rubles, and for the Murmansk region it was 20.3 billion rubles, for the Vologda region - almost 35 billion rubles; Arkhangelsk - about 33 billion rubles. And if, for example, in Karelia it is planned to create new fish processing facilities, then in the neighboring Murmansk region the Murmansk fish processing plant, one of the largest in the former Union, is on the verge of bankruptcy, because domestic suppliers sell raw materials, as before, at higher prices than foreign, the same Norwegian and Icelandic. But the latter are included in retaliatory food sanctions by the Russian Federation, so their supplies have fallen sharply (they are re-exported through non-sanctioned Greenland and the Faroe Islands, autonomous from Denmark). Plus, tariffs for transporting fish products (raw materials and finished products) from the Murmansk region, which is remote from the vast majority of other regions of the Russian Federation, remain high.
In comparison with Karelia, in the Murmansk, Vologda, and Arkhangelsk regions the situation in the agro-industrial complex is worse. In addition, if we take the level of provision of Karelia with high-quality roads and their length as 100%, then, according to expert calculations in 2016, in the Murmansk, Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions this figure is 65-75%.
The level of gasification of the territory in all these regions is not equally high.
In Finland they remember that a number of territories in northwestern Russia belonged to it in 1919-1940, then from August 1941 until the end of 1944. We have already noted that Finnish investments dominate foreign investment in Karelia, while the Finns do not seem to give up hopes for the return of the supposedly “original Finnish territories” -, parts of western Karelia and the Arctic port of Pechenga (formerly Petsamo).
These plans, as noted by Karelian and Finnish media, are indirectly implemented through the purchase, including by front companies or individuals, of land and a number of other real estate properties in the former “Finnish” areas.
Population surveys in Finland that have become more frequent since 2010 show that up to 40% of respondents are in favor of the return of these territories. Among the supporters of revenge are well-known politicians, for example, former head of parliament Riita Uosukainen and former foreign minister Pertti Salolainen. By the way, the latter “predicted” that by 2022 Russia will disintegrate and the “territorial issue” will be resolved...
Thus, the situation in the Karelian region is influenced by a complex of factors, among which external factors must also be taken into account.
The weather forecast is presented by the “Multifunctional Real Estate Center”, which in Petrozavodsk.
Karelian weather is changeable, like a windy girl. Last week, the State Traffic Inspectorate warned motorists that due to the cold weather they urgently need to change their summer tires to winter ones. Today, the traffic police advise drivers to be attentive and careful on the roads due to the sharp warming, especially during rain and in dark time days.
In the next three days, the republic will be under the influence of the southeastern, southern periphery of the Atlantic cyclone,
Leading weather forecaster of the Karelian Hydrometeorological Center Elena Ishkina told the portal “Petrozavodsk Speaks”.
According to her, it will still be cool tonight - from November 3 to 4. Temperatures are expected to range from 0 to -5 degrees. In the afternoon, on Saturday, November 4, the thermometer will rise to +4 degrees. Wet snow turning to rain is expected in places. The wind will be moderate southwest - 4-6 m/s.
On Sunday and Monday - November 5-6 - it will become even warmer. Temperatures at night will be from +3 to -1, and during the day from +1 to +6 degrees. Precipitation in the form of rain is possible only in places.
If we talk about the weather in Petrozavodsk, then according to forecasting organizations, in the next two days it will also be quite warm for this time of year.
On Saturday, November 4: air temperature from +1 to +4 degrees, southwest wind 4-5 m/s, cloudy, light rain.
On Sunday, November 5: air temperature from +3 to +5 degrees, southwest wind 4-5 m/s, cloudy, light rain.
In the following days, according to the Hydrometeorological Center of the Russian Federation, there will be no significant weather change in the Karelian capital. It will be warm, cloudy and rainy for this time of year.
This is also evidenced by data from Roshydromet. In the next ten days - from November 3 to 12 - the average air temperature will be 1-2 degrees above the long-term average values (see graph):
The average air temperature these days will be from 0 to +1 degrees (see chart):
Unfortunately, warmth will not come to Karelia for long. According to the director of the Hydrometeorological Center of the Russian Federation, Roman Vilfand, north of Moscow, November will generally be a cool month, writes TASS.
We predict that temperatures will be around or slightly below normal north of Moscow. These are the northern regions of the Central Federal District and in the Northwestern District - in the Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, Leningrad, Pskov, Novgorod regions, Karelia,
The meteorologist said.
The amount of precipitation in November in the European territory of the country is predicted to be around normal, “even with some deficit west of Moscow.”
But, like October, like previous months and seasons, we predict that November will also be uneven,
Vilfand said.
Let us remind you that last October, Russians experienced all the variability of autumn weather, according to an analysis by the Hydrometeorological Center of the Russian Federation. Thus, in the first ten days of the month, almost throughout the entire country temperature conditions were below normal. Everything changed with the beginning of the second decade. Warmth poured into European territory. In the third decade the cold came again. In the northwest, average temperatures were about 2 degrees below normal. Such unstable weather led to the fact that on average for the month, heat and cold approximately compensated for each other, and the average monthly temperature in most of Russia turned out to be close to normal.
More detailed forecast for the next week in Karelia, read on Tuesday, November 7th. Also keep an eye on our daily forecasts, which are released daily at 7.10 and 16.30.
ANECDOTE ON THE TOPIC
The weather is great today. For lovers of extreme sensations.
One of the most famous monuments in Tallinn is the Freedom Cross, dedicated to victory in the War of Liberation 1918-1920. Standing under it, one involuntarily remembers that Karelia had its own War of Liberation in those same years. And if the North Karelian (Ukhta) Republic had won it, Karelia could well have become just as independent European state, like Estonia.
Of course, the different outcomes of these wars are largely predetermined by socio-historical reasons. Although there are many parallels. Estonia at the beginning of the twentieth century was also predominantly a peasant country, like Karelia. But still there was a significantly larger educated urban population. In Karelia, alas, there were no analogues to the University of Tartu. The capital of independent Karelia was located in the village of Ukhta (hence the name of the republic). However, this difference does not at all justify the Bolsheviks, who violated their own Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia.
One of the most famous monuments in Tallinn is the Cross of Freedom, dedicated to the victory in the War of Liberation of 1918-1920. Standing under it, one involuntarily remembers that Karelia had its own War of Liberation in those same years. And if the North Karelian (Ukhta) Republic had won it, Karelia could well have become an independent European state like Estonia. Bolsheviks immediately after the October Revolution of 1917 and promised all the peoples of the former Russian Empire“the right to free self-determination, up to and including secession and the formation of an independent state.” However, only Finland was able to take full advantage of this promise - it declared independence on December 6, 1917, and was recognized by the Bolshevik government on December 31. But when the northern regions of Karelia made a similar demand in 1918, the Kremlin sent military units to suppress “separatism.” The Bolsheviks thus revived the imperial structure of Russia just six months after their coup.
Today at National Museum Karelia in Petrozavodsk there is not a single exhibit dedicated to the Ukhta Republic. Her story is effectively banned. Official historical version is that the word “Karelia” appeared in political map only in 1920, when the Bolsheviks created the “Karelian Labor Commune” in this territory.
At the head of this geographical formation, the Kremlin put the “Red Finns” (Otto Kuusinen, Edward Gylling, etc.), who lost civil war in Finland and were forced to flee to Soviet Russia. However, they did not receive full power in Karelia. British historian Nick Baron, in his book “Power and Space: Autonomous Karelia in the Soviet State, 1920-1939,” reports that from the early 1930s, approximately half of the territory of Karelia was removed from the control of the civil administration and transferred to the jurisdiction of the NKVD. It was on the territory of Karelia that the first camps of the Soviet Gulag appeared - the White Sea Canal, Solovki, etc.
By the way, in 1938, the first leader of Soviet Karelia, Edward Gylling, was convicted and executed. In his book, Nick Baron cites his approval of the construction of the first concentration camps in Karelia in the 1920s. The tragedy of Gülling - as well as that of the entire generation of revolutionaries - was that, having begun to spin the wheel of repression, they themselves naturally fell under it in the end...
The Kremlin built Soviet Karelia as a military springboard for the future Bolshevisation of Finland and Scandinavian countries. Therefore, there is no development of the Karelian language special attention was not given. In the 1930s they even tried to translate it into Cyrillic - but this experiment failed.
And today Karelia is the only Russian republic where the language of the titular people does not have any official status. For example, if in Tatarstan the official languages are Russian and Tatar, in Yakutia - Russian and Yakut, then in Karelia - only Russian.
This situation is the result of a number of historical, cultural and political reasons. In Soviet-era censuses, many Karelians preferred to be recorded as “Russians” - it was safer, since Karelians and Finns could be accused of “bourgeois nationalism.” In addition, the Karelian language historically consists of two dialects - Livvikovsky (southern) and North Karelian, which differ significantly in grammar and phonetics. Attempts to create a unified Karelian language on their basis were unsuccessful. However, speakers of both dialects fully understand Finnish, which Soviet time actually became a “second language” in Karelia. All street signs in Petrozavodsk were bilingual - Russian and Finnish. True, in recent years this bilingualism has practically disappeared. Finnish language in Petrozavodsk you can only hear it at the National Theater of Karelia. Since the early 1990s, when the borders opened, many Karelians and Finns have moved to Finland. And today the titular people make up only 10% of the republic’s population.
Karelian dialects today, in terms of lexical development, have actually remained at the level of village life at the beginning of the twentieth century. They are impossible to teach on. modern sciences in the University. But on the other hand, this archaic nature of the Karelian language gave an interesting creative result. It was Karelia that, since the 1980s, has become one of the centers of folk music in Russia. True, one can note the following paradox: famous Karelian folk groups (Myllärit, Sattuma, Santtu Karhu, etc.) are more popular in Finland than in Russia.
The neighborhood of Karelia with Finland (their border occupies more than 800 km) is traditionally determined high level cross-border cooperation. Residents of Finland have always taken a special interest in developing ties with Russian Karelia. You can recall an interesting fact - they started connecting residential buildings to the Internet in Petrozavodsk even earlier than in Moscow, back in 1997. This was the result of cooperation between Karelian programmers and Finnish universities.
In 1990, like other republics within Russia, Karelia proclaimed the Declaration of Sovereignty. By the way, during the years of “Perestroika”, Karelia had its own Popular Front, an analogue of similar organizations in the Baltic countries.
The declaration of sovereignty of Karelia meant the desire not for the republic to secede from Russia, but for full-fledged federalism, in which the regions have maximum powers. The Karelian Declaration introduced full republican self-government, in which only part of the powers (defense, foreign policy etc.) delegated federal center, and the main economic issues had to be decided by the republic itself, freely electing its government.
However, this Declaration (like similar ones adopted by other Russian republics) did not contain a mechanism for its own implementation. Positioning ourselves as component Russian Federation, the republic was completely dependent on federal laws and the evolution of Russian political system generally.
President Putin in 2004 abolished direct and free elections heads of regions, including republics. The republics themselves within Russia, from the point of view of self-government, ceased to differ from the regions. In fact, this meant the end of federalism and the transformation of Russia into a unitary state.
In 2000, the Euroregion “Karelia” was created, uniting the Republic of Karelia and three Finnish provinces - North Karelia, Kainuu and Northern Ostrobothnia. This project has been developed since 1998 and in the future provided for the transparency of internal borders, similar to the Euroregions within the EU. However, the implementation of this project on the Russian side was actually suspended in 2002, when Karelia’s own ministry was disbanded external relations, which developed the Euroregion project and was one of the main subjects of relations in it. The “vertical of power” policy launched in Russia at that time provided for the implementation of international contacts only centrally, through the federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In May 2012, a few days before the law on the return of gubernatorial elections came into force, Putin appointed a native of Karelia as head of Karelia. Leningrad region Alexandra Khudilainen. Thus, the residents of Karelia were again not given the opportunity to independently elect the head of their republic.
In the “era of Hudilainen” (from 2012 to the present), Karelia, from the point of view of politics, economics and culture, finally turned into a powerless imperial province. The main government posts in the republic continue to be occupied by “Varangians” (as they are called local population) - a team of friends and fellow countrymen of the governor. At the same time, local opposition is being suppressed with unprecedented severity. They were arrested in 2014 former member Federation Council from Karelia Devlet Alikhanov and Chairman of the Petrozavodsk City Council Oleg Fokin. The head of the Karelian branch of the Yabloko party, Vasily Popov, was forced to emigrate to Finland.
Under Khudilainen, Karelia's public debt grew rapidly and reached 21.3 billion rubles (300 million euros) by 2016. Most taxes from the republic go to Moscow. Since 2011, the volume of Karelia’s foreign trade has decreased from $1,499 million to $727. At the same time, Khudilainen blames “foreign intelligence services” for the economic crisis in the republic. It is clear that such an approach is unlikely to stimulate the interest of foreign investors in Karelia.
The appointment of Khudilainen as head of Karelia also turned out to be a cultural paradox. At first, the national public of the republic was happy that Karelia was headed by “a man with a Finnish surname” and harbored hopes for a cultural revival.
However, everything turned out to be “exactly the opposite” - Khudilainen’s rule resulted in an unprecedented suppression of republican cultural specifics. In 2013, the Faculty of Baltic-Finnish Philology and Culture was closed at Petrozavodsk University, which was the only one in Russian universities, the Karelian Pedagogical Academy is also closed. The publication of the magazine “Carelia”, also the only Finnish-language one, has been practically suspended literary magazine in Russia. In 2015, the youth cultural and educational organization Nuori Karjala (Young Karelia) was recognized as a “foreign agent” for the UN grant it received to support indigenous cultures.
In his authoritarian and repressive leadership style, Khudilainen is reminiscent of the “Red Finn” Otto Kuusinen, who ruled Karelia under Stalin. The Karelian opposition today is fighting to ensure that the head of the republic is elected by citizens. Despite the fact that Khudilainen took the position in May 2016 last place in the rating of the effectiveness of Russian governors, the Kremlin is afraid to remove him from office, since in this case, according to the law, free elections of the head of the republic must be held. And in these elections, Khudilainen and the ruling United Russia party in general have minimal electoral chances in Karelia.
Voters in border Karelia are generally more liberal than in Russia as a whole. In the 2013 mayoral elections of Petrozavodsk, independent democratic politician Galina Shirshina won, which became a nationwide sensation at the time. In 2015, Governor Khudilainen, with the help of the Petrozavodsk City Council controlled by him, managed to dismiss her, which caused massive civil protests.
A broad civil movement in Karelia is possible only on the basis of the revival of republican identity. As long as it is suppressed by the official authorities, any demands for regional self-government are condemned as “separatism.” But the inevitable increase economic crisis in Russia, caused by the Kremlin’s policies, will contribute to the growth of opposition sentiments in society.
Photo: klarititemplateshop.com
In November to the Ministry natural resources Members of the public council of the village of Tiurula, Alexander Talya and Mikhail Angelov, contacted the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Neva-Ladoga Basin Water Administration and the environmental prosecutor’s office. They are protesting against the project to locate a new fish factory of Aldoga LLC in Rasinselka Bay, near the mouth of the spawning river Asilan-Joki, which is at the southwestern tip of Kilpola Island (not far from the border with the Leningrad region). Back in the summer, a similar group letter, also signed local MP Sergei Budritsky, was sent to the head of the administration of the head of the republic, Anatoly Moiseev. The Thiurulians pointed not only to ecological problems, but also to the fact that the owners of the enterprise began their activities even before they won the auction for the right to obtain a section of the water area.
Fish farming is a profitable business, the demand for fish is high, and cages appear one after another in many bays of the republic. However, there is a downside: keeping them in conditions of extreme concentration huge amount fish individuals (absolutely unnatural for nature) leads to the formation of an equally huge mass of waste from its vital activity. In most cases, both fish excrement and food remains are released into the water. More precisely, more often than not, fish farmers simply do nothing to collect them: the cages do not have pallets. Will the bays be able to “digest” such an amount of biomass, or will the water turn into a “soup” of feces and fish food? Which, by the way, is also not entirely natural: as for broiler chickens, antibiotics, soy and growth stimulants are added to the feed of factory fish (for this reason, it is not recommended to eat such fish too often).
Even the most optimistic adherents of Karelian trout farming admit that low-quality cheap food can ruin not only the cage fish, but also the ecosystem of the lake in which the cages are located. According to Alexander Taglia, currents in the Kilpola area change their directions several times a day (this can be seen from the dam on the island), so the biomass from Aldoga LLC will be carried 50 km around. In this case, however, its concentration should seem to decrease to natural, but there are other fish factories in the neighborhood that contribute.
The experience of neighboring Finland serves as a guide and argument for fish farming activities. Karelians, returning home from shopping tours, always brought with them the famous cage fish as a delicacy. However, as it turned out, their neighbors and colleagues had already encountered environmental consequences fish factories and draw some conclusions. Thus, factories that were previously located on inland lakes are now being moved to the Baltic. The reason is obvious: closed aquatic ecosystems were unable to cleanse themselves of fish waste.
In the case of Karelia, however, we are usually talking not about small lakes, but about Ladoga, where the depths and water exchange are completely different. However, Ladoga, unlike the Baltic or White Sea, is a source of drinking water supply. The narrow winding bays of the northern coast are practically the same small lakes, except perhaps flowing ones. In addition, most of the coast is planned to be included in national park“Ladoga skerries”, therefore the economic use of the water area must be approached with extreme caution.
Back in 2012, the organization “Karelian Fishermen’s Club” sent an appeal to the head of Karelia, Alexander Khudilainen, and the minister of economic development of the republic, Valentin Chmil, expressing concern about the organization of trout farms in small stagnant reservoirs. “The conditions for growing fish in many farms do not meet the requirements,” the letter said. – There is no processing; fish are cleaned (bleeding) often into the water and into the forest. Often there are no trays under the cages, as in the West.” The fishermen proposed to “prohibit the presence of trout farms in water areas where there is no running water, on small lakes, and also to do everything possible to move trout farms to the sea.”
The fish farmers themselves, of course, do not consider the situation so dramatic. Timur Gazimagomedov, director of the Kala-Ranta company, which owns several farms on Ladoga, believes that nothing threatens its ecosystem, and new plants can be safely built: “the potential of the northwestern part of Ladoga is from 5 thousand to 15 thousand tons " He associates the move of Finnish trout farms to the sea with the fact that “they have very strict environmental requirements” ( I wonder, for what reasons?). At the same time, Gazimagomedov agrees that the use of small reservoirs for fish farming needs to be strictly regulated. Regarding creation national park“Ladoga Skerries”, then he is mentally prepared for the fact that any cage farming within the boundaries of the national park will be prohibited. Although he hopes that already operating enterprises will be able to be preserved.
In 2013, Vladimir Putin became concerned about the quality of Ladoga and Onega water. The Internet immediately started talking about fish factories as one of the reasons for its pollution. Representatives of cage farms assured that they regularly monitor water quality, and that the share of untreated sewage discharges from cities and towns in the overall pollution picture is much higher. Opponents of the factories countered with empirical observations: “in the village of Hiidenselga, all the banks are covered with white mucus - waste from trout production. How many tons of feed are poured into the lakes of Karelia per day? And all this turns into manure, only fish manure. I watched how they fed the fish: about 10 bags were poured into one cage, and there are several of them, and they feed them in the morning and evening.”
True, no one provided official data on pollution, and it is not surprising: now fish farming has become almost a strategic direction Agriculture region, and the authorities are not very interested in publishing “disloyal” data. As a result, in parallel with the deterioration in water quality, the government of Karelia announced a course... to increase the number of fish factories.
The Existing and the Ought
In 2012, the “Ecological Directory for the Fish Farming Industry of North-West Russia” was published. Among the authors of this work (which also included Finnish fish producers) is the head of the fisheries department at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Hunting of Karelia, Igor Pepelyaev. According to this guide, the environmental impacts of fish farms consist of:
Use of water in cases where the water level in a natural reservoir is regulated in order to supply water to the enterprise;
Ejection Wastewater fish farming enterprises;
Exposure to chemicals and materials used to care for fish;
Genetic problems associated with fish that have escaped from a fish farm, etc.
The handbook quite objectively describes the harm that can be caused environment as a result of improper organization of production.
What is this proper organization of production? The most important thing, from the point of view of experts, is the relationship between the size of production and the level of flow of the reservoir. Obviously, the greatest flow is observed in the deepest parts of the reservoir. However, all observed farms are located near the coast. According to the Lakhdenpokh district newspaper “Karelian Contrasts”, “this is being done in order to save maintenance costs. And then, as soon as the first profits are received, almost any enterprise begins to expand in the same zone, thereby disrupting the volume of cultivation. In this case, the ecological balance is immediately disturbed: food settles to the bottom, fish die both from waste and from the corpses of their own relatives.”
Karelian activist Alexander Taglia sees another problem in fish factories - illegal occupation of the shore. Although the cages are located in the water, the shore has to be used for supplying and unloading food, organizing security and other household needs. The letter addressed to Anatoly Maksimov contains a complaint about the use of a public coastal strip for production activities, which does not belong to the Aldoga LLC fishery.
The answer received from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Hunting of Karelia to deputy Sergei Budritsky was brief and can be translated from clerical into human language as “the enterprise is good, don’t interfere with work.” Approximately the same (in terms of information content) letter came from the Neva-Ladoga Basin Water Administration. Acting head M.V. Kazmina reports that she has no information about the provision of the Asilanjoki River for water intake and discharge. But NLBVU asked not about the river, but about the bay into which it flows, and not at all about water intake/discharge, but about cages in the water area! It seems that departments deliberately give confused and meaningless answers in order to discourage people from contacting them.
There are also cases when fisheries, taking advantage of administrative preferences, engage in activities other than the officially declared one. Thus, the already mentioned company ZAO Kala-Ranta ten years ago acquired 30 hectares of farmland on the island of Kilpola (information from the newspaper Karelia No. 33, March 2007). Now, according to Alexander Taglia, this plot has already been cut into small plots and resold to private owners. It turns out that Kala Ranta is also engaged in land trade?
But the main question regarding “artificial” fish is, of course, possible water pollution. With all the tax benefits and jobs, clean lakes are the main resource on which the future of Karelia depends. We would like to say that the regional Rosprirodnadzor and the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources should conduct regular hydrochemical studies. But this is only possible if someone powerful enough is interested in obtaining independent data. However, for now, apparently, official Karelia needs other results.
One of the most famous monuments in Tallinn is the Cross of Freedom, dedicated to the victory in the War of Liberation of 1918-1920. Standing under it, one involuntarily remembers that Karelia had its own War of Liberation in those same years. And if the North Karelian (Ukhta) Republic had won it, Karelia could well have become an independent European state like Estonia.
Of course, the different outcomes of these wars are largely predetermined by socio-historical reasons. Although there are many parallels. Estonia at the beginning of the twentieth century was also predominantly a peasant country, like Karelia. But still there was a significantly larger educated urban population. In Karelia, alas, there were no analogues to the University of Tartu. The capital of independent Karelia was located in the village of Ukhta (hence the name of the republic). However, this difference does not at all justify the Bolsheviks, who violated their own Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia.
One of the most famous monuments in Tallinn is the Cross of Freedom, dedicated to the victory in the War of Liberation of 1918-1920. Standing under it, one involuntarily remembers that Karelia had its own War of Liberation in those same years. And if the North Karelian (Ukhta) Republic had won it, Karelia could well have become an independent European state like Estonia. Bolsheviks immediately after the October Revolution of 1917 and promised all peoples of the former Russian Empire “the right to free self-determination, up to and including secession and the formation of an independent state.” However, only Finland was able to take full advantage of this promise - it declared independence on December 6, 1917, and was recognized by the Bolshevik government on December 31. But when the northern regions of Karelia made a similar demand in 1918, the Kremlin sent military units to suppress “separatism.” The Bolsheviks thus revived the imperial structure of Russia just six months after their coup.
Context
Karelia as a gift for Finland's anniversary
Helsingin Sanomat 08/16/2016Karelia: how the last opposition mayor was fired
BBC Russian Service 06/21/2015Finns and lost Karelia
Helsingin Sanomat 08/24/2005 Today in the National Museum of Karelia in Petrozavodsk there is not a single exhibit dedicated to the Ukhta Republic. Her story is effectively banned. The official historical version is that the word “Karelia” appeared on the political map only in 1920, when the Bolsheviks created the “Karelian Labor Commune” in this territory.At the head of this geographical formation, the Kremlin placed the “Red Finns” (Otto Kuusinen, Edward Gylling, etc.), who lost the civil war in Finland and were forced to flee to Soviet Russia. However, they did not receive full power in Karelia. British historian Nick Baron, in his book “Power and Space: Autonomous Karelia in the Soviet State, 1920-1939,” reports that from the early 1930s, approximately half of the territory of Karelia was removed from the control of the civil administration and transferred to the jurisdiction of the NKVD. It was on the territory of Karelia that the first camps of the Soviet Gulag appeared - the White Sea Canal, Solovki, etc.
By the way, in 1938, the first leader of Soviet Karelia, Edward Gylling, was convicted and executed. In his book, Nick Baron cites his approval of the construction of the first concentration camps in Karelia in the 1920s. The tragedy of Gülling - as well as that of that entire generation of revolutionaries - was that, having begun to spin the wheel of repression, they themselves naturally fell under it in the end...
The Kremlin built Soviet Karelia as a military springboard for the future Bolshevisation of Finland and the Scandinavian countries. Therefore, no special attention was paid to the development of the Karelian language. In the 1930s they even tried to translate it into Cyrillic - but this experiment failed.
And today Karelia is the only Russian republic where the language of the titular people does not have any official status. For example, if in Tatarstan the official languages are Russian and Tatar, in Yakutia - Russian and Yakut, then in Karelia - only Russian.
This situation is the result of a number of historical, cultural and political reasons. In Soviet-era censuses, many Karelians preferred to be recorded as “Russians” - it was safer, since Karelians and Finns could be accused of “bourgeois nationalism.” In addition, the Karelian language historically consists of two dialects - Livvikovsky (southern) and North Karelian, which differ significantly in grammar and phonetics. Attempts to create a unified Karelian language on their basis were unsuccessful. However, speakers of both dialects fully understand the Finnish language, which in Soviet times actually became a “second language” in Karelia. All street signs in Petrozavodsk were bilingual - Russian and Finnish. True, in recent years this bilingualism has practically disappeared. The Finnish language in Petrozavodsk can only be heard at the National Theater of Karelia. Since the early 1990s, when the borders opened, many Karelians and Finns have moved to Finland. And today the titular people make up only 10% of the republic’s population.
Karelian dialects today, in terms of lexical development, have actually remained at the level of village life at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is impossible to teach modern sciences at a university using them. But on the other hand, this archaic nature of the Karelian language gave an interesting creative result. It was Karelia that, since the 1980s, has become one of the centers of folk music in Russia. True, one can note the following paradox: famous Karelian folk groups (Myllärit, Sattuma, Santtu Karhu, etc.) are more popular in Finland than in Russia.
The proximity of Karelia to Finland (their border covers more than 800 km) determines the traditionally high level of cross-border cooperation. Residents of Finland have always taken a special interest in the development of ties with Russian Karelia. You can recall an interesting fact - they started connecting residential buildings to the Internet in Petrozavodsk even earlier than in Moscow, back in 1997. This was the result of cooperation between Karelian programmers and Finnish universities.
In 1990, like other republics within Russia, Karelia proclaimed the Declaration of Sovereignty. By the way, during the years of “Perestroika”, Karelia had its own Popular Front, an analogue of similar organizations in the Baltic countries.
The declaration of sovereignty of Karelia meant the desire not for the republic to secede from Russia, but for full-fledged federalism, in which the regions have maximum powers. The Karelian Declaration introduced full republican self-government, in which only part of the powers (defense, foreign policy, etc.) were delegated to the federal center, and the main economic issues were to be resolved by the republic itself, freely electing its authorities.
However, this Declaration (like similar ones adopted by other Russian republics) did not contain a mechanism for its own implementation. Positioning itself as an integral part of the Russian Federation, the republic was completely dependent on federal laws and the evolution of the Russian political system as a whole.
President Putin in 2004 abolished direct and free elections of heads of regions, including republics. The republics themselves within Russia, from the point of view of self-government, ceased to differ from the regions. In fact, this meant the end of federalism and the transformation of Russia into a unitary state.
In 2000, the Euroregion “Karelia” was created, uniting the Republic of Karelia and three Finnish provinces - North Karelia, Kainuu and Northern Ostrobothnia. This project has been developed since 1998 and in the future provided for the transparency of internal borders, similar to the Euroregions within the EU. However, the implementation of this project on the Russian side was actually suspended in 2002, when Karelia disbanded its own Ministry of Foreign Relations, which developed the Euroregion project and was one of the main subjects of relations in it. The “vertical of power” policy launched in Russia at that time provided for the implementation of international contacts only centrally, through the federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In May 2012, a few days before the law on the return of gubernatorial elections came into force, Putin appointed Alexander Khudilainen, a native of the Leningrad region, as head of Karelia. Thus, the residents of Karelia were again not given the opportunity to independently elect the head of their republic.
In the “era of Hudilainen” (from 2012 to the present), Karelia, from the point of view of politics, economics and culture, finally turned into a powerless imperial province. The main government posts in the republic continue to be occupied by the “Varangians” (as the local population calls them) - a team of friends and fellow countrymen of the governor. At the same time, local opposition is being suppressed with unprecedented severity. In 2014, former member of the Federation Council from Karelia Devlet Alikhanov and chairman of the Petrozavodsk City Council Oleg Fokin were arrested. The head of the Karelian branch of the Yabloko party, Vasily Popov, was forced to emigrate to Finland.
Under Khudilainen, Karelia's public debt grew rapidly and reached 21.3 billion rubles (300 million euros) by 2016. Most taxes from the republic go to Moscow. Since 2011, the volume of Karelia’s foreign trade has decreased from $1,499 million to $727. At the same time, Khudilainen blames “foreign intelligence services” for the economic crisis in the republic. It is clear that such an approach is unlikely to stimulate the interest of foreign investors in Karelia.
The appointment of Khudilainen as head of Karelia also turned out to be a cultural paradox. At first, the national public of the republic was happy that Karelia was headed by “a man with a Finnish surname” and harbored hopes for a cultural revival.
However, everything turned out to be “exactly the opposite” - Khudilainen’s rule resulted in an unprecedented suppression of republican cultural specifics. In 2013, the Faculty of Baltic-Finnish Philology and Culture, which was the only one in Russian universities, was closed at Petrozavodsk University, and the Karelian Pedagogical Academy was also closed. The publication of the magazine “Carelia”, also the only Finnish-language literary magazine in Russia, has been practically suspended. In 2015, the youth cultural and educational organization Nuori Karjala (Young Karelia) was recognized as a “foreign agent” for the UN grant it received to support indigenous cultures.
In his authoritarian and repressive leadership style, Khudilainen is reminiscent of the “Red Finn” Otto Kuusinen, who ruled Karelia under Stalin. The Karelian opposition today is fighting to ensure that the head of the republic is elected by citizens. Despite the fact that Khudilainen took last place in the rating of the effectiveness of Russian governors in May 2016, the Kremlin is afraid to remove him from office, since in this case, according to the law, free elections of the head of the republic must be held. And in these elections, Khudilainen and the ruling United Russia party in general have minimal electoral chances in Karelia.
Voters in border Karelia are generally more liberal than in Russia as a whole. In the 2013 mayoral elections of Petrozavodsk, independent democratic politician Galina Shirshina won, which became a nationwide sensation at the time. In 2015, Governor Khudilainen, with the help of the Petrozavodsk City Council controlled by him, managed to dismiss her, which caused massive civil protests.
A broad civil movement in Karelia is possible only on the basis of the revival of republican identity. As long as it is suppressed by the official authorities, any demands for regional self-government are condemned as “separatism.” But the inevitable increase in the economic crisis in Russia, caused by the Kremlin’s policies, will contribute to the growth of opposition sentiments in society.
