East Karelia and West Karelia with borders of 1939 and 1940/1947. They are also known as Russian Karelia and Finnish Karelia respectively.
East Karelia, also Eastern Karelia or Russian Karelia, is a name for the part of Karelia that since the Treaty of Stolbova in 1617 has remained Christian Orthodox under Russian supremacy. It is separate from the western part of Karelia, called Finnish Karelia or historically Swedish Karelia (before 1808). Most of East Karelia is now part of the Republic of Karelia within the Russian Federation.
19th century ethnic nationalist Fennomans saw East Karelia as the ancient home of Finnic culture, "un-contaminated" by both Scandinavians and Slavonics. In the sparsely populated East-Karelian backwoods, mainly in Viena's Karelia, Elias Lönnrot collected the folk tales that ultimately would become Finland's national epic, the Kalevala.
Small elitist circles in newly independent Finland advocated before and during the Continuation War the conquest of East Karelia in order to rescue the Karelians from Bolshevist and, later, Stalinist oppression. Most of East Karelia was occupied by Finnish forces 1941–1944. The war conditions were accompanied by hardship for the local ethnic Russian civilians, including forced labour and internment in prison camps as enemy aliens.
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