The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the peoples who speak Finno-Ugric Languages and have titular republics or autonomous regions within the post-Soviet Russian Federation. Information on the subject was screened by Soviet censors, and only recently have alternative sources of information become available.
The principal threat facing the Finno-Ugrians in the post-Soviet World is as much environmental as political. Communism has gone, but exploitation of natural resources threatens the region's ecology, while the tendency of latter-day rulers in the Kremlin seems to be to continue their predecessors' oppressive policies towards the Finno-Ugrians. The book has been written with a deep commitment to the threatened human and political rights of these endangered peoples.

Rein Taagepera is Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is also Professor of Political Science at the University of Tartu, Estonia.