Vepsy, Ižory and Vožani could lose their land. They suffered repression during Stalin’s time and have similarities with the Baltic and Finnish peoples. With the war in Ukraine, they are once again in the crosshairs of the authorities. They are accused of separatism, extremism and being “foreign agents”.
Saint Petersburg () – After the period of Stalinist repression, the small towns of northern Russia kept their language and traditions, but now they risk losing all their land.
In the Leningrad Oblast (Leningradskaya Oblast), in the Saint Petersburg region, there are officially three small communities: Vepsy, Ižory and Vožani. For centuries, they have occupied the areas close to the shores of the Gulf of Finland, especially the Vožani, the most threatened, now concentrated in the small town of Lužitsy.
Today the old center is surrounded by the port of Ust-Luga and the gas transportation and processing buildings of the Ruskhimaljans complex, and locals are fighting to prevent its ultimate demise.
In Lužitsy there are about 100 buildings, scattered along a couple of kilometers of the Narva state highway. For more than 500 years, this town has been the center of the land of “Vodskaja” (of water). Just over a hundred Vozasans live there, who are also present in the neighboring town of Krakolje. Today, almost all are elderly; some live in other settlements in the province, in the city of Saint Petersburg and in neighboring Estonia.
They live in humble houses that usually spend months buried in the snow and often look abandoned. With the port works of the 2000s, its demolition seemed inevitable. With enormous efforts, the people of Vozani managed to defend their homes, despite being trapped by the harbor, isolated in their ancient forest, and with almost no communication with the outside world. A museum of Vožani culture has even been opened in the village, called the “Fortress Center” of these ancient heirs of the first meetings between Scandinavians and Slavs.
The people of Vozani are said to have the lightest hair in the world. This people settled in the Gulf of Finland in the first centuries of the Christian era. The Slavic chronicles speak of them in 1069, when they were conquered by the armies of Novgorod, (a city of Rus’, older than Kiev itself). It is difficult to distinguish them from the other Baltic-Finnish peoples in the region, but they still carry ancestral songs from their “golden-haired, blue-eyed” daughters.
During the Soviet period, they suffered harsh repression by the authorities and were deported – along with the ižory and ingermanlandtsy – to the territories of Finland and Karelia. They were not allowed to return to their hometowns, and only a few managed to return after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, many of them dream of reconstituting the ethnic group of yesteryear.
Preserving the language and culture of these peoples is something that worries several Estonian specialists from the glorious University of Tartu. One of them is the linguist and ethnographer Paul Ariste, who published extensive research on the subject during the Soviet years. Currently, in Tartu, there is also a course in the Vodic language, related to Estonian, and which the locals call maavacithe “language of the land”.
As a consequence of the war in Ukraine, the hostility of the Russian authorities against these peoples has increased. Perhaps, fearing a consonance with the Ukrainians, a woman from Lužniki, Ekaterina Kuznetsova, maintains: “The Russians think that all the peoples around them are enemies, especially in these areas of the Baltic, the scene of so many wars.”
Flags of Vožani and other local towns are traditionally displayed at local festivals, which are now strictly prohibited. They are accused of “separatism and extremism” and even of being “foreign agents” in the pay of Estonians or other western and northern enemies.
They are forbidden to speak words in their ancient language, or wear folk costumes outside the museums. The Vožania ethnic group, like the similar Vepsy and Ižory ethnic groups, is not subject to legal recognition and protection. But the dramatic events of this year of war are awakening the memory of the men and peoples of the north, buried by snow and history. Now, they are once again in search of their own land, far from the horrors and death.
