In soc.culture.nordic Patrick Chew > wrote:
: Jarmo Ryyti wrote:

: > And most of the Fenno-Ugric languages. Lennart Meri, august 1995
: > in Jyva"skyla":  "Out of the 23 Uralic peoples only three have been
: > able to establsih their own states."


: 	Are you saying that political entities are to be based on "peopledom,"
: which in this case seems to coincide with linguistic divisions...?????
: That each and every "peoples" who speak a different "language" should
: have their own sovereign state?

: -Patrick

Mr. Meri (president of Estonia)referred to a fact that all the Fenno-Ugrians 
actually share a common experience in living in a minority in the sea of the In
do-Europeans and abouve all, only *nation states* have guaranteed for 
the Finno-Ugric peoples existence. Finland, Hungary and Estonia in the last 
moment as he also said in the conference.

In all the cases when Finno-Ugric peoples have lived as a  minority under
the Swedish rule and those who still live under Swedish rule have
met consideraqbly difficluties to maintain own language and culture.
The same rule is valid in Norwasy where the state of Norway has
always tried to root out Finnish language and culture from Norway.
(Reference to Mr. Bjornar Seppola's brand new study about the topic,
he is Norway's Finn (Kven) . And the last but not least Russia/SU 
whose record is very bad. Russia's Finns was sent to Sibiria
as a nation from  Ingria. Finnish language was discriminated "as a fashist
language" like a language could be fashist. etc. etc.

It is the experience all the Finno-Ugrian share. Finno-Ugrians
are the Red-Indians of Euorope but thanx to the size like
the Hungarians they have been able to resist unlike the natives of  America.
regards,
jami
-- 
#In 1958,The Swedish School Administration repealed directives banning#
 # the speaking of Finnish language in Sweden's schools.However,some #
       # municipalities maintained restrictions until 1968 #