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The President of the Republic on the Opening of the Seventy Third Pan-Finno-Ugrian Days on October 15, 2001, in Tallinn
15.10.2001


Dear participants of the Pan-Finno-Ugrian Days!

The Pan-Finno-Ugrian movement, which became a tradition due to the activities of the Finno-Ugrian Society, established on the initiative of Otto Donner in Helsinki in 1883, and became especially widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, has a special importance beside the co-operation between our peoples and our countries.

It carries several significant messages not only from the viewpoint of our future, but - I dare say - from the viewpoint of the whole world.

First, there are our time-honoured and balanced ties with our natural environment. As the inhabitants of northern and temperate zones of Eurasia, we have adapted our behaviour so as to enable the recreation of nature as well as ensuring the possibility for our life to endure. We have probably the right to state that the environment that the Finno-Ugrian tribes inhabited recognised these tribes as well as the peoples that have grown out of the tribes. The nature-preserving life experience of the Finno-Ugrians is especially necessary at the time when the mentality favouring unlimited consumption is accelerating the erosion, which may, if continued at the same pace, turn out some day to be irreversible. From the viewpoint of sustainable attitude to nature preservation, the world does indeed have a lot to learn from the lifestyle of the Finno-Ugrians.

Another characteristic feature of the Finno-Ugrians is their dispersed inhabitation. Even though continuous urbanisation is the general trend of development in the whole world, it seems that dispersed households are more common to us. It adds beauty to the Estonian landscape that each farm is a small world on its own, from which you can merely glimpse the next. Thus, a social network covering the whole country and giving a sense of security is formed. I am convinced that the more people there are in big centres, and the more metropolitan the world becomes, the more vulnerable those centres will be. The recent tragedy in New York is a regrettable confirmation. To avoid metropolisation, states should take care that also their remotest areas were equipped with modern infrastructure and job opportunities. Then people would stick to their traditional homes, and then there would be no alienation or good life for some on the account of others.

The ethnic consciousness of the Finno-Ugrians has focused on the preservation to their land and their language. For most of their history, Estonians have called themselves country people. This land has been our common soul, and for us, the cultivation of land has not meant just feeding ourselves, but also the verification of the holiness of that land. This has been recorded in our traditional culture. We also have a proverb: tease the field once, and the field will tease you seven times. Unfortunately, today we can see too many fallow fields around us. This ostensibly purely economic fact does actually have a deep cultural background. Every field we lose has a setback impact on our Finno-Ugrian and national identity. The same goes for language. Any temptation caused by mass culture, or attempts of political and economic assimilation, to give up the use of one's language or to adapt it to some lingua franca will undermine our identity. He who loses his language, also loses his freedom. Peoples without identity are just a crowd, easy to manipulate for both economic and political global powers.

Dear friends!

The strength of the world is contained in the diversity of cultures, and when speaking of the clash of cultures, people are usually covertly referring to economic and political ambitions and privileges.

The culture of Finno-Ugrian peoples has been characterised by its openness for dialogue, loans and adaptations. The culture of our peoples is characterised by a great number and intensity of ties with other cultures. And yet this unique basis, that enables us to feel really Finno-Ugrian, can be felt in all of us, notwithstanding whether we live in Northern or Central Europe, in the Baltic region or between the Volga River and the Urals, or in the vast of Siberia.

For the sake of preserving and recognising the Finno-Ugrian uniqueness, also our co-operation should develop. The traditional Finno-Ugric congresses, of which the latest took place in Tartu last year, have been a confirmation of this. The cultural and political co-operation between Finland, Estonia and Hungary is acquiring an ever-firmer pace. It is my pleasure to inform you that my first state visit as the new President of the Republic of Estonia will take me to Finland on 20-21 November.

And yet, as independent nation-states, we have obligations to our kin peoples. This should not be seen as help or charity - above all, this is an expression of family solidarity, just like older of better-off sisters and brothers supporting the younger or weaker ones.

During the Pan-Finno-Ugrian Days starting today, we have the possibility to look back in satisfaction at the recent past. First, the Pan-Finno-Ugrian Days are no longer an exclusive event. It has spread to the Estonian counties. Neither is it just an once-over campaign. Besides Finland, Estonia has become another co-operation and education centre of the Finno-Ugrian peoples. Let us just recall that the first Finno-Ugrian students, mostly postgraduates, started their studies at Tartu University already in 1951. This tradition was initiated by our legendary Paul Ariste.

Immediately after the restoration of Estonia's independence in 1991, four full-time Mari students started their studies at Tartu University, and on the next year, there were already thirty students from Mari El and fifteen from Udmurtia. Today, there are over a hundred Finno-Ugrian students, postgraduates or researchers doing their PhD in Estonian universities. Until 1995, students came to Estonia on the basis of bilateral agreement, obliging the home university to pay the scholarship and the transport and accommodation fees. We had such agreements with Mari El, Udmurtia, and the Komi Republic. The Republic of Estonia has always covered all the tuition fees. Since 1998, all the financing has come from Estonia. Since then, Estonia has also been free to decide to what faculties the students would be accepted. In recent years, also Karelian, Ersa, Moksha, Nenets, and Khant students have been accepted besides those from Komi Republic, Udmurtia and Mari. There are several hundreds of Finnish students at Tartu University, and several from Hungary.

With all this, I would like to emphasise that it is this way - educating students in traditional Finno-Ugrian centres of culture and research - that we prepare our national society of intellectuals and establish a solid basis for the continuation of the Pan-Finno-Ugrian movement in the future.

And the more secure the Finno-Ugrians feel in the world, the more they will be able to contribute to the world culture.

With this thought, let me open the traditional Pan-Finno-Ugrian Days and wish you every success in your joint work for the survival of the Finno-Ugric languages and culture.


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