In 1930, according to the statistical collection of the Moscow Oblast Executive Committee (at that time the eastern part of the former Tver province was part of the Moscow region), Karelians lived in the following districts:
The resettlement of the Karelians to the Tver land was carried out by the Moscow government in an organized manner, the places intended for the settlement of the Karelians were examined in advance, it was indicated how many families could be settled. The Karelians settled mainly in the wastelands (that is, in the place of desolate villages), the original Russian names were usually retained. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, new villages (settlements) and farms appeared.
Karelian villages predominate in the Likhoslavl region, constituting a significant part in the Maksatikhinsky, Rameshkovsky, Spirovsky and Vesyegonsky districts. Now in most of them the population is mixed or Russian.
The formation of Tver Karelia is associated with the mass resettlement of Karelians from their original places of residence on the Karelian Isthmus and in the Northern Ladoga area to the empty palace lands of the Bezhetsk upper [ru] in the second half of the 16th — first quarter of the 18th centuries. Deprived of ties with their fellow tribesmen in Olonets and White Sea Karelia, Tver Karelians eventually separated into a separate subethnos of Karelians, speaking a special Tver dialect of the Karelian language.
On July 8, 1937, on the territory of the compact settlement of the Tver Karelians, the Karelian National Okrug was created, consisting of three already existing and two newly created districts: Likhoslavl, Novokarelsky, Rameshkovsky, Maksatikhinsky, Kozlovsky. The capital of the district was the city of Likhoslavl. During the first year of the Okrug's existence, many Karelian cultural and educational institutions were created, but on February 25, 1939, it ceased to exist, and many activists of the Karelian movement in the Tver region were repressed.[4]
Tver national-cultural autonomy of Tver Karelians
In 1997, the Tver national-cultural autonomy of the Tver Karelians was formed, which is a public association of citizens of this nationality on the basis of voluntary self-organization in order to resolve issues of preserving identity, developing their native language, education, and national culture. Includes six regional and one urban cultural autonomy.[5]