That leaves the one area where the Finno-Ugric movement can claim some success: propaganda initiatives by politicians and activists.

ECONOMIST: The Finno-Ugrics

In the two-room world headquarters of the Finno-Ugric movement in Tallinn, Mr Heinapuu proudly shows a shelf of newly published poetry in Mari and other languages.

ECONOMIST: The Finno-Ugrics

The president of Mari-El, a bombastic Kremlin loyalist, Leonid Markelov, was confronted, seemingly for the first time, with the fact that some outsiders including ambassadors and politicians from the Finno-Ugric countries, plus a bunch of academics found his rural subjects' odd customs and strange speech rather interesting.

ECONOMIST: The Finno-Ugrics