Mari El

The VII All-Russian Finnougrist Conference 'Modern Finno-Ugristics: science-society-culture' took place in the Mari National Theatre in the capital of the Republic of Mari El, Yoshkar-Ola, on 27-30 June.

In the Republic of Mari El, Mari is the mother tongue of 7,400 pupils, which is nearly 9% of the total number of schoolchildren: of the 248 general education schools in the Republic of Mari El, Mari is taught as a mother tongue in 81 schools.

The Mari holiday begins on a Friday after the new moon after the Winter Solstice. Shorykyol lasts for a week, this year from 5 January to 12 January.

The head of Mari El Republic, Yuri Zaitsev, answered the questions of the republic's citizens dissatisfied with the mobilisation in a live broadcast on 14 November.

By the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR on October 18, 1991, October 30 was declared the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression. However, in the Russian Federation, the day was also celebrated this year.

On 4 November, the birthdays of republics were celebrated in Mari El and Udmurtia, capped by the celebration of the Russian Federation's newest national holiday - the Day of National Unity.

At the II Forum of Finno-Ugric Peoples of the Russian Federation in Saransk, the Rector of Mari State University, Mikhail Shvetsov, presented the new Centre for the Study of Uralic Languages, which opened on 1 September.

Hundreds of settlements in Mari El were left without electricity and nine people were killed, Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations said. The disaster has received worldwide coverage.

Esa-Jussi Salminen's book Sankarimatkailijan Marinmaa ja Udmurtia ("An Adventurer's Mari El and Udmurtia") was recently published in Finland. This was announced by the author on Facebook and VKontakte.

A court in Mari El's Yoshkar-Ola district has fined local blogger Andrei Filippov 1.8 million roubles (nearly 18 thousand euros) for a video about the war in Ukraine. The blogger was convicted of spreading "fakes" to incite hatred against the Russian army.

The Mari youth movement has started collecting signatures in Mari El to change the national emblem and formally reintroduce the former emblem. To date, 300 signatures have been collected.