Russians in Finland

Russians in Finland (or Finland Russians) constitute a linguistic and ethnic minority in Finland. Russian is the mother tongue of about 50,000 people in Finland, which represents about 0,9% of the population.

The Grand Duchy of Finland under Imperial Russia maintained a separate Finnish citizenship. Russian subjects were not allowed to freely immigrate to Finland. At the time of Finnish independence in 1917, Finland had 6000 civilian Russian residents in addition to the 40 000 Russian soldiers stationed there. The first great wave of Russian immigrants arrived after the Russian Revolution of 1917; by 1922 Finland had 33 500 "emigrants". Many of these later emigrated to other places in Europe, including Paris. Today about 5000 descendants of this population consider themselves Russian.

A second major wave of immigration occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union. A large part of this Russian speaking population are descendants of Ingrian Finns, who were given the right of return as ethnic Finns.

Notable Finland Russians

* Kirill Babitzin, musician
* Sammy Babitzin, musician
* Alexei Eremenko, footballer
* Roman Eremenko, footballer
* George de Godzinsky, composer
* Viktor Klimenko, actor
* the Sinebrychoff family
* Oskar Stark, admiral
* Anna Vyrubova, socialite