The Karelo-Finnish SSR existed for a brief time as a full union republic of the Soviet Union, from 1940 to 1956. In 1945 the government held a competition for an anthem of the republic. The winning submission was adopted in the early 1950s and was the official anthem until the Karelo-Finnish SSR was made an “Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic” within Russia and had no need for a republic anthem any more. The SSR had a high concentration of Finnish peoples at the time, hense the Finnish lyrics of the anthem.

The anthem of the Karelo-Finnish SSR is unique in a few respects in that it doesn’t mention the Russian people (an attribute shared with only one or two other anthems of the union republics of the Soviet Union), and secondly the anthem mentions Stalin; while all anthems of Soviet republics mentioned Stalin at the time, the lyrics were changed in all of them after Stalin’s death in the mid 1950s, yet Karelia had already ceased to be a union republic by the time de-Stalinization was starting.

Special thanks to: Pavel Zinovatny for the music file, lyrics, and some of this information.