Ryurik Petrovich Lonin

Ryurik Petrovich Lonin was a local historian, collector of Veps folklore, and a writer (he wrote in Veps and Russian), an Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Karelia, and the founder of the Sheltozero Veps Ethnographic Museum. He was born in the Veps village of Kaskez (Kaskesruchey) in what is now the Prionezhsky District on the shore of Lake Onega. After finishing school in 1946 he entered Petrozavodsk Vocational School No. 2, where he trained as a fitter-toolmaker. In 1948 he began working at the Onega Machine-Building Plant in Petrozavodsk, where he started writing poetry in the Veps language.

 

From 1952 to 1955 Lonin served in the army. After demobilization he worked at the Petrozavodsk Auto Repair Plant, and in 1957 he returned to Sheltozero where he worked as a mechanic at the state farm. Parallel to his main job, from 1956 to 1993 he collected Veps folklore in Karelia and neighboring regions. He published the collected materials in republican publications. In 1967 Lonin established the Veps Ethnographic Museum—the only museum in Russia dedicated to Veps culture. From 1977 to 1979 he headed the Memorial Museum of the Sheltozero Partisan Underground, and from 1980 to 2001 he worked as a research associate at the museum he had founded.

 

Lonin was an active member of the Veps folk choir (1957–2001) and of the Veps Cultural Society. From the late 1980s he took part in the revival of the Veps language and culture, and he taught Veps at the Sheltozero Secondary School from 1987 to 1989. For his work he was awarded many medals and prizes, including the Medal 'For Valiant Labor' and the 'For Devotion' prize of the Open Society Institute. In 1992 Lonin was granted the title Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Karelia. Ryurik Petrovich Lonin passed away on 17 July 2009.