Mari El

Mari El / Марий Эл Республик / Республика Марий Эл

Wiki[link]

Located in the central part of European Russia, Mari El is an Ugro-Finnic nation.
Established as the Mari Atuonomous Oblast in 1920, it was upgraded to Marii Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936.

In 1990 it self-proclaimed itself to Marii Soviet Socialist Republic in July 1992 became the Mari El Republic of the Russian Federation.
Area: 23.200 sq km
Pop : 697.000 (43% is Mari El and 48% is Russian) In the rest of Russia there area 604.000 Mari people.

They speak Mari belonging to the Uralic language family. There are four dialects of the Mari language, which are not mutually inteligible: of these the Hill Mari and Meadow Mari are mostly used...
Mari people are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians.

The nationalistic feelings among the Mari are quite strong and articulated by the organizations like Mari Usham and Mari National Congress.
The present regime of the Republic, led by its head, Leonid I.Markelov is being criticized for repressing the indigenous ethicities of Mari El,
and its disregard for human right and the administration's inablity to deal with the economic decay of the republic.

Markelov is of Russian nationality and considered to be aggressively anti-Mari and despised by the Mari people.

The Mari Usham organization protests the cutting of the funds for Mari-related cultural and linguistic activities.
Some members dream about independence and unity of all Ugro-Finnic peoples.

Note that there are different versions of this flag which you can find in these links
Version 1 [link]
Version 2 [link]
Version 3 [link]