In Russia the main concentrations of Karelians are found in the Karelian Republic and the Tver’ province located about 200 kilometres northwest of Moscow. According to Soviet census statistics, this ethnic group has been on continuous decline since World War II. Of the two main geographical groups, the Tver’ Karelian population, in particular, has diminished rapidly. This article examines two of the most objective and tangible constituents of the Tver’ Karelian ethnic community: population resources and territorial base. The Tver’ Karelians are descendants of the migrant groups which left the original Karelian homeland for the Upper Volga region in Russia in the seventeenth century. Until the early twentieth century, the Karelian population of the Tver’ province exhibited an upward trend. However, by that time assimilation pressures had already developed considerable momentum. Firstly, railways had divided the Karelian settlement area into separate segments. Secondly, the all‐embracing bilingualism of the group established preconditions for continuing Russification. The twentieth century has been marked by a sharp demographic decline for the Tver’ Karelians: by 1989 the size of the group had collapsed to one sixth (23,200) of its all‐time high of about 140,000 in the interwar period. Moreover, the age‐sex composition has become extremely distorted: to be more exact, it is skewed towards old age and females. The Karelians still form a nominal majority of inhabitants in about 250 villages of Tver’ province but the network of villages is continuously declining. As with many other Fînno‐Ugrian groups in Russia, the Russification of the Tver’ Karelians basically proceeded without much direct administrative enforcement.