Introduction. At the moment the territory of the Russian Federation comprises 138 endangered languages, which determines the relevance of studying the influence of the state’s language policy on the development of the Karelian language. The purpose of the study is to analyze the way language contacts influenced Karelian. The novelty of the study lies in the consideration of linguistic interference in the historical context. Methodology and sources. The study is conducted using the publications in Karelian of the pre-Soviet and Soviet periods, as well as articles from modern electronic periodicals. The research material was broadened by interviewing several informants. The data was collected and analyzed using the method of continuous sampling, questioning, participant observation, and comparative analysis. The theoretical basis of the research is the social typology of languages and the typology of language situations. Results and discussion. Different historical periods ended in changing Karelian in different ways and making it adopt some features of Finnish, Vepsian and Russian. The texts of the pre-Soviet period show that lexical units of Russian origin denote everyday realities or religious concepts. The Soviet period texts demonstrate the maximum number of Russianbased lexical units, that are related to everyday life or Soviet ideology and realities. In the texts of the modern period, there is the least number of words of Russian origin, that are mostly borrowings that have long been a part of the language norm of Karelian. Conclusion. With the distinctive features relevant to the typology of language situations taken into account, the present language situation in the Republic of Karelia can be defined as multicomponent multilingual, being demographically out of equilibrium and communicatively unbalanced. In different historical periods Karelian was influenced, in varying degrees, by Russian; this is clearly reflected in the vocabulary. Nowadays professional and amateur activists striving to revitalize the Karelian language are oriented mainly towards its Baltic-Finnish basis.