In the forced deportations before and after World War II, and during the genocide of Ingrian Finns, most of them were relocated to other parts of the Soviet Union, or killed.

Ingrian Finns mainly consist of two groups: Savakot, who originated from migrant Savonians; and Äyrämöiset, coming from the Karelian Isthmus (mostly from Äyräpää), then parts of the Swedish realm.

[9] Soviet rule, and the German occupation (1941–1944) during World War II, were as disastrous for the Ingrian Finns as for other small ethnic groups.

After the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Ingrian Finns inhabiting the southern part of the Karelian Isthmus seceded from Soviet Russia and formed the independent Republic of North Ingria, which was backed by Finland.

The short-lived republic was reintegrated with Soviet Russia according to the 14 October 1920 Russian-Finnish Treaty of Tartu, and for several years thereafter it retained some degree of autonomy.

From 1928 to 1939, Ingrian Finns in North Ingria constituted the Kuivaisi National District with its center in Toksova and Finnish as its official language.

To facilitate it, in 1929–1931, 18,000 people (4,320 families) from North Ingria were deported to East Karelia or the Kola Peninsula, as well as to Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia.

The situation for the Ingrian Finns deteriorated further because of the Soviet plan to create restricted security zones along the borders with Finland and Estonia, free of the Finnic peoples, who were considered politically unreliable.

[9] In 1937 Lutheran churches and Finnish-language schools in Ingria were closed down, and publications and radio broadcasting in Finnish were suspended.

From the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 2010, about 25,000 Ingrian Finns moved from Russia and Estonia to Finland,[14] where they were eligible for automatic residence permits under the Finnish Law of Return.

[15] There are social integration problems similar to those of any other migrant group in Europe, to such an extent that there is a political debate in Finland over the retention of the Finnish Law of Return.

The majority of Ingrian Finnish men belong to the paternal haplogroup N1c, which is typical for Finns and other Finno-Ugric peoples.