Culture, Ethnicity and Migration After Communism

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Culture, Ethnicity and Migration After Communism

This book addresses the issue of emerging transnationalism in the conditions of post-socialism through focussing on migrants’ identity as a social construction resulting from their experience of the ‘transnational circuit of culture’ as well as from post-Soviet shifts in political and economic conditions in their home regions. Popov draws upon ethnographic research conducted among Greek transnational migrants living on the Black Sea coast and in the North Caucasus regions of Russia who have become involved in extensive cross-border migration between the former Soviet Union (the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Georgia) and Greece (as well as Cyprus). It is estimated that more than 150,000 former Soviet citizens of Greek origin have resettled in Greece since the late 1980s. Yet, many of those who emigrate do not cut their connections with the home communities in Russia but instead establish their own transnational circuit of travel between Greece and Russia. This study demonstrates how migrants employ their ethnicity as symbolic capital available for investment in profitable transnational migration. Simultaneously they rework their practices of family networking, property relations and political participation in a way which strengthens their attachment to the local territory. The findings presented in the book imply that the social identities, economic strategies, political practices and cultural representation of the Russian Greeks are all deeply embedded in the shifting social and cultural landscape of post-Soviet Russia and extensively influenced by the global movement of ideas, goods and people. Dr Anton Popov is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aston, UK. His research interests include sociological and anthropological approaches to globalisation, migration, identity and transnationalism; ethnicity; youth culture; multiculturalism and minority rights.

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Culture, Ethnicity and Migration After Communism The Pontic Greeks Anton Popov

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First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Anton Popov The right of Anton Popov to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [CIP data]

ISBN: 9781472448026 ISBN: 978-1-315-57551-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

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To my grandparents Aleksei and Klavdia

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Contents

List of Maps, Tables and Plates Acknowledgements Note on Transliteration List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Ethnography of Transnational Migrants at Home

ix xi xiii xiv 1

1 The Cultural Production of ‘Transnational Locals’ in Theory and (of ) Practice

13

2 Ethnicity and Migration After Communism

30

3 History and the Politics of Representation: Greek Ethnicity in Southern Russia

51

4 Making Sense of Home and Homeland: Motivations and Strategies for a Transnational Migrant Circuit

78

5 Transnationalisation, Materialisation and Commoditisation of Ethnicity

96

6 The Transnational Family: Re-shaping Kinship and Genealogy

109

7 A Place Called ‘Home’: Property Ownership, Legitimacy and Local Identification of Migrants in Home Communities

121

8 Becoming Pontic Greeks

146

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viii Contents

9 The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival: A Global Network and Local Concerns

161



Conclusion: Local Lives of Transnational Migrants

185

Bibliography Index

188 207

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Maps, Tables and Plates

Maps 2.1 Krasnodar Krai and Republic of Adygea 3.1 The Pontos in the nineteenth century 3.2 Pontic Greek migration to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Greece in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century

31 52 57

Table 2.1 Population and proportion of individual nationalities in Krasnodar Krai in 1989, 2002 and 2010

32

Plates 3.1 The entrance to the town stadium ‘Pontos’ built by the local Greek organisation Gorgippia with the financial support of the town wine factory. Vitiazevo, August 2002 7.1 Building a ‘family home’. Vitiazevo, 1950s 7.2 Housing construction. Gaverdovskii, October 2002 7.3 Greek ethnicity reflected in local architecture: a house with columns in the ‘Ancient Greek style’. Gaverdovskii, October 2002 7.4 A grave with a candle holder in the shape of a Byzantine chapel brought from Greece. Gaverdovskii, October 2002 7.5 A grave with a candle holder in the shape of an Ancient Greek basilica. Vitiazevo, October 2002 7.6 A grave with a candle container made from a tin of Greek olives Vitiazevo, August 2002 9.1 Old and new kemenches and a case decorated with old family photographs and the ‘Pontic eagle’ belonged to a kemenche-maker from Vitiazevo, July 2006 9.2 A teenage boy playing the kemenche using sheet music brought from Greece. Vitiazevo, August 2002

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68 124 125 126 127 128 128 164 166

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x  Maps, Tables and Plates 9.3 A performance of a Pontic Greek folk ensemble. Vitiazevo, September 2002 9.4 Teenagers dancing Pontic Greek dances at a discotheque. Vitiazevo, September 2002 9.5 A man in Greek ‘national’ costume. The photograph was taken in Greece and sent to relatives in Russia, 1920s 9.6 Actors in an amateur Greek theatrical production in stage costumes. Vitiazevo, 1920s 9.7 An Orthodox cross and candles on the rocks in Grushovaia Balka, the gorge where the Russian Greeks celebrate Panayia. August 2013 9.8 A memorial to the victims of the Stalinist repressions in 1937–38 from Vitiazevo next to the building site of the St. George church. Vitiazevo, July 2006

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167 168 170 171 177 181

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Acknowledgements

This book would not have been written without the help and support of many people. It is based on the research conducted as part of my PhD project and I would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to my supervisors, Hilary Pilkington and Elizabeth Edginton, who were generous with their knowledge and time and provided me with their intellectual guidance and encouragement throughout my doctoral study at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies in the University of Birmingham. I also benefited a lot from discussions with my colleagues and friends. These numerous conversations were both very informative and inspiring, and ultimately helped to develop my research ideas and to shape the argument of this book. For their advice, suggestions and comments I am grateful in particular to Frances Pine, Kataryna Wolczuk, Moya Flynn, Galina Yemelianova, Kathryn Tomlinson, Anthony Bryer, Igor Kuznetsov, Vladimir Kolesov, Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, Hülya Demirdirek, Bruce Grant and Georgios Agelopoulos. The research would not have been possible without my informants’ willingness to take part in it, to talk to me and to help me. My grateful thanks to all those who have been involved in my study in Vitiazevo, Gaverdovskii, Gelendzhik, Novorossiisk, Maykop, Severskaia and Krasnodar, although not all names can be mentioned here. I am especially grateful to the leadership of the Greek nationalcultural organisations in Krasnodar, Vitiazevo and Maykop for their assistance in introducing me to the local communities and help with finding contacts and accommodation in the fieldwork sites. A special word of thanks goes to Ekaterina Georgievna, Ivan Konstantinovich, Kostia and Yura, Semen, Zosim Fotievich, Kateni, Nina, Euthumios Papadopoulos and Lazaros Papadopoulos, Marat Gubzhokov and his family, Konstantin Dmitiriev and his parents-in-law for their friendship, hospitality and kindness. I also would like to remember Ivan Andreevich, who tragically died in 2002. I would like to thank my wife, Ariadna, for her love and endless patience. Without her help and support the writing of this book would have been incredibly difficult. Our daughters, Dasha, Tasya and Alexia, without realising it, contributed to writing this book by keeping me real, helping to sort out the priorities and bringing eternal joy in my life. I am also thankful to my sister Lidia, my niece Praskovia, my parents-in-law Nadezhda and Alexander for being there ready to help when

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xii Acknowledgements they were most needed. I am forever indebted to my late grandparents, Aleksei Mikhailovich and Klavdia Georgievna, from whom I learned how to be inquisitive and interested in the world, to work hard, be brave and see opportunities in whatever challenges I face. My most sincere thanks to my parents, Tatiana and Pavel, for everything. In the book I use some material that partly had been previously published as journal articles or chapters in edited volumes, such as, Popov, A. and Kuznetsov, I. (2008) ‘Ethnic Discrimination and the Discourse of “Indigenisation”: the Regional Regime, “Indigenous Majority” and Ethnic Minorities in Krasnodar Krai’, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May 2008), pp. 243–72 (in Chapter 2), Popov, A. (2008) ‘Ethnicity and Civil Society after Socialism: the Politics of Representation among Greek Communities in Southern Russia’, in M. Flynn, R. Kay and J. Oldfield (eds), Trans-National Issues, Local Concerns and Meanings of PostSocialism, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, pp. 195–212 (in Chapter 3); Popov, A. (2010) ‘Making Sense of Home and Homeland: Former-Soviet Greeks’ Motivations and Strategies for a Transnational Migrant Circuit’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 36, No.1, pp.67–85 (in Chapter 4); Popov, A. (2007) ‘Crossing Borders, Shifting Identities: Transnationalisation, “Materialisation”, and Commoditisation of Greek Ethnicity in Post-Soviet Russia’, Anthropology of East Europe Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 29–41 (in Chapter 5); Popov, A. (2007) ‘Are Greeks Caucasian? The Multiple Boundaries of Pontic Greek Life in Southern Russia’, in B. Grant and L. Yalçın-Heckmann (eds), Caucasus Paradigms: Anthropologies, Histories, and the Making of a World Area, Münster: LIT Verlag (Halle Series in the Anthropology of Eurasia), pp. 219–46 (in Chapter 8). Therefore, I am grateful to editors and anonymous reviewers who worked with me on these publications and the draft manuscript; their comments and suggestions helped me develop and clarify my arguments. I thank Helena Hamilton for her invaluable help in proofreading the manuscript. All remaining deficiencies in this book are of course my own responsibility. I am thankful to Ashgate for commissioning this book and in particular, Claire Jarvis whose kindness, understanding and patience seem to be limitless. Last but not least, I am grateful to the Ford Foundation International Fellowship Programme and the Institute of International Education which awarded me a scholarship to study on the PhD programme in the UK. The research this book is based on would have been impossible without this financial support.

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Note on Transliteration

The Library of Congress system for the transliteration of Russian names and terms has been used throughout the text, except for place names, where the most commonly used transliteration in the English language is preferred (e.g. Maykop, not ‘Maikop’). Where there is no adequate translation for a Russian word, the word is transliterated rather than translated. Transliterated Russian words used in the text in preference to the English translation are krai / kraia (territory / territories), oblast’ / oblasti (province / provinces) and raion / raiony (district / districts). The book uses ISO 843:1997 Type 2, transcription of Greek characters into Latin characters (International Standards Organisation, http://www.iso.ch) for transliterating Greek names and titles. Turkish terms, apart from the titles of Turkish language sources in the Bibliography, are transliterated in order to avoid confusion over the English pronunciation of some letters of the Turkish Romanised alphabet. For example, the Turkish word for the Pontic fiddle is spelled in the book as kemenche rather than kemençe.

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Abbreviations

ASSR

(Russian) Avtonomnaia Sovetskaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika – Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. CIS Commonwealth of Independent States. FSB (Russian) Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti – Federal Security Service. GAKK (Russian) Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Krasnodarskigo Kraia – Krasnodar Krai State Archive. GTRK (Russian) Gosudarstvennaia Tele-Radio Kompaniia – State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. Gulag (Russian) Gosudarstvennoe Upravlenie Lagerei – State Directorate for [Prison and] Labour Camps. KTOS (Russian) Komitet Territorial’nogo Obshchestvennogo Samoupravleniia – Committee of Territorial Communal Self-Government. KZ (Russian) Kraevoi Zakon – Krai Law. MVD (Russian) Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del – Ministry of Internal Affairs. NKVD (Russian) Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del – The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. RSFSR (Russian) Rossiiskaia Sovetskaia Federativnaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika – Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. SSR (Russian) Sovetskaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika – Soviet Socialist Republic. UPVS (Russian) Ukaz Prizidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta [SSSR] – Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council [of the USSR] ZSKK (Russian) Zakonodatel’noe Sobranie Krasnodarskogo Kraia – Legislative Assembly of Krasnodar Krai.

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Introduction Ethnography of Transnational Migrants at Home

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the beginning of profound social, political and economic transformation in the socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the Soviet Union itself, and, indeed, as history has proved, in the rest of the world. These changes also had a spatial dimension: the borders which for decades had separated the capitalist West and the communist East were opened almost overnight. Simultaneously new boundaries were swiftly drawn, dividing a previously united space of socialist nations into different ‘homelands’ for re-emergent ethno-nations. Former Soviets crossed these new frontiers, driven by economic and social deprivation and / or by ethnic alienation from newly independent republics. Large-scale voluntary and forced population movements occurred throughout the Soviet period as well as earlier in the Russian Empire (Gatrell, 1999; Polian, 2001). However, the dramatic changes in political regimes, economic systems and state borders, which coincided with and often determined the recent mobility of people in the territory of the former USSR, make the scale of post-Soviet migration unprecedented. The collapse of the USSR made the postSoviet space more open to globalising processes: while capital, ideologies and goods flowed from the West, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Jews, Germans and Greeks chose (or were forced) to ‘repatriate’ from the former Soviet Union to their ‘historical homelands’ in the ‘far abroad’, effectively constituting new transnational communities. This book explores the social identification of transnational migrants in their ‘home’ area in the contemporary Russian Federation. In particular it focuses on the Greek community of southern Russia, which actively participates in migration to and from Greece and Cyprus. It is estimated that more than 150,000 former Soviet citizens of Greek origin have resettled in Greece since the late 1980s (Upourgeio Makedhonias-Thrakis Geniki Grammateia Palinnostounton Omegenon, 1999). Yet despite such a mass exodus of Greeks from the former USSR, the regional statistics in southern Russia show hardly any reduction of the Greek population in the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to the last Soviet census in 1989, the Greek population of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) numbered 92,000 (Goskomstat Rossii, 1995, p. 22), while about one third of ‘Russian’ Greeks lived in Krasnodar Krai where they accounted for 28,337 or approximately 0.6 per cent of the total population of the

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2 Introduction region, including Adygea (Ivanova, 1994, pp. 133–40). In 2001, a 30,460 strong Greek minority constituted the same 0.6 per cent of the Krai population (excluding Adygea) (Goskomstat Rossii, 2001). The more dramatic decrease in the number of Greeks in the region occurred only 10 years later. In 2010, there were 22,595 ethnic Greeks living in Krasnodar Krai, comprising just over 0.4 per cent of the region’s population (Goskomstat Rossii, 2010). In fact, many of those who emigrate do not cut their connections with the home communities in Russia. Some of them return after spending a few years abroad, others establish their own transnational circuit and continue to travel between Greece and Russia, while a significant number of Greek migrants have arrived in the region from other parts of the former Soviet Union. This emergence from the uncertainty of the post-socialist community of Greek transnational migrants who continue to consider Russia as their home constitutes the subject of this book. The Greek identity of this community is considered as a social construction – a product of their experience of the transnational circuit that is also contingent on post-Soviet shifts in political and economic conditions in their home region(s). To understand how social agents’ experience of transnationalism affects the cultural processes and production of identities in a community living through post-socialist transformations a number of questions have to be considered. More specifically, the book looks at how the values and meanings of home, family and nation are redefined by migrants while they are navigating their cross-border movement. It highlights the interplay of ethnic identification with the economic strategies of individuals and households, their political life and the cultural representation of their communities.

Constructing the Researched: Pontic / Caucasian / (post-) Soviet Greeks? The genre of this book can be defined as an ethnography meaning that it is based on ethnographic research. Ethnographic research is a simultaneous process of receiving data about other groups and communities and the product of such research (Sanjek, 2001). But who are the subjects, the researched of this ethnography? The answer to this question seems to be obvious – it is in the title of the book – culture, ethnicity and migration after the demise of the communist regime in the Soviet Union is explored through ethnographic research with a group of people defined as Pontic Greeks. The further question to ask is who defined this ‘group of people’ with this term, why, and what it means. Indeed the de- and reconstruction of the meaning of ‘Pontic Greek’ identity constitutes one of the central themes of this book. The answer to these questions, however, requires a rather reflexive engagement with ontological and epistemological premises of social research and ethnography as a particular methodology. The ‘traditional’ ethnographic approach, sometimes referred to as Malinowskian ethnography, implies that some distance existed between the ethnographic Self and the ‘native’ Other, suggesting that through engaging in prolonged observations the ethnographers enable themselves to reveal cultural specifics of ‘natives’ who,

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Introduction  3 although followed their ‘cultural code’, never ‘comprehended’ it by themselves (Bunzl, 2004, p. 438). This traditional vision and practice of ethnography has become the subject of postcolonial and postmodern critiques, which bring to light the issue of ethnographers’ complicity in the reproduction of the power relations of colonialism. As Rabinow (1986, p. 260) argues, referring to the theorisations of Michel Foucault, the epistemological framework of social sciences (including anthropology) emerged in a particular historical period as a representation of the social world through relations of ‘governmentality’ between culture and power. Edward Said shows that anthropological statements about the ‘other’ are a reproduction of established positions in Western academic tradition, which is a part of ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’ rather than any ‘actual’ description of it (Said, [1979] 1995, p. 3). The core of this critique is that the native ‘others’ had been constructed within and through ethnographic accounts (Clifford, 1988, p. 25). Effectively ethnographers were constructing their research subjects while representing their culture within a particular political paradigm that is always historically contingent. This observation is fully applicable to historiography of ethnographic study of so called Pontic Greek communities in southern Russia and the Caucasus. The Greek population of the former Soviet Union have been the subject of academic investigation in the West, the USSR and its successor countries for several decades. The body of literature on the Greek population of the Caucasus in the Russian language started to develop in the late-nineteenth century, when Russian ethnographers and administrators published several very detailed reports on sanitary conditions, daily life, household economy and rituals in the Greek communities of Transcaucasia and southern Russia (see for example Erikson, 1898; Khakhanov, 1907; Sysoev, 1901). From the perspective of the Russian imperial project and colonisation of the Caucasus, the Greeks being Christian and Orthodox were seen as loyal to Russian rule. At the same time, the use of such definitions as ‘the Anatolian Greeks’ (Sysoev, 1901) indicated their classification as non-natives (inorodtsy) who had recently migrated from the territory of the Ottoman Empire that was hostile to Russia. During the Soviet period, good quality ethnographic, folklorist and dialectological research was conducted mainly among the Greeks of Ukraine, and the Soviet republics of Transcaucasia (Akritas, 1962; Angelov, 1989; Ivanova, 1976; 1988; Pashaeva, 1972; 1977b; Shirokov, 1973; Volkova, 1975; Zaikovskaia, 1989). The ethnographic studies documented the so-called ‘traditional culture’, the way of life and changes which occurred in it as a consequence of the social and economic transformation of Soviet society (Ivanova, 1976; Pashaeva, 1977a). These works approached the issue of Greek ethnicity (etnicheskoe samosoznanie, literally ‘ethnic self-consciousness’) from the vantage point of the Soviet grand theory of ethnos which saw ethnicity as the subjective reflection of objectively existing ‘ethnic organisms’, or ethnoses, the latter being understood as human collectives united by primordial givens of common culture, origin, language, territory and history (Bromley, 1973, p. 97; see also the analysis of the Soviet conception of ethnicity in Chapter 2). However, due to the existence of Greek Turkophones in

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4 Introduction Georgia and Ukraine, the Greek case did not always fit easily into this consistently primordialist theory (see Aklaev, 1988; Korelov, 1990). Like all humanities and social disciplines in the Soviet Union, Greek studies experienced political censorship. Thus, the Greeks of southern Russia and the North Caucasus who went through mass deportation and repression during the Stalinist period were excluded from Soviet ethnographic and historical studies after the early 1940s. The situation changed with the beginning of perestroika in the USSR, when the issue of Stalinist repressions of ethnic minorities was reopened and interest was kindled in the history of ‘punished’ people (Bugai, 1993). Since the early 1990s, the history of Greek migration in southern Russia, including their resettlement from the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century and the tragedy of the Stalinist exile to Central Asia and Siberia in the mid-twentieth century, has been the focus of many new studies (Dmitriev, 1994; 2000; Kabuzan, 1990; Kessidi, 1994; Kotsonis, 1997; Popadius, 1994; Rudianov, 1994). There are also some ethnological works which investigate Greek ethnicity by Russian anthropologists using a constructivist approach, examining the diverse and changing nature of Greek ethnic identities in the region (see Kolesov, 2000; 2004; Kuznetsov, 1997). Only a few works actually address the issue of ‘repatriation’ to Greece and consider the growth of aggressive ethno-nationalism in the (ex-) Soviet republics, with the increasing economic and social marginalisation of the post-Soviet population, as possible reasons for it (Ivanova, 1990; 1991). The Western scholarship on Pontic Greeks did not develop entirely independently from politics. Indeed, the mass ‘repatriation’ of Soviet Greeks from the Soviet Union to Greece in the late 1980s was interpreted by Western scholars as one of the first outcomes of liberalisation processes in the USSR; a signal that the ‘Iron Curtain’ was falling. Yet concern was raised both about the difficult economic and political conditions which forced Greek ‘repatriates’ to leave their homes in the USSR – illuminating the uneven and uncertain character of the post-Soviet transition – and about the problems which they experienced in their cultural, social and economic adaptation to the ‘homeland’ (Hionidou, 2012; Kokkinos, 1991a; Sideri, 2006; Vergeti, 1991; Voutira, 1991; 2011). The issue of migrants’ identity has often been discussed in relation to the reasons for their movement and the adaptation process upon their arrival (Kokkinos, 1991b; Shamai et al., 2003; Voutira, 1991). For example, the anthropological research of Effie Voutira (1991) questions the construction of Greek migrants’ identity as ‘refugees’. Voutira shows how the cultural identities of the migrants are negotiated when, trying to escape the hardship of economic transition and the threat of neo-nationalist movements in the Soviet Union, they latch on to the idea of a national ‘homeland’ in Greece and represent themselves simultaneously as a Greek diaspora and as refugees (Voutira, 1991, p. 415). Although some of the studies mentioned above address the issue of the construction of Greek migrants’ identities, they focus mainly on immigrant communities in Greece or on those who are about to leave their home countries for the ‘homeland’. Partly because many of these works were written shortly after the start of the Greek ‘exodus’ from the USSR and their main concern was with ‘people in motion’ as an urgent

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Introduction  5 problem in hand, they rarely touch upon the question of how this mass immigration affects those (post-) Soviet Greeks who decide to stay. The book questions what is described as the ‘Pontic Greek’ identification of Greek migrants from southern Russia. In the Western academic tradition, the Greek population of the former USSR are defined as ‘Pontic Greeks’ (see for example Journal of Refugee Studies, 1991) on the grounds that they originate from the region on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea which is also known as the Pontos. Such historical and geographic identification was developed during the twentieth century among those Greeks from the Pontos who resettled in Greece in the course of its population exchange with Turkey in 1923. This Pontic Greek identity, promoted by the Pontic ethnicist movement (Fann, 1991; Voutira, 2011), suggests the Greek nationalist vision of the Pontians as refugees from Asia Minor and ‘heirs of the Greek catastrophe’ at the beginning of the twentieth century (Hirschon, 1998). Although this view was accepted in the circle of Western historians and anthropologists with critical acknowledgment of its politicised historical connotation (Bryer, 1991, p. 321; Fann, 1991, p. 340; Voutira, 2011, p. 82), it was not used until recently in Russian historiography and ethnology, where the ethnonym ‘Caucasian Greeks’ (kavkazskie greki) was traditionally employed (see Ivanova, 1997; Volkova, 2000; Akritas, 1962). It is important to note here that the group in question, the Greeks of southern Russia, were also unaware that they were ‘Pontic Greeks’. Equally they did not recognise the Soviet concept, but called themselves by the Russian term ‘greki’ (Greeks) or by their native terms ‘romeoi’ and ‘urumlar’ in the Pontic Greek dialect and Turkish respectively. In fact, as will be shown in Chapter 4, the first time the Russian Greeks came across the description of themselves as ‘Pontic Greeks’ was when they started their movement to Greece in the late 1980s. It was subsequently ‘imported’ to their home communities in southern Russia. Therefore, the Pontic identity of the Greeks of southern Russia has to be examined as a new phenomenon which is a product of their transnationalism. At the same time, the meaning of this Pontic Greek identity and its representation in the local Greek communities needs to be analysed in the context of the post-Soviet Russian Federation (see Chapters 8 and 9).

Conceptual Frameworks: Ethnography of Post-Socialism and Transnationalism The case study of ‘Pontic Greeks’ in southern Russia emphasises the importance of the Soviet legacy, especially of the ethno-territorial principle of Soviet federalism and institutionalised individual ethnic identification for an understanding of the complex political and social process which influences the construction of ethnic and national identities in contemporary Russia (Brubaker, 1996, p. 24). The argument this book puts forwards is very much in agreement with those observers who emphasise that, as discursive constructions rooted in the projects of socialist modernity (Slezkine, 1996, pp. 210–15), post-Soviet ethnicities are determined by the historical context and are therefore contested by, and change in response to, the uncertainty and challenges of the ‘transition period’ (Verdery, 1996, p. 100).

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6 Introduction The book shares the preoccupation of anthropologists working in the postsocialist societies with ‘ordinary people’s’ perspective on the political and economic transformations which are taking place across former socialist countries after the collapse of the Soviet system (Hann, 1998, p. xi). Ethnographic research illuminates people’s understanding of, and strategies for coping with, this ‘transition’, which is examined in anthropological literature as an uneven process with an often-unpredictable outcome (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999; Pine and Bridger, 1998). As Pine and Bridger (1998, p. 8) note, the renegotiation of the status and identities of both individuals and groups is a major consequence of the ‘transition’ from the planned economy of socialism to the ‘free market’. In these conditions, people rethink their ethnicity and national identities, which are sometimes employed as strategies for surviving economic marginalisation and social fragmentation (Kaneff, 1998; Verdery, 1996, pp. 61–103). Although the conditions of post-socialism outlined above determine the migration practices of the Greeks in southern Russia, their experience of displacement and dislocation is not ‘unique’, and the effect of migration on their culture has to be placed in the broader conceptual framework of studies of transnationalism. The existing literature on these issues suggests that the transnational movement of people, ideas and goods must be viewed as a consequence, as well as one of the driving forces, of globalisation (Portes et al., 1999, p. 218). On the one hand, transnational migration challenges local traditions and national state orders (­Clifford, 1997; Deleuze and Gauttari, 1988; Gupta, 1992; Hannerz, 1996; Malkki, 1996); on the other hand, local cultures are reproduced through interaction with the ‘global ethnoscape’ (Appadurai, 1996) and migrants play a significant role in recreating local contexts (Kristeva, 1991). In my study of Pontic Greeks as transnational migrants at home I adopted an anthropological approach that focuses on the existence of globalising processes in the context of a particular society (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 4). The effects of a macro-process of globalisation are examined at the micro-level of Greek transnational communities in southern Russia, as well as of individual migrants’ experiences, and also in relation to their locally embedded identities. The notion of a ‘transnational circuit of culture’ employed here as conceptual framework for the analysis of Pontic Greek experiences of transnationalism suggests that the identities of Greek migrants are constructed in the course of their migration as a part of the broader cultural process consisting of the production and exchange of meanings between members of society through and within social practices (Hall, 1997). The transnational circuit helps to understand how meanings which are produced in different geographical and cultural sites become constitutive elements of individual and collective identities. The book explores how the meanings attached to such concepts as ‘home’, ‘homeland’ and ‘family’, as well as former Soviet Greeks’ perceptions of their national and ethnic identities and their representations of the Pontic Greek culture, are (re-) produced, contested, translated, interpreted and customised through their transnational experience within their everyday practices in southern Russia.

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Introduction  7

The Ethnographer’s Positionality and Multi-Sited Ethnography in the ‘Field’ and at ‘Home’ As Gray (2003, p. 22) argues, there is no single ‘truth’ about the ‘reality’ of ‘others’ experiences, but there are different perspectives on the event, which may be understood in particular social and cultural contexts as researchers attend to the different levels of practices through which meanings are generated. In my ethnography, I reflect on my informants’ and my own positionalities within social processes. I argue that this reflexivity, whilst not resolving the power relations embedded in fieldwork, can claim to move me closer to understanding my informants’ ideas about their everyday practices and their vision of the social world itself. Any ethnography is a trans-local practice in itself. Moreover, ethnographic writing is to a certain extent part of the fieldwork process because ethnographers back at home at their desks continue to be engaged with the researched people, ‘through imagination, recollection and reconstruction’ (Carrithers, 2002, p. 231). Nevertheless, the location of ethnographic writing is associated with the home of the ethnographer, whereas fieldwork is defined through the ‘spatial practice of travel and dwelling’ (Clifford, 1997, p. 76) in a place quite different from the researcher’s university. My biography and the trajectory of this research have been dramatically interwoven and this brings a new perspective on the subject of this book. In fact, southern Russia is my ‘home’ region. So in the case of my ethnography of the Greeks in southern Russia, my moving to the field is a return ‘home’. Home-located fieldwork suggests a degree of ‘authenticity’ attached to the researcher and this raises the risk of supposing that indigenous ethnographers have absorbed ‘local knowledge’ from the beginning, whereas outside scholars have to learn it. However, echoing Narayan’s (1993) statement that the ‘native’ has the same hybrid identity as any other anthropologist and that insider ethnographers ‘are complexly and multiply [sic] located vis-à-vis their worksites and interlocutors’ (cited from Clifford, 1997, p. 77), Clifford (1997, p. 86) argues that no one can be an ‘insider’ in all sectors of his / her home community since these existing differences and distance are inevitably part of the research, analysis and writing. This reflexive point of view on the changes of my location as an ethnographer draws attention to the trajectory of my ethnography of the Pontic Greeks and its interconnection with the changes in my perspective on the subject of my research. My study of ritual practices among the Greeks in southern Russia started in 1993 as part of my undergraduate training in ethnography (ethnology). I had already investigated cultural processes among the local Greek communities because they were part of the Pontic (related to the region in north-eastern Anatolia) cultural and historical paradigm. Therefore, when I defined my subject as the ‘Pontic Greeks’ they were the Other, ‘the native’ for me, although I lived in the same region and my route from the ‘field’ to the desk sometimes took just a few minutes. As an ethnographer I investigated the otherness of my informants; that is, I studied their Ponticness, as ethnographers would call it. So that it was not ethnography at home (although neither the subjects nor the ethnographer undertook significant trips

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8 Introduction away) because my ethnographical subject was virtually situated in a historically, geographically and culturally distinct space. When I moved to England in 2001 to do my doctoral studies, with my location I shifted the audience of my ethnography. I have learned to write in another language (English) and within a different academic tradition (Western or Anglo-American). Suddenly I have realised that more significant transformations affect my research identity. During my fieldwork in 2002–2003 I was one of the Russian students at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at Birmingham University, and my ethnography was viewed as research on post-Soviet Russia rather than about the Pontos. My knowledge of the historical and cultural background of my subject had been formed during previous ethnographic experiences, but in the meantime, a new macro-perspective on East European and Russian area studies and new postsocialist and transnational research paradigms have emerged in my study. I set out to do fieldwork, but, in fact, I came back home, to my region and to my language. I had assumed that my research trajectory, directed from the home region (which is at the same time the field location), paradoxically would have led me closer to my subjects. This book draws predominantly on ethnography conducted during my doctoral studies. The research consisted of a multi-sited ethnographic study conducted mainly in two settlements located in two regions of southern Russia, the town of Vitiazevo in Krasnodar Krai and the village of Gaverdovskii in the Republic of Adygea. In addition to these two locations some interviews and participant observation were conducted during visits to informants’ homes in the villages of Severskaia and Bzhedugkhabl’, the town of Gelendzhik, and the cities of Krasnodar, Novorossiisk and Maykop. Multi-sited ethnographic research facilitates the connection of locally-orientated fieldwork to a macro-perspective on wider social processes. As Marcus suggests, ‘a multisited [sic] space and trajectory encourage the ethnographer literally to move to other sites that are powerfully registered in the local knowledge of an originating locus of fieldwork’ (Marcus, 1997, p. 98). The multi-sited perspective of my research brings together different types of work and sources, as well as different fieldwork locations. However, I did not follow my subjects in their cross-border activities, but rather concentrated my ethnographic investigation on the cultural production of social identities among these Greek transnational migrants in their home communities in the Russian Federation. Paraphrasing Burawoy (2000, p. 4) the imaginations of my informants connected these local field locations to the globe. In my ethnography I followed and participated in the meaning-making practices of my informants and this transnational imagination was part of it.

Life Story Interviews and Production of Ethnographic Knowledge The strength of ethnographic fieldwork comes from its experiential, reflective and critical activities (Rabinow, 1977, p. 5). The dynamic and unstable nature of the phenomena being studied – transnational migration and ethnic minority identities in the transitory conditions of post-Soviet Russia – requires such a flexible research method.

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Introduction  9 Together with the field notes, where I recorded my ethnographic observations during fieldwork in 2002–2003, life history interviews with 63 individuals constitute an empirical foundation of this research. My focus on informants’ life history narratives brings their voice and point of view into the research (McBeth, 1993) and, in turn, serves as a platform for building a theory which is grounded in the informants’ understanding of their culture. While life history is not a new method for the sociological and anthropological traditions of writing (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1958; Shostak, 1990; Crapanzano, 1980), the techniques of life story interviewing and the strategies of analysing biographical data have been critically rethought in terms of understanding the acts of social research as social acts (Bertaux, 1981a; Berger Gluck and Patai, 1991; Plummer, 2001; Roberts, 2002). Holstein and Gabrium propose active interviewing as an approach which is based on the social constructionist consideration that the process of producing meaning is ‘as important for social research as the meaning that is produced’ (Holstein and Gbrium, 1997, p. 115). The process of interviewing is, thus, the production of meanings and it is also the interpretation of reality. A kind of knowledge which is neither predetermined nor absolutely unique is the effect of this interpretative practice. The life story as the product of active interviewing or collaboration between researcher and researched is often scrutinised as a highly subjective source of knowledge about social reality. But as McBeth notes, ‘while questions of reliability and bias may be interpreted as a weakness of this approach, they may also be perceived as a unique strength, for self-interpretation is a part of human expression, and a part of what life history is’ (McBeth, 1993, p. 150). Moreover, the placing of the subject’s narratives at the centre of the researched world-picture changes the perspectives of sociological / anthropological knowledge. On the issue of subjectivity in biographical interviewing, Bertaux notes that, in collecting life histories, social researchers discover the patterns of social practices which provide a guide to understanding the ‘underlying sociostructural [sic] relations’ (Bertaux, 1981b, p. 36). This linkage of micro- and macro-perspectives within life history and life documents in general permits us to see relations between structures and agency as a dialectical interaction (Papadakis, 1998, p. 161). Life history emphasises the role of the individual as a member of the culture; it shows how the individual copes with society rather than ‘the general view of how the society shapes individuals’ (McBeth, 1993, p. 150). Biography as a methodology is ideally suited for studying themes which are marginal to more ‘objective’ and macro-oriented approaches, such as the micro-history of ‘ordinary people’ in the context of macro-historical processes or individual experiences of recent and rapid social transformations (Thompson, 1981, p. 290). Therefore, the biography or life history approach is employed to achieve the main objectives of my study; revealing the interplay of individual practices and structural aspects in the cultural production of migrant and minority identities of Greeks in the transitory conditions of post-Soviet southern Russia. Almost all interviews cited in this book are unstructured life stories. Several interviews were given by experts: two by local anthropologists; one by the officer

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10 Introduction of the Greek General Consulate; and three by officers of the Vitiazevo town administration. All the interviews took place in Russian, although informants sometimes used terms and sentences in Pontic Greek or Turkish. The Russian language was chosen for interviewing for two reasons: because my skill in spoken Pontic Greek and Turkish was not sufficient for active participation in conversations; and because Russian was the mother tongue for most of my informants and was as a rule their preferred language. The principle of ‘non-maleficence’ supposes that ‘researchers should avoid harming participants’ (Murphy and Dingwall, 2001, p. 339). During my fieldwork, I often faced suspicion on the part of informants that my study might be harmful to them. The lack of control by the informants over the way in which they would be represented in the final product of my ethnography was the main reason for their wariness, though I was absolutely transparent about the purposes of my research, and they were assured that the interview material would be used anonymously and only with their permission. Whereas the majority of the people I met with in the field were pleased to speak to me and expressed their gratitude that I was interested in their histories, several of my informants did not agree to have our conversations tape-recorded. Often informants joked (but with an underlying seriousness) that the data collected could be made available to the police or the Federal Security Service (FSB), and they warned each other ‘not to chat too much’ with me. The memory of Stalinist repression, when almost the entire Greek population of the region was exiled to Siberia and Central Asia (see Chapter 3), was revived at such moments and people told me that they worried that something similar could reoccur. While writing this book I have been concerned to protect informants against any unintentionally harmful effects of their participation in the research. For instance, the names of all my respondents have been changed in the text. In the book, I refer to informants by their pseudonyms, years of birth and the name of the place where the interviews or conversations were recorded. However, such protective measures are quite limited, for ethnographic research in relatively small communities brings into question the very possibility of anonymity (Hopkins, 1993, p. 125). Moreover, the personal details of my interlocutors are inevitably present in the life story narratives, and this increases the potential risk of recognition.1 In addition to field notes and interviews, secondary empirical data, such as documents from Greek national-cultural organisations, statistics and household registers from archives of local administrations and informants’ family photo and video archives, were used as sources of research data. After the completion of my doctoral study I continued to be in touch with my informants via telephone and Skype calls. I updated the ethnographic data produced during the main period of research with observations and information received from my informants during my visits to the researched communities in 2006 and 2013. 1 An elaborated account of my research ethics considerations is provided elsewhere (see Popov, 2009), along with a more general discussion of research ethics and moral dilemmas social researchers face while studying post-socialist societies (see Ziemer and Popov, 2014).

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Introduction  11

Structure of the Book The book is organised as a series of chapters that while presenting an original ethnographic research move theoretically informed analysis beyond a geographically and historically bound case study of Pontic Greek migrants in post-Soviet southern Russia. Some sections of the book have been previously published as part of journal articles or chapters in edited volumes (see Acknowledgments); the book format allows, however, the presentation of the ethnography in a more holistic way as a coherent and contextualised narrative interlacing with the theoretical and empirical aspects of the research in more detail. Chapter 1 introduces the book’s theoretical focus and conceptual framework. The key issues discussed in this chapter are theoretical approaches to the cultural production of identity, a critical reflection on nationalist and ethnicist representations of cultural identities and an outline of the main arguments about the impact of globalisation and transnationalism on locally embedded cultural processes. Chapter 2 moves the analysis of post-Soviet ethnic discourses and so-called ‘migration and nationality policy’ to the regional level. The discursive construction of ‘migrants’ as a group which is ethnically, culturally and in terms of their legal status opposed to the ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ population (korennoe naselenie) is examined in this chapter, using the case of Krasnodar Krai as one of the focal regions of my study. Chapter 3 introduces readers who are not familiar with the society in question to the ethnic history of the Greek community in southern Russia. Furthermore, the chapter puts the geographically and historically specific case of this Greek community into the perspective of macro-historical processes, to demonstrate that the Greek ethnicity of my informants is a product of their complex history. Chapter 4 focuses on Greek migrants’ experience of displacement in the course of their cross-border movement to Greece and Cyprus, and aims to shed light on the impact of this migration on ethnic and national identities of the Russian Greeks as a transnational community. The chapter examines how the migrants’ motivation in their transnational movement is determined by the ‘push-and-pull’ forces of socio-economic and political transformations in post-Soviet space. Chapter 5 demonstrates how meanings of Greek identity are shaped by consulates and visa-issuing bureaucratic practices while being used as a resource facilitating the organisation of transnational migration. As a result, Greek identity acquires its material manifestation in the form of different documents that further complicate the relationships between nation, ethnicity and citizenship for Pontic Greeks in southern Russia. Chapter 6 shifts focus onto the ‘transnational family network’ as a channel of Greek migration between Russia and Greece and its role in the renegotiation of migrants’ ethnic and national identities. This chapter examines difficulties of economic and cultural adaptation for migrants to Greece in relation to the Pontic Greeks’ economic strategies within their home communities, and their perception of the ‘homeland’ as a constantly contested and relocated social construct.

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12 Introduction Chapter 7 explores the meaning of ‘home’ in the Greek transnational communities in southern Russia. In particular it investigates how people’s identification with the specific place and community is negotiated through property relations. The chapter draws a complex picture of the way in which regional migration policy and property regulations, as well as the emerging property market, influence traditional connections between a family and its house / land property in the Greek communities. Chapter 8 concentrates on the Pontic Greek cultural identity of the Russian Greeks as a product of their transnational circuit. Being ‘imported’ from Greece, the ‘Ponticness’ acquires new meanings in southern Russia. The issue of Pontic cultural boundaries, as they are perceived by the informants, is scrutinised in conjunction with the discursive construction of the ‘other’ as a dynamic moment of ethnic identification. Chapter 9 shows that Pontic cultural representation is a sphere of interpretation, translation and customisation which challenges both the continuity of local cultural practices and the authenticity of the ethnicist model of Ponticness, when the ‘imported’ Pontic cultural heritage (such as folklore dances and music, traditional costume etc.) is reproduced within the context of local power relations. The chapter investigates also how the post-Soviet Orthodox Christian resurgence is interwoven with Pontic ethno-cultural representation and the communalist morality of the local communities.

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1

The Cultural Production of ‘Transnational Locals’ in Theory and (of) Practice

Introduction The group whose cultural, economic, political practices and identities constitute the content of this book are the Greek villagers who continue to live in their ‘home’ communities in southern Russia, whilst nevertheless being engaged in transnational movement to Greece and Cyprus. The oxymoronic expression ‘transnational locals’, in my opinion, gives a very accurate description of these people’s living dispositions. It is these transnational characteristics of the group under study that bring to my research its concern with ‘globalisation’, or the ‘global ecumene’, which Ulf Hannerz describes as ‘the interconnectedness of the world, by way of interactions, exchanges and related developments, affecting not least the organisation of culture’ (1996, p. 7). These ‘global cultural flows’ challenge the notion of an homogenised and spatially bounded culture which in the past was established within the discourse of (ethno-) nationalism (Appadurai, 1996). Embedding the oxymoron into the title of this chapter is deliberate. It highlights one of the main theoretical concerns of my research: the issue of the articulation between the local and the global. This book addresses the question of how transnationalism as a key globalising process affects the cultural production of meanings in a given society in a particular geographical and historical context.

Cultural Processes and Identity Visualising Culture: The ‘Transnational Circuit of Culture’ Beginning with the writings of Raymond Williams (1958; 1961), interest in the study of culture in the social sciences and humanities has grown dramatically. This is sometimes called the ‘cultural turn’ and is characterised by an emphasis on ‘the importance of meaning to the definition of culture’ (Hall, 1997, p. 2). Defining ‘culture’, one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Cultural Studies, Stuart Hall, writes that ‘culture is not so much a set of things . . . as a process, a set of practices’ (Hall, 1997, p. 2, emphasis as in original). Thus, culture is the production and exchange of meanings through practices such as ‘representation’, ‘identity’, ‘production’, ‘consumption’ and ‘regulation’. As Hall argues, these

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14  The Cultural Production practices constitute key ‘moments’ in the ‘circuit of culture’, which suggests that ‘meanings are produced at several different sites and circulated through several different processes and practices’ (Hall, 1997, p. 3). The ‘cultural turn’ may also be seen as a critical intervention in a subject area which, for a long time, was reserved for anthropology. This corresponds with a growing dissatisfaction among socio-cultural anthropologists with the traditional definition of culture as ‘a highly patterned and consistent set of representations (or beliefs) that constitute a people’s perception of reality and that get reproduced relatively intact across generations through enculturation’ (Fox and King, 2002, p. 1). The understanding of culture as a process for the production and circulation of meanings brings into focus a cognitive aspect of cultural processes. Social researchers are especially concerned about the discursive formation of cultural processes as ‘ways of referring to and constructing knowledge about a particular topic of practice’ (Hall, 1997, p. 6). In socio-cultural anthropology, the discursive construction of cultural practices has been acknowledged in the extensive critical writing on the challenges posed by post-colonialism, modernity and globalisation to the traditional understanding of, and approaches to, culture within the discipline (see for example Appadurai, 1996; Clifford, 1988; 1997; Gupta and Ferguson, 1992; 1997; Hannerz, 1996; Marcus, 1995; 1997; Marcus and Fischer, 1986; Staring et al., 1997). Anthropological research has been primarily concerned with the everyday practices of people in whom cognition is often understood to be inseparable from the actions of individuals in the society. Thus, Katherine Verdery defines culture as ‘worlds of meanings’ which, in her opinion, are ‘beliefs and ideas materialised in action’ (1999, p. 34). Verdery provides a highly explicit definition of what she means by a ‘world of meaning’ when she writes: ‘World’ . . . seeks to capture a combination of ‘worldview’ and associated action-in-the-world, people’s sense of a meaningful universe in which they also act. Their ideas and their action constantly influence one another in a dynamic way. (Verdery, 1999, p. 34) Thus, by using the expression ‘cultural processes’ in this book, I want to indicate my understanding of ‘culture’ as a process of producing and reproducing meanings through and within people’s actions. This implies that discourses and practices intersect and affect each other in many different ways: in a world full of meanings, people act in accordance with their understanding of this world. At the same time, the meanings of people’s actions are produced, changed, exchanged and reproduced in the course of their interactions, in other words, through the ‘circuit of culture’. A theoretical framework of this book thus develops from a synthesis of key approaches to culture in Cultural Studies and socio-cultural anthropology. I am drawing together Cultural Studies’ concern with the cognitive aspect, or meaningmaking properties, of the circuit of culture and the anthropological notion of

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The Cultural Production  15 practice as the ideas and beliefs enacted in everyday life. I also argue that involvement in transnational migration directly and indirectly affects the practices and meanings of ‘everydayness’ among the Russian Greeks in their home communities. The ‘transnational circuit of culture’ is proposed as a concept explaining the social and cultural processes among the group in question. This ‘transnational circuit of culture’ is characterised by agents’ involvement in the geographically distant and culturally different locales in which they operate through their participation in the global circulation of people, ideas, goods and capital. The conception of the ‘transnational circuit of culture’ provides a model for an analysis of cultural and social practices in the community in question. It also permits an analysis of the cultural production of identity as part of a broader social process. Identity is already present in the ‘circuit of culture’ as one of its key elements. Being a part of the meaning-making process, identity is both a product of the circulation of meanings and a process of the production and exchange of meanings between members of a society. In the book, I focus on the meanings of Pontic Greek identities in relation to, and in the context of, the diverse practices through and within which these meanings are generated and reproduced. These practices include some which relate to the regulation, production, consumption and representation of meanings. To a certain extent, the notion of the ‘circuit of culture’ constitutes the meta-structure of this book, and the chapters which follow demonstrate how the social and cultural identities of Russian Greeks are produced, regulated, consumed and represented within the transnational circuit. At the same time, the concept of a ‘transnational circuit of culture’ is employed as a very broad model for the theory which explains the social and cultural processes under consideration, while, as has been explained in the book’s Introduction, a more inductive approach is applied in interpreting the ethnographic data. This allows theoretical generalisations about the cultural production of identity to be grounded in the context of the particular practices of the social actors considered. The focus on practices as driving moments of cultural production implies the importance of an individual’s actions for cultural processes. As a result, more attention needs to be paid to the role of social agency in the ‘circuit of culture’. Theory of Practice: Structure, Agency and the Cultural Production of Identity The recent interest of social researchers in agency may be partly explained by a general trend in the social science disciplines to overcome their earlier emphasis on structure, system and social determinism (Hannerz, 1996, p. 22). For instance, in the anthropological tradition, where the sociocentric understanding of culture as a domain of social structure was developed on the assumption that territory, culture and people are closely related (see below), little interest was paid in analyses to the role of agency in the production of culture (Hannerz, 1996, p. 22). Several theoretical attempts have been made to redirect the focus of the social sciences towards an individual’s actions by challenging the opposition of structure

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16  The Cultural Production and agency. Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration, for example, suggests that the nature of the social system may be understood by investigating the production, reproduction and transformation of structures across time and space by knowledgeable actors who are drawing on rules and resources contained within the system. Hannerz (1996, p. 22), for his part, proposes the notion of ‘habitats of meaning’ as a useful device for cultural analysis, expanding the theoretical understanding of culture as ‘worlds of meaning’ by adapting Bauman’s idea that agency should combine, not with system, but with a flexible sense of habitat in which ‘agency operates and which it also produces’. Many such theoretical attempts ‘to bring human beings back in’ to social research reflect the thought-provoking concept of habitus which has been developed in Bourdieu’s theory of practice (Fowler, 2001, p. 321). According to Pierre Bourdieu (1992), habitus is the system of the durable, transposable dispositions of actors. Habitus is also an ‘objective relation between practices and situation that produces meaning through categories of perception and appreciation that are themselves social products’ (cited from Bottomley, 1992, p. 13). Structure itself is the structure of the consequences of human practices. In this respect, the relationship between structure and agency is mutually congruent and dialectic: social structures are reproduced only within and through actors’ everyday practices, while, at the same time, these practices are strategic actions orientated towards a goal which is determined by the structural dispositions and positions of actors. Hence, social structures are embodied and encoded in the actor’s habitus (Bourdieu, 1992, pp. 52–6). Describing the structural resources which are used, accumulated and reproduced by actors in their actions ‘objectively oriented towards a goal’ (cited from Wodak et al., 1999, p. 32), Bourdieu uses the economic metaphor of ‘capital’ (economic, cultural, social, symbolic ‘capital’). Social space is structured by the ways in which the various forms of ‘capital’ are distributed, which are capable of conferring strength, power and consequently profit on their holder (cited from Skeggs, 1997, p. 8). The notion of habitus allows us to introduce everyday practices as the strategic actions of social agents into the focus of our analysis of cultural processes. On the one hand, this explains how structural elements of culture are reproduced and changed by agents and, on the other, it shows that agents’ behaviour, emotional attitudes and cognition become dynamic moments in social structures. The theory of practice has been reflected in studies of identity, notably in works which examine the reproduction of ethnic and national identity through collective and individual practices as an interplay between structure and agency (Karakasidou, 2000; Papadakis, 1998; Wodak et al., 1999). Nations (as well as ethnic groups) act both as dominant value systems and as practices. Hence, the appropriation of national identity by individuals indicates their sense of habitus (Karakasidou, 2000, p. 423). The identities of individual actors are manifested in their practices (including their discursive practices of representation), while they act strategically in order to achieve particular practical outcomes (Wodak et al., 1999, pp. 29–32).

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The Cultural Production  17 I apply the theory of practice as a conceptual framework to explain how the social and cultural identities of Greeks are produced through the practices of individual actors as they deal with such structural elements of the social process as the state, market, regional citizenship regimes, the local community network, family and kinship structures, and so on. Such an approach makes it possible to show the influence which structure has on agency, since social practices are shaped and constrained by agents’ dispositions; however, it also illustrates the reality of individual strategies through which identities are represented, manifested and reproduced. Thus, from the vantage point of the theory of practice, the production of identity is seen as a dialectic process of internalising and reproducing social structures through individual actions. This makes identity the site of an interplay between structure and agency, discourse and practices, ideology and subjectivity and also brings a dynamic aspect to the view of identity as a process of identification. Identification: The Discursive Construction of Identity and the ‘Other’ Being a part of the meaning-making process, identity itself is conceived as a process of identification, because, as a process, social identification implies both structure, which involves the dispositions and positions of social agents, and the agents themselves who ‘do the identifying’. Since agents act strategically in a given situation and their habitus, identification is also situational and contextual. Thus, some scholars see the concept of ‘identification’ as a way to escape the ‘reifying connotations’ suggested by the term ‘identity’ (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000, p. 14). The process of identification takes place in broader historical, political and cultural contexts, suggesting that individual identity is affected by practices and discourses which are external to the individual and which change over time. Therefore, identities are also subject to change and negotiation. Since culture involves the production of meanings which are expressed, represented and exchanged through and within language and other discursive practices (Hall, 1997, p. 4), identification is a process of the discursive construction of meanings of the ‘self’. This also suggests the notion of identification as a psychological process of the construction of ‘self’ which involves the conscious and unconscious experiences of the subject’s position (in relation to sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity) (Elliott, 2001, p. 9). For Hall (2000, pp. 5–6), this interface between the psychological ‘inside’ and the discursive ‘outside’ constitutes the central idea of identity. Hall also argues that the process of identification is never absolutely stable but articulated through the relationship with the ‘other’. Identities are primarily not the product of something deep inside individuals, but come about in consequence of the ways in which others have recognised them (Hall, 1996b, p. 345). Through the process of identification, people are positioned and position themselves in relation to the ‘other’. Since culture is a process of constant change and of the (re-)production of social structures through agents’ practices, identity is produced and changed in the course of these discursive practices. Hence, identity

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18  The Cultural Production is a discursive construction which emerges in the dialogic relationship with ‘others’ through representation of the differences between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. The idea that the relationship of the ‘other’ is important for the construction of the ‘self’ is also central to a psychoanalytic conception of identity and was particularly developed in the work of Jacques Lacan. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, identity starts developing at ‘the mirror phase’ when the infant recognises him / herself through the image of the mother which acts as the ‘other’ (Lacan, 2000, p. 45). Lacan followed classic Freudian theory in his emphasis on the childmother dyad. At the same time, he introduced the notion of the ‘symbolic order’ or language, which is also ‘the domain of human law and culture’ (Barker and Galasinski, 2001, p. 32), as a site of the ‘cultural mediation’ of libidinal normalisation. This suggests that it is language that imposes the structure of the subject position which forms the basis for making the articulation of identity possible (Lacan, 2000, p. 48). In Lacan’s account, identity is developed through and within language, or discourse as a symbolic reflection of the relationship with the ‘other’. This ‘Lacanian discovery’ of the critical role which the ‘other’ plays in the discursive construction of the subject was further elaborated in Louis Althusser’s writings on ideology (Althusser, 1993b, p. 161). Althusser argues that ideology, which is a discourse, recruits its subjects through the practice of ‘interpellation’ – that is, their recognition by ideology and within ideology (Althusser, 1993a, pp. 49–53). Therefore, the process of interpellation is critical for the existence of ideology, since it ensures the functioning and reproduction of ideology through the subjects of that ideology. The individual is an abstract concept until he / she is recognised by others who function both in accordance with a certain ideology and as an ideology. So the individual becomes the subject, because he / she is recognised as a subject by the ‘other’. Thus, according to Althusser’s theory of interpellation, ideology, or discourse, acts as the ‘other’ in the process of identifying the individual. Or, in other words, identification is a transformative process of ‘an interchange between self and structure’ (Rutherford, 1990, p. 14). This idea of the construction of the subject by and within the discourses of power receives further development in Michel Foucault’s (2000) study of the genealogy of ‘techniques of the self’. According to Foucault, the individual is formed by regulatory power in the way in which he or she establishes relations to the rule of conduct (or discourses of power) and sees him / herself as obliged to put this rule into practice (Foucault, 2000, p. 366). Hence, discourses are internalised by individuals as a regulatory and normative means of self-formation. Following Foucault’s argument, Judith Butler (1993) suggests that identities operate through the discursive ‘production of “outside”’ (cited from Hall, 2000, p. 15). Thus, the ‘other’ is outside as well as inside the ‘self’, because the individual can identify him / herself only through his / her own perception of difference from the ‘other’. This knowledge of differences is a product of the regulatory power which shapes the identity of the individual as a historically and culturally determined subject and which is reproduced through agents’ practices. The theoretical framework for the study of identity as a cultural phenomenon is complex. As one of the key moments of the circuit of culture, identity is both a

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The Cultural Production  19 product of the circulation of meanings and a process of producing and exchanging meanings. Identity is also seen as a site where the process of the internalisation and reproduction of social structures through individual actions takes place. In the course of the agents’ discursive practices, social identities are constructed which represent ‘self’ through differences from the ‘other’. This dialogic relationship with the ‘other’ constitutes the core of the identification process. Thus, paraphrasing Stuart Hall (1996b, p. 346), identity is articulated through differences and as differences between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’.

Predicaments of Cultural Identity: Culture, Nation and Ethnicity Identity is often seen not only as part of the cultural process, but also as an embodiment of culture itself, and the phrase ‘cultural identity’ reflects such a perception of the link between the two. The issue of cultural difference inevitably arises in the study of identity. But what are these cultural differences? How do people think of themselves in relation to culture? Why are cultural differences so important for the construction of identities? How do cultural differences become such an essential part of social identification? And what role do culture and cultural differences play in the construction of contemporary national and ethnic identities? Questions of Culture, Identity and Space: ‘Natural’ Links or Discursive Constructions? As has been mentioned already, the anthropological critique of the traditional approach to culture has raised the issue of the discursive construction of culture as a cognitive category. ‘Culture’ is an analytical concept; consequently, approaches to understanding ‘cultural identity’ are also products of a particular way of thinking and representing reality. Lawrence Grossberg (1996) highlights two distinctive understandings of cultural identity. The first approach, which could be called ‘primordialist’, ‘emphasises the singular, distinctive and separate character of cultural identity based on a common origin and / or common experience’ (cited from Staring et al., 1997, p. 11). The second model, which has been developed within the framework of a social constructionist approach, states that cultural identities are subject to a ‘never completed process’ of social construction (Hall, 2000, p. 2). Contrary to the primordialist paradigm of group identity as based on a culture which is both temporally stable over time and homogeneous, constructivists stress the fragmentation, multiplicity and differences in cultural identity (Staring et al., 1997, p. 11). The conceptual framework of the ‘transnational circuit of culture’ implies that identity is both a product of the circulation of meaning and a site of the meaningmaking process. This suggests the constructivist understanding of cultural identity as a process of social construction and representation via the discursive practices of social agents. In fact, this book questions the primordialist assumption that culture, society, identity and space are interconnected. Such representations of culture via

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20  The Cultural Production territorialised groups and collectives via spatially bounded cultures have to be critically re-evaluated as discursive constructions which have generated an excessively historicised and politicised vision of ‘social reality’. Thus, for instance, the link between culture, community and territory is discursively established by the use of such terms as ‘cultural boundaries’. The concept of ‘cultural boundaries’ as a description of differences between communities, allows anthropologists unwittingly or deliberately to imply the geographical division of culture. In the works of Ruth Benedict, for example, the spatial connotation of the term ‘boundary’ was elaborated in the conception of geographically territorialised cultural patterns (see Benedict, [1935] 1966). In this approach, cultural identity is seen as a reflection of the cultural differences between localised and territorialised communities. This kind of association of cultural identity with localised and spatially bounded communities suggests an essentialist view of culture. To overcome such an essentialist view, the postmodernist anthropological critique suggests that contemporary anthropology should focus on ‘how borders are made’ rather than on ‘how life is lived within and on either side of borders’ (Rosenblatt, 2004, p. 464). Gupta and Ferguson (1992) insist that the link between territory and identity, culture and society, must be ‘politicised’ and analysed as a discursive construction. The representation of cultural differences as an aspect of the division of space was developed within the historically specific conditions of colonialism and nationalism which assumed a ‘natural association of a culture, a people and a place’ (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992, pp. 11–12). For example, strongly colonialist tones are already audible in so far as the definitions of ‘indigenous’, ‘natives’ and ‘aboriginal’ are evidence of a discursive link between ‘indigenous peoples’ and the territory which they inhabit. As Malkki (1996) shows, this is partly achieved by means of metaphors borrowed from natural science (botany), in which the ‘rooted’ (indigenous people) gain ‘roots’, for which ‘soil’ is vital, and in this way actually begin to identify with the earth of the territory on which they are living. All of this harks back to the European ideology of expansion and subjugation, in which ‘natives’ are conceived not only as the inhabitants of a specific place, but also as an attribute of the territory in question. As such, they are ecologically and culturally fixed in local circumstances, or ‘spatially incarcerated’ in their place, while their Western subjugators consider themselves to be free to travel (Appadurai, 1988). The ‘National Order of Things’ and Construction of Ethnic Boundaries The ‘natural’ link between culture and territory is, however, also essential for ideologies of nationalism, which see the world as a political map encompassing nation-states. Maps themselves become powerful instruments of nationalism. Working on the basis of a totalising classification, the map was designed to demonstrate the antiquity of specific, tightly bounded territorial units and, therefore, played an important role in imaging the nation. As Anderson (1983) states, modern nations were born as ‘imagined political communities’ within the ideology of nationalism in the conditions of spreading capitalism and imperialism, and

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The Cultural Production  21 through the development of the publishing industry. The nation is characterised as an imagined community because the image of communion with their fellow members lives in the minds of each, although most of them will never be known (Anderson, 1983, p. 6). Separated from other nations by borders drawn on paper as well as in the physical landscape, the nation-state is conceived by nationalists as a community bounded spatially and united culturally. Such a nationalist vision and division of the world, in Malkki’s phrase, ‘the national order of things’ (1996, p. 441), is also reproduced within the primordialist approach to ethnicity and national identity which is based on the assumption that modern nations evolved from the ethnic communities of the past (see, for example, Smith, 1986). The connections between the ethnic collectives of the pre-modern era and contemporary nations are conceived genealogically. Cultural traits attributed to modern nations, such as a common language, a traditional way of life, rituals and so on, are traced back to the ‘ancestral’ ethnic group through the process of essentialising cultural identity (Geertz, 1996, pp. 41–2). From the constructivist perspective, however, ethnic and national identities are not based on stable and fixed cultural traits shared by all members of the ethnic group and / or nation, but are defined by articulating the differences between these groups and other groups. As has been argued earlier, the notion of the ‘other’ as a reference point for the ‘self’ is central for the identification process, for this involves the discursive construction of differences between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Social groups are also constituted within discursive practices. Thus, Fredrik Barth (1969) argues that ethnic groups are units of the ascription and identification of social actors themselves. Rejecting the primordial ‘givens’ as essential features of ethnic identity, Barth focuses on ethnic boundaries as a result of interaction between different groups, during which ethnic differences are constructed and maintained. This makes ethnicity a boundary process, which provides participants in the ‘interethnic game’ with a matrix of strategies (cited from Voutira, 1991, p. 407). For Barth ‘ethnic categories provide an organizational vessel that may be given any amounts and forms of content in different socio-cultural systems’ (1996, p. 78). A similar emphasis is laid on interaction as the core of cultural identification by James Clifford (1988), when he suggests that cultural identity must be examined only in the context of historical processes which are characterised by non-integrated exchanges between different groups. During these interactions and in specific conditions, all the critical elements of identity, such as language, land, blood, leadership and religion, are replaceable. The group simply finds other forms, or utilises newly appropriated cultural products, to mark their identity and to differentiate themselves from others (Clifford, 1988, p. 338). Thus, ethnic and cultural differences must be seen as a result of cultural processes which produce and reproduce meanings, rather than as a manifestation of an ahistorical and unchangeable culture. Having discredited the primordialist understanding of cultural identity, we nonetheless have to acknowledge that even in the world of late modernity, the ‘national order of things’ dominates. The perception of ‘bounded culture’ is now widespread and reproduced not only within the ideologies of state nationalism, but

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22  The Cultural Production also by ethnic counter-nations (see Appadurai, 1996, p. 15; Malkki, 1996, p. 445). A ‘naturalistic’ understanding of cultural identity as the recognition of a common origin or shared characteristics with other members of the group prevails in the worldview of ‘ordinary people’, becoming a part of common sense language (Hall, 2000, p. 2). In southern Russia, for example, my Greek informants believe that all Greeks are bound by the blood of common ancestors to each other and to the territory of Greece. My informants sometimes explained and justified their practices of transnational migration to Greece as their ‘return to the historical homeland’. Thus, attention should be paid to the ways in which nationalist perceptions of culture are reproduced through people’s representation of their identity. This leads us to the issue of the politics of representation. The Politics of Ethnic Representation and the Struggle Over Classification The use and abuse of ethnicity for purposes of political mobilisation is a common feature everywhere in the contemporary world. Therefore, identity studies connect the representation of cultural and ethnic identities with politics, exploring both in the broader context of power relations. As Laclau (1990) states, ‘the construction of any social identity is an act of power’ (cited from Hall, 2000, p. 5). In his article on so-called ‘new ethnicities’, Hall (1996a) suggests the understanding of ethnicity (and social identity in general) as a ‘new politics of representation’, defining ethnic identity as an historical, cultural and political construction. Being an instrument of political mobilisation, ethnicity, like national identity, is constructed within discourses which tend to represent the ethnic group as a homogeneous and united community and, by so doing, to silence the actual diversity of individual experiences and cultural practices (Hall, 1996a, pp. 443–6). Thus, ‘the unities which identities proclaim are, in fact, constructed within the play of power and exclusion, and are a result . . . of the naturalized, overdetermined process of “closure”’ (Hall, 2000, p. 5). Representing their ethnicity, people participate in various practices of exclusion and inclusion, demarcating the boundaries of their ethnic group. The naming of the ethnic group is one of the most important manifestations of ethnic identity, not least because ‘systems of representation work like languages’, and often through language (Hall, 1997, p. 4). Thus, in representing their ethnicity, people reveal a sort of classificatory system which puts ‘members of humanity’ under different ethnic labels. Ethnic classifications have also to be analysed as part of a political process. Bourdieu (1991) suggests, for example, that ethnic identity is a particular form of the struggle over classification, which is also a struggle over the power to impose a particular vision of the social world. This is a struggle over the legitimate definition of divisions of the social world and, thereby, of ways of making and unmaking the group. Bourdieu considers that the objectification and de facto ‘officialisation’ of group identity are achieved through the public act of naming the group in front of everyone. He calls this process the ‘dialectic of manifestation or demonstration’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 224).

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The Cultural Production  23 This suggests that the act of naming the ethnic group should become the subject of closer investigation. In this book, for instance, I am reluctant to take for granted the definition ‘Pontic Greeks’ as a convenient name for the group in question. In fact, the chapters which follow show that this term is not as unambiguous as it appears for at least some of my Greek informants in southern Russia. My informants’ narratives of their Pontic Greek identity reveal how people make sense of their cultural identity, negotiating ethnic boundaries with other groups and positioning themselves in the complex landscape of social, political and economic relationships both in their ‘home’ region and during their migration to Greece. The group becomes separated from other groups and, indeed, positioned as a separate entity of the social world through its ethnic definition. At the same time, such ethnic naming brings a sense of unity to the group. The idea of the unity of the group and its separation from others is central to ethnic identity. Yet Bourdieu notes that the ‘objectification of identity in discourse’ also has to be grounded in the objectivity of the group to which this identity is addressed, that is, ‘in the recognition and the belief granted to it by the members of this group, as well as in the economic or cultural properties they share in common’ (1991, pp. 223–4). Therefore, nationalists and ethnicists often refer to common ‘cultural properties’ as an objective basis for group identity, which itself validates the existence of this group. In other words, the group is represented through its cultural properties, which are positioned as being the ‘objective’ evidence of the group’s existence. So the sum of different dialects could be represented as a language spoken by a people, as in Bourdieu’s example of ‘Occitans’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 223), or, as shown in this book, Turkish and Pontic Greek dialects; equally, the distinctive dance and music tradition, as well as some peculiarities of their Orthodox Christian practices, can become utilised for the representation of ‘Pontic-ness’. This confirms Peel’s (1989) argument that social identities are not manipulated at will by activists, but rather that ‘identities are creatively shaped and reshaped from existing materials, they are never in the strict sense invented’ (cited from BellerHann and Hann, 2001, p. 18). I started from a critical reassessment of the anthropological perception that cultural identity is something which manifests a link between a bounded culture and a territorialised group. By unfolding the discursive nature of such territorialised cultural identity, the anthropological critiques shed light on the ways in which connections between identity, culture, land and collectivity had been constructed and naturalised within the dominant discourses of colonialism and nationalism. These representations of ethnic groups as united within ‘cultural boundaries’, which, at the same time, separate their members from those who belong to other ‘cultures’, reproduce the ‘national order of things’ in the contemporary world. Having established my own critical argument in line with such a constructivist approach to cultural identity, paradoxically, I would like to finish this section by defending the cognitive value of ‘cultural boundaries’. For ordinary people, as Bashkow argues, these boundaries are ‘rather culture-internal distinctions that organize and give meaning to their lives’ (2004, p. 450). I want to suggest that ‘cultural boundaries’ remain important for understanding the process of identification

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24  The Cultural Production because they are constructed within and through the discursive representations of groups and have practical meaning for social actors. Cultural properties are used in the representation of identity as ‘conceivable criteria’. The group becomes a reality when both its members and people outside the group believe in the existence of a culture which unites the group and makes it different from others. The cultural identity has to make sense for the people to whom it is addressed. Thus, as Bourdieu states, in order to gain a better understanding of social identities, researchers have to: keep together what go[es] together in reality: [the] objective classifications, whether incorporated or objectified, sometimes in institutional form . . . and [the] practical relation to those classifications, whether acted out or represented, and in particular the individual and collective strategies . . . by which agents seek to put these classifications at the service of their material or symbolic interests, or to conserve and transform them. (1991, p. 227) In this book, I try to show how the cultural differences are ‘objectified’ and ‘naturalised’ within dominant discourses – for example, in the case of the former Soviet Union, within the discourse of ‘titular nationalities’ – and become an integrated part of my informants’ ‘meaningful worlds’. In the contemporary world, the local production, representation and interpretation of ‘cultural boundaries’ are challenged by the global flows of people, ideas, goods and capital. This brings the analysis of the cultural production of identity within the framework of the ‘transnational circuit of culture’ which connects locally embedded practices with global structural processes.

Transnational Migration and Cultural Identities in the ‘Global Ecumene’ Globalisation, Modernity and Culture: Differences versus Homogenisation The term ‘globalisation’ is often used to refer to ‘the intensification of global interconnectedness’ which is experienced everywhere in the contemporary world, and thus it suggests that the world we now live in is ‘full of movement and mixture, contact and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and exchange’ (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 2). Inda and Rosaldo describe the world of globalisation in the following terms: Here capital traverses frontiers almost effortlessly, drawing more and more places into dense networks of financial interconnections; people readily (although certainly not freely and without difficulty) cut across national boundaries, turning countless territories into spaces where various cultures converge, clash, and struggle with each other; commodities drift briskly from

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The Cultural Production  25 one locality to another, becoming primary mediators in the encounter between culturally distant others; images flicker quickly from screen to screen, providing people with resources from which to fashion new ways of being in the world; and ideologies circulate rapidly through ever-expanding circuits, furnishing fodder for struggles couched in terms of cultural authenticity versus foreign influence. (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, pp. 3–4) Thus transnationalism, which is characterised by ‘the high intensity of exchanges, the new modes of transacting, and the multiplication of activities that require cross-border travel and contacts on a sustained basis’, is one of the most visible manifestations of globalisation (Portes et al., 1999, p. 219). This transnational flow of people, ideas, goods, images and capital challenges the notion of culture as a production and exchange of meanings between members of a localised and territorially bounded community. Anthony Giddens (1990) describes globalisation ‘as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link different localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’ (cited from Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 8). In the conditions of globalisation, the production of meanings becomes possible through social interaction with ‘absent others’, who are not in a situation of face-to-face contact. Such distanciated relations, according to Giddens, constitute a definitive feature of modernity (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 8). In fact, globalisation is often referred to as a driving force of modernity which is sometimes defined as a form of ‘expansive civilisation’ advancing upon localised, and increasingly marginalised, traditional cultures (Hannerz, 1996, p. 44). Yet modernity is perceived as the spread of Western cultural forms and styles through non-Western societies via electronic media propagating the Western mode of consumption. In this understanding, globalisation is seen as a sort of ‘cultural imperialism’ which is driven by forces which aim to impose the dominance of Western capitalism throughout the world. According to this vision of globalisation, peripheral cultures will gradually be assimilated by the centre (Western culture); therefore, globalisation is leading to the cultural homogenisation of the world (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 13). The opponents of this ‘cultural homogenisation’ scenario argue that, although the political economy of the transnational circuit has a significant transformative effect on local societies and the world is becoming increasingly connected, it is still not unified economically and culturally (Clifford, 1988, p. 17). The transnational flow of goods, ideas and people goes in both directions and brings the cultural diversity of the ‘periphery’ to the ‘centres’ of Western culture as well. The transnational migration from less affluent countries to Western cities is just one, very illustrative, example of what Roger Rouse calls ‘the social space of postmodernism’ where, alongside the capitalist penetration of the periphery goes ‘peripheralization at the core’ (2002, p. 165). Moreover, transnational circuits are developed not only between the West and the rest, but also between different parts of the periphery

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26  The Cultural Production and this undermines the vision of a single, homogenised and Westernised culture (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 25). One example of such peripheral circuits is the transnational movement of people between the former Soviet Union and Greece and / or Cyprus (two countries on the ‘edge of Europe’), in which the subjects of the present research, the Greeks of southern Russia, are involved. As I will demonstrate in the following chapters while the ex-Soviet Greeks are often forced to move to Greece by economic and political hardship at home, they justify their migration by a cultural affinity with their ‘historical homeland’. In fact, alongside the hard currency and ‘Western’ goods which they import back to their home villages, are such cultural products as Pontic Greek folk music or Orthodox Christian icons, which play a significant role in the production of the Pontic Greek culture of my informants because they make sense of their attachment to both the locales of their circuit and at the same time, manifest their cultural particularity. Perhaps the most weighty argument against the view that cultural homogenisation is an outcome of globalisation is that any cultural materials imported or transferred to another cultural context become understood by their recipients only through the process of ‘interpretation, translation and customisation’ (Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, p. 17). As a result, such cultural imports always receive new local meanings which are inevitably different from their meanings in the culture of their origin. Thus modernity is much reproduced locally and through local cultural forms, but at the same time, cultural differences between different localities emerge from what appears to be the homogenising advance of modernity upon traditional societies. Hannerz considers modernity, with its emphasis on similarity, to be just one major contemporary metaculture, whereas another metaculture with an emphatic underlining of differences (for example, cultural revivalism, ethnicist and nationalist movements) exists alongside it, often as a reaction to, or even as a result of, a process of modernisation (Hannerz, 1996, pp. 51–5). Therefore, instead of viewing different cultures as a sort of relic of the pre-modern era which will be flattened by the homogenising bulldozer of globalisation, Hannerz proposes seeing this cultural diversity as a new diversity bred by globalisation itself (Hannerz, 1996, p. 64). This ‘new diversity is based relatively more on interrelations and less on autonomy’ (cited from Clifford, 1988, p. 17). The Production of Identities and Experiences of Transnationalism: Cultural Hybridity, Transnational Families and the Nation-state As has been argued above, globalisation has its effect on the locality of cultures through transnational circuits which connect societies around the world. One manifestation of the increasing interconnectedness of the contemporary world is the emergence of transnational groups and communities, such as diaspora, migrants, guest workers, tourists, exiles, refugees and so on. The existence of these groups is a manifestation of globalising processes which lead to long-distance travel, long-term separation from families and home countries, and the emergence of

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The Cultural Production  27 communities divided by national borders. The world of globalisation is characterised by a non-congruity between people and territories and as a consequence, the link between culture and territory becomes even more elusive. Awareness of the growing dispersion, interpenetration and general complexity of globalised communities is reflected in researchers’ concerns with the issue of cultural identity in the conditions of transnationalism (Kearney, 1995, pp. 556–7). Appadurai (1996, p. 48), for instance, proposes the term ‘ethnoscape’ to refer to the dilemmas of perspective and representation of the ‘changing social territorial and cultural reproduction of group identity’. Global ethnoscapes are the space of de- and re-territorialised cultures and cultural identities (Appadurai, 1996, p. 49; Inda and Rosaldo, 2002, pp. 10–12). As Gupta and Ferguson state, the emerging transnational public sphere ‘has enabled the creation of forms of solidarity and identity that do not rest on an appropriation of space where contiguity and faceto-face contact are paramount’ (1992, p. 9). To understand how transnational identities are constructed, particular attention has to be paid to different agencies involved in transnational circuits, namely, to individual experiences of displacement and relocation and to networks of social relations (family, friends and so on), as well as to broader institutionalised structures such as local and national governments (Portes et al., 1999, p. 220). The identity of transnational groups is constructed through their practices and the various social relations which they are engaged in. In the ‘transnational public space’ (Sørensen, 1998), individual actors are involved in social interactions in different localities which are geographically and culturally distant. Thus transnationalism requires individual identities to be multiple in nature, reflecting the complex positionality of actors in globalised communities where their sense of belonging is divided between several different places, cultures, social positions, ethnicities and nationalities. The literature on migration and diaspora studies provides many examples of what Hall (1990, p. 235) calls the ‘hybridity’ of transnational experience. As an effect of globalisation, modern societies are increasingly characterised by ‘differences and split by various societal rifts and antagonisms which produce a large number of various “subject positions”, or identities for individuals’ (Wodak et al., 1999, p. 17). The investigation of cultural identification as a part of transnational experience brings the family network into focus. Family constitutes a support network for transnational migrants; for example, it often operates as a channel for migrants’ cross-border movement (Vertovec, 1999, pp. 449–53). At the same time, the transnational family network becomes a site of multiple identifications. Debora Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela point out that: ‘transnational families have multiple community identities related to all the places where their members are resident or have been resident in the past’ (2002, p. 19). Family networking connects home communities with their ‘diaspora’, making them effectively ‘a single community spread across a variety of sites’ (Rouse, 2002, p. 162). An analysis of the family network potentially provides an important insight into understanding how migrants’ transnational experiences become a constitutive part of the construction of cultural identities in their ‘original home

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28  The Cultural Production areas’, and this is one of the main issues in this book. Transnational families are in a way an embodiment of the globalising process; they make visible the way in which the world system’s discourses penetrate the local reality, making it a part of the world system itself (Marcus, 1995, p. 99). Since identity construction is the interplay between agency and structure, attention should be paid to the role which nation-states as institutionalised structures play in the production of transnational identities. Perhaps it is too early to speak about the world of globalisation and transnationalism as a ‘post-national’ world (Appadurai, 1996, p. 21). Rather, as Sørensen (1998, p. 262) argues, the transnational space becomes a contested space which contains several national and binational identities. In the world of globalisation, the nation-state has not lost its capacity to construct the subjectivity of its citizens. However, it has ceased to be the sole source of legitimate identification. Although transnational communities exist in, and as, a transnational circuit (Rouse, 2002), they rarely identify themselves as transnationals and continue to speak about their attachment to particular nations, ethnicities, places and countries (Sørensen, 1998, p. 244). Transnational migrants do not lose the sense of belonging to territorialised nations, because they, perhaps more than anyone else, are aware of the nation-state’s desire to control its territory as well as the movement of people across its borders. Being subject to state policies of naturalisation or living in a ‘host’ country illegally, transnationals routinely deal with the nation-state, while their national, ethnic and cultural identities are constantly being renegotiated. According to Sørensen, transnational migration has not eroded the nation-state (Sørensen, 1998, p. 262). It is possible to say that, to a certain degree, the space of the nation-state has expanded as transnational practices and identities continue to be shaped by the state policies and identity politics of both ‘home’ and ‘host’ nations. The local is a part of the processes of globalisation and the global is reproduced in the local context. In the contemporary transnational world, the nation-state continues to play a significant role in the negotiation of global cultural flows and in the translation of external discourses in the local context of the cultural production of identity. In other words, ‘the national’ shapes individuals’ understanding of global-local relations. Thus, in the contemporary Russian Federation, my Greek informants’ understandings of both ethnicity and cultural differences are influenced by their transnational circuit but also shaped by Soviet and post-Soviet discourses on ethnicity. The (post-) Soviet ‘nationality policy’ and public discourses of ethnicity and culture might be seen as a structural determinant of the Greeks’ self-identification as ‘transnational locals’ in the southern Russian Federation. Partly because of this the focus of the next chapter is on transformations and the interplay of new and old discourses in the construction of ethnic, national and cultural identities in contemporary Russia.

Conclusion Identity is produced through agents’ practices within the circuit of meaning which constitutes the cultural process. As part of the cultural circuit, identity is conceptualised as a process which goes through the discursive construction of the ‘self’

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The Cultural Production  29 and the ‘other’. While the representation of cultural identities is shaped by the dominant discourses of nationalism as well as by ethnicist ideologies, cultural identities are not the product of a primordial link between people, culture and territory, but are rather constructed in the course of interaction with other groups. In the conditions of the interconnected world of globalisation, the locality of identities is challenged by the transnational movement of people, goods and ideas which de-territorialises cultural production. Nonetheless, globalisation does not lead to cultural homogenisation, but rather results in a new range of cultural identities, which are constituted within a complex interplay between transnational agency (migrants and their support networks) and the institutionalised structures of the nation-state.

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2

Ethnicity and Migration After Communism

Introduction The Greeks of southern Russia, like the rest of the local population, are subjected to identity politics in the region, since any social identity is constituted within discourses and is a product of power relations (Hall, 2000, p. 5). In this respect, at the regional level their identities are to a great extent shaped by two emergent and corresponding discursive constructs such as ethnicity and migration. Most of my fieldwork was conducted in two Greek communities which were situated in different, albeit neighbouring, regions of southern Russia: the Republic of Adygea and Krasnodar Krai. However, this chapter focuses on Krasnodar Krai in particular, in its analysis of regional ‘migration’ and ‘nationality’ discourses.1 There are several reasons why Krasnodar Krai, rather than Adygea, forms the focus of the regional analysis of policy towards minorities and migrants. Firstly, Krasnodar Krai has been the trendsetter in so-called ‘migration and national policy’ in southern Russia and is notorious for its strict anti-migrant legislation since the early 1990s (Osipov, 2002a, pp. 13–22). In fact, the migration policy in Adygea has mirrored Krasnodar’s hard line approach, albeit with some differences, which are partly a result of Adygea’s status as an ethnic, or ‘national’, autonomy (see also Poliakova, 2002a and Lankina, 2002). These differences will be scrutinised in the next chapter, when I look at the impact which regional ‘nationality policy’ has had on the Greek communities under study. Secondly, in order to justify their discriminatory policy, the authorities in both regions often use the concepts of ‘ethnic relations’ and ‘ethnic conflict’ which have been developed by local sociologists, ethnologists and ethnodemographers from Krasnodar Krai. One of objectives of this chapter is to develop an understanding of the way in which academic concepts and regional policy are inter-related. Finally, the analysis of regional identity in Krasnodar Krai contributes to a discussion of the role which nationalism and ethnicity play in regional politics in the so-called ‘Russian regions’ of the post-Soviet Northern Caucasus.

Krasnodar Krai: Location, Population and Migration Krasnodar Krai is a province of the Russian Federation in the North Caucasus region. Its borders with the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine became part of 1 The sections from earlier version of this chapter were published as part of Popov, A. and Kuznetsov, I. (2008) ‘Ethnic Discrimination and the Discourse of “Indigenisation”: the Regional Regime, “Indigenous Majority” and Ethnic Minorities in Krasnodar Krai’, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May 2008), pp. 243–72.

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  31

Map 2.1  Krasnodar Krai and Republic of Adygea Source: Popov, 2007b.

the national border of Russia after the collapse of the USSR. The region has strategic significance for the Russian Federation because Russia’s only Black Sea ports (Novorossiisk, Tuapse and Sochi) are situated in its territory. The geo-political importance of the region was demonstrated when it hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi; this is virtually on the border of Abkhazia, whose declaration of independence from Georgia has been supported and recognised by Russia. Krasnodar Krai is also close to Crimea – separated from the peninsular by the narrow Kerch Strait – since its annexation in March 2014 the main land route to the autonomous republic from mainland Russia cut through the territory of the region. Although Krasnodar Krai has been part of the Southern Federal District (Yuzhnyi Federal’nayi Okrug) since 2000, geographically it is one of the so-called Russian regions in the North Caucasus. The region has common borders with the ‘national’ republics of Karachai-Cherkess and Adygea, the latter was an autonomous oblast’ within the Krai until 1991 and now forms an enclave completely surrounded by Krasnodar Krai. Krasnodar Krai’s neighbour to the south-west is Abkhazia (see Map 2.1).2 The North Caucasus, where war in Chechnya had been ongoing for more than 10 years and where peace in the neighbouring republics remains fragile, has gained 2 Abkhazia is de jure a national autonomy within Georgia but declared its independence from Georgia in 1992 which led to armed conflict between the Georgians and the Abkhaz in 1993–1994, which has still not been resolved. The 2008 military escalation during the course of the Russo-Georgian War led also to recognition of Abkhazia’s independence by the Russian Federation, despite international condemnation.

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32  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism a reputation as one of the poorest and least stable regions of Russia. Nevertheless, Krasnodar Krai, also known as Kuban, with its developed agricultural-industrial complexes and tourist industry, has maintained its image as a peaceful and prosperous region in southern Russia (Kosikov and Kosikova, 1999). At the same time, Krasnodar Krai is notorious for its conservative and reactionary political elite; in the 1990s, the Krai also has a reputation as a stronghold of pro-Communist and radical national-patriotic forces (McAuley, 1997; Magomedov and Kirichenko, 2004). The Krasnodar authorities justify their heavy-handed ‘national policy’ by reference to the need to protect the interests of the ‘local population’ by maintaining an ‘ethnodemographic balance’; this is perceived as guaranteeing stability in ‘inter-ethnic relations’. In their rhetoric of ‘ethno-demographic balance’ the regional authorities often refer to statistical data; the statistics, however, do not suggest any potential threat of so-called ‘ethnic aggression’ or even dramatic change in the demographic situation existing in the Krai. Although in Krasnodar Krai’s population of over 5,000,000 the majority – approximately 86.54 per cent (4,522,962) – are Russians, the Krai is, nonetheless, ‘multinational’. Armenians (281,680) and Ukrainians (83,746) are the most numerous of the ethnic minorities, even though they comprise only approximately 5.39 and 1.60 per cent of the region’s population respectively (see Table 2.1): Table 2.1 Population and proportion of individual nationalities in Krasnodar Krai in 1989, 2002 and 2010 Nationality

All nationalities Russians Ukrainians Armenians Belorussians Germans Greeks Adygheans Tatars Georgians Azeris Moldovans Jews Others

1989

2002

2010

persons

%

persons

%

persons

%

4,620,876 4,006,811 182,128 171,757 34,688 29,946 28,337 20,795 14,547 12,105 10,343 7,439 5,163 96,817

100.00 86.71 3.94 3.72 0.75 0.65 0.61 0.45 0.31 0.26 0.22 0.16 0.11 2.10

5,125,221 4,436,272 131,774 274,566 26,260 18,469 26,540 15,821 25,589 20,500 11,944 6,537 2,945 128,004

100.00 86.56 2.57 5.36 0.51 0.36 0.52 0.31 0.50 0.40 0.23 0.13 0.06 3.49

5,226,647 4,522,962 83,746 281,680 16,890 12,171 22,595 13,834 24,840 17,826 10,165 5,170 2,247 212,531

100.00 86.54 1.60 5.39 0.32 0.23 0.43 0.26 0.48 0.34 0.19 0.10 0.04 4.08

Note: Shows the statistical data for some of the most numerous ethnic groups of the region (for 1989 without the population of the Adygean Autonomous Oblast’). The table combines the 2002 and 2010 All-Russia Population Censuses data. The statistical data for 1989 is based on the last Soviet population census (cited from Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 128). Source: Goskomstat Rossii, 2002 and 2010; Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003.

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  33 Although the issues of anti-migrant policy and ethnic discrimination in Krasnodar Krai are tightly intertwined, the so-called ethnic migration and immigration in the region are insignificant. For instance, less than 10 per cent of all migrants who arrived in Krasnodar Krai in 2001 came from outside the Russian Federation; this suggests that about 90 per cent of newcomers were Russian citizens, and 82 per cent were ethnic Russians. Moreover, the total number of arrivals (88,628) in 2001 included those people who moved within Krasnodar Krai (37,414) that constituted over 40 per cent of a population that regional authorities identified as ‘migrants’ (see Krasnodarskii kraevoi komitet gosudarstvennoi statistiki, 2002a, pp. 64–5). As everywhere in contemporary Russia, the birth rate in Krasnodar Krai is low and the death rate is high; therefore, since 1990, migration has become the only source for replenishing regional demographic resources. Although over the course of the last two decades, the population of the region grew from 4,620,900 in 1989 to 5,226,647 in 2010, in fact migration peaked between 1991 and 1993 and since 1995 the rate of migration has declined (Krasnodarskii kraevoi komitet gosudarstvennoi statistiki, 2002b). The (post-) Soviet academic discourses of ethnicity, identity and culture have profoundly affected the construction of ethnic identities in the contemporary Russian Federation; these must first be examined before analysing the regional policies on migration and inter-ethnic relations.

Thinking and Making the Ethnos: (Post-) Soviet Ethnic Discourses and Nationality Policies In the post-socialist context of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the growth of ethno-nationalism and of intolerance towards migrants and ethnic minorities, is partly explained by the construction of national and ethnic identities during the Communist era (Brubaker, 1996; Tishkov, 1997; Slezkine, 1996; Verdery, 1996). Some scholars refer to this intolerance as one of the ‘unexpected outcomes’ of liberal transformations (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999). As Verdery argues, ‘ethno-national tensions had persisted and perhaps even intensified under socialism’ because ‘ethno-nationalism was in certain ways “built into” the organisation of socialism, manifesting itself differently in different countries but fully absent from none’ (1993, p. 174). Indeed, it is difficult to underestimate how important the Soviet legacy is for understanding ethnic relations and nationality policy – which play a critical part in the production of post-Soviet cultural identities – in the contemporary Russian Federation. Soviet Modernity and the Creation of ‘Titular Nationalities’ In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks started their project of korenizatsiia (indigenisation) which aimed to solve the so-called ‘nationality question’ in the young Soviet state and to bring equality and emancipation to non-Russian minorities who, it was assumed, experienced the double yoke of class exploitation and political and

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34  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism cultural suppression by the Tsarist colonial administration. This programme was implemented through the ‘national demarcation’ of the territories populated by ethnic minorities (Slezkine, 1996, pp. 214–25; Tishkov, 1997, pp. 27–31), and laid the foundations of Soviet ethno-territorial federalism. Sokolovski (not dated, p. 3) suggests that the Bolshevik early nationality policy and the korenizatsiia project in particular were developed within a paradigm of the ‘naturalist’ understanding of ethnicity as a phenomenon rooted in the geographical landscape rather than as a sociological construct. As has been argued in Chapter 1, such a perception of a natural link between people and their territory was dominant in the epoch of colonialism and imperialism. In the USSR, the new ‘national’ administrative-territorial units became identified with the ethnic groups living there. These administrative units were named after the peoples inhabiting them. Thus, ‘titular nationalities’ were born: groups whose names were in the title of the autonomous region and which had priority rights in the region’s self-government. The korenizatsiia project might be analysed in the broader context of Soviet modernisation (Slezkine, 1996, pp. 210–15). The central idea of Soviet modernity was to overcome parochial backwardness which, from the point of view of the ideologists and apologists of Bolshevism, had been part of the ‘order of things’ in the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire. Oushakine (2004, p. 416) argues that Soviet modernisation aimed to reorder existing social structures through a transformation of the material world. Mapping new ethnic (or nationality) borders, the Bolsheviks effectively created a new social, political and – since the ethnic group was conceived as part of the natural environment – physical order. To some extent, ethnic groups or ‘the peoples’ (narody) were changed and (re)created as a consequence of being given or denied the status of a ‘titular nationality’. Paradoxically, the Soviet project of social modernisation was accompanied by the manifestation, promotion and sometimes even creation of cultural differences by the institutionalisation of ethnicity. The observers of Soviet nationality policy have acknowledged the role of the official ‘affirmative-action’ programmes, which targeted most of all the representatives of the ‘titular nationalities’ in the formation of ethnic identities in the USSR (see Gitelman, 1992; Martin, 2001; Suny, 1993). The culture of titular nationality received official recognition from the federal authorities. The political and administrative structures in the national autonomies were formed in a way which reflected the ethnic composition of the region or territory. As a rule, the representatives of the titular nationalities predominated among the republican / regional officials. The new political classes in the national autonomies were formed by recruiting new members of the Communist Party predominantly from the titular ethnic groups (Suny, 1993, p. 103). As Suny states, in the Soviet Union, ‘[titular] nationality had taken on a new importance as an indicator of membership in the relevant social and cultural community’ (Suny, 1993, p. 121). Brubaker (1996, pp. 30–31) argues that ethno-national federalism and the ethnic self-identification of citizens were institutionalised in the USSR through the organisation of government and administration along ethno-territorial lines and through the introduction of an ethno-national population classification. A citizen’s

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  35 ethnicity, for instance, became fixed in various identity documents, such as passports, birth certificates, etc.3 This institutionalised ethno-federalism created new cultural, ethnic and national identities for the ‘titular nationality’, while previous identities based on regional origin, religion, kinship or social status were rethought, ignored or rejected (Slezkine, 1996, p. 213). To paraphrase Beissinger (2002, p. 14), this institutionalisation of ethnic identities in the Soviet Union shaped social reality and inserted certainty into outcomes of social life, imposing a national order on population. National autonomy within the framework of the Soviet federal state had an emancipatory effect on many ethnic minorities. At the same time, groups which did not receive territorial autonomy were denied the opportunity to institutionalise their ethnicity and were largely subjected to assimilation with the majority. At the end of the 1930s, the policy of korenizatsiia was abolished and was replaced by the quasi-imperialist, Stalinist nationality policy. As a result, many small nationally determined administrative units (natsional’nye sel’sovety and natsional’nye raiony) were liquidated, and the ethnic elites which had been accused of ‘counter-revolutionary nationalism’ were repressed, while some ethnic groups were deprived of their status of ‘titular nationality’ and deported from the territory of their autonomous regions. For instance, in 1938, the Greek national district (raion) which had existed in Krasnodar Krai since 1930 was abolished, and, by the end of the 1940s, almost all of the Greek population of the region had been sent into exile in Siberia and Central Asia (see Kotsonis, 1997). Despite these dramatic changes in Soviet nationality policy, the principle of ethno-territoriality was left intact. Moreover, during the 1940s Soviet ethnofederalism had been utilised for the Stalinist expansion into Eastern Europe and constituted the administrative structure of the USSR until the very end of its existence in 1991. To a certain extent, Soviet modernisation succeeded and social, economic and political differences between different ‘nationalities’ populating the vast territory of the USSR were more or less ironed out by the 1980s, as reflected in claims of the emergence of ‘one community of Soviet people’. The ‘national’ or ethnic identities of the Soviet peoples became more clearly articulated, however (Tishkov, 1997, p. 42). The Theory of Ethnos The modernisation of ethnic relations in the Soviet Union was academically justified. Ethnologists were actively involved in the process of national-territorial building, and scholars developed ethnic classifications on the bases of linguistic, cultural and religious differences which were used by Bolshevik administrators in the process of demarcating borders between ethno-national entities, and in some

3 The impact which the records of a citizen’s ethnicity in Soviet passports has on the construction of Greek identity in contemporary Russia will be discussed in Chapter 5 in conjunction with the Greeks’ practices of transnational migration.

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36  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism cases, for the creation of new ‘nationalities’ (Slezkine, 1996, pp. 213–14). Even the administrative hierarchy of the national, ethnically based territorial units from the national sel’sovet (ethnic minority village soviet) to the Union republics was established in accordance with the scientific perception of ethnic evolution from tribes to nations (Sokolovski, not dated, pp. 3–4). In the 1970s–80s, the primordialist conception of ethnicity became dominant in Soviet ethnography / ethnology, and was elaborated most consistently in the ‘theory of ethnos’ by academician Yulian Bromley (1973 and 1981). According to this theory, the ethnic group, or the ethnos, is a ‘social organism’, the existence of which is conditioned by commonality of language, cultural traits, origin and territory of settlement as well as by the ethnic identity (etnicheskoe samosoznanie) which is shared by all members of the ethnos (Bromley, 1973, p. 97). Bromley (1981, p. 23) stated that ‘the cultural unity of the representatives of one ethnos is inseparably connected to the unity of their mentality which, in particular, is manifested in the hues of their [ethnic] character, in [their] specific value orientations, in [their] tastes and so on’. The cornerstone of the theory of ethnos is an acknowledgment of the organic links between the ethnic (cultural) community and the territory of its settlement or its origin. Studies of ethnogenesis dominated Soviet ethnology and interpreted the history of the ethnic group as a territorialised evolution of autochthonous culture(s). Such studies had serious political implications because they could be, and, in fact, often were, used as an argument in territorial disagreements between ethno-national autonomous regions. For instance, both the Azeris and the Armenians consider the ancient population of the region of Karabakh, or Artsah to be their ancestors and on this basis they claim their historical rights to the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast’ (Goluboff and Karaeva, 2005, p. 19). The ethnic violence which broke out between Azeris and Armenians around NagornoKarabakh in 1988 became the first of the so-called ‘ethnic conflicts’ which shook the late-Soviet period, and continue today in many parts of the post-Soviet space in the form of civil wars or frozen conflicts. ‘The Reordering of Meaningful Worlds’: New Ethnic Diversity in the Post-Soviet Space In the Soviet Union, the cultural rootedness of titular ethnic groups in the territory of their autonomous regions was part of mainstream state ideology and was justified scientifically. As a consequence, Soviet nationality policy had an impact on the formation of the structure and ideology of the ethnic political elites. It also shaped the social identities of several generations of Soviet people and determined their perception of social reality. The collapse of the Soviet regime was thus a huge socio-cultural stress for the population of the USSR. Verdery sees in the post-socialist transformations ‘a reordering of people’s entire meaningful worlds’: In moments of major transformation, people may find that new forms of action are more productive than the ones they are used to, or that older forms make

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  37 sense in a different way, or that ideals they could only aspire to before are now realizable. Such moments lead to reconfiguring one’s world; the process can be individual and collective, and it is often driven by the activities of would-be elites (in competition with one another). (Verdery, 1999, p. 34) In the closing days of the Soviet Union, ethno-nationalism emerged from Soviet ethno-federalism and effectively institutionalised the personal ethnic identifications of Soviet citizens (Brubaker, 1996, p. 24). At a deeper level, there is a paradigmatic similarity between the ideologies of nationalism and socialism. As Verdery states, ‘they share both a fundamental essentialism (identities are fixed, unchanging) and a totalising impulse’ (1996, pp. 93–4). Even if nationalism is seen by society as politically antagonistic to the previous ideology, it leaves intact the moral basis of the political community which was created by the rejected regime. The nation or the ethnic group is viewed as the ‘People-as-One’ and opposed to other nations and / or ethnic groups (Verdery, 1996, pp. 94–6). Not surprisingly, the post-Soviet ethno-nationalist movements borrowed many of their ‘arguments and postulates for political platforms and cultural programmes’ from academic publications by (post-) Soviet ethnologists (Tishkov, 1997, p. 6). The heightened ethno-nationalism in the former socialist societies is partly explained by the institutionalised primordialist understanding of ethnicity and nation (Slezkine, 1996; Tishkov, 1997; Verdery, 1993; Suny, 1993). Nevertheless, it is an oversimplification to see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a direct result of ethnic revivalism. Rather than being descendants of pre-modern ethnic communities whose identity is based on primordial cultural bonds and whose self-determination was suppressed by the ‘Soviet Empire’, post-Soviet ethnicities emerged from Soviet ethno-federalism (Tishkov, 1996, p. 33). In a way, the ethnic diversity of the post-Soviet era is an outcome of Soviet modernity. Post-Soviet ‘Securitisation’ of Inter-ethnic Relations Due to the Soviet ethno-territorialisation of national identities, in the post-Soviet era the category ‘nation’ (natsiia) is now defined in ethno-cultural rather than citizenship terms. As a consequence, in the contemporary Russian Federation, the concept of ‘national minorities’ is often understood as a part of the ethno-nation living outside their ‘historical homeland’ or their ethnic territory (Sokolovski, not dated, p. 9). In this ethno-national paradigm, loyalty to the state is viewed as one’s belonging to the state ethno-nation, while ‘national minorities’ are stigmatised as a potentially disloyal population. Therefore, the relationships between the state and such minorities are seen as an area of concern for national security. Some scholars define such a situation as the ‘securitisation’ of ethnic policy (Wæver, 1995 cited from Kymlicka, 2002 p. 20). Kymlicka considers that the ‘securitisation’ of ethnic policy is typical of some post-socialist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe, where the ‘history of imperialism, collaboration and border change’ has

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38  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism encouraged the assumption that ‘a strong and stable state requires weak and disempowered minorities’ (2002, pp. 20–21). Contemporary Russian ‘nationality policy’ is also determined by the ‘interests of national security’ (interesy natsional’noi bezopasnosti), the most important of which is the ‘prevention of inter-ethnic conflicts’ ( predotvrashchenie mezhnatsional’nykh konfliktov). Osipov (2002b, p. 62) believes that ‘conflictological’ discourse is used to justify the Russian authorities’ policy, leading to the violation of civil and minority rights and to the curtailing of society’s control over the power of the state. Since the perestroika period, ‘ethnic conflict’ has become the central theme of (post-) Soviet ethnology and it still dominates Russian ethnic studies (see Tishkov, 1996a and 1997; Pain, 1996; Drobizheva, 2003). The investigation of so-called ethnic conflict is the priority for contemporary Russian social sciences in general. As Osipov points out, it is a ‘conflictology approach’ that dominates nowadays in Russian ethnic studies: ‘Very different social agents use the “conflict” language in order to describe or interpret the whole spectrum of ethnic manifestations in different areas of the social space’ (2002b, p. 45). Yet the contemporary Russian academic discourse of ethnic conflict justifies, and to a certain extent reproduces, the official ideology of the ‘securitisation’ of inter-ethnic relations. Although the impacts of social transformation and violence upon ethnicity are now often investigated from both the instrumentalist and constructivist paradigms, and the theory of ethnos is being ousted from its position as the grand-narrative in contemporary Russian ethnology,4 the conceptualisation of conflict in ethnic terms nevertheless still suggests a primordialist understanding of ethnicity. Such an approach might be identified, using Appadurai’s term ‘the Bosnia Fallacy’, as ‘an error that involves . . . misunderstanding Eastern European ethnic battles as tribalist and primordial’, ignoring the real question of the discursive construction of ethnicities in conflict and the power relations behind the representation as primordial of these conflicts (Appadurai, 1996, p. 21). Thus, a study of cultural identities in the contemporary Russian Federation has to be set up as a critical reflection on the unique historical experience of Soviet ethno-federalism, with its inherent principles of ethno-territorialism and the institutionalised ethno-identification of citizens. The role of the state ideology of securitisation in relation to ethnic minorities and the ‘conflictology’ approach to academic research also have to be taken into account as factors which influence the discursive construction of social identities in post-Soviet Russia.

4 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a heated discussion between supporters of the constructivist and instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity and their opponents from the old Soviet school of ethnographic research developed in the pages of the main Russian anthropological journal, Sovetskaia ethnographia (Krupnik, 1990; Kuznetsov, Markov and Cheshko, 1989; Tishkov, 1989a and 1989b; see also Sokolovski, 2004).

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  39

‘Migration Policy’ of the Regional Political Regimes in Southern Russia The post-Soviet transformation of political and economic relationships between the federal centre and the subjects of the Russian Federation led to an emergence of regionalist political regimes in provincial Russia. As Humphrey suggests, the Soviet principle of the territoriality of state administration, which survived ‘the collapse of the USSR, disintegration of the Communist Party and many all-union departmental structures’, was dominant in the organisation of social, political and economic life in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russian regions (Humphrey, 1999, p. 31). As economic connections weakened within the country (vertically, between the federal centre and the provinces and horizontally, between neighbouring regions), the regional elites aimed to establish total control over the local resources by creating legislation of their own which closed the region to ‘strangers’. Exploiting regional specifics, such as ethnicity, religion and the cultural peculiarities of the local population, the regionalist ideologies were used to mobilise regional identities for the support of provincial political regimes (Humphrey, 1999, pp. 43–4). In southern Russia, these processes coincided with the development of legislative systems and policies which institutionalised discrimination against migrants and ethnic minorities in the region. Construction of ‘Migrants’ and ‘Natives’ and Regional Legislation in Krasnodar Krai The institution of registration of citizens in the place of their residence (registratsia po mestu zhitel’stva) provides provincial political regimes with effective means of control over, and regulation of, socio-economic relationships in the region. Initially, registration was introduced as part of the liberalisation of post-Soviet domestic policy, replacing the Soviet system of the so-called propiska. The practice of propiska as a mechanism of control over population movement was officially abolished in October 1993. The Russian Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of movement to all citizens of the Russian Federation. According to the new legislation, individual residence is merely registered and not granted. Officially, registration does not restrict either the residence or the movement of people in the country’s territory; however, the local authorities continue to use registration for controlling migration, via the introduction of their own procedures for the establishment of residence. Thus, restrictive propiska has been de facto resurrected in the local use of registration (Pilkington, 1998a, pp. 40–41). The whole body of regional legislation in Krasnodar territory is dedicated to registration control (for detailed characteristics of regional normative acts, see Osipov and Cherepova, 1996, pp. 18–23). In his description of the registration regime of Krasnodar Krai, Osipov points out that the regional legislation classifies people applying for registration in the region according to three categories: The concessionary group (children and parents of Krai residents who are registered in the same dwelling, demobilised soldiers returning to the Krai,

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40  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism and so on) receive a registration permit unconditionally, regardless of observance of housing norms. The second group (close relatives of Krai residents, specialists who have been offered employment) are registered in accordance with housing norms. The third group, i.e. all other people, are registered ‘as exceptions’, or in other words, with special permission. (Osipov, 2002a, pp. 11–12) In fact, this regional registration regime violates both Federal legislation and civil rights. However, the trend to use registration as a tool for control over population movement within the country can be seen in the recent development of federal legislation. Several amendments to the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation which were adopted by the Federal Parliament in March and April 2004, increased administrative penalties for failure to obtain registration in the place of residence. These amendments target foreigners and people without citizenship as well as Russian citizens who fail to register foreigners living in their property (Levinson, 2004, pp. 11–13). The category ‘local population / local residents’ was introduced into the legislative and law enforcement practices of regional officials by Krasnodar Krai’s Law ‘On the registration of movement and residence on the territory of Krasnodar Krai’ No. 9–KZ of 23 June 1995. This law imposes a settlement qualification of 10 years which is required of citizens in order to receive permanent registration in the region and obtain full rights in the territory of Krasnodar Krai as naturalised ‘local residents’. At the same time, this regional law and similar normative acts provide legislative frameworks for discrimination against people who are classified as migrants. The category ‘migrants’ has no clear juridical definition in those parts of Russian legislation which address migration issues, so it often becomes the subject of political manipulation by provincial regimes. For example, in Krasnodar Krai, the term ‘migrants’ could be applied to Russian citizens who have arrived from other parts of the Russian Federation as well as to people who have resettled in the region from the former Soviet republics in the 1990s. At the same time, in the regional media discourse and in official public rhetoric, the definition ‘migrants’ is used to refer to almost all groups of ethnic minorities, even if the representatives of these groups have lived in the region for a long time and have permanent registration there. Hence, in regional discourses, the boundaries between the ‘local population’ and so-called ‘migrants’ are ethnicised. Migrants are identified as representatives of ‘non-native ethnic groups’ (predstaviteli nekorennykh etnosov) (Osipov, 2002a, p. 9). Non-native ethnic groups form the main target of a regional migration policy which restricts the registration of the representatives of ethnic minorities resettling in Krasnodar Krai. There is a range of regional normative acts which address particular ethnic groups classified as migrants. For instance, the Krasnodar governor’s decrees have criticised those local administrators who issued marriage certificates and granted permanent registration and Russian citizenship to ethnic Armenians and Georgians

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  41 residing in the region.5 A so-called ‘special’ regime of residence had been created for the Meskhetian Turks, who resettled in Krasnodar Krai from Uzbekistan in 1989–1990 after anti-Turkish riots and violent attacks in the Fergana valley (Tomlinson, 2004, pp. 18–21). In violation of Article 13 of the ‘Law on Citizenship’ of 6 February 1992, regional officials have treated the Meskhetian Turks as ‘stateless people’ (litsa bez grazhdanstva) insisting on the temporary status of their residence in Krasnodar Krai (Popov and Kuznetsov, 2008; Osipov, 1999). The long-lasting campaign of Russian and international human rights organisations to gain publicity for the situation of the Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar Krai has resulted in an international outcry against discrimination towards Turks in the region, which influenced the US State Department’s decision to grant refugee status to more than 10,000 Meskhetian Turks from southern Russia as people threatened by ethnic cleansing in 2004. The Krasnodar authorities, however, publicise such developments in the ‘Meskhetian Turks problem’ as a great success for the regional migration policy (see Press-sluzhba administratsii kraia, 2004; Lukina, 2004, p. 13; Abramtseva, 2004, p. 7). In accordance with regional anti-migrant legislation, district and town administrations refuse to grant residence permits mainly to those migrants who belong to ethnic minorities. The absence of regional registration is considered an administrative offence, so people without registration who are identified in the course of police raids, which are frequent in those areas with a compact population of ethnic minorities, are detained in local police stations and released only after they have paid a fine. Furthermore, people without permanent registration cannot be officially employed by local enterprises, do not receive pensions or other social benefits and have no access to public health services or vocational and higher education. Until 2003, they could not legally purchase property or own houses or land in the region. The Greeks who are involved in transnational migration to Greece find themselves also vulnerable to these discriminatory rules, since many of them lost their local propiska when they applied for ‘repatriation visas’ in accordance with the Soviet and Russian emigration regulations in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Regional Discourse of ‘Securitisation’ and the Criminalisation of Ethnic Minorities and Migrants In the contemporary Russian Federation, issues of migration and ethnic minorities are mainly discussed within the discourses of professed ‘national security’ (gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost). As some researchers have noted, the language of postSoviet securitisation discourse is rather symbolic and serves the ideological aims

5 The Decree of Krasnodar Krai’s Head of Administration ‘On the facts of brutal violation of the Russian Federation’s laws and Krasnodar Krai’s normative acts which regulate registration of citizens and the rules of land use and construction in the city of Sochi’, No. 130 of 11 April 1997.

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42  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism of the ruling political regime. Hence, such formulas as ‘prevention of conflicts’ (predotvrashchenie konfliktov) or ‘regulation of inter-ethnic relations’ (regulirovanie mezhnatsional’nykh otnoshenii) contain the message that state bureaucracy imposes its monopoly of control over some spheres of social life (Osipov, 2002b, pp. 62–3). According to Foucault’s history of ‘governmentality’, the apparatus of security is an essential mechanism of the modern state, which seeks first and foremost to control and care for its population (Foucault, 1991, p. 102). The Russian state authorities see migration and ethnic diversity as objects of heavy policing. According to the ‘Law on Citizenship’, which came into effect in 2003, citizens of the former Soviet republics who live and work in the Russian Federation have to be treated in the same way as other foreigners from the ‘far abroad’, and the procedure for acquiring Russian citizenship has become more complicated for them (Levinson, 2003, pp. 7–8; Moskovkin, 2003, pp. 9–10). At the same time, migration issues and questions of so-called ‘nationality policy’ (natsional’naia politika) have been passed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD, the police) since the abolition of the Federal Migration Service and the Ministry of National Policy and Federal Affairs in 2001.6 The police approach to ‘the problem of ethnic migration’ criminalises ethnic minorities and migrants. The absence of registration is considered by the police to be an administrative offence and people without registration are treated as illegal migrants (see Kostin, 2002; Shapovalova, 2002). The central and regional police departments register the ethnicity of criminal offenders and include this data in the criminal statistics. Such ethnic classification of criminal activities is elaborated in the concept of ‘ethnic crime’, which is widely publicised by police officials through the mass media (see for example Voronkova, 2001; Kucheruk, 2001). The regional authorities justify a repressive policy towards foreign citizens, stateless people and some ethnic minorities who, in their opinion, are illegally living in Krasnodar Krai, by insisting that the migrants contribute to the rise in crime and have a negative effect on the ‘climate of inter-ethnic relations’. Since 2002, the office of the Krasnodar governor and the regional Legislative Assembly (ZSKK) have issued several normative acts which aim to implement the deportation of ‘illegal migrants’ as a routine police practice in Krasnodar territory (see Tur’ialai, 2003, p. 10; Petrosian, 2002, p. 4; Kubanskie novosti, 2002; Kuznetsova, 2001, p. 4). The region’s officials and its media claim that non-Russian migration to southern Russia does not meet the ‘geopolitical interests’ of the Russian Federation in the North Caucasus and could potentially undermine ‘national security’ (Osadchii, 2002, p. 2). In regional normative acts, the non-Russian migrants from Transcaucasia and the republics of the Northern Caucasus are stigmatised by association 6 On 13 September 2004, at the Government meeting dedicated to the hostage crisis at the school of Beslan (1–3 September 2004), President Putin announced the resurrection of the Ministry of National Policy as a part of the president’s political initiatives in ‘strengthening measures against terrorism and political extremism’ and ‘strengthening the power of the central authorities in the regions’ and ‘the unity of nation’. In 2014 the Ministry of National Policy was abolished again and reopened under name of the Federal Agency for Nationalities’ Affairs on 31 March 2014.

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  43 with the violent conflicts, ethnic cleansing and terrorist attacks which took place in these regions after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The following quotation from one of the resolutions issued by ZSKK in 2002 provides a typical example of the discursive construction of dangerous ‘ethnic migration’: The permeability of the Russian southern borders and the frontier location of Krasnodar Krai close to the zones of violent conflict make entry to the territory of the region easier for individuals who violate the legislation of the Russian Federation. The stability of society and the national security of the Russian Federation on the southern borders are seriously threatened by terrorist attacks in southern Russia, political and religious extremism, ethnic conflict, arms and drug smuggling, [and] the growth of ethnically organised criminal structures. (Kubanskie novosti, 2002) In the early 2000s, in the regionalist discourse of the Krasnodar authorities, the ideas of ‘national security’ and the ‘struggle against illegal migration’ were interlinked with the demand for the special ‘borderland’ status of Krasnodar Krai (see Beketov, 2002 and 2001; Eschenko, 2000; Rozhkova, 2000; and Kubanskie novosti, 2000a). Almost all the anti-migrant normative acts which have been adopted in Krasnodar Krai violate Federal legislation and the Constitution of the Russian Federation (Kubanskie novosti, 2000b). Although ZSKK was eventually forced to remove almost all non-Constitutional bills from local legislation, the notorious Law on Registration was left intact (Kurdiuk, 2001). Furthermore, the regional authorities successfully lobbied for the legislation that strengthened anti-migrant measures at the federal level. In June 2002 the higher chamber of the Russian Parliament, the Council of the Federation, issued its Resolution, ‘On state regulation of migration in the Russian Federation’. The main themes of this decree are similar to the articles of the draft law initiated by the Krasnodar and Adygea deputies (Kuban’ segodnia, 2002). Thus, state migration and ‘national’ policy led to the alienation of migrants from the CIS, especially those of non-Russian origin, from the population of postSoviet Russia. A ‘migration policy’ which discriminates against ethnic minorities constitutes a central pillar of the regional citizenship regime in Krasnodar territory. Regional identity is discursively constructed within this ethnic hierarchy by contrasting the self-styled ‘native population’ with ‘ethnic migrants’, while the unequal positions of the ‘natives’ and ‘migrants’ are institutionalised via the regional legislative system. Academic Discourse and the Conceptualisation of Migration and Ethnicity in Southern Russia The anti-migrant political practices and discriminatory legislative system in are tightly interwoven with theoretical approaches to, and media representation of,

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44  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism ethnicity and migration in the region. Observers of post-Soviet policy towards migrants and minorities have already noted the interdependence between the academic, political and media discourses of ‘inter-ethnic relations’ in contemporary Russia (Osipov, 2002b, p. 63). Officials and the mass media draw upon references to the opinion of scholars as symbolic capital, while academic experts take advantage of access to power resources as consultants and public supporters of the official ‘national’ policy. Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge shows that, since their emergence as a social institution in the nineteenth century, the modern social sciences have produced knowledge which has never been free of the power relations existing in society (Foucault, 1980). In Krasnodar Krai, the authorities frequently ask the ‘informed opinion’ of regional experts in ‘migration and ethnic processes’. At the same time, experts use information received from regional officials as well as the databases of law enforcement agencies. Sometimes academics are employed as high-ranking bureaucrats responsible for issues of ‘national policy’ in the federal and provincial government institutions; they often combine their research with their work as policy makers. This is the case of the region’s most prominent expert in ‘ethnic and migration studies’. In Krasnodar Krai, the very first study of ‘inter-ethnic relations’ was based on interviews conducted among the deputies of the Krai Council (which was the higher executive authority in the region at the time) in 1991 by the postgraduate sociology student, Mikhail Savva, who also worked as the head of the Interethnic Relations Department of the Krai Council (Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 60). In the mid-1990s, Dr Savva was appointed to the post of a deputy Minister of Nationalities, and later he worked in the office of the Krasnodar Mayor. He also established himself as a leading expert in ethnic and migration studies in the region by publishing several articles and monographs on this subject; his interviews and ‘expert comments’ (kommentarii eksperta) were frequently published in the regional newspapers in Krasnodar Krai (see for example Savva, 2002a; 2002b; 2001 and 2000). From 2001 until 2013, Mikhail Savva was a director of grant programmes in the Krasnodar Regional NGO ‘The Southern Regional Resource Centre’ where he led a number of projects focusing on relationships between migrants and local population in Krasnodar Krai. He continued teaching in the Kuban State University as a Professor in Political Sciences.7 As a result theoretical approaches elaborated within regional ethnic and migration studies often underpinned and justified the anti-migrant policy implemented by the Krai authorities. 7 In April 2013, Mikhail Savva was arrested and detained by FSB. Russian human rights activists insisted that Savva’s arrest was politically motivated and related to the current attack on NGOs receiving foreign funding (Kuznetsov, 2013, p. 221). In January 2015, he escaped from house arrest and emigrated from Russia (Mishin, 2015).

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  45 Thinking About ‘Ethnic Conflict’ One example of the close cooperation between the authorities and their academic experts is the development of the concept of ‘ethnic conflict’ in regional ethnic and migration studies in southern Russia. This concept is based on the perception that social interaction may be defined as the relationships between different ethnic groups, or ethnoses. For instance, in a book written by Mikhail Savva, in co-authorship with Elena Savva, ethnicity is defined ‘as a fundamental category, as a form of organisation of human existence, which is closely related to the category culture most of all’ (Savva and Savva, 2002, p. 25, my emphasis). As a consequence, all social processes, including migration, are seen as a manifestation of the ethnic nature of humanity. This understanding of ethnicity originates from the Soviet theory of ethnos which views the ethnic group (ethnos) as a collective subject of historical processes (see Bromley, 1973). Social scientists in southern Russia who share the theoretical positions cited above tend to describe the population of the region in ethnic terms, while a variety of social interactions are reduced to ostensible ‘inter-ethnic relations’ (mezhnatsional’nye otnosheniia). Moreover, they conclude that ethnic conflict is inevitable in a polyethnic / polycultural society because the ethnic group acts like a collective individual driven by its ‘national’ (ethnic) interests in competition with other ethnoses for economic and political resources (Petrov, 2003; Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003). Thus, Mikhail Savva and Elena Savva outline the following conclusions in their monograph:



1 Being a universal form of human existence, ethnicity has been, and will be, a relatively independent factor of conflict generation (konfliktogennyi faktor). 2 The polycultural and polyethnic characteristics of society (polikul’turnost’ i polietnichnost’) are closely interconnected. 3 Indeed, polyethnic society demonstrates a higher potential for conflict (bolee vysokii uroven’ konfliktogennosti) [than a monoethnic one]. However, this is one example of how a weakness in society can also be a strength because the developmental capacity [in polyethnic societies] is higher than in monoethnic societies. Furthermore, monoethnic societies effectively no longer exist today. 4 Ethnic conflicts are inevitable phenomena in the life of contemporary society. . . . 5 Almost any ethnic conflict acquires the form of ethno-political conflict in contemporary conditions (Savva and Savva, 2002, p. 32).

In their works, regional academics in Krasnodar Krai persistently link ethnic diversity with conflict in such a way as to justify the discriminatory migration and nationality policy of the Krai authorities. At the level of public discourse, this academic work contributes to reproducing negative attitudes towards non-Russian

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46  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism minorities among the Russian majority in the region. At the same time, such an ethnic vision and division of social reality results in a conceptualisation of the regional identity of Russians in Krasnodar Krai in ethnic terms. The Concept of Kuban Regional Identity: ‘Indigenisation’ of Cossacks With regard to the situation in the region, particularly in the case of Krasnodar Krai, local researchers consider there to be a high risk of ethnic conflict between locals (who are usually called ‘native / indigenous population’ (korennoe naselenie)) and migrants (Petrov, 2003). In fact, local academics insist that a ‘single ethno-cultural space’ (edinnoe etnokul’turnoe prostranstvo) had been established in Krasnodar Krai by the late 1980s (Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 94). Russians, who constitute 85 per cent of the regional population, are seen as a ‘titular ethnos’ consolidating the regional ‘ethno-cultural space’ (Bondar’, 1998, p. 38; Matveev, 2002, p. 4). At the same time, the regional specific is emphasised in the academic and political representation of the local Russian population. This regional identity is marked by the historical name of the region as Kuban (which originates from the name of the main river in the north-western part of the Caucasus); hence the ‘native population’ of the region are called Kubanians (kubantsy). Thus, the link between the local territory and its Russian population is discursively constructed in regional identity politics. Such a primordial connection of people and land is also emphasised by the historic association of the word ‘Kuban’ with the Cossacks, who had a quasi-autonomous ‘Kuban Oblast’, in the region during the pre-revolutionary period until its abolition after the Civil War in 1920. The Cossacks historically constituted a military semi-privileged estate within the Russian Empire, and their military organisations, the so-called ‘hosts’ (voiska), also had administrative functions in the Cossack regions. As members of their hosts, Cossacks were collective owners of the local lands. This, together with the economic and social boundaries which existed between the Cossacks and the rest of the Tsar’s subjects, led to the establishment of a strong Cossack cultural and social identity in pre-revolutionary Russia. As a result of the Bolsheviks’ repressions of the Kuban Cossacks, the majority of whom actively supported the White movement during the Civil War, the Cossack population of the region decreased during the 1920s–1930s. At the same time, significant groups of non-Cossack Russians and Ukrainians were resettled, sometimes forcibly, to Cossack villages (stanitsy) from other regions of the USSR (Polian, 2001, pp. 77–80). Since 1989, an ethno-political Cossack revivalist movement (vozrozhdenie kazachestva) has been in progress in the region. Although the leaders of the modern Cossack movement claim its succession from the historical Kuban Cossack Host, nothing like a majority of local residents of Cossack origin participate in this movement, and not all members of today’s Cossack organisations have Cossack ancestors. The regional regime, however, supports Cossack revivalism. The Cossack organisations are allocated money from the regional budget on a regular

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  47 basis; ZSKK had a special Committee on Cossack Affairs; and the leaders of the Kuban Cossack movement have been appointed as deputy governors since the late 1990s. The Krasnodar authorities back Cossack paramilitary organisations and use them in their anti-migrant policy within the region. Since September 2012 the Cossack druzhiny (patrols), funded by the Krai administration, have policed the streets of towns and villages in the region together with local law enforcement. In August 2012, the governor of Krasnodar Krai, Alexander Tkachev, gave a speech at a meeting of the Ministry of Internal Affairs explaining the main purpose of these patrols as demonstrating a conspicuous presence in the battle against migration from the neighbouring Caucasus republics (Kostiukova and Ivanov, 2012). In its brutal honesty Tkachev’s speech is a good example of how production and maintenance of the regional citizenship regime goes hand in hand with migration policy, ‘securitization discourses’, regional particularism and Cossacks paramilitarism: We do not have any other option – we will push [the migrants] out, enforce order, ask for documents, practice migration policy ([asking a migrant] where he arrived from, why, etc.). So those, who are attempting to have an ‘easy ride’ to here, [in order] to come here, put down their claims [to property here], make provocations or do illegal business, would understand that it is not worthwhile to come to Kuban. There are Kubanians here, they have their own laws, and they are rather tough guys. Since there are functional police forces, Cossacks here; they [migrants] better go somewhere else. (cited from Kostiukova and Ivanova, 2012) The regional identity of the ‘native’ population is constructed within official discourse as a Cossack one. Regional symbols, such as the flag, coat of arms, and anthem, are borrowed from the Kuban Cossack autonomy of the imperial and Civil war epochs. Moreover, Article 2 of the Status of Krasnodar Krai declares: Krasnodar Krai is the historical territory of the Kuban Cossacks’ foundation; it is the primordial land of the Russian people who constitute the majority of the Krai’s population. The structure and activities of the state authorities in the region are organised with respect to this situation. (cited from Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 92) Ironically, though, Cossack revivalists widely use the ‘indigenisation’ discourse in representing themselves as a part of ‘the North Caucasus civilisation’, together with other ethnic groups native to the Northern Caucasus (Gromov, 2002a, p. 8; Gromov, 2002b, p. 3). Arguably the Cossack identity in the region is constructed through the discursive appropriation of the Caucasus as a ‘native land’ and alienating the non-Russian people who are historically associated with the region (Popov, 2012). Ethnocentrism in the construction of the regional Cossack identity is reflected in the use of the term ‘Slavs’, or ‘Slavic population’, as way of defining the ‘native residents’ (korennye zhiteli) of Kuban. The Cossacks are sometimes classified in

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48  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism the works of regional sociologists and ethnologists as a ‘quasi-Slavic nationality’ (Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 94), a subdivision of the Russian ethnos (Bondar’, 1995), or even as a separate East-Slavic ethnos which historically appeared in the Russian-Ukrainian borderland (Velikaia, 1999; Matveev, 2000). Therefore, with regard to regional identity, the concept of the ‘Slavic population’ is an inclusive definition for all ethnic groups speaking Slavic languages − mainly Russians, including those who consider themselves to be Cossacks, Ukrainians and Belorussians − but it also has a cultural connotation which assumes a sort of kin relationship based on the common cultural origin of all Slavs. Although this obviously resonates with pan-Slavic ideology, for example, in the case of the broad, popular and official support throughout Russia of Serbia as a ‘sister-nation’ during the Kosovo crisis (1999), the construction of Slavic identity in Krasnodar Krai has to be seen as a regional phenomenon.8 In this context, opposition on the part of the ‘native Slavic population’ to the ‘non-Slav migrants’ is thought of in terms of cultural differences. Construction of Cultural Differences Between ‘Slavs’ and ‘Migrants’ Krasnodar academics view the roots of ethnic conflict in cultural differences which they believe to exist between the ‘native Slavic population’ and ‘non-Slavic migrants’. Regional researchers share a rather essentialist perception of ethnic culture as a stable structure founded on ‘values and normative predispositions’ (tsennosti i normativnye ustanovki) which are common to all members of the ethnos (Petrov, 2003, p. 87). Hence, ethnic conflict is also ‘a clash of incompatible fundamental values’ (Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 76). According to this theory, elaborated by Mikhail Savva and the Krasnodar sociologist, Evgenii Kritskii, the local Slavs and migrants from Transcaucasia as well as other ‘Caucasian’ and Muslim peoples belong to different ‘socio-cultural types’, contact between which, therefore, will lead to inevitable conflict (Kritskii and Savva, 1998, p. 26). Similarly, the Kuban ethnologist, Nikolai Bondar’ (1999, p. 178), juxtaposes ‘the native Slavic population’ with the ‘peoples from Transcaucasia and Turkic peoples who confess Islam’. Furthermore, the Krasnodar sociologist, Vladimir Petrov, applies such an ethno-cultural typology to his survey of (in) tolerance towards ‘ethnic migrants’ in Krasnodar Krai by grouping respondents according to their ethnicity into ‘representatives of Slavic and European ethnoses (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Germans, Greeks and so on)’ and ‘representatives of the Caucasus and Central Asian peoples (Adygs, Armenians, Georgians and so on)’ (Petrov, 2003, p. 86). The ethnic migrants, or so-called ‘peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia’, are described in these works as traditional and archaic societies which have been touched by modernisation to a lesser extent than their Slavic counterparts, as a 8 In the regional context, the concept of ‘Slavic population’ usually does not include Western and Southern Slav ethnic groups, for example, the small Polish, Czech and Bulgarian minorities who have been living in the region since the nineteenth century.

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Ethnicity and Migration After Communism  49 result of which they tend to retain an ethnic and cultural isolation from the native population of the region (Rakachev and Rakacheva 2003, pp. 84–5). All these constitute a ‘threat’ to the ‘natives’ (Slavs) as a titular ethnic group. In one of his essays, Nikolai Bondar’ gives the following assessment of the impact of migration on the ‘Kuban ethno-cultural space’: a) an intensive process of ‘Armenisation’ of [Krasnodar] Krai, especially in the Black Sea coastal towns and the settlements alongside the main transportation routes; b) a process of ‘Islamisation’ of the region by means of the emergence of a new, and rapid increase in population of old, ethnic groups who practise Islam; c) an increase in the ethno-cultural and ethno-religious [sic] diversity of the local population, [for instance] the development of new diasporas which were previously either small or were not present at all ([such as] Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, Koreans, Kurds, etc.) on the territory of Kuban. At the end of the day, all these lead to fragmentation, [and] interruption of a more or less homogenous ethno-cultural space, the existence of which has always depended on the titular ethnos. [As a result] this space is becoming more fragile. (Bondar’, 1998, p. 38) All non-Slavic ethnic groups in Krasnodar Krai are also perceived as ‘non-native’ and alien to the Kuban ethno-cultural space. Hence, their ability to participate in the regional political process is limited. In order to gain a higher status in the Krai ethnic hierarchy, the leaders of ethnic communities have to compete for the public recognition of their historical right to be called ‘locals’. Thus, as will be shown in the chapters which follow, the Greeks expression of xenophobic attitudes towards Armenians might be partly explained by this struggle over the right to be seen as ‘natives’ in their settlements. Following the Krasnodar ethnologists and sociologists, the regional politicians in their public rhetoric occasionally praise ‘well-assimilated ethnic diasporas’ (Tsygankov, 2003). They also impose cultural differentiation between the so-called ‘Kubanian Armenians’ and the ‘Armenian migrants’, for example (Beketov, 2001). The former are conceived as Russified, or, in the language of Bondar’, ‘integrated’ into a ‘homogenous ethno-cultural space’, while the latter are represented as culturally different from their ‘local’ compatriots and, therefore, as ultimately ‘incompatible’ with even more culturally distant Slavs. In regional ethnic studies, there is a subaltern discourse which is critical of this dominant ethnocentric approach (see for example Kolesov, 2002 and 2003; Kolesov and Kochergin, 2003; Kuznetsov, 2013). Such critics of ethnocentrism point out that by discussing the cultural premises of ‘ethnic conflicts’, Kuban scholars both deliberately or involuntarily generate and promote racist and racialist discourses (Kolesov, 2003, p. 6). Academic hypotheses are then borrowed by politicians and journalists in order to explain and justify the discriminatory policy of the regional regime. As a result, ‘ethnic conflict’ is represented as an inevitable outcome of the cultural interaction between different ethnic groups. Migrants and

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50  Ethnicity and Migration After Communism minorities are alleged to be responsible for an increase in ethnic intolerance and xenophobia, while the ‘native majority’ is seen as the innocent victim of ethnic aggression. The conclusions and recommendations of regional academics help to present the strict anti-migrant policy of the provincial regime as something which is justified by the need to maintain ‘the historically established ethnic balance’ and the region’s security.9

Conclusion The regional perspective on the analysis of post-Soviet identity politics and conceptions of ethnicity and migration demonstrates how and why migrants and migration are discursively constructed by the regional authorities, academia and media, using a kind of ‘ethnic coding’. The concepts of ‘migrants’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ are merged in the quasi-academic expression ‘non-native ethnic groups’ which imposes ethnic, cultural and territorial barriers between those who are identified as ‘migrants’ and the supposed ‘local population’ of Krasnodar Krai. ‘Migration policy’ lies at the heart of regional ideology and is reflected in the discriminatory registration regime and legislative system. In these conditions, regional identity is also constructed in ethnic, or quasi-ethnic, terms through contrasting ‘ethnic migrants’ with ‘native Cossacks, or Slavs’. Dominating the regional public discourses, the rhetoric of ‘indigenisation’ (ukorenennosti) and ‘migration policy’ has affected the relationships between different ethnic groups as well as identity politics in southern Russia. The ethnographic investigation moves the analysis to the local and individual levels of the construction of social and cultural identities among the Greeks in two settlements – the town of Vitiazevo and the village of Gaverdovskii.

9 For a critical analysis of the racist discourses in the post-Soviet ethnic and migration studies, see also Osipov (2002b).

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3

History and the Politics of Representation Greek Ethnicity in Southern Russia

Introduction The history of the people who now call themselves Pontic Greeks is a complex one and could provide the material for a separate book. Historians of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires have covered significant periods however, the best examples being the articles of Anthony Bryer which are collected and reprinted in two volumes (1980a and 1988a) and two volumes of Bryer and Winfield’s (1985) survey of Byzantine monuments in the south-eastern Black Sea. The purpose of a history chapter in this book is different; firstly, it provides readers with a historical background to the Greek presence in the Caucasus and southern Russia. This is necessary because the issues discussed in this book often refer both to the distant and the recent pasts of the ‘Pontic’ Greeks in general and of the two examined communities in particular. Secondly, history itself becomes an important reference point in the construction of ethnic and cultural identity, providing a foundation for meaningful engagement between the past and present. For ordinary members of the two communities in question the legacy of their ethnic past exists as part of their collective memory that works alongside and sometimes against more institutionalised forms of historical knowledge (such as museum exhibitions, archival collections, published works by professional historians, representation of the past in media and so on). Therefore, in this chapter the informants’ own perceptions of their history – as it appears in their narratives – are presented alongside documented historical accounts. The term ‘collective memory’ is used here to indicate the form of social memory as a process of representation and active construction of the past by the members of a given group. As Pine et al. point out ‘[social] memory is both individual and collective, it is highly selective, it is both part of each individual’s life story and simultaneously a flexible and shifting resource drawn on, and continually reformed, through relationship in groups and collectives’ (2004, p. 20). Social memory has been extensively investigated by sociologists, anthropologists, historians and psychologists (for a detailed review of the literature, see Olick and Robbins, 1998). The areas of particular interest to social researchers are the interconnections between memory and identity, culture and history. Holbwachs (1992), for instance, argues that ‘collective memory is the active past that forms our identities’ (cf. Olick and

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52  History and Politics of Representation Robbins, 1998, p. 111). Social memory plays an important part in the construction of identities, since people build their identities and social relations ‘through mutual understanding and hence confirmation of particular shared pasts’ (Pine et al., 2004, p. 4). Indeed Boyarin argues that social memory and identity ‘are virtually the same’ since both are the product and manifestation of power relations at work within society that he defines as ‘politics of memory’ (Boyarin, 1994, p. 23). Finally, the histories of the Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii Greek communities are presented here in comparative perspective, because differences in their formation are reflected in the specific ways in which contemporary Greek ethnicity, local identities and transnational migration are understood by people in these settlements.

The Greeks of the Pontos The ancestors of the Greeks who are now living in southern Russia and particularly in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii came from the northern part of Eastern Anatolia, a region which is geographically and culturally related to the Caucasus. As early as the eighth century bce, the first colonies of Ionian Greeks appeared in the Pontos, the region stretching along the Black Sea coast from the contemporary city of Sinop in Turkey to Batumi in Georgia, and separated from the rest of Anatolia by the Pontic Alps (see Map 3.1). The Greek colonists settled in the Pontos among the native populations of Caucasian origin. These natives were gradually Hellenised within the Hellenic Pontic Kingdom (until 64 bce) and later the Byzantine Empire (until 1204 ce). However,

Map 3.1  The Pontos in the nineteenth century Source: Popov, 2007b.

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History and Politics of Representation  53 some researchers consider that the peoples of the Pontos still share many common cultural features with the native inhabitants of the Caucasus, differentiating them from the population of the inner Anatolian plateaux (Bryer, 1988c). This is reflected in the fact that, in contemporary Turkey, the population of the southeastern Black Sea coastal regions (Karadeniz) is regionally identified as Laz and considered culturally distinct from the population in other parts of the country (Meeker, 1971, p. 321). The Lazi-speaking minority (linguistically related to the Mingrelians and Georgians) now dominates only the eastern part of the historical Pontos (so-called Lazistan) (see Beller-Hann and Hann, 2001); at the same time, in Turkey, the term Laz is a ‘folk’ definition for people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds originating from the region (Meeker, 1971). For example, before their resettlement in the Caucasus, the Turkish-speaking Greeks from the inner areas of Eastern Anatolia used the word Laz to refer to the Pontic Greekspeakers from the Black Sea coast. This description was brought from Anatolia to the Caucasus by the ancestors of the Turkish-speaking Greeks of Gaverdovskii. Although the Greeks who resettled in Gaverdovskii from the Tsalka district in eastern Georgia now actively participate in the Pontic Greek revivalist movement and consider themselves Pontians (see Chapter 8), the East Anatolian province (Erzurum pashalik) of the Ottoman Empire, from which their ancestors migrated to the Caucasus, was situated outside the historical Pontos and had a predominantly Armenian population. The Gaverdovskian Greeks now use the term Laz without any regional connotation to demarcate the linguistic boundaries between the Turkish- and Pontic-speaking groups of Greeks in the Caucasus:1 Sometimes Greeks are called Laz. In the past, the old people, illiterate people called all those who spoke Greek ‘Laz’. Now if you see our Greek, K. [the informant refers to a Pontic Greek-speaking businessman from a nearby city of Maykop], you say that he is a Laz. It means he speaks Greek . . .  (Iosif, born 1929, Gaverdovskii) Regional identities, however, intersect with the religious identification of the Pontic populations as Orthodox Christians. Membership of the Greek Orthodox Church and loyalty to the Emperor were inseparable as cultural indicators in the Byzantine Empire (Kartashev, 1994, p. 295); therefore, the Orthodox there defined themselves as Romans (Rhomaioi) after the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire (Bryer, 1991, pp. 319–23). The ‘Roman’ identity was maintained in the Greek Trebizond Empire (1204–1461), the medieval state which emerged in the Pontos in the declining years of the Byzantine civilization, and in Anatolia under the Ottoman rule (Bryer, 1991, p. 321). Even now the Pontic-speakers in Vitiazevo define themselves as ‘romeoi’ which is the Pontic synonym for the Russian ethnic term ‘greki’ (Greeks), while the Turkish-speaking Greeks in Gaverdovskii use the 1 The Pontic-speaking Greeks in Vitiazevo, who have dropped out of the Anatolian cultural context since the resettlement of their ancestors in the Northern Caucasus in the nineteenth century, are now altogether unaware of their regional identification as Laz.

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54  History and Politics of Representation word ‘urumlar’ to refer to local Greeks. Both terms can be traced from the Byzantine epoch through the Ottoman Empire where ‘Rum’ was the name for Orthodox Christian subjects (Bryer, 1991, p. 327). Religion and the state played decisive roles in the construction of social identities in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman imperial system which established its rule in the region by 1461 was both feudal and theocratic. The population of the Empire was divided into religious millets based on different denominations (Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Armenian-Gregorian and Jewish) as separate feudal estates in which Muslims dominated over non-Muslim groups. The millet system shaped the social identity of the imperial population according to a social hierarchy based on religion, whilst often ignoring existing ethnic differences. In practice, therefore, people practising Orthodox Christianity and classified by the Ottoman administration as Rum-Greeks, often had quite diverse origins and the use of Turkish by some ‘Pontic’ Greeks today is evidence of the group’s complex ethnic history. The family histories of some contemporary Greek residents of Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii reveal the heterogeneous character of the Pontic Christians. For example, in Vitiazevo, one family is referred to as Tatar’ia (‘Tatars’, or ‘the Muslims’); a nickname which they received, according to local legend, from their forefather who was a Turkish-Muslim convert to Orthodox Christianity (Foma, born 1955, Vitiazevo). In Gaverdovskii, there are recollections of some Greek families being Assyrian, Jewish, or Armenian in origin (Iosif, born 1929, Gaverdovskii). The religious identity of the Pontic Christians has also been contested and renegotiated throughout history. Under conditions of the Ottoman theocracy, upward social mobility for non-Muslims was possible only on condition of their conversion to Islam. Meeker notes that ‘ethnicity and language were not correlated with political identity and religious affiliation during the late Ottoman period’, and in the Pontos ‘the older Byzantine peoples became Muslim by participating in an imperial project rather than by assimilation to a Turco-Islamic majority’ (Meeker, 2002, p. 93). Many of the Pontic natives were converted to Islam during the first two centuries following the Ottoman conquest of the region. Taking the high military and religious posts in the region, their elite were integrated into the ruling class of imperial society. The converted population accepted Ottoman identity, but in many instances the people retained their local, native languages. As a consequence, in the contemporary Eastern coastal region of Turkey, there are still large pockets of the Muslim population who are Greek-speakers (the Off, Chaykara, Machka and Tonya districts of the Trabzon province), Lazi-speakers (the provinces of Rize and Artvin) and Armenian-speakers (the Hopa district of the Artvin province). These people now ultimately associate themselves with the Turkish nation-state, while they have sometimes multiple regional and linguistic identities as Rum, Laz, or Hemshin (Asan, 1996; Meeker, 2002; Beller-Hann and Hann, 2001; Simonian, 2007). The involvement of non-Muslims in the imperial project also affected their religious identification, as the case of the so-called crypto-Christians reveals. The Pontic crypto-Christian communities were ‘discovered’ in the nineteenth century in the remote areas of the region. European diplomats and travellers who visited

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History and Politics of Representation  55 the Pontos left anecdotal accounts of crypto-Christian communities in the highland villages of Kurum (Krom), Stavri and Santa, which frequently mentioned the paradoxical mixture of Islam and Christianity in the religious practices of the Kurumlis and Stavriotes, whose priests were simultaneously mullahs (Palgrave, 1881; Chikhachev, 1960; Gordlevskii, 1967; see also Bryer, 1988d). These cryptoChristian communities were established by Greek Orthodox miners and charcoalburners that had concessions from the Ottoman authorities, granting exemption from the religious tax and the right to carry weapons. Hence they acquired a socioeconomic status that was equal to that of Muslims, in addition to being freed from military service as Christians. After the closure of the mines in 1829, those people who were living in remote highland areas of the Pontos became lost to both the Ottoman bureaucracy and the Constantinople Patriarchy; this allowed them to retain their special status and identity and develop religious practices which combined Christian and Muslim rituals with local beliefs and cults. Only in 1910 were they officially recognised as Christians by both the Ottoman authorities and the Orthodox Church (Bryer, 1988d, p. 32). Some families of the Vitiazevo Greeks trace their genealogies from the first settlers who originated from the crypto-Christian villages of Stavri (Istavri) and Santa. Although the crypto-Christian past of their ancestors is completely absent in the collective memory of contemporary Vitiazevo Greeks, some of them still recall stories of the close association of their grandparents with the Muslims back in the Pontos. In the past Muslim first names were not rare among villagers and their descendants still tell fascinating stories about their fathers’ Muslim names: [When my grandparents lived in Turkey] their common language was Turkish, like Russian is ours today. Their friends were also Turks, this is why my father’s name was Murad. This is my story . . . So there was a Turkish village next to the Greek village [of my grandparents], a rich Turk lived there who was a friend of my grandfather. The name of his only son was Murad, and this Murad died during a horseracing accident . . . Then this Turk said to my grandfather: ‘I see that [your wife] is expecting a child; if it is a boy, let’s call him Murad. We are neighbours and I will see how he is growing up, and will consider him as my own son’. They were very good friends, and my grandfather did not object to his offer. When my father was born and the time came to baptise him, the priest refused to give him a Muslim name in the church. After a very long negotiation, this rich Turk persuaded the priest to baptise my father at home with a Muslim name for a big sum of liras. (Matvei, born 1924, Vitiazevo) The regional and religious identities of Pontic Christians were re-shaped and altered by their emigration, which became a mass exodus from the Pontos by the beginning of the twentieth century. The colonial expansion of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus and the establishment of the Greek national state in the nineteenth century were arguably external factors which fostered Greek emigration from the Pontos (Bryer, 1991; Xanthopulou-Kyriakou, 1991). The Russian Empire was

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56  History and Politics of Representation regarded by many of the Ottoman Christians as their champion against the sultan’s regime. Russia’s advance in the region caused large-scale emigration of the Pontic Christians to the Caucasus and southern Russia (Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou, 1994). During the nineteenth century, after each Russo-Turkish war, thousands of Greeks and Armenians resettled across the advancing borders of the Russian Empire (Xanthopulou-Kyriakou, 1991). Thus the ancestors of the contemporary Gaverdovskii Greeks made their way from Anatolia to Eastern Georgia in 1828–1829, while the mass resettlement of Greeks from the Pontos to the Russian coasts of the Black Sea started soon after the Crimean War (1854–1856) and became even more intensive at the end of nineteenth century after the Russian victory in the war against Turkey in 1877–1878 (see Map 3.2). These mainly voluntary migrations from Turkey to the Caucasus in the informants’ narratives are merged with, and replaced by, the collective memory of the Greek exodus from the Pontos. This was a result of the Ottoman atrocities against the Christian population during the First World War – the Armenian genocide of 1915 and persecution of Greeks and Assyrians in 1916. At this time, thousands of Greek refugees arrived in the Caucasus and southern Russia. The ‘genocide of the Pontians’ has enormous significance for the ideology of the Pontic Greek ethno-national revivalism (see Chapter 8); the notion of refugeehood is essential for the ‘diaspora identity’ of Russian Greeks as a part of the Greek nation (Voutira, 1991), as the following excerpt with a Vitizevo resident, Konstantin, shows: Konstantin: W  ell, many of the Hellenes (ellintsy) agree that we are more Greeks sic] than they are. It means a great deal to be 300 years under the yoke of the Turks. AP: But weren’t you under the yoke of the Turks? Konstantin: No, we had run away. Our grandfathers fled from there, from Turkey, and came here from the Turkish side. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo) The emergence of the Greek national state brought to the Pontic Orthodox ‘notions of nation, historical determinism, and identity by language’ (Bryer, 1991, p. 327). These ideas were delivered through education by the schoolmasters who had been educated in the emergent centres of ‘Hellenism’, such as Athens, Constantinople (Istanbul) and later Trebizond (Trabzon). The impact of their work upon the construction of a new Greek national identity is difficult to overestimate. Thus, Bryer suggests that at the beginning of the nineteenth century a Pontic Christian might describe himself in the old way as a member of his village community first, and ‘then as a ‘Roman’ (Rum) Orthodox subject of the sultan; by the end of the century he was calling himself a Greek, and after he had finally left the Pontos in 1923, a Pontic Greek’ (Bryer, 1991, p. 327). The spread of this Greek national identity among the Pontic Orthodox Christians reshaped their community, creating the Greek diaspora in the Pontos, although this diaspora identity emerged from the migration of ideas rather than people. In a

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History and Politics of Representation  57

Map 3.2 Pontic Greek migration to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Greece in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century Source: Popov, 2007b.

paradoxical way, the Pontic Greeks experienced an actual displacement after they had already become a diaspora. In 1923, in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne, all the Greek Orthodox left the Pontos in the course of population exchanges between Turkey and Greece. With their departure, the Greeks who had emigrated earlier to the Caucasus also lost all contact with their relatives in the Pontos and

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58  History and Politics of Representation gradually forgot about their cultural and historical ties with this region. As shown in the next few chapters, for the Greeks of southern Russia their Pontic Greek identity is a new one which contests both their ‘traditional’ identities of region, language, and religion and also the national and ethnic identifications developed during the Soviet period. Therefore, the twentieth century history of the Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii Greeks requires further examination.

Vitiazevo: Forging Greek Ethnicity Through Colonisation, ‘Indigenisation’ and Exile The core of the Greek population in Vitiazevo is composed of the descendants of migrants from the Pontos. This resettlement took place as part of the Russian colonisation of the Caucasian Black Sea coast, which had been abandoned by the native Circassian population after their defeat in the Caucasian Wars (1816–1864). The Russian administration invited and supported Christian migrants from the Ottoman Empire (the Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians and Moldavians) as well as landless peasants from Western and Central Europe and the Western provinces of the Russian Empire (Germans, Czechs, Poles, Estonians and Latvians). According to archival data, the village of Vitiazevo was inhabited by the Greeks who migrated from ‘Anatolian Turkey’ in 1862.2 Their present descendants remember that their great-grandfathers arrived from different villages and towns in the Trabzon area, such as Santa, Krom, Imera, Platana and Stavri. Later, the population of the village was supplemented by the resettlement of Greeks from other villages in the north-western Caucasus. During the twentieth century, migration in and out of the town continued. After the First World War, the Greeks from the Pontos (rural and urban population from Trabzon, Samsun, Baphra and Ordu districts) and Kars Oblast’ (the East Anatolian area which was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1878 and lost to Turkey in 1919) migrated to Vitiazevo as refugees escaping the brutality of the war. Today a few families in the town retain their identity as Karslidis, or Karsskie greki. The participation of their ancestors in the Russian colonisation of the region is reflected in the local legend about the establishment of Vitiazevo, which expresses in jest the Greeks’ association of their cultural identity with the imperial project:  . . . Khamsa is a kind of fish, the Russians call us Khamsichi too. [Before we came here] they didn’t eat this fish.3 There is even a legend about why the Greeks came to live in Vitiazevo . . . All [peoples] were bringing presents to the Russian tsar. Well, as a present the Greeks prepared the best thing that they had – they brought a dish full of khamsa. This is the most delicious thing 2 State Archive of Krasnodar Krai (GAKK, found 668, description 1, file 3151.15). The reference to archival documents was kindly given by V. Kolesov. 3 Khamsa is a species of Black Sea anchovy. This fish is mentioned as a favourite food of the Pontic population in Ottoman sources of the seventeenth century (Chelebi, 1983, p. 41–2). My Greek informants in Vitiazevo considered salty khamsa their ‘national’ dish.

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History and Politics of Representation  59 [for us]. [When they came to the tsar], his servant reported that some people, the Greeks, had come with a present. The tsar went to look, and when he saw [what they had brought, he became angry and ordered] us to be sent to ‘the far end of the land’ (na krai zemli). Well they sent us here – on one side there is only sea, water is everywhere; so this is the far end of the land . . .  (Yannis, born 1948, Vitiazevo) This legend conveys also the idea that Greeks’ rights to the land where they are living now had official approval, awarded as a result of their unfortunate present to the Russian tsar. This notion of the ‘land which was granted by a monarch’ bears a striking resemblance to the central idea of the history of the Kuban Cossacks, according to which, they were granted the Kuban land by Tsarina Catherine the Great in 1791. Some of my Greek informants even insisted that it was Catherine the Great who ‘invited’ them to live in Kuban. Here the past as it has been represented in the official historiography is incorporated into Greek collective memory, as a means of justifying their present attachment to the land. Thus, rather than opposing memory to history as a less ‘objective’ and ‘untrue’ representation of the past, memory studies prefer to speak about ‘distinctions between history and memory as different technologies for incorporating and addressing the past in the present’ (Pine et al., 2004, p. 14). Sometimes local memories may reject the dominant discourse, while at other times they accommodate themselves to official historiography. Indeed in the feudal hierarchy of the nineteenth century Russian Empire, the majority of the first Greek settlers in Vitiazevo seemed to have entitlements close to the semi-privileged estate of the Cossacks who were on the frontline of the Russian colonisation of the North Caucasus. In 1875, 447 people out of the total village population of 493 were counted as belonging to ‘[the Kuban Cossack] Host estate’ (Grigorian, 1997, p. 125). As a consequence, unlike the majority of Greek migrants, the Vitiazevo Greeks were landowners by the time of the October Revolution (1917), because in Kuban Oblast’, only Cossack men were allocated their parcel of the communal land from birth, while the non-Russian colonists had to rent their plots from the Cossacks.4 Although the grandfathers of some of my informants fought with the Cossack troops against the Red Army during the Civil War (1918–1922) (Fedor, born 1947, Vitiazevo), it is unlikely that they identified themselves and were identified by others as Cossacks. Furthermore, after the Bolshevik victory, association with the Cossacks lost all advantages and may even have led to persecution. In the period following, the Bolshevik national policy of the 1920s and early 1930s fostered the growth of ethnic awareness among non-Russian minorities (Slezkine, 1996). In accordance with the policy of korenizatsiia (indigenisation), territories with significant ethnic minority populations received autonomy to varying degrees. Thus the Greek national district (national’nyi raion) was

4 The Tsarist government issued a law (29 May 1898) which prohibited the right of land-ownership by foreigners (Karpozilos, 1999, p. 140).

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60  History and Politics of Representation established in a territory of Krasnodar Krai where it existed from 1930–1938 (Tveritinov, 1992). This raion consisted of several villages with substantial Greek populations situated in the Krymsk and Abinsk districts. Additionally, sixteen Greek sel’sovets (rural administrative units), including Vitiazevo, were founded outside the national district (Kazazov, 1999, p. 16). This ‘nationalityengineering’ facilitated the development of the Greek cultural identity in Vitiazevo. Greek language classes were included in the local school programme, where Modern Greek in the form of demotiki with a simplified alphabet was taught. My elderly informants, who attended Greek classes in the village school, recalled that they even wrote letters in Modern Greek to their relatives who emigrated to Greece in the early 1920s (Evdokia, born 1922, Vitiazevo). The amateur theatre group, which had existed in the village since the early 1920s, staged plays in the Greek (Pontic) language dedicated to the national liberation of Balkan Greece in the nineteenth century.5 However, the dramatic change in the national policy of the Stalinist state in the late 1930s resulted in repressions against activists of nation building as well as ordinary representatives of ethnic minorities who were accused of ‘bourgeois nationalism’. The Greek ethnic minority was repressed − its national autonomies were abolished and many individuals were arrested imprisoned and killed. More than 150 Vitiazevo dwellers died in the Gulag labour camps or were killed by NKVD in 1937–1939 (Kazazov, 2000, pp. 1–2). Even more tragic events followed when, in the 1940s, almost the entire Greek population of the region was sent into exile to Central Asia and Siberia. There were three big waves of mass deportation of the Greeks from Krasnodar territory and the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus (mainly from Abkhazia) in 1942, 1944 and 1949. The fear of the Stalinist regime of ‘foreigners’ as ‘politically unreliable elements’ led to the exile of those holding Greek or Turkish citizenship as well as people without any citizenship (politicheski neblagonadezhnye elementy) (Polian, 2001, p. 141). In the 1920s, under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), those Greeks who fled from the Pontos to Russia received Greek citizenship in the Greek consulates. A significant proportion of them emigrated to Greece during the 1920s and 1930s, but many families became divided between the USSR and Greece when Soviet borders were closed to emigration in 1939. In 1942, the majority of those refugees who remained in the Soviet Union were deported to Kazakhstan (Polian, 2001, p. 116). During WWII, many Greek families left Vitiazevo and moved to the Crimea under pressure from retreating German troops. After the liberation of the Crimea in 1944, these families were deported to Western Siberia and the Urals region together with other ‘unreliable’ (neblagonadezhnyh) ethnic minorities. In 1949, the repressions swept even those former Greek citizens who had already obtained Soviet citizenship (Kotsonis, 1997, p. 87). Only after the death of Stalin, when the special regime of exile was abolished in 1956 were

5 For a detailed account of the Greek cultural revival in the USSR in the inter-war period, see Karpozilos (1991 and 1999).

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History and Politics of Representation  61 people allowed to return to their native villages.6 Many, however, died in exile while others decided to stay in Central Asia; but the latter were forced to leave their homes and subsequently resettled in southern Russia in the 1990s following the collapse of the USSR. The Stalinist repressions and deportation had a conflicting effect on the Greek ethnic identity of the Vitiazevo population. One consequence of the ethnic persecution was that the Russian Greeks were forced to remember their ethnic background; they learned that they were ‘foreigners’ who had a ‘historical homeland’ in Greece. Thus exile and repression as experiences shared by the majority of Soviet Greeks became an important point for the construction of Greek ethnicity during the Soviet, and especially the post-Soviet, periods. The Greek national-cultural movement, which emerged at the peak of the ethno-national resurgence of perestroika, for example, declared the resurrection of the Greek national raion in the territory of Krasnodar Krai and the rehabilitation of the Greeks as a repressed people to be among their prime objectives. In March 1991, the first All-Union Convention of Soviet Greeks held in Gelendzhik (Krasnodar Krai) resurrected the idea of Greek autonomy in the Krasnodar region. It was proposed that this autonomy should be extended to include the territory of Anapa (Agtzidis, 1991, p. 380). This proposal was abandoned in the early 1990s after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union however, as the central and provincial authorities in the Russian Federation became increasingly suspicious towards both the territorial demands of the ethnic minorities and the ethno-nationalist movement in national autonomies (Tishkov, 1996b, pp. 33–9). For many of the informants, their Greek ethnicity had a strong association with the trauma of exile and they expressed their fear that the contemporary Greek national-cultural revival might cause similar trouble for others: . . . When these [Greek] ‘societies’ started emerging, I told the lads that there was a society that was reviving us Pontic Greeks. Do you know what their answer was? They said, that if such societies were organised then we would have to expect a repetition of 1937. So many Greeks were deported then. (Georgii, born 1959, Vitiazevo) Those Greeks who went through exile may see Greek ethnicity as a stigma, given the fact that unlike some other ‘punished peoples’ Greeks were never officially rehabilitated by either Soviet or post-Soviet Russian legislation.7 As the following 6 The first Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR (UPVS No. 139/47), which abolished restrictions of the citizen rights of Greek as well as Armenian and Bulgarian special settlers (spetsposelentsy) was released in 27 March 1956. However some categories of exiled Greeks, including the ‘former foreign citizens’ were granted full rights to choose the place of residence only in 1972 (Polian, 2001, pp. 265–6). 7 A general statement about the rehabilitation of repressed peoples was adopted as the low of RSFSR in 1991, according to which similar legislative acts related to each of the repressed people should have followed. But by 2015, no such law had been enacted with regard to the Greeks and thus the issue of ‘official rehabilitation’ remained on the agenda of Greek national-cultural organisations in the Russian Federation.

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62  History and Politics of Representation citation from a conversation with a group of so-called ‘Kazakhstan Greeks’ (the returnees and descendants of Greeks deported to Kazakhstan) shows, they still struggle to explain and, paradoxically, to justify such a repressive policy of the authorities towards their people: Elena: T  hen, primarily Greek citizens were deported. Russian citizens weren’t touched. I heard how people had said that Russia had promised Greece that it would take care of Greek citizens, so they were sent to Kazakhstan, far from the frontline, in order to save them from the Germans. Anna: [They] exiled us, but who knows maybe it was even for the best. We are the so-called, small people. We were deported in order to be saved; otherwise we had to be included in the Red Book of endangered species [laughter] . . .  (Elena, born 1953; Anna, born 1934, Vitiazevo) The Greek deportation and post-war migration of the Russians to the village, as well as administrative changes, led to a significant shift in the demographic and ethnic structure of the Vitiazevo population. Some of these changes were also due to the development of the tourist infrastructure in Krasnodar Krai. In the mid1980s, Vitiazevo was merged with the neighbouring Russian village. The enlarged settlement became an important tourist centre, which was reflected in its official name as kurortnyi poselok Vitiazevo. This town became a part of the municipal territory of the city of Anapa. Such administrative changes resulted in the increase of the Russian population of Vitiazevo, which has been supplemented gradually by migration from other regions of the Russian Federation during the 1990s. The increase in the Russian population of the settlement resulted in the growing number of mixed Greek-Russian marriages. My elderly informants recalled that before WWII marriages between Greeks and other ethnic groups were extremely rare and unusual if not unacceptable: . . . You know, we have become Russified now. My daughter-in-law is Russian, my son-in-law was Russian; we have also some other [Russian] relatives. And in every family it is like this . . . Before the war, here, in our village, there were no Russians at all . . . And you know, we didn’t use to marry Russians – there were maybe only one or two such families then . . . But after the war, we started marrying Germans, Russians and Armenians, now we are an absolutely mixed [people]. But it was not like this before . . . Just after the war, when I was a young girl, one Russian lad from a farmstead (khutor) down there asked me to marry him. But it was so weird then that I said: ‘No, I don’t want to marry yet’. (Evdokia, born 1922, Vitiazevo) In 2003, about 30 per cent of Greek families in the town were officially ethnically mixed, while 25 per cent of families were effectively Greco-Russian

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History and Politics of Representation  63 marriages. 8 The Russians now also constitute the majority of the town’s population. Despite the Russian majority in Vitiazevo, the local administration was ‘traditionally’ almost exclusively Greek. This may be explained by the core of the management and employees of the main agricultural enterprises – a collective farm (kolkhoz), later a state farm (sovkhoz), and a local wine factory – being comprised of Greeks. In the USSR where Soviet enterprises carried out many administrative functions and took care of a local social infrastructure (Humphrey, 2002, p. 21), the domination of Greeks in the town’s administration (poselkovyi sovet) quite naturally reflected the ethnic character of local working collectives. In the postSoviet period, the local authorities have continued to work in close contact with the town’s Greek national-cultural society Gorgippia, which was organised as a non-governmental public organisation in December 1989 with financial support and the direct participation of local enterprises. The role of this national-cultural organisation in the construction of Greek ethnic identity in Vitiazevo will be examined later in this chapter. To sum up, in Vitiazevo, the Greek ethnicity of the local population was always recognised by official authorities. During different periods of this community’s history, it either entitled the population to some privileges or became a reason for persecution. Thus, Greek ethnic and local identities of the Vitiazevo population have been shaped by the voluntary and forced migration, and state national policy toward ethnic minorities throughout the history of this community.

The Gaverdovskii Greeks: An Informal Migrant Community The history of the village of Gaverdovskii is significantly less well documented than the historiography of Vitiazevo. In 2003, the chairwoman of the village’s Committee of Territorial Communal Self-Government (KTOS) collected oral histories of the long-term residents of the village to write a historical account of Gaverdovskii. According to her findings, the village was founded by, and took its name from, two brothers called Gaverdovskii in the 1850s. The brothers were Jews, but until the 1930s almost all of the population of Gaverdovskii were Russians. The Greeks appeared in Gaverdovskii in 1938 as migrants from the Tsalka region (eastern Georgia), chiefly from two villages, Edikilisa and Oliank. The reasons behind this migration are not absolutely clear. Some long-term residents of Gaverdovskii connected this resettlement from Georgia with the construction of the Hram dam in the late 1930s, which resulted in the flooding of several Greek villages in the Tsalka district. The populations of these villages were resettled to the North Caucasus, in particular to Stavropol’ Krai (Kolesov, 1997, p. 93). But

8 These statistics are calculated on the basis of data of the Vitiazevo household registers for 2002–2003. According to these registers, in 2003, there were 576 Greek households in the town, in 173 families one of the spouses was non-Greek, and in 136 ‘Greek’ families were in fact Russo-Greek ones.

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64  History and Politics of Representation neither Edikilisa nor Oliank were flooded, and Gaverdovskii was not a destination for the Greek migrants from abandoned villages. An alternative explanation is that officially permitted migration from the area of dam construction could have been used as a pretext for resettlement by families from other villages who sought better living conditions than rural highland Tsalka during the first decade of collectivisation. These unofficial migrants might have used their family ties with people resettled from flooded villages as means to facilitate their own movement to the North Caucasus. Stavropol’ Krai for example is mentioned in the family histories of many Greek long-term residents as the first destination of their parents en route from Tsalka to Gaverdovskii. Another motivation for this resettlement could be the memory of mass migration of ‘Caucasian’ Greeks to Greece in the 1920s. The new wave of Greek emigrants from the Soviet Union in 1937–1939 was a response to the Stalinist persecution of the Soviet Greek national movement in the 1930s (Vergeti, 1991, p. 388). At that time the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in Krasnodar Krai, where the Consulate of the Kingdom of Hellenes was located, was one of the departure points for Greece. This complex intersection between economic and political reasons for Greek resettlement from Georgia to the North Caucasus are reflected in the family histories of my Gaverdovskii informants: AP: Why did your parents decide to resettle from Tsalka in 1937? Vasilii: Well, evidently, there, in Georgia, they, well, were, probably, desperate people [golyd’ba, literally, naked]. And my father, he was an orphan; my mother was an orphan too. And there people could not earn enough for a piece of bread. Yes, many people left, and many people went to Greece . . . Well, some people could not, because they had not got [enough] money, or couldn’t because of some other [reasons]. I heard that a ship full of Greeks was sunk, the ship with the Greeks. So my parents looked for a place far from Georgia . . .  (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii) The Gaverdovskii Greeks were not touched by the Stalinist deportation to Central Asia in the 1940s, because all of them were Russian subjects since their ancestors had arrived in Georgia from the Erzerum province of the Ottoman Empire in the 1820–1830s. In Gaverdovskii, the first Greek migrants kept contact with their villages of origin and resettlement continued after WWII. Unlike the Vitiazevo Greeks, the majority of them were not employed on the local collective farm but looked for jobs as contract workers in the nearest city of Maykop and neighbouring villages, or worked on seasonal contracts in Siberia and other regions of the Soviet Union. Perhaps because the Gaverdovskii Greeks were not attached to the local working collectives their local identification as the ‘locals’ is less articulated than in Vitiazevo. The networks of families and people originating from the same Tsalka village (odnosel’chani) played a more important role as a channel of migration from Georgia and in socio-economic adaptation in the new place. Therefore,

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History and Politics of Representation  65 many of my informants, even if they were born in southern Russia, continue to identify themselves with kinship groups uniting several related families and with their ‘ancestral’ (always from the father’s side of family) villages in Georgia: Tamara: A  mong my friends there is no one from the same village as me. I am unique, I am the only one from Tsinskaro, ha-ha [laughter] . . . The rest are Oliankians, Takkilisians and Edikilisians. AP: Well, your mum is also from Edikilisa, isn’t she? Tamara: Yes, she is from Edikilisa, but my father is from there [Tsinskaro] . . . [Let’s say] if someone’s father is from Oliank, but mother is from Edikilisa, [she or he] anyway would be from Oliank of course . . .  (Tamara, born 1988, Gaverdovskii) At the beginning of the 1990s, migration from Georgia took on a mass character. The Greek population of the village had more than doubled by 2003. Now in Gaverdovskii, there are representatives of the following Tsalka villages: Oliank, Edikilisa, Takkilisa, Avranlo, Tsalka, Dzhinis, Kiariak, Kumbat, Karakom, Shipiak, and Tsintskaro (in the Tetritskaro district). This village identification of the Gaverdovskii Greeks is often interwoven with a differentiation between descendants of the earliest migrants and recent newcomers. The majority of the first Greek settlers in Gaverdovskii were Edikilisians by birth, whereas people from Oliank predominate among the latest migrants from Tsalka. The second and third generations of the Gaverdovskii Greeks sometimes define themselves as ‘the local Greeks’, whereas the recent migrants are called ‘the Georgian Greeks’. The majority of Gaverdovskii Greeks are Turkish-speakers (they practice an East-Anatolian dialect).9 This makes them different from the Pontic Greekspeakers who constitute a majority of the Greek population of Adygea and Krasnodar Krai.10 Nevertheless, in the 2000s the Gaverdovskii Greeks dominated in the leadership of the Republican Greek national-cultural organisation Argo. In 2003, this organisation had its headquarters in the capital city of the Republic of Adygea, Maykop. The influence of the Gaverdovskians on the activities of this organisation has increased since the mid-1990s, when the village was incorporated into the municipal borders of Maykop as a city subdistrict (mikroraion). Unlike the people of Vitiazevo, the Greek community in Gaverdovskii was formed without any direct official involvement in their resettlement from Georgia.

9 Linguistic research among the Greeks in the Tsalka district of Georgia was conducted by Yeloeva (1995) at the beginning of the 1990s. 10 In 2003, there were only few people in the village who could speak the Pontic Greek dialect. One of them came from the village of Kumbat (Gumbati), which is one of four villages (Kumbat, Tarson, Santa and Neon-Kharaba) with a Greek-speaking population in the Tsalka district (Pashaeva, 1977a, cited from Kolesov, 1997, p. 94). Two were born in the Greek village of Achkva in Ajaria. One person originated from the town of Belorechensk in Krasnodar Krai, but arrived in Adygea from Kazakhstan where his family was in exile. All of them married Turkish-speaking Greeks.

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66  History and Politics of Representation To a certain extent, this community existed despite the Soviet regulation of movement and employment of the population. The Gaverdovskii Greeks were not subjected to the destructive experience of ethnic persecution and Stalinist exile. Nor did they develop a strong identification with local collective enterprises like state or collective farms, because their unofficial migration left them outside these collectives both in Gaverdovskii and Tsalka. At the same time, informal ties of kinship and friendship between offspring of the same village in Georgia provided the basis for social solidarity and were strategically employed by individuals in everyday life during and after the Soviet period. However, despite these dissimilar historical backgrounds and different patterns of social solidarity, both communities reveal a striking similarity in the presentday representation of their locality through Greek ethnicity and the distinction made between the long-term residents and recent migrants. Furthermore, currently the Greeks from both settlements actively participate in migration to Greece and Cyprus. Hence, they share familiar experiences of displacement and their localities are affected by the transnational circuit of culture in the same way. This locality might be viewed as a modern, post-Soviet phenomenon.

Greek Ethnicity and the Politics of Representation in Southern Russia In the Republic of Adygea and in Krasnodar Krai, regional citizenship regimes are structured around overlapping discourses of ‘inter-ethnic relations’, the migration policy and its securitisation (see Chapter 2). In these ethnically diverse regions, social, political, economic and cultural life is inevitably affected by the political discourses and regulatory practices of provincial authorities towards ethnic minorities and migrants. Hence, regional political processes influence the construction of Greek ethnicity in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii. The Greek national-cultural organisations working in these settlements play a key role in the representation of the locals as an ethnic community. Greek National-Cultural Organisations as Post-Soviet Institutions The emergence of Greek national-cultural societies (grecheskie national’nokul’turnye obshchestva) in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii coincided with the tremendous transformations of social, political and economic life in the late Soviet period. Being a new phenomenon in a changing Soviet society, these organisations have reflected the growth of ethno-nationalist movements observed in most of former socialist countries (Verdery, 1996, p. 83). The increase of their influence in the everyday life of local communities highlights the significant role that the issues of ethnicity and nation play in the process of the (re-)construction of postsocialist social identities. In the Russian Federation, ethno-national organisations have been seen by the state in an essentialist way as ethnic communities themselves. The state tries to control and manipulate them in order to secure the governing of the

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History and Politics of Representation  67 country which has been increasingly divided into ethnic and regional entities after the dismantling of the ideological monopoly of the Communist Party. In Krasnodar Krai and Adygea, for instance, the provincial and local authorities organise consultative meetings with national-cultural organisations on a regular basis. In Adygea, the association of ethno-national societies, the so-called ‘League of Peace’ (Liga Mira), has been created in order to monitor and manage ethno-political processes in the republic via collaboration between the regional authorities and national-cultural organisations (Khadzhibekov and Polyakova, 1994; Polyakova, 2002a, p. 198). In a situation where former Soviet political and social institutions have disappeared or become weak, this recognition by official authorities allows the delegation of some rights and obligations to engage with the populations they represent to national-cultural organisations. In fact, the Greek national-cultural societies working among the Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii Greeks are preoccupied with providing social services to the local population, including community welfare, public security, and sustaining the so-called ‘traditional’ culture (see Chapter 9), physical and ‘moral’ health of the locals. To a significant extent, they carry out many of the functions previously executed by enterprises or even by local Communist Party organisations during the Soviet period. The comparison of Greek national-cultural organisations with Soviet enterprises might seem less like an exaggeration if we take into account the fact that these enterprises were not only economic entities but constituted structuring supporting pillars of the Soviet realm, providing their members with housing, education and medical care.11 At the same time, the privatisation programme of the early 1990s, which had aimed to achieve the de-collectivisation of producers, disturbed the established social infrastructure and undermined the very foundations of socialist ‘meaningful worlds’ (see Verdery, 1999, p. 35). Despite the great determination of the federal government to complete the process of privatisation, this reform became widely disliked among the population. In Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii communities, the Greek national-cultural societies were seen as collective institutions which replaced the newly privatised local enterprises not only in their social, collective-orientated activities but also in their property rights. For instance, the Vitiazevo society Gorgippia was given the premises where it is now located by the former state farm. This building is officially registered as the property of a public non-governmental organisation. It is also true that the former owner of the town’s wine factory was an active member of the Greek society and its main sponsor (see plates 3.1). In contrast, the difficulties of Argo in obtaining premises for the organisation’s office in Gaverdovskii can, to some extent, be explained by the weak links of the Greeks with local agricultural enterprises in the Soviet past.

11 Humphrey sees Soviet enterprises as ‘the quasi-feudal corporations, the collective “domains”, which confer a social status on their members and which in practice are still the key units disposing of property and people in Russia’ (2002, p. 21).

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68  History and Politics of Representation

Plate 3.1 The entrance to the town stadium ‘Pontos’ built by the local Greek organisation Gorgippia with the financial support of the town wine factory. Vitiazevo, August 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

Similar to Soviet-style enterprises, the Greek organisations continue a protectionist policy towards collectives which are understood now as local Greek communities. Carrying out their cultural and social projects, Greek national-cultural organisations put the principle of social justice and equality first. For example, they redistribute financial support received in the form of sponsorship from local businessmen to the rest of community via socially-oriented activities, such as occasional aid to elderly people, the sending of local children to summer camps in Greece, the hiring of a teacher for optional Greek classes in the village school, or the organisation of a free legal advice service at the society’s office. As legal entities (iuridicheskie litsa), Greek organisations even run their own businesses. However, they justify these economic activities by the socialist moral imperative of work in the interest of the whole community; this community is assumed to be a predominantly Greek one. Thus the Vitiazevo Greek society has rented the town’s market place from the local administration. The Greek leaders claim that they do this in order to guarantee fair conditions for local traders (for which read Greeks) and to protect them from competition from outsiders (who are usually ethnically defined as Armenian retailers). The locals themselves have not yet started to trade and rent their stalls out to nonlocal retailers, however. A significant part of the market, which is now called ‘Gorgippia’ after the society, is also directly rented out to private retailers (some Armenians among them) by the Greek organisation. The money earned

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History and Politics of Representation  69 is channelled into sponsoring the Pontic folk dance group, the town’s theatre and the construction of the local church. The business projects of Greek societies facilitate the economic survival of the local population. The same Vitiazevo Greek organisation has arranged a bus service connecting the upper town with the beach; for a short period of time, in 2003–2005, the beach itself was rented by Gorgippia. During the tourist season, the regular public transportation to and from the beach area brings more holidaymakers, who seek private accommodation in the town, into previously unpopular and relatively cheap central and upper neighbourhoods, consequently increasing the annual incomes of the locals who hire out rooms to tourists. The local communities have ambivalent attitudes towards these Greek societies. On the one hand, they express their gratitude to these organisations for the maintenance of the social and cultural life in settlements which otherwise would have been neglected in a society preoccupied with economic survival.12 The locals see the Greek organisations as keepers of ‘order’ (poriadok) within the community and as champions of local interests against the outside world (including the regional authorities). On the other hand, the economic activities of the population can conflict with the business interests of the Greek national-cultural societies; citizens are disturbed that organisations which ostensibly declare cultural, social, in other words ‘spiritual’, revival as their main purpose should have such highly-visible money-making practices. In Vitiazevo, taxi-drivers protested against the daily fee for cars entering the beach area of town. This fee was imposed by the Greek society which rented the beach from the local administration. The same people, however, asked the leader of Gorgippia to use his influence on the district authorities and to protect the locals from the cavalier actions of the traffic police when working outside the town’s borders. Some local residents, like Efim in Gaverdovskii and Mikhail in Vitiazevo remark that their main reason for refusing to join Greek societies as formal members was their mistrust of the stated social goals of their business activities: I’m asking him [the chairman of Argo], ‘look, well, we will collect the dosh, we’ll put money in the kitty (obshchag), we are not talking just about fifty roubles, but a whole hundred. Then we help them [members of the society]; they go to Moscow, others go to Rostov, someone goes to Khabarovsk. They trade and have already gone up, they make big money. Will we have some dividends from this money?’ No, there’s no answer. I said then, I don’t buy this. I left at once. I am not against [the Greek society]. I just don’t get it. I am saying that I will not take part in such a society, I don’t want to . . .  (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii)

12 Perrotta (1998, p. 160) points out that where local administrations refuse to take responsibility for the social sphere, the continuation of the Soviet practice, whereby these services were supported by enterprises, makes it very difficult for the latter to survive economically.

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70  History and Politics of Representation AP: Why didn’t you join the society? Mikhail: I didn’t like something in their system . . . Well, they [Gorgippia] offered me membership, but I didn’t [join] because . . . I consider that the theatre, culture and all such things are necessary, and then you need to join the society. But markets are not the business of the Greek society . . .  (Mikhail, born 1975, Vitiazevo) Nonetheless, many of the local Greeks come to the Greek societies with their needs as previously they appealed to the state farm, although they are not formal members of the organisation. As a matter of fact, in Gaverdovskii and Vitiazevo, the secretaries of the local Greek organisations were unable to specify exactly the number of their members who paid membership fees (about one hundred people in both cases), but preferred to speak about the whole Greek population of settlements or even the districts, as if all of them were, or would be, potential members. Thus, the collectivist principles of Soviet life have been successfully adapted by Greek national-cultural societies to post-Soviet reality and employed for their ethno-nationalist agenda. It should be noted that although these organisations are proponents of collectivist values in the local communities, they see these communities as exclusively Greek in spite of their actual multi-ethnic character. They impose this ethnic representation of the whole community via their social, cultural and business activities. This confirms Bourdieu’s statement that the construction of ethnic / regional identity is a particular form of struggle over classification, which is a struggle over the power to impose a vision of the social world (Bourdieu, 1991, pp. 224–5). So the production of social identity is always a political process and the local Greek organisations are sophisticated actors on the regional political stage. The ‘Ethno-national Character’ of Gaverdovskii and Adygean Ethno-nationalism The increase in the Greek population of Gaverdovskii coincided with a change of political regime in Adygea. In 1991, Adygea, the former autonomous district (avtonomnaia oblast’) subordinated to Krasnodar Krai, became a distinct subject of the Russian Federation with the status of a national republic. Since 1991, the republican legislation and governmental systems have been formed on the principle of parity of representativeness between the two main ethnic groups, Adygeans and Russians, in the republican political institutions (Polyakova, 2002a, p. 199). The regional electoral law guarantees the equal presence of Adygeans and Russians in the republican two-chambered parliament and other representative institutions; and the same parity principle is used for the appointment of ministers in the republican government (Polyakova, 2002b). According to the republican Constitution, only an individual who is fluent in both state languages of the republic, Adygean and Russian, can be elected President of Adygea, consequently only ethnic Adygeans have occupied this post to date (Polyakova, 2002a, p. 198). However, Russians represent 67 per cent of the total population of the republic, as of 2001,

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History and Politics of Representation  71 whereas Adygeans comprise only 23 per cent. Thus, the existing political regime can be characterised as an ethno-nationalist one; it enhances the political elite of the titular ethnic group, Adygeans, at the expense of Russian-speaking politicians. Russian political organisations, such as the Union of Slavs (Soiuz slavian) and the Maykop department of the Kuban Cossack Host (Maykopskii otdel Kubanskogo kazach’ego voiska), who confess Russian nationalism, constitute the most dedicated opposition to the ruling regime. They demand the abolition of the parity system, a broader representation for Russians in regional politics, and a referendum on the return of part, or all, of the territory of Adygea to Krasnodar Krai (Polyakova, 2002b). Thus political processes in the republic are discursively represented as an interethnic competition for power between the two main ethnic entities, the Adygeans and the Russians. Meanwhile, leaders of other ethnic groups are seen as minor actors on the regional political stage. Thus, in both chambers of the Republican Parliament, only eight per cent of members represented other ethnic groups, including Ukrainians, Belorussians, Armenians, Tatars and Greeks, in 2001 (Polyakova, 2002b). They have to accept the rules and build up their own political capital through the exploitation of the ethnicity issue. Hence, leaders of the Greek organisation Argo have successfully mobilised the Greek ethnicity of the Gaverdovskii villagers to their own political ends. During the period 1997–2003, two of them were elected as deputies from the Gaverdovskii electoral district (izbiratel’nyi okrug) to the republican legislature and the Maykop City Council. Indeed, playing off the Russian against Adygean politicians in their complex relationships in regional politics, the leaders of Argo have been successful in reshaping the ethnic image of Gaverdovskii as a Greek community. Importantly, the regional political elite acknowledged this representation of the village. Thus, in his speech at the round table ‘The Greeks in Adygea’, which was held in the Gaverdovskii secondary school in October 2002, and dedicated to the eleventh anniversary of the republic and the sixtieth anniversary of the Adygean national autonomy, the chairman of the Republican Association ‘The League of Peace’ proposed renaming the village after the present leader of Argo: The centre of the Greeks in Adygea seems to have moved closer to Maykop now, closer to the traditional centre [of the republic], to the capital. I said to A. [he named the leader of Argo, who was present at this event], okay, it might be called Gaverdovskii now, but it could be called after you. You could [change its name in order to] show that it’s Greeks who are living here . . .  (The Round Table ‘The Greeks in Adygea’, 3 October 2002, Gaverdovskii) Ethnicity has become a hotly discussed point in ongoing political debates in the region. The importance of the ethnic factor in regional political processes is acknowledged in both Adygean and Russian camps. Russian nationalists promote the concept of the ‘ethno-national character’ (etno-natsional’nyi kharakter) of local communities in order to claim their political rights to represent the Russian

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72  History and Politics of Representation majority in some rural districts of the republic. In October 2002, for example, during a round table dedicated to collaboration between public libraries and nationalcultural organisations in Adygea, organised by the legislature of the republic, the leader of the Union of Slavs proposed paying more attention to the ‘ethno-national character’ of the particular settlement in forming the book collection of local libraries (Fieldwork Diary, 2 October 2002, Maykop). In one way the development of the Greek ‘ethno-national character’ of Gaverdovskii fits the political programme of the Russian opposition; however, it does not challenge the existing ethno-nationalist regime. Moreover, the Greek ethnic representation of Gaverdovskii has been established by increasing the political marginalization of the Russian majority in the village. The Gaverdovskii Russians do not have their own national-cultural organisation in the village and as a result, they are excluded from a political process in which the ethnic representation plays a crucial role. Ethnicity becomes a core aspect of the village’s political life, since regional political discourses have been naturalised at the community level. In December 2002 elections for the mayor of the republican capital city of Maykop and deputies to the City Council were held. Russian politicians have ‘traditionally’ secured the post of mayor of Maykop, however, one of the candidates was an ethnic Greek resident of Maykop, a businessman, famous in the republic for pioneering the production of double-glazed windows in the region. Exploiting the ethnicity factor, he launched part of his election campaign in Gaverdovskii. His supporters persuaded the villagers to vote for their candidate, distributing leaflets which emphasised his Greek origin − his name was written in Greek and the flag of Greece was printed next to the national symbols of Adygea and the Russian Federation. But the relationship between this candidate and the Gaverdovskii Greeks was not straightforward: he was an outsider in the eyes of the locals because he did not have relatives either in the village or in Tsalka. The Turkish-speaking Gaverdovskians suspected that he, as a Pontic Greek-speaker, had an arrogant attitude towards them which they often perceived in relations between these two groups (see Chapter 8). There were also some business disputes between him and the Argo leaders, who had close links with Gaverdovskii. Conversely, the Greek villagers thought that a Greek mayor could be supportive of their community, and that they might receive dividends from both his political and business activities. Thus, many of the Gaverdovskii Greeks were ready to give their votes to him, even if they realised that his prospect of winning these elections was fairly unrealistic. The ethnic factor also played a fairly ambiguous role in the electoral campaign of the City Council deputy. All three candidates were Greeks but the votes of the Gaverdovskii Greeks were divided between two of them. One was a young local businessman, who was born in the village and associated with the party of the Greek long-term residents. The second was a Tsalka-born Maykop resident with extensive kinship relations in Gaverdovskii. At the time of the elections, he had been a deputy of the republican legislature, but his term was ending, which is why he wanted to secure his political career in the City Council. Neither of these,

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History and Politics of Representation  73 however, won the election. It was won by the third candidate − the ex-chairman of Argo and the former communist official in Maykop’s rural suburbs. But as a city resident, Pontic Greek-speaker and someone who had no family ties with the Georgian Greeks, he was a stranger to the Gaverdovskii Greeks. In fact, he was elected mainly by the Russian villagers, who had known him since the Soviet period. Arguably these politicians miscalculated the efficacy of Greek ethnicity in their electoral campaign in Gaverdovskii, and the local deputy won despite his identification with Greeks rather than because of it. It is evident that all the actors on the local political stage − the local Greeks, the leaders of the Greek national-cultural organisation, regional politicians, and even the Russian majority in the village − had taken for granted that Gaverdovskii was a ‘Greek settlement’ and the Greeks had a ‘natural’ right to represent the local community before regional and local authorities. Therefore, in September 2003, the Russian chairwoman of the Gaverdovskii KTOS and her Russian deputy, who were appointed by the municipal administration, were afraid of losing their jobs to local Greeks. Thus, the post-Soviet ethno-nationalist discourses of Adygean politics bring an official status to the Greek ethnicity of Gaverdovskii residents, shaping the ethnic identity of the local population. This is also a new process, because in the Soviet past the question of Greek ethnicity had never been raised there. Vitiazevo: The ‘Indigenous’ Political Regime in the Province and ‘the Greek Order’ in the Town As in Gaverdovskii, Greek ethnicity is a central aspect of local politics in Vitiazevo, but the regional political regime in Krasnodar Krai is rather different from the ethno-nationalism in Adygea. Whereas the ruling ethno-nationalist ideology leaves room for the participation of ethnic minorities in political processes in the Republic of Adygea, the ethnic diversity of the population in Krasnodar territory is seen by the provincial authorities as a potentially dangerous and mainly destructive factor in the regional socio-political situation (Savva and Savva, 2002; Osipov and Cherepova, 1996). The discourse of the ‘indigenisation’ of Cossacks, or the Russian majority, dominates in the regional ideology and ‘national’ policy and ensures that ethnic minorities – who are considered to be ‘non-native’ (nekorennye) – are removed from the regional political process. In these conditions, the Vitiazevo Greek leaders manage to foster the dominant political position of the Greek minority in the town through their complex manoeuvring for political power in the region. They do this by employing a well-established historiography of the settlement, which provides evidence of Greek ‘rootedness’ in the region. So whereas the Greek ‘ethno-national character’ of Gaverdovskii is a novel political construct, in Vitiazevo, the Greek activists defend the ‘traditional’ Greek representation of the village by appealing to their local history. The Greek ethnicity of the Vitiazevo population has been institutionalised since the 1930s, when the village comprised a Greek national sel’sovet. Despite the Stalinist deportations and persecutions, the Greek-ness of local inhabitants was

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74  History and Politics of Representation sustained as something similar to the ‘nationality’ record in passports of Soviet citizens. It was accepted naturally by the locals and people from neighbouring settlements although it had no decisive effect, none of any kind, on local political and cultural life. Indeed town residents might see ethnicity rather as a part of the local landscape. Thus mapping neighbouring settlements Ekaterina attributes them with a particular ethnic profile that for her manifests even in appearance of streets and houses there: It is considered that Djiginka is a German village. And my grandma always said, ‘In Djiginka, everything is in order, there are flowers and so on’ . . . The village of Anapskaia is regarded as a Tatar-inhabited one. Gaikodzor, you can guess, it is an Armenian one. Vitiazevo [is populated by] the Greeks . . .  (Ekaterina, born 1954, Vitiazevo) Since it was founded in 1989, the local Greek society, Gorgippia, had enjoyed close relations with the town’s administration and the directors of the state farm. Until recently, almost all heads of the administration were locals and Greeks. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Greek-ness of Vitiazevo seemed to be so obvious that the local administration passed its own decree permitting the registration (propiska) of Greek migrants from Transcaucasia and Central Asia. This actually contravened the regional law prohibiting the registration of newcomers on the territory of the Krai (see Chapter 7). However, the Greek identity of the Vitiazevo locals emerged in the middle of the political dispute in 2000, when the mayor of Anapa appointed a new head of the town administration. The new head was a Russian and did not originate from the town, so the existing connections between the town’s administration, the local business elite and the Greek national-cultural society were significantly undermined. Furthermore, the appointment contradicted the regional ‘indigenisation’ discourse based on the local Greek historiography. Indeed, it questioned the representation of the town as a historically Greek settlement. Arguing with leaders of Gorgippia about the date and the programme of the town’s annual festival, the new head stated that Vitiazevo was founded by the Cossacks and the Greeks had appeared there later. Therefore, he insisted that the local Cossack organisation had to play a central role in festival events. The Gorgippia activists replied that such statements were nonsense because ‘there were no Cossack graves in the old Vitiazevo cemetery’ (Andrei, born 1950, Vitiazevo). Thus, the local political struggle mingled with issues of cultural property and became the concern of the dead Greeks as well as of their living descendants.13 The local Greek party finally got its way and the new administrator was replaced in July 2002. Accusing him of having exceeded his authority, the party deployed the

13 Verdery (1999, p. 112) shows that the dead bodies of famous and nameless compatriots play an active role in ‘an orgy of historical revisionism’ everywhere in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

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History and Politics of Representation  75 regional anti-migrant and ‘inter-ethnic relations’ discourse to their own advantage and called for an official investigation of the situation. When the legislative commission from Krasnodar arrived in the town, a gathering of local residents (skhod mestnykh zhitelei) was organised to hear the public complaints against the head of administration.14 The locals blamed him for provoking ‘ethnic conflict’ in the settlement by patronising Armenian migrants and selling municipal land to outsiders. There were widespread rumours that in the part of the town which is profitable in terms of tourism, municipal land had been sold by the administration to non-local enterprises and individuals. It was argued that this denied the rights of locals, to whom this land had to be allocated in the first instance, because they had been asked to pay some ‘sharing money’ (an invention of the local administration which is semi-official bribery) or receive their lots far away outside the town limits.15 One of my informants said that the most emotional and, in his opinion, the critical moment of this meeting was the speech of an influential local businessman, who was also an activist of Gorgippia: He [the businessman] stood up and said to them, said to Astapenko, the mayor of the raion [sic], ‘you, he said, take away your billy-goat [he meant the head of administration] from here and then everything will calm down’. Can you imagine he said that?! . . . And they had to take him away. So he [the local businessman] proved that he was not afraid of anybody here. He wants to keep the village in order. The Greeks founded the village here. Everything was Greek here. Now, they [the Armenians] have arrived and want to be masters here . . . They occupied the whole market and the locals could not [sell] anything there . . .  (Matvei, born 1924, Vitiazevo) There was no other evidence that the scornful expression ‘billy-goat’ had been used towards the head of administration at this meeting. But in this particular informant’s narratives, this phrase should be read in the context of the allegations that the head of administration had been bribed to sell communal land. The same informant mentioned gossip to the effect that this administrator had traded the land to pay his own debts, which the locals estimated at several hundreds of thousands of dollars. In this interview, the word ‘billy-goat’ relates directly to the Russian proverb ‘let the billy-goat into the kitchen-garden’ (pustit’ kozla v ogorod), which is the equivalent of ‘sending the wolf to tend the sheep’ in English. It also indicates that despite the stress on ‘inter-ethnic relations’, the control of municipal property and ‘property 14 These events received quite broad publicity in the region. The meeting had been filmed by the crew of the Regional State TV company (GTRK ‘Kuban’) and the short clip was shown on the regional news programme. 15 I have not got information on whether these allegations have been confirmed or otherwise by the official investigation (if any real investigation took place at all). But this administrator was appointed to the same post in the neighbouring Russian village soon after his resignation from the Vitiazevo administration.

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76  History and Politics of Representation relations’ in this tourist town is a real issue in the local political struggle. This is further confirmed by repeated accounts from informants of the following phrase, which was attributed to the former head of administration: ‘Only rich people will live here [in Vitiazevo], but you [the locals] will go to Djiginka to build your houses’.16 Whatever was actually said, the outcome of the meeting was that a new head of administration was appointed from among the local Greeks and he appointed one of the leaders of the Greek society as his deputy. The administration hired out the town’s market place to Gorgippia, and Armenian retailers started to pay rent to the Greek ‘bosses’. In other words, ‘order in the village’ was restored. However, despite such a spectacular victory for the Greek leaders, their political power is restricted within the municipal limits of the town, and they are poorly represented in both provincial and district politics. None of the local Greeks, for instance, took part in the elections to the Anapa district Council in December 2002; but the leader of the town’s Cossack organisation became a deputy from Vitiazevo. These events, however, brought the regional ‘indigenisation’ discourse on to the agenda of the local Greek society. The front line of the political struggle stretched to a reassessment of local history in order to find evidence that a Greek settlement had existed on the site of the modern town before the appearance of Cossacks or Russians in the region. Several years ago, the local history enthusiast, Fedor, discovered a big white stone with very faint traces of letters which looked like Greek. He believed that this finding was a ‘boundary stone’ of the old Greek settlement which is situated exactly on the site of present-day Vitiazevo. In his article in the regional Greek newspaper, Fedor insisted that this pillar originated from the marble quarry of the Pontic ‘village of Stavri’ and that it had been brought to Vitiazevo in 1855 after its sanctification in the Orthodox Cathedral of St Eugenie in Trebizond. There were indeed quarries in the area of the Pontic village of Stavri, although marble has never been mined there. It is also rather unlikely that the Orthodox sanctification of the ‘Vitiazevo memorial stone’ took place in the Trebizond cathedral of St Eugenie in 1855. Indeed, any Christian ceremonies and rituals would have been impossible there, since this famous church became a mosque after the conquest of the Empire of Trebizond by the Ottomans (Bryer and Winfield, 1985). Fedor interpreted the Greek script as a memorial text dedicated to the foundation of the settlement in 1827, which later became known as Vitiazevo. Although, according to archival data, we can speak about the permanent Greek population in Vitiazevo from 1862 at the earliest, it is possible that some Greeks from the Pontos had lived in the Anapa area from the Ottoman period (before 1828). Recent ethnographic and historical studies on the so-called Circassian Greeks (cherkesskie greki) provide evidence that the natives of the north-western Caucasus in the past had cultural contacts with the population of the south eastern coast of the Black Sea, and that some migration of the Pontic Christians to the region took place in the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries (Kuznetsov, 1997; Kolesov, 2000; Kolesov and Kuznetsov, 2002). 16 The village of Djiginka is situated near Vitiazevo but relatively far from the sea, consequently property is substantially cheaper there.

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History and Politics of Representation  77 Despite lacing credibility as an archaeological artefact, the Fedor’s interpretation of the stone and vague scriptures on it are an example of inter-group tensions that result from the struggle over political representation within the regional citizenship regime that is hostile towards ethnic minorities. Thus, according to Fedor’s version of local history, this first Greek inscription was deliberately damaged in 1967 and replaced by a Russian text with the date 1837 as the year of organisation the Cossack village (stanitsa) of Vitiazevo (Kazazov, 2000, p. 1). Fedor also suspects some conspiracy behind the merging of Vitiazevo with the neighbouring Russian village in the mid-1980s. In his historical notes written for the Greek society, he explains this enlargement of Vitiazevo as a malicious action of pro-Russian Soviet authorities to demolish the Greek ‘rootedness’ in the local land by reducing their proportion of the town’s population.

Conclusion From the historical perspective, ethnicity is a relatively new form of social identity. Its appearance coincided with the development of the modern nation-state and nationalism. As Gellner (1988) says, the nation-state took over a culturally plural and hierarchically structured empire imposing a congruence of political and cultural units. Beller-Hann and Hann (2002, pp. 22–3) argue however, that national identity combines with more traditional identities, giving rise to new forms of social identification, one such ‘emerging and specifically modern form of identity’ being ethnicity. It both combines with and partly replaces identities dominant in the pre-modern period. In the case of the Greeks from Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii, Greek ethnicity has been built on top of their religious identity and their identification with a particular region, village or family group; these identities have been renegotiated and the contemporary Greek ethnic identity may be characterised as multi-layered. Thus, the Greek-ness of the inhabitants of these two settlements is not embedded in the deep shared culture which ties the ethnic group within ‘primordial bounds’ of language, blood, custom and territory (Geertz, 1996, p. 42). Rather, the Greek identity of the Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii locals has been determined by and constructed through the relations of these communities with the state. Indeed, the foundation of this Greek ethnicity was established through the Russian and Ottoman colonial policy; it was influenced by the pan-Hellenist ideology of Greek nationalism, yet it is, to a significant extent, the product of Soviet national engineering. In contemporary post-Soviet Russia, Greek ethnic identity is also shaped within the complex relationships between the regional authorities and the local communities, where the political representation of ethnic collectives is vitally important. The Greek societies play a crucial role in representing the local communities vis-à-vis local and regional authorities. The dominant positions of Greeks in relation to official authorities results in the representation of the Greeks of Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii as culturally and politically united communities. In both cases (Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii), there is a tendency to regard the locals on an official level in the first place as ethnic collectives. The political representation of local communities has come to acquire an importance for the construction of the local Greek identity.

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4

Making Sense of Home and Homeland Motivations and Strategies for a Transnational Migrant Circuit

Introduction There have been dramatic changes in political regimes, economic systems and state borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union. These have coincided with, and often determined, the recent mobility of people in the territory of the former USSR. The Greeks who for several generations had been living in the territory of Russia were among those former Soviet people who, with the fall of the ‘Iron Curtain’, received an opportunity to emigrate to the country which many of them considered their ‘historical homeland’, this created a dilemma of whether to emigrate or remain at home. This chapter examines the complex combination of motivations and strategies which affected the decisions of some ‘Soviet’ Greeks to ‘repatriate’, to stay, or to return home in southern Russia. The chapter also seeks an answer to the question how migrants’ experience of transnationalism affects their values and meanings of home and homeland as well as their ethnic and national identities.1 My Greek informants have negotiated their post-Soviet transformations by increasing their transnational mobility. It is common practice for members of Greek communities such as Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii to spend several months or even years abroad – almost exclusively in Greece or Cyprus – earning money as low-skilled workers and sending remittances to their families at home, or bringing money with them on their return to spend in Russia. This migration practice might be defined as a transnational circuit. Roger Rouse refers to a ‘transnational migrant circuit’ as a multi-sited but single community which is constituted by ‘the continuous circulation of people, money, goods, and information’ (Rouse, 2002, p. 162). The migrants’ life abroad is, to a significant extent, determined by the social, cultural and economic situation at home. At the same time, the experience of transnational movement impacts on the construction of social identities in the home settlement. In other words, transnationalism refracts and shapes the local community.

1 The earlier version of this chapter was published as Popov, A. (2010) ‘Making Sense of Home and Homeland: Former-Soviet Greeks’ Motivations and Strategies for a Transnational Migrant Circuit’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 36, No.1, January 2010, pp. 67–85.

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  79 The everyday practices of place-making as identification with the homeland and home are constantly renegotiated by people involved in the transnational circuit (Gupta, 1992, p. 63). Building on the narratives of those Greek migrants who returned home and / or continued to make frequent visits to Greece, this chapter focuses on their experience of displacement and aims to outline the impact which migration has had on the social identities of the Greeks of southern Russia as a transnational community.

Motivations for Migration: Surviving Identity Crisis and Socio-economic Hardship After Socialism The former-Soviet Greeks arriving in Greece are often seen by the Greek state as immigrants or repatriates. At the same time, it has been acknowledged that the motivations behind this repatriation can vary from the dream of reaching the national homeland to an escape from growing intolerance towards ethnic minorities and economic crisis in the post-Soviet space (Kokkinos, 1991, pp. 312–13). But are those Greeks who migrated to Greece from the former Soviet Union economic migrants? Are they refugees? Or are they simply part of a Greek diaspora finally being reunited with its historical homeland? An analysis of the migrants’ stories shows that there is no single and easy answer to these questions. A New Greek Diaspora? The Russian Greeks often use the word ‘diaspora’ to describe themselves and use ‘repatriation’ to refer to their (e)migration to Greece. This notion of a journey to Greece as a return to the homeland assumes their self-identification with the Greek nation as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983). Such diaspora identity is constructed within the dominant power / knowledge regime of ‘the national order of things’ which imposes a view of identity as being closely bound to the territory of the nation state (Malkki, 1996). The return to the homeland is seen from this national perspective as a ‘natural’ process. At the same time, informants outlined the novelty and post-Soviet character of their diaspora identity, with its contradiction of other, former, identities. This emergence of post-Soviet diasporas is articulated in the following extract from a conversation with a group of men who were born in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, where their family were exiled, and who resettled in Vitiazevo in the 1970s–90s: Yurii:

Well, it seems that in general the meaning of national was simply a bit eroded at that [Soviet] time. Alexander: Internationalism was everywhere. Yurii: So I lived in Uzbekistan for many years. There was a quite strong Greek ‘colony’, as we called it, in Kokand. It was unique, but it was mixed [as well]. We neither hid nor emphasised our national peculiarities. [But] from the 1990s, the growth of self-consciousness

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80  Making Sense of Home and Homeland (rost samosoznaniia) started among all these diasporas, not just among Greeks, but also among Germans and Armenians. Kuz’ma: Yes, it happened to all [of them] . . . But before this, I remember that, at the university, I studied the issue of ‘The erosion of inter-ethnic relations’ (mezhnatsional’nye otnosheniia). I read about this topic for our classes in political information (politzaniatiia). Alexander: [That was] a Soviet human being. Kuz’ma: Exactly. There were no nations (natsii) [at that time]! (Alexander, born 1957; Kuz’ma, born 1949; Yurii, born 1952, Vitiazevo) In the conditions of Soviet ethno-national federalism, the ‘non-titular nationalities’ such as the Greeks, Armenians and Germans in Uzbekistan, indicated in the passage cited above, saw themselves as diasporas, or ‘colonies’, to use their own term, of other nations which had their ethnic homelands either inside or outside the borders of the USSR (Sokolovski, not dated, p. 9). However, researchers investigating the migration of Russian returnees from the former Soviet republics have noted that, for the migrants ‘the Soviet people’ (sovetskii narod) was not only an ideological construct of Soviet propaganda for socialist internationalism, but also formed the reality of their identification with the entire population of the former Soviet Union, providing a sense of ‘membership of a multi-national community’ (Flynn 2001, p. 246). Thus the emergence of the Greek diaspora in the aftermath of socialism is linked to the fragmentation of national identity in the post-Soviet space. The Greek Nation as the Escape From Ethnic Alienation The heightening of ethno-nationalism in the former Soviet republics brought a feeling of discomfort to those informants who used to live in Transcaucasia and Central Asia during the Soviet period and had to leave after the collapse of the USSR. This is true for an old man, Grigorii, who was born in Armenia, lived there with his wife and daughter until 1990. The main reason for their resettlement from Armenia and eventually for their separation from their daughter was the unfair treatment of non-Armenians in the republic at the time: When this perestroika began Armenians started to treat other nationalities badly . . . Firstly, they said to my wife, she is Russian, that she had to go to Russia. But she was born in Armenia. Then . . . I had worked as the head of the Juridical Department in the State Committee of Natural Resources, and my daughter was a chief accountant there. She was young [and] had just left the institute. One day our director sent for me and said that she had to leave. Because she wasn’t Armenian, they wanted to put their [man] in her place . . . Well, they fired her. That’s why we left [Armenia]. My daughter, being jobless, decided to go to Greece. (Grigorii, born 1923, Krasnodar)

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  81 In the conditions of ‘economies of shortage’ which were present everywhere in socialist countries and came to permeate the Soviet Union in its twilight years, the system of redistributing economic resources was restricted by the network of kinship and friendship which was likely to include mostly people belonging to the same ethnic group (Verdery, 1993, p. 176). In the Soviet national republics, the political domination of ‘titular nationalities’ provided their elites with easier access to, and control over, economic resources. In contrast, the representatives of the other ‘non-titular’ ethnic groups became increasingly marginalised, both politically and economically. As a result, the everyday survival in the economic crisis became incredibly difficult for almost all non-titular groups, who found themselves outside such restrictively ethnic networks of mutual support. Analysing the motivations for the mass migration of the Russian-speaking population from the newly independent states in the aftermath of socialism, Hilary Pilkington (1998) comes to the similar conclusion that migrants’ narratives clearly illustrate that the decisions of many to leave the former republics were affected by the growing nationalism in both state policy and everyday social interactions. Nevertheless, these ‘ethnic issues’ are inextricably entwined in the migrants’ articulation of their motivations with ‘socio-economic and political dissatisfactions’ (Pilkington, 1998a, p. 139). This acted as a complex political-economic factor which pushed Greeks, together with other non-titular nationalities, out of the newly independent states: We had already resettled here [Krasnodar Krai] in 1991, because there was the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The situation there was very difficult, there were few, if any, opportunities [for us] to find jobs. Shops were empty. And, generally speaking, our life was dangerous and hard there. (Svetlana, born 1963, Vitiazevo) The diaspora identity gives people an opportunity to identify themselves with a collective and territory somewhere else when they are experiencing ethnic and national alienation from the places where their families have lived for generations and which they have considered their home, if not their homeland. This feeling of loss of, or not belonging to, ‘our place’ is reflected in an interview with a Gaverdovskii resident, Efim, who grew up in the Tsalka district of Georgia and resettled in Russia in 1972: Tsalka is not our land, because the Georgians have come and told us that it is not our land . . . Today all our people have left Tsalka voluntarily, you understand. I think that nobody abandons his own [place]. People don’t just leave a place, when so many of them have already lived there . . . But we, let’s say, simply leave. That’s a sign it doesn’t really belong to us. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) Such narratives of ‘uprooting’ reveal that there is no easy answer to the question of whether the displacement experienced by the ‘Soviet’ Greeks was a ‘voluntary’

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82  Making Sense of Home and Homeland economic migration or an exodus of refugees.2 Effie Voutira suggests that a categorisation of the Greeks resettling in Greece from the former Soviet Union as refugees is problematic, because of the active use of the ‘rhetoric of return’ by migrants, who ‘are trying to escape from their former habitual residence and for that [reason] . . . appeal to the idea of “homeland”’ (Voutira, 1991, pp. 409–11). In her article, written just after the outbreak of the mass exodus of the ‘Pontic’ Greeks from the Soviet Union to Greece, Voutira (1991, p. 409) proposes the dilemma of ‘repatriation’ which is thought of in terms of the choice ‘to stay or to go’ as the standpoint from which to analyse the Greek migrants’ identity. She identifies two patterns of migration among the ‘Soviet’ Greeks: the Greeks deported from Central Asia can be seen as closer to ‘refugees’ because of the finality of their uprooting, while the migrants from Transcaucasia and southern Russia who keep ties with the home place are closer to immigrants. In the decade following publication of her article, the violent conflicts in Abkhazia, Chechnya and Ossetia, the growth of ethno-nationalism as well as Russian chauvinism in all regions of southern Russia and the economic and political instability of the mid-1990s all extended the refugee pattern of migration to many Greeks from the Caucasus. Voutira argues that ‘it is the degree, intensity and complexity of the various types of pressure these groups feel by remaining in the old land, which determine their decision concerning future dislocation’ (Voutira, 1991, p. 413). Thus my informants’ decision to leave home and migrate to the ‘homeland’ is determined by the sense of alienation and socio-economic degradation. However, this alone would not be a sufficient reason to leave; they are also ‘pulled’ to Greece by their desire to discover their ‘homeland’. Possessing the ‘Homeland’ in Greece and the Production of the Dispossessed in Post-Soviet Russia The pressure of growing nationalism in the early years of perestroika was felt to a lesser extent by those Greeks who lived in Krasnodar Krai and other ‘Russian’ regions of RSFSR.3 Perhaps this was because during the Soviet period the RSFSR was never considered to be an ethnically Russian republic, and despite being the majority in all provinces (oblasti and kraia), Russians were not identified as a ‘titular nationality’. Thus, for many of my Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii informants, the uncertainty of the ‘transitory period’ with which they have had to cope since the late 1980s became the main reason behind their decision to start their transnational circuit.

2 The Greek government does not give the status of ‘refugee’ to the Greeks from the former Soviet Union but treats them as immigrants or repatriates (Kokkinos, 1991). 3 However, as examined in Chapter 2, in post-Soviet southern Russia, regional identities are often constructed within ethno-nationalist discourses through contrasting the ‘local’ Slav or ‘Cossack’ population with the so-called ‘ethnic migrants’ predominantly of Caucasian and Central Asian origin. The latter also become victims of the discriminatory policy of regional authorities and the xenophobic attitudes of an ethnic majority.

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  83 The economic crisis was accompanied by the bankruptcy of many Soviet enterprises, which had to dismiss a significant number of their workers as well as reducing or dispensing with their social infrastructure. People who had lost their jobs, or had to survive on microscopic salaries which were often delayed for months or even years, felt themselves abandoned. Their habitual way of life, which had been structured around the collectives of Soviet enterprises, was disrupted and previous social values and norms were seriously challenged or devalued. All this determines the crisis of social identity in post-Soviet Russia, which Humphrey defines as ‘the production of the “dispossessed”’ (2002, p. 21). Russian Greeks see Greece as an escape from the hardship of transformation and a solution to their economic problems. Thus, in the 1990s, people of active working age, from 19 to 40, comprised over 40 per cent of all Greeks who had migrated from the former Soviet Union to Greece ( Upourgeio Makedhonias-Thrakis Geniki Grammateia Palinnostounton Omegenon, 1999). At the same time, an attachment to Greece as a national homeland compensates for the ‘lack of identity’ experienced by many after socialism. This is why in informants’ narratives the search for economic prosperity in Greece is often justified by the morality of a return to a desirable ‘homeland’, or the land of their ‘fathers’ dreams’, as in the following quotation from an interview with Gavriil who in October 2002 came to visit his mother in Gaverdovskii from Salonica (Greece) where he and his family were working at the time: AP: The first time you went to Greece was in 1991, wasn’t it? How did it happen? Gavriil: This happened when my father had a dream to go there. He found out that we had some relatives there . . . [Though borders] were closed at that time, some of our lads went there and told us: ‘There are some of your relatives in Greece’ . . . But my father never went [there]. At that time I had worked at an automobile plant, and I lost my job when they shed jobs (popal pod sokrashchenie). Well, what could I do? I thought, let’s go [to Greece] to see what’s what there. (Gavriil, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) Further education is another reason for migration to Greece. Until recently some Greek universities had scholarship programmes for Russian citizens who wanted to take undergraduate courses in Greece. A qualification obtained there is seen as more prestigious than one received in a Russian institute since it provides broader career opportunities both in Greece and Russia: I studied . . . at the music college for two years here in the city [of Anapa] . . . Then there I had a problem with my hand, I had an operation on it. After this my music career was finished; and I  went to Greece, to Salonica. I enrolled at the Aristotle University, in the Law Department. During the first year, we learned the [Greek] language . . . Now I am in my third

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84  Making Sense of Home and Homeland year . . . I have changed to part-time study . . . And so I have been asked to work as a teacher of Greek language in the [Vitiazevo] school by the chairman of the Greek society. (Sofia, born 1980, Vitiazevo) In the 1990s, the emergence of commercial colleges and institutes in Russia which did not always have proper state licences for their educational activities undermined the prestige of further education as an effective investment in one’s future social and economic status. The following passage conveys how this disillusionment, together with poor employment prospects at home, led to emigration or temporary migration to Greece after graduation from secondary school as the most acceptable social path for many young Greeks: I finished eighth grade, didn’t go on into the ninth, but went instead to the vocational school, started to study there. At that time, diplomas were not being awarded. There was nothing to be done, the school was not registered in the proper way . . . Well, I decided I didn’t need it. And then, I went to Greece . . . [pause and smile] as they say, to the Homeland (na rodinu). Went to Greece, to study . . . No, not to study. I wanted to work. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo) Migration to Greece is also utilised by young men as a strategy to avoid conscription in Russia. If a young man applies for a ‘repatriation visa’, he loses his local registration and his name disappears from the conscription lists of the local army commissariats. Military service is a duty for all male Greek citizens in Greece; and Greeks from the former Soviet Union are conscripted into the Greek army as soon as they have obtained Greek citizenship. The Russian Greeks see the short national service in Greece (three months for repatriated Greeks) as an easier and safer alternative to the long and dangerous service in the Russian army, where they could be posted to the Caucasus or other ‘trouble spots’. Additionally, it is now common knowledge in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii that following service in the Greek army, which guarantees them full rights as Greek citizens, migrants can find work and achieve their economic aims more easily: I went to the army in Greece, served six months, and came back home. This is the situation now. Then, just as now, there were no jobs to be found here, I went to Cyprus . . . When, [in 1996], I received my documents [he was referring to a Greek passport] and served in the [Greek] army, my only aim was to go abroad and to find a job. Initially I wanted to go not to Cyprus, but to Germany . . . There was an opportunity to do this because I served alongside a lad [who had lived in Germany for some time], he told me that he would help me with accommodation and work there. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo)

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  85 Although the migrants’ strategic use of military service in Greece is obvious to everyone, the imagined link with the ‘national homeland’ imparts to the Greeks a moral justification for their economic migration, as well as for the evasion of dangerous conscription to the Russian army. So the mother of Konstantin, from whose interview the passage cited above was taken, proudly referred to her son’s military experience in the ‘homeland’: The top commander once came to their sub-unit. All soldiers drew up in front of him, he went around and spoke to everyone asking where they were from and where their parents lived. All the soldiers turned out to be locals, Kostia was the only one without parents [nearby]. He said that he lived alone there in his uncle’s house while his parents were still in Russia. That officer was amazed: ‘You are alone here! And you joined the army! Bravo! This is a real patriot!’ (Elena, born 1953, Vitiazevo) Thus, the emergence of a diaspora identity among the Greeks in the post-Soviet space highlights the serious identity crises which they experience in a situation when their established way of life has been disrupted by the economic and political shifts in a post-socialist society. Their decision to migrate to Greece is determined by their increasing feeling of being torn up from their ‘home places’ and by a hope of finding their roots in the imagined ‘homeland’. Malkki’s argument that ‘mass displacement occurs precisely when one’s own, accustomed society has become “strange and frightening”’ (Malkki, 1995, p. 509) illustrates the complex motivations behind the Soviet Greek mass migrations to Greece. This makes it difficult to classify the analysis of this migration into the traditional theoretical categories of ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’. In the refugee and migration studies literature, theories which favour the distinction between free and forced migration have been criticised as too schematic or even misleading (Malkki, 1995; Pilkington, 1998a; Richmond, 1994; Voutira, 1991). Thus, Richmond argues that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary migrations is misleading not least because ‘choices are not limited but are determined by the structuration process’ (Richmond, 1994, p. 55). By adopting Giddens’ concept of structuration, which allows one to emphasise the process by which social structures are created and changed through the exercise of freedom of action, Richmond acknowledges the complex interplay between structure and agency in the individual decisions about migration. He goes on to offer his own model of migration as a continuum of different individual and collective actions ‘at one end of which individuals and collectives are proactive and at the other reactive’ (Richmond, 1994, p. 55). In my research I use the ‘pull-and-push’ approach in analysis of my informants’ migratory decisions because, in my opinion, it demonstrates that there is not a simple answer to the question whether (former) Soviet Greeks are ‘pushed’ from their home communities in the (former) USSR, becoming ‘forced migrants’ and ‘refugees’; or they are ‘pulled’ to their

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86  Making Sense of Home and Homeland ‘historical homeland’ in Greece in their rather ‘voluntary’ pursuit of economic and symbolic rewards from such resettlement. Applying Richmond’s terminology, I argue that when my informants take their decision to migrate they often ‘react’ to the economic and political crisis and to deteriorating inter-ethnic relationships in the post-Soviet society. Nonetheless, their migratory strategies might involve a significant element of rational calculation when former Soviet Greeks ‘proactively’ search for the best opportunity to improve their social and economic positions by ‘repatriation’ to Greece. As Voutira points out ‘the redefinition of identity along ethno-national lines has led to an improved access to emigration to the West under the redefinition of “repatriation” as the “right to return” to one’s historical homeland’ (Voutira, 2006, p. 380). Thus, very often my informants see their migration as both a voluntary, or even desirable, action and a step which they were forced to make under the pressure of circumstances.

The Homeland of the Greek Migrants, or the Journey There and Back Again The analysis of motivations and strategies for migration from southern Russia to Greece demonstrates the complex intersection of socio-economic and psychological reasons for the cross-border movement of the former Soviet Greeks. The migrants’ experience of displacement influences their perception of the homeland; it sometimes changes the aims and the course of their journey and redirects them back to Russia. So why have these migration practices developed as a transnational circuit of people, ideas and objects rather than leading to the outright emigration or repatriation of the ex-Soviet Greeks to their ‘historical homeland’? Economic Migration: Expectations, Disappointments and New Opportunities The economic crises which accompanied the post-socialist transformations in the 1990s were among the main motivating forces behind the mass ‘repatriation’ of the Greeks from the former Soviet Union. The experience of the Greeks as economic migrants plays a critical part in their return to Russia. The Greek migrants have ambivalent attitudes towards their work in Greece and Cyprus. On the one hand, economic migration abroad is seen as a desperate step for people on the edge of survival. On the other, informants admitted that this almost unavoidable cross-border movement might bring substantial material benefits: [Our] Greeks started to go to work in Greece, because they compared their earnings here and there. It was absolute poverty here, but there they began to earn real MONEY [informant’s emphasis]. They saw life there and started to live. (Vitalii, born 1955, Gaverdovskii) But while the Greek migrants from Russia are earning Western hard currency abroad, they encounter for the first time conditions of competition in the labour market and

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  87 social inequality.4 They are pushed out to the so-called ‘non-competitive’ sectors of the Greek labour market, where migrants are usually employed in jobs regarded by the natives as low-status, such as building construction, seasonal agricultural work, hotel and restaurant work and domestic service (Fakiolas and King, 1996, p. 177). The low economic and social status of migrants from the former Soviet Union is complicated by their linguistic incompetence. Describing the characteristics of the economically disadvantaged status of the Greek repatriates from the Soviet Union, Vergeti outlines how ‘in the early years the majority of arrivals ended up as cheap labour, regardless of their educational level and work experience, chiefly due to the language problems and the fact that their qualifications had no local equivalent’ (Vergeti, 1991, p. 390). Those Greek migrants who enter Greece with tourist visas but aim to work are usually employed illegally with wages several times lower and working hours significantly longer than official employees. They experience difficulties in finding employment and change jobs frequently; they also have to cope with the constant risk of being caught by the police: I have to say that I was lucky with my job. Thank God! I found work quickly. Some people cannot find a permanent job there for several years . . . They change their jobs five to six times a month, or have [even] two to three jobs in the space of a week. There are different circumstances there. People who are living without documents there are fired [without payment], and the police catch them. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo) The migrants’ disillusionment with their economic expectations from the homeland reminds them of their social degradation. The Russian Greeks’ experience of displacement and difficulties with employment in the host country are sometimes reflected in informants’ negative self-representation when compared with such socially marginalised groups as nomadic Gypsies: [Working there], you travel around almost all of Greece. One time your job is here, another it is there, and the next job [could be at the opposite end of the country] . . . In short, we go around like a band of Gypsies. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) This representation of transnational migration via nomadic metaphors reproduces the pattern of territorialised (national) identity which imposes a sedentarist vision of territorial displacement as a social pathology (Mallki, 1996), while it brings into question the morality of migration and migrants’ activities (Kristeva, 1991). The

4 Some forms of open and hidden economic exploitation of sections of the working population by the totalitarian state had existed in the Soviet Union (the most striking examples are the Gulag labour camps and the serf-like situation of the peasantry on collective farms before the 1960s).

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88  Making Sense of Home and Homeland Greeks in southern Russia suspect that transnational migration is accompanied by illegal and even criminal practices, such as human trafficking, prostitution and racketeering. The negative image of economic migration abroad is based on the Greek migrants’ own experience of racketeering on their way to and from Greece as well as being fostered by the Russian media, which releases materials about migrants involved in, or victimised by, criminal activities. Discussing the dark side of transnational migration, the Gaverdovskii Greeks also mentioned a local woman who had been involved in the illegal trafficking of orphan children from Russia to Greece. Thus, despite the importance of migration to Greece for their economic wellbeing, their socio-economic status in the host society is low and they characterise their work abroad in terms of professional degradation and social marginalisation. Such a negative perception of changes in the migrants’ social status in the host society has a gender dimension too. My female informants spoke more often about the positive sides of their life abroad, emphasising the material comfort, new friends and financial improvement in their personal situation, while the men expressed more concern with their loss of the socio-economic positions which they previously had at home. This gender difference occurred in an interview with Anna and Georgii, a mother and son who had emigrated to Greece, when they answered my question about whether they liked their life in Greece: Anna:

I  like it there [in Greece]. I have some friends there who are like my family. And whom do I have here? There is only Lena [my sister-in-law] here. Georgii: I don’t like [to live in Greece]. I feel better here. AP: Do you work there? Anna: No, I don’t work. I was retired when I went there. Would I go to work there? I get a pension there, so I can buy my bit of bread. Here I don’t have a pension. AP (to Georgii): Do you work there? Georgii: Yes, I work in a garage. It is a big private garage for huge trucks. I clean and repair them. I also do some metal- and body-work. I am also a builder for my employer. I do everything. AP: What was your occupation here? Georgii: I was a jeweller here. (Anna, born 1934; Georgii, born 1959, Vitiazevo) In the migration studies literature, there is a ‘theoretical concentration on women’s opportunities and reversed gender relations created by their migrant status’ (AlAli, 2002, p. 97; see also Kosmarskaya, 1999). The migrant men refer to their past much more frequently than their female counterparts, when they were somebody of status; while migration may create for women an opportunity ‘to escape from oppressive social codes concerning female roles, female behaviour and female identity’ (Hollands, 1996, pp. 11–12; cited from Al-Ali, 2002, p. 97). My research

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  89 demonstrates that there are differences between the strategies of migrant men and women of adaptation to and naturalisation in Greece / Cyprus, which have something to do with shifts in migrants’ gender identities. For example, on several occasions, I heard how my informants referred to marriages between migrant women and native Greek men in Greece as successful stories of migrant adaptation in the host society, but nobody ever mentioned a migrant man marrying a Greek woman. Moreover, my informants would condemn any such marriage if there were one: AP: Do [the migrant men] marry Cypriot women? Konstantin: It would be a very rare case if a Cypriot girl was to marry a Pontian [laughter from the other people present during the interview], or if a Pontian were to take a Cypriot girl. Honestly, I don’t know, maybe there are such womanisers (lavelasy) who hope to marry and do not work. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo) For a migrant man who occupies a low position on the socio-economic ladder of Greek / Cypriot society, marriage to a native woman, with presumably higher social status because of her native origin, is seen as a misalliance, since gender roles from the ‘traditionalist’ point of view would be inverted and the wife would dominate the husband. Moreover, such a marriage would be seen to condone an unacceptable male dependence on his wife. Marriages between migrant women and Greek men are approved, in contrast, because they do not contradict the popular perception of the subordinate female role in the ‘traditional’ family. The femininity of migrant women sometimes provides them with an opportunity to adjust more easily to the host society via marriage to natives, while the discrepancy between ‘traditionally’ high male social status and migrants’ socio-economic marginality challenges the migrant men’s perception of their masculinity.5 The migrants tend to see their cross-border activities as a temporary state which they have to endure in order to gain higher social and economic positions at home.6 Because of their relatively low wages in Greece, the migrant workers cannot afford a luxurious lifestyle there, but once this money is invested in Russia it may bring substantial economic dividends as well as social respect at home. The case of Efim, a Tsalka-born Gaverdovskii resident, who opened a food store in the village in 1996 after several years of work as an unskilled agricultural labourer in Greece and as a shuttle-trader (chelnok) between Turkey and Russia, may serve as an example of a successful career as an economic migrant. Efim’s 5 Similar changes in the male migrants’ gender identity have been noted by Green in her research among Northern Epirots from Albania who migrate to Greece. In their social and economic deprivation, Northern Epirot men become excluded from the gender order of Greek society when they work as musicians at Greek festivals (Green, 1998, p. 98). 6 The resemblance of crossing international borders in the course of transnational migration to a rite of passage has been already noticed by social anthropologists (Driessen, 1998, p. 101; cited from De Rapper, 2004, p. 163).

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90  Making Sense of Home and Homeland shop in the centre of the village became a place for the daily gathering of the local Greek males, chiefly new arrivals from Georgia. Such male social gatherings are widespread everywhere in rural Transcaucasia, but very unusual in Russia. By providing the Georgian Greeks with an opportunity to recreate their old lifestyle in the new place of residence, Efim won respect among those Gaverdovskii Greeks who had recently resettled from Georgia and who now constituted a majority in the local Greek community. Thus, the starting capital earned through transnational migration, once it was invested in the socio-economic infrastructure of the village, provided Efim with social recognition and a position of informal leadership in the local community. The full benefits from money earned by hard labour (often in humiliating conditions) in Greece are only realised when migrants bring their earnings to Russia. The migrants, in fact, go abroad as if to a work place where they will earn enough for a decent life at home; illustrated in the following extract from Konstantin’s interview: I didn’t like my first job [in Greece], because my wages were low there. I went there to work, not to relax. It was easy work, and so I earned little. Well, I found another job, I was employed simply as an unskilled builder’s labourer. Well, it was better, I worked there one year. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo) Although the migrants experience exploitation and a lack of respect while working abroad, they can enjoy their leisure time and relative economic independence at home. It is even a subject of pride for Greek men who work abroad that they can afford to have free time for socialising when they return from Greece (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii). Being dependent on their work abroad, the migrants try to organise their lives to use their time in Greece to maximum profit, while they take their leisure or involve themselves in some economic activity in Russia. Greek migration has therefore a seasonal element to it. Due to the seasonal demand during the summer from the agricultural sector, building construction and tourism, which are the main occupations of the Greeks from the former Soviet Union in Greece and Cyprus, the Gaverdovskii Greeks usually leave home in the early spring, heading abroad for work, and come back in the autumn. The migrants from Vitiazevo, however, prefer to stay in Russia during the summer months, because they are engaged in local tourism along the Black Sea coast. The recent development of the tourist industry in the region allows the local Greeks to earn a substantial income during the summer, which may support them till the start of the next tourist season. The cases of economic migration from Vitiazevo which were investigated during the fieldwork indicated that the locals go to work in Greece and Cyprus chiefly during the period between October and June. Money which the migrants bring from Greece is often invested in the development of houses and the construction of buildings which are rented out to holidaymakers. Changes in socio-economic conditions both in Russia and Greece inevitably impacted on the migrants’ strategies, patterns of movement and periods of time

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  91 spent in either of the two countries. For example, in 2005, the Anapa city council changed the administrative borders of Vitiazevo. The beach and coastal areas which were most profitable for the tourist industry were taken from the town and the administrative status of Vitiazevo was degraded from ‘town’ to ‘village’. City officials started selling the land near the sea for development of tourist infrastructure. The majority of local residents could not afford to buy lots in the beach zone and the buyers were mainly rich newcomers or big corporations. These changes, however, created more jobs for the locals in building construction. As a result some of Vitiazevo Greeks who had emigrated to Greece several years ago started coming back. They were attracted by new job opportunities at ‘home’, after complaining that life became very expensive after Greece joined the ‘Euro-zone’. For example, Konstantin has stopped going to Cyprus, he now builds houses in Vitiazevo using technologies and skills which he learned working in Greece and Cyprus. He earns even more then if he went to work abroad. His brother, Mikhail (born 1975), however, was cautious during our conversation in 2006: ‘At the moment there is more stability in Russia, but who knows what happens in [the] future’. The economic crisis of 2008 and the following recession worsened economic situations in both Greece and Russia. However, there is no evidence to show that migrants have been returning from Greece en mass. On the contrary, according to the 2002 and 2010 All-Russian Population Censuses and other recent statistics the Greek population of Krasnodar Krai decreased from 30,461 people in 2000 (Rakachev and Rakacheva, 2003, p. 128) to 22,595 in 2010; with about half of this significant 8,000 population loss occurring between 2002 and 2010 (see Table 2.1). The most plausible explanation for such a dramatic reduction in the Greek population of the region might be their emigration as a result of the changing economic climate in Russia. Greece is not necessarily the only possible destination of this migration, however. There is some anecdotal evidence from my Vitiazevo informants that in 2013 those of the local Greeks who had both Russian and Greek citizenship used their EU passports to move to northern European countries, such as Germany, that have been less affected by the economic crisis than Greece or Cyprus. At the same time, those of my informants who resettled in Greece ‘permanently’ do not necessarily rush to return to their ‘homes’ in Russia. In August 2013, I met Foma and his three grown up children during their annual holiday visit to their native Vitiazevo. Despite the economic and political instability in Greece they were not considering a return to Russia. Rather, the fact that such a possibility was suggested in jest by Foma’s Hellenic son-in-law (a native Greek from Greece), confirms that in the eyes of the ‘natives’ former Soviet Greeks are not entirely rooted in their ‘historical homeland’ but retain an ambiguous image of ‘economic migrants’. Two years later, in 2015, with an economic climate in Greece seeing no improvement, Foma and his twenty-three year old son were spending most of the year living and working in Vitiazevo. Nevertheless, neither themselves nor their neighbours considered them as returnees, since having citizenship of both countries and having properties in Salonica and Vitazevo they would be able to move between Russia and Greece with ease if they wanted or needed to (see also Chapter 7 for discussion of interconnections between migrants’ identity, citizenship and property relations).

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92  Making Sense of Home and Homeland Thus, both the economically-disadvantaged and marginal social status of the migrants in Greece, and the opportunity to improve the personal and family economic situation and receive social recognition in the home community, play important roles in the development of cross-border movement as a transnational circuit among the Russian Greeks. Transnational circuits as a form of ‘transnational social spaces’ are characterised by production of exchange-based networks which spread across national borders (Faist, 2000, p. 198). As Thomas Faist argues, ‘the reality of transnational exchanges indicates that migration and return migration are not definite, irrevocable, and irreversible decisions; transnational lives in themselves may become a strategy of survival and betterment’ (Faist, 2000, p. 197). Rethinking ‘Home’ and ‘Homeland’ Looking for refuge from the hardship of the economic crisis since the Soviet era, the Greeks of southern Russia assume when they migrate to Greece that they are going to their ‘historical homeland’. The encounter with the homeland, however, does not always fulfil the expectations of the repatriates, but leads them to rethink and relocate both home and homeland. On their arrival in Greece, the Greek migrants discover their cultural difference from the local Greeks. The researchers studying the process of repatriation / return from the diaspora to the ethnic / historical homeland have reported that returnees realise their cultural otherness as a result of face-to-face encounters with people from the homeland (Pilkington and Flynn, 2001; Shami, 1998). For one thing, Greeks from the former Soviet Union face a linguistic boundary, which separates them from their hosts. Most of the repatriates speak Russian or Turkish; if their families maintain the Pontic Greek dialect, they come to realise that it is incomprehensible to the people of Greece speaking in Modern Greek. These linguistic differences are critical for the migrants’ reconstruction of their Greek ethnicity. In fact, the very Greek-ness of the migrants, which plays such an important part in their desire to (im)migrate to Greece, is called into question. The migrants’ encounter with the homeland leads them to understand their difference from the population of Greece and they rethink their ethnic identity as ‘other Greeks’. At the same time, the local Greek population, the so-called Hellenes, demarcate the cultural otherness of the Greek migrants from the former Soviet Union by calling them Russo-Ponti, which literally means the Russian Pontians. Thus, the former-Soviet Greeks discover their new identity as Pontic Greeks in Greece. In his interview, Konstantin explained how he became a Pontian by accepting the name which native Greeks gave to migrants from the former USSR: I considered myself Greek [before I came to Greece]. [In Greece], I came to understand that I am a Pontian (pontiets), Pontius, Russo-Pontius, they say. There I came to feel that I am a Pontian . . . , well, a Greek-Pontian (grek-pontiets) . . .  (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo)

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  93 The migrants, then, departed from Russia as Greeks but arrived in Greece as Russians and Pontians; this Pontic identity is subsequently imported back to Russia when the migrants return home. Although the Pontic Greek identity has acquired complex meanings in the post-Soviet socio-political context of southern Russia, the Ponticness of the Greek migrants implies the idea of their otherness to the native Greeks and their cultural distance from the homeland. Sideri notes that in the early 1990s, the term Russo-Ponti was initially used in Greece to underline the common origin of recent Pontic Greek migrants from the USSR and those who arrived from the Pontos in 1923 in the course of population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The term also emphasised the difference between these two groups highlighting a Russian / Soviet background of the new arrivals. However, this term soon acquired a pejorative connotation which ‘questions the migrants’ less “authentic” Greekness’ (Sideri, 2006, p. 4). The construction of Pontic identity among the Greek migrants indicates the process of relocation of the homeland on the part of former-Soviet Greeks in the course of their migration to Greece. Paradoxically, seeking to escape from their post-Soviet identity crisis, the Greeks undertook a difficult journey to the country which they saw as their historical homeland in order to rediscover their homeland in Russia. Thus Zoia’s interpretation of the concept of ‘Pontic Greek’ as a ‘Soviet Greek’ shows graphically how the meaning of homeland moves alongside people: Our Greeks went there [to Greece]. The [local] Greeks asked them: ‘Why do you come here?’ Ours answered: ‘Well, [because] our homeland is here’. Then the locals disagreed: ‘Why is your homeland here? Where were you born?’ For example, one Hellene (ellinets) asked me: ‘How is it possible that your homeland is here? You were born in the [Soviet] Union, so, your homeland is there!’ He said: ‘You are Ponti, Pontians’. Why are we Pontians? We are Soviet Greeks. So, [Ponti] means Soviet in Greek [sic]. Yes, we are Soviet Greeks. (Zoia, born 1933, Severskaia) Accordingly, the Pontic Greek identity replaces the previous ‘Soviet’ identity of the migrants, while the Greek ‘repatriates’ relocate their homeland in the former USSR. This new identity of the repatriates is developed alongside strong feelings of attachment to Russia or the territory of the former USSR as the homeland. In their research into the Russian returnees from the CIS, Flynn and Pilkington outline a similar phenomenon of nostalgia attitudes towards the place of previous residence, which is sometimes defined as ‘the diaspora identity’ (Gradirovskii, cited from Pilkington and Flynn, 2001, p. 29). These authors, however, offer to recast the concept of homeland as ‘home / land’, which allows us to discard the primordialist view of ethnicity as the territorialised identity which the meaning of ‘homeland’ implies. The concept ‘home / land’, in contrast, suggests that the personal attachment to the territory (land) is constructed by migrants through the recreation of home, the meaning of which is defined via such words as ‘family’, ‘relatives’, ‘house’, ‘work’, ‘past’ and ‘future’, in the new place (Pilkington and

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94  Making Sense of Home and Homeland Flynn, 2001, p. 29). It seems that this conception might be applied as a description of the process of relocation of home and homeland by the Greek migrants. Nonetheless, the case of the Greeks who are involved in continuous circulation between Greece and Russia has significant differences from that of the Russian returnees, for whom return to the countries of their previous residence seems unthinkable. In the narratives of the Greeks’ displacement, home and homeland are rediscovered in Russia rather than reconstructed in Greece: When I went [to Greece], I thought, ‘Ah, the Homeland!’ I’ve arrived. Let’s shout about the Homeland, we like it even if it is not beautiful.7 So we left [Russia], we got to know what the world is like, got to know that there is nothing better than home. (Konstantin, born 1977, Vitiazevo) Greek migrants put much effort into crossing national borders only to encounter new ethnic and cultural borders which are not at all easy to cross. But, at least, some of them have acquired a home / land in Russia through ‘repatriation’ to Greece. Paradoxically, the migrants who tried to avoid the hardships of economic shock therapy in post-Soviet Russia had to confront a dramatically free market economy when they arrived in Greece. Furthermore, the social and cultural difficulties of adaptation set their economic position in the host society even further back. All these led repatriates to reconsider their prospects in Greece and forced them to alter their economic practices. At the same time, the experience of the cultural otherness and challenges of economic adaptation in Greece stimulated the Greek migrants to look for new opportunities at home. Meanwhile, the location and meaning of ‘homeland’ are constantly being renegotiated.

Conclusion The serious identity crisis which the former-Soviet Greeks experienced in the aftermath of socialism, when the established way of life was disrupted by economic and political shifts, led to the emergence of a diaspora identity among them. Therefore, the decision to migrate to Greece was for many of my informants determined by increasing feelings of being torn out of their home ground and by a hope of finding their roots in an imagined ‘homeland’. The meaning of homeland is, however, reassessed by the migrants when they discover their cultural otherness from Greece and make the difficult social and economic transition to join the host society. All this determines the development of the Pontic identity among the migrants and leads to a social reconstruction of the ‘home / land’ in Russia. The Greek narratives of displacement reveal the process of constructing social identity among the transnational migrants in the course of their migration. The

7 In fact, this phrase is a paraphrased line from the song ‘Rodina’ (‘Homeland’) of the Russian rockgroup DDT.

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Making Sense of Home and Homeland  95 analysis of the migrants’ practices demonstrates that the social identities of the Greeks who are engaged in the transnational circuit are in constant flux. Navigating their transnational circuit, the Greek migrants strategically use their ethnic and cultural identities, family networks and ethno-nationalist discourses as capital, which they invest in achieving a practical goal – a more secure economic and social position as well as emotional and psychological comfort whether in the home or the host communities. Whatever the different motives for the decision to move to Greece, all migrants face the problem of safe and effective transportation to their destinations. Therefore, the focus of the next chapter is the seemingly technical issues of visa regulations naturalisation requirements and citizenship that, however, touch upon the predicament of national and ethnic identity among the transnational migrants.

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5

Transnationalisation, Materialisation and Commoditisation of Ethnicity

Introduction On Thursday, 9 November 2000, the Krasnodar Greek national-cultural organisation (society) held its usual weekly meeting. What was unusual was that the office was full of people; it was too small to accommodate all those who had turned out that evening and the overflow had to stand in a dark corridor. It was obvious that they were waiting for something. When I entered the office the chairperson of the society was speaking on the telephone; he was quite nervous, even annoyed. He almost shouted into the telephone: ‘Yes, we are waiting for him! He promised to be here by 6.30 . . .’ Listening to conversations in the room, I realised that the office was overcrowded because the people were all waiting for their passports to be returned from the Greek Consulate in Moscow, complete with visas. Since 1999, when the Greek General Consulate in Novorossiisk had stopped issuing visas, people from southern Russia and the North Caucasus had had to apply for Greek visas in Moscow. The crowd at the meeting was very upset over this inconvenience and people were complaining to the chairperson. He replied that from 2001 onwards they would once again be able to obtain their visas from the Novorossiisk Consulate. Moreover, it would even be possible to apply for Greek citizenship there (everyone called it ‘dual citizenship’, meaning that they were planning to retain their Russian passports as well). The people were very pleased to hear this and, although their passports did not arrive that evening, many went home in a better mood. When the meeting was almost over, an old man and two women in their late 30s entered the room. The old man asked the chairperson: Chairperson: Old man: Chairperson: The old man’s daughter:

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Is it possible to join your society? Possible for whom? Here are my daughter and daughter-inlaw – they want to join. But who are you? Well, I am the daughter . . . 

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Transnationalisation, Materialisation  97 Old man: Chairperson:

[ My] surname is Popandopulo.1 No. I mean: are you Greeks? . . . [I ask] this because if you then [want to] apply for ‘dual citizenship’, only Greeks can obtain it. You, Popandopulo, what [ethnicity] is recorded in your passport? Are you a Greek? Old man: ‘Russian’ is recorded there, but I have the birth certificates (metriki) of my parents [and my] grandfather which show that they were Greeks. And my daughter can prove that she is a Greek by these certificates. Well, as for my daughter-in-law, there is my son . . .  The old man’s daughter-in-law: Yes, first of all, my husband has to . . .  Chairperson: Okay. The old man’s daughter: Where should we write our names and how much shall we pay for membership? . . . (Fieldwork Diary, 9 November 2000, Krasnodar) This story from my fieldwork diary offers a snapshot of practices without which the transitional migration of many my informants would be difficult or even impossible. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, when (former) Soviet Greeks became involved in transnational migration between Russia and Greece, the nation-state has attempted to regulate their cross-border movement. The focus of this chapter is on the impact that bureaucratic regulations governing transnational migration – covering matters such as passports, visas, invitation letters and documents proving the national / ethnic identity of citizens – have on identity construction among the Greeks of Russia. The chapter also examines how the meanings of citizenship, national and ethnic identity are changed and reinterpreted by people crossing national borders in the shifting conditions of the post-Soviet era.2

1 For the sake of anonymity, all the surnames which I use in this book have been changed. Popandopulo is one of the most common and stereotypical surnames among (former) Soviet (Pontic) Greeks. The actual surname of this old man also sounds typically Pontic Greek. 2 The earlier version of this chapter was published as Popov, A. (2007) ‘Crossing Borders, Shifting Identities: Transnationalisation, “Materialisation”, and Commoditisation of Greek Ethnicity in PostSoviet Russia’, Anthropology of East Europe Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 29–41.

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98  Transnationalisation, Materialisation

Visa Regulations and Citizenship Provisions for the ‘Repatriated’ Greeks Since the outbreak of mass migration by the Greeks from the former Soviet Union, the policy of Greece towards these migrants has been determined by the history of the relations between the Greek nation-state and its diaspora, and by political processes within the country, as well as by the increasing influence of the European Union on contemporary Greek foreign policy. The general trend in this policy can be defined as the facilitation of the resettlement of Greek migrants, which highlights the peculiarity of Greek nationalism (Fakiolas and King, 1996, p. 177). Since the foundation of the independent Greek state in 1821, Greek national identity has been based on a combination of the civic model of the nation as a state and people who live in its territory, and the ethnic model, which represents the Greek nation as a community of ethnic Greeks. The latter principle assumes a Greek-ness based on cultural and ‘blood’ bonds as the essence of the Greek nation. The governmental department founded in 1984 for ‘Diaspora Hellenism’ reflects this principle of national identity at the institutional level (Hirschon, 1999, pp. 164–70). The Greek state sees Greek diasporas as its potential citizens.3 Therefore, the Greek state treated the former ‘Soviet’ Greeks who intended to migrate to Greece as repatriates from the Greek diaspora and facilitated their entry into the country and their naturalisation (Fakiolas and King, 1996, p. 186; Mestheneos, 2002, p. 180). Greek Consulates in the former Soviet republics suddenly found themselves on the front line of this repatriation. Until 2000 they issued so-called ‘repatriation visas’, which enabled migrants to enter Greece and apply for Greek citizenship within a year after the visa had been issued. Initially these visas were issued only by the Greek Embassy in Moscow; but it was clear in 2000 that by the late 1990s, the General Consulate of Greece, which had been opened in Novorossiisk, had issued over 8,000 repatriation visas. At the same time, the Greek officials turned a blind eye to those migrants who entered the country on tourist visas but overstayed them. Thus, according to the official statistical data, as of 1999, over 34 per cent of all repatriated Greeks from the former USSR or 49,139 people had outstayed their tourist visas (Upourgeio Makedhonias-Thrakis Geniki Grammateia Palinnostounton Omegenon, 1999). Furthermore, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided these migrants with an opportunity to apply for repatriation visas once they are within Greek territory. In 1990, the same ministry formed the National Foundation for the Reception and Resettlement of Repatriated Greeks which offered a service facilitating the adaptation of repatriates via the organisation on their behalf of language courses, employment and housing (Kokkinos, 1991b, p. 395). This service, known among migrants as ‘the Programme’ ( programma), became one of the main channels of resettlement of the Greeks from the former Soviet Union. 3 The ethnic model of the nation was fully employed in order to fulfil the conditions of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) when almost all ethnic Greeks resettled in Greece in the course of the population exchange with Turkey.

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Transnationalisation, Materialisation  99 Currently, the Greek policy towards the former Soviet Greek diaspora has moved towards keeping them in their present place of residence and preventing them from mass return to the ‘homeland’. This policy is inspired by the difficulties which returnees have experienced in adaptation. The Greek infrastructure was not prepared for such a mass influx of immigrants within a very short period and the adaptation measures became a burden on the country’s economy. Another reason behind the frosty welcome of Greeks from the post-Soviet space is that Greece, as a member of the EU, has to follow European immigration regulations restricting the entry of migrants into ‘fortress Europe’ (Fakiolas and King, 1996, p. 186). In practice, this policy was implemented by abolishing the repatriation visas in 2000. Now Greek Consulates in the Russian Federation are entitled to issue Greek passports to returnees who can become Greek citizens without an actual ‘return’ – resettlement – to Greece. At the same time, the procedure for obtaining Greek citizenship is becoming longer and more complicated. It is assumed that an average future Greek citizen has to display his / her cultural and ethnic affiliation with Greece, which requires quite substantial knowledge of Greek national history, the contemporary political situation in the country, and some fluency in Modern Greek. The Greek origin of the applicant has to be proved by documents showing the Greek ethnicity of the citizenship-seeker or at least one of his / her parents. A personal interview with the applicant in the Consulate is also a part of this procedure. As one of the officers in the Novorossiisk Consulate implied, the purpose of these interviews is to prove ‘the Greek mentality’ of the applicant, which can include his / her knowledge of Greek cuisine, folklore and traditions (Expert interview, Novorossiisk, 12 September 2003). Finally, the Greek official approach to the repatriation of the Caucasian Greeks depends on the ‘strategic’ national interests of Greece and the socio-political situation in the country. Thus, those repatriates who joined the Programme were settled in several ‘resettlement centres’, which were all situated in Northern Greece, the provinces of Macedonia and Thrace (Kokkinos, 1991b, p. 395). In 1999, about 75 per cent of all repatriates from the former Soviet Union, that is, 106,347 people, lived in these two provinces (Upourgeio Makedhonias-Thrakis Geniki Grammateia Palinnostounton Omegenon, 1999). Since these northern regions became part of Greek national territory in 1912, the Greek state has used different waves of repatriates (the first were those Greeks who arrived from Asia Minor after the transfer of populations in 1923), in order to create a buffer zone against external threats and increase the Greek element in this border region with its significant proportion of ethnic minorities (Slavo-Macedonians, Vlachs, Pomaks and Turks) in the local population (Voutira, 1997, p. 118). In 2003 my informants believed that the procedure of repatriation and granting of Greek citizenship became easier before elections to the national Parliament of Greece. The Greek Socialist Party (PA.SO.K), which formed the national government between 1989 and 2004 – the period of mass immigration of Greeks from the USSR – saw Soviet repatriates as potential political supporters. In interviews, some informants expressed their opinion that the Greek Government softened the repatriation regime from time to time and declared some tax and credit privileges

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100  Transnationalisation, Materialisation for the post-Soviet immigrants just before the elections in order to attract the votes of these new citizens. The Decree of the Ministry of Internal Affairs giving the opportunity for ‘repatriates’ from the former USSR to receive housing credits was released on the eve of the Parliament elections in April 2000. The opposition party ‘Nea Democratia’ accused PA.SO.K of buying more than 100,000 votes from the repatriates by this edict and thereby securing its victory in the elections (Evksinos Pontos, 2000b, p. 1). At the same time, the Greek diaspora in the post-Soviet space was well informed about the political situation in Greece via the local Greek newspapers which published pro-PA.SO.K articles (see for instance Evksinos Pontos, 2000b, p. 1; Evksinos Pontos, 2002d, p. 4).

‘Materialisation’ of Greek Ethnic and National Identities via the Bureaucracy of Emigration The Greek ethnicity of the potential repatriates occupies an essential place in the whole process of their migration to the ‘homeland’. As a matter of fact, the Greekness of the migrants has to be proved by documentation. Actually, their Greek ethnicity is partly constructed as a bureaucratic concept, during the process of obtaining Greek visas and citizenship. In order to receive repatriation visas and / or Greek citizenship, an applicant has to prove his / her connections with the Greek nation. The most solid evidence of belonging to the Greek nation was Greek citizenship which had been acquired in the 1920s–30s in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) by many Greek refugees who fled from the Ottoman Empire to the Soviet Union. This is why the Greeks who were persecuted for possessing foreign passports and sent into exile in Central Asia during the Stalinist period became the first and most significant wave of ‘returnees’ (Voutira, 1991, p. 412). However, most of these repatriates were the children and grandchildren of those who obtained Greek citizenship before the Second World War and who had died or were too old to emigrate when it became possible in the late 1980s. As a consequence, their descendants, like Semen, have to show evidence of their family ties with Greek nationals and sometimes make archival inquires in the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs on their way to the ‘homeland’: Personally I didn’t have [any difficulties with documents], because [the documents] of my father, grandfather, his sister were in the archive [of] the Greek Embassy . . . [They were] Greek subjects. [They had passports of] the Kingdom of Hellenes and I had no problems . . . If you wanted to receive [Greek citizenship] you went to Moscow, at that time, it was only in Moscow. If your documents were there in the [Embassy] archive, you were given all the documents for the Greek passport at once. This is what happened with my family . . . We arrived in Greece with these documents, went to the police station and they gave us internal Greek passports and we became entitled to all rights as natives . . .  (Semen, born 1955, Severskaia)

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Transnationalisation, Materialisation  101 Those migrants who have no Greek citizens among their ancestors, like the majority of the Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii Greeks, have to bring so-called ‘additional papers’ as evidence of their Greek-ness. These are Soviet documents with their nationality record, such as the birth certificates of their parents, an internal passport or even a Soviet Army service card (voennyi bilet). Birth certificates of parents are especially important documents for those who have a record of Russian nationality in their Soviet passport, which was usual for the children of the numerous mixed marriages. The ‘Soviet passport’ was used as an internal ID in the post-Soviet Russian Federation until 2004, when it was gradually replaced by a new internal Russian passport. However, it is such an important document for the business of Greek repatriation that the General Consulate of Greece in Novorossiisk has recommended the Russian Greeks keep their old passports in order to prove their Greek origin even after receiving new ones, because the new internal passport has no record of ethnicity (Evksinos Pontos, 2002a, p. 1). The role of the Soviet passport is in no sense less important for the return journey ‘home’ than for migration to the ‘homeland’. Thus, on their way home, the post-Soviet Greeks who overstay their tourist visas working in Greece use the Greek nationality record in their Soviet passports to avoid fines at border checkpoints: Any citizen of the Russian Federation, not only Greeks, can take a ‘tourist visa’ . . . He is treated as a tourist in Greece. And it is useless to shout that your mum, dad, grandpa or grandma [were Greeks]. The only advantage is that when you leave [Greece] if you overstay [your visa] they do not fine you because you are Greek . . . Thank God, there is still a record of [nationality] in the Soviet passport. (Il’ia, born 1967, Novorossiisk) Some migrants have to acquire Greek surnames to begin with and start their trip to the ‘homeland’ afterwards. In fact, many Greeks from southern Russia have Russian surnames, whereas the majority of Greek family names from Transcaucasia look Turkic or Muslim. This is because in the nineteenth century, those Greek migrants from the Ottoman Empire who became subjects of the Russian Empire were usually recorded in the official documents under surnames with the Russian endings – ov / ev and-in which were added to their Ottoman / Turkish family names or to their Orthodox fathers’ names. These Russian-like or Turkish-like surnames may undermine the Greek-ness of repatriates in the eyes of immigration clerks and lessen the chances of obtaining Greek citizenship, as Il’ia’s story demonstrates: I waited two and half years for my citizenship . . . Simply they [the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs] saw, [my surname is] D-ev, well: ‘What is your relation to Greeks?’ It is not recorded on my mother’s birth certificate that she is Greek. She was born in Kabardinka [a Greek village in Krasnodar Krai]

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102  Transnationalisation, Materialisation but they did not mention [‘nationality’] in the 1930s when this certificate was issued . . . Well, her parents’ [surname] was A-ev. Who were they? In Greece, it was decided that they could not be Greeks. That’s all . . . [Finally, I proved my Greek origin] when I brought ‘additional papers’. The Soviet Army service card is an ‘additional factor’, because it is usually given at age sixteen and it has the record of [your] ‘nationality’. So it is a very important document . . .  (Il’ia, born 1967, Gelendzhik) This Hellenisation of family names is a part of the broader cultural process which takes place among the Caucasian Greeks: that is, the rediscovery of their Greek identity. This new Greek identity is different to the previous Soviet one. It appeared in the situation when new ethnic and national boundaries were drawn in the previously uninterrupted Soviet space. Adjusting to such shifts in national borders, people had to change their identities and they did this quite literally by changing their names and ethnicity in their identification documents. For instance, the children of Russian fathers and Greek mothers insisted on putting the Greek ‘nationality’ into their Soviet passports in order to be ‘true’ Greeks, despite their Russian or Ukrainian surnames and tradition of inheriting the ethnicity of the father. The power of documented ethnicity is so strong that it might overwhelm individual self-identification. So during the 2002 demographic census in Gaverdovskii, Vadim (born 1954) declared his ethnicity to be Russian, as recorded in his passport, in spite of his clearly Greek surname, his active participation in the local Greek society and the recognition of his Greek-ness by his colleagues and neighbours. Thus, Greek ethnicity needs to be proved by bureaucratic documents in order to be considered sufficient to obtain Greek nationality. Indeed, without such documents ethnic identity is seen as something incomplete and even fragile. The absence of an ethnicity statement in the new Russian passport has provoked a heated discussion in the media and political circles, as well as among the population of the country. The heavy criticism of this passport reform has come from the ethnic intelligentsia who assess the abolition of ‘nationality’ in new passports as a step towards the cultural and ethnic assimilation of minorities (see for example Khatazhukov, 2004). Russian nationalists also see the disappearance of the ethnicity record from the passport as an indication of a conspiracy against Russia which threatens the existence of the Russian people (russkii narod) itself. Finally, the former Ministry of Federal Affairs, National and Migration Policy challenges the passport reform, suggesting that without a ‘nationality’ in the passport it becomes difficult to control inter-ethnic relations in the country (Kuznetsova, 2001, p. 4). The identification of an individual via documents which he / she possesses is, probably, one of the most powerful legacies of the Soviet past. As Humphrey points out, ‘a fully integrated Russian person’ has to get a range of papers which guarantee his / her rights and entitlements in society. The absence of one document is seen as a loss of official status which can threaten ‘the unravelling of the whole edifice, that is, descent into the wilderness of having no entitlements at all’ (Humphrey, 2002, pp. 26–7). In the Soviet and post-Soviet contexts, as well as in the practice of Greek Consulates, it is not enough to have self-identification or to be identified by others as a

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Transnationalisation, Materialisation  103 member of some ethnic group; what counts as true identity for officialdom needs to be fixed, to be based in some sense on material proof. Thus ethnic identity is materialised in the form of ethnicity records in documents of different sorts and comprises an integral part of the post-Soviet individual as a subject of state bureaucracy.

Greek-ness as a Commodity The materialisation of the Greek identity in documents makes it, in some respects, the precursor of the ‘commoditization’ of documented Greek-ness. From the anthropological perspective, a commodity is a universal phenomenon which exists via transactions involving the exchange of things. A thing becomes a commodity if ‘it has use value and can be exchanged in a discrete transaction for a counterpart’ (Kopytoff, 1986, pp. 68–9). Such exchanges can be direct or indirect, that is, achieved by means of money. Indeed, documents proving Greek origin are seen as the equivalent of hard currency, convertible into the valuable emblem of Greek citizenship, which also takes a quite material shape − the Greek national passport. This passport enables the holder to be an economic migrant to Greece and at the end of the day brings wealth. It also supplies people with a feeling of security in the uncertain Russian conditions. In fact, Greek nationality is acquired via financial transactions which vary from the payment of Consulate fees for repatriation or tourist visas to the bribery of different official institutions for absent but desperately needed ‘additional papers’. For instance, the church marriage certificate of parents is included in the list of the documents required for issuing repatriation visas. During the Soviet period, church marriages were very rare, and if they took place, it was unlikely that any certificates were issued at the time. Therefore, the Greeks, who intended to emigrate to Greece, had to pay substantial sums to Russian Orthodox priests in local churches for these certificates, even if their parents were never married in church: Denis: T  here was a standard list of documents for repatriation. First of all, it was the birth certificate, then, the birth certificate of parents, the marriage certificate of parents, plus, there were absolutely stupid documents such as the church marriage certificate of parents and [your certificate of] baptism in [Orthodox Christianity]. AP: But people couldn’t have such documents, could they? Denis: As a matter of fact, nobody had these. It was your problem to get these [certificates] by paying bribes. How many priests became fatter in Russia because of this?! They should send a telegram of thanks to the President of Greece. (Denis, born 1970, Novorossiisk) The other side of such a commoditisation of Greek identity is the fear that documents proving Greek-ness can be faked and Greek identity can be purchased by non-Greeks. This can devalue one’s documented Greek-ness and undermine Greek

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104  Transnationalisation, Materialisation people’s social and economic positions, achieved via the conversion of credible and well-documented Greek ethnicity into valuable European passports and easy access to stable Western currencies. Such fear is probably not unjustified. Frequent cases of the acquisition of repatriation visas by non-Greeks via the General Consulate in Novorossiisk were investigated by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1999–2000. During the time of this investigation, the Novorossiisk Consulate stopped issuing visas and the Greeks from all the south Russian and North Caucasian regions had to go to the Greek Embassy in Moscow in order to get their visas. This made the trip to Greece more expensive and time-consuming. But all such inconveniences seem unimportant compared with the damage which had been done to the trust which had grown up between the local Greek communities and the Consulate. Relationships between the Consulate and local Greek national-cultural societies, for example, first cooled and then became increasingly hostile: There are many Chechens of ‘Greek extraction’ now in Greece . . . [The Greek Consul] let many of the Chechens and Armenians in for some token of appreciation. They are caught there and asked: ‘Where did you [get your visa] from?’ − ‘From the Novorossiisk Consulate . . .’ And they started to check [the Consul’s work]. The investigator came here from there. They invited [the chairman of our Greek society] to come, to the Consulate . . . And the investigator questioned him there . . . But he [the chairman] told them: ‘You had better question your own people. This is all their business. We didn’t send anyone [who were not Greeks to Greece]’. (Andrei, born 1950, Vitiazevo) Finally, attention should be paid to the role which regional discourses of interethnic relations play in Greeks’ perception of the threat to their ‘right’ to migrate to Greece. Although the Ministry’s investigation highlighted some instances of corruption among the Consulate clerks, the local Greeks’ fear that their privileged Greek-ness could be adulterated reveals also local xenophobic attitudes towards migrants from other North Caucasian regions and Transcaucasia. In fact, the stereotype of these migrants as people engaged in criminal and / or commerce-oriented activities is widespread in post-Soviet Russia and particularly sharply articulated in Krasnodar Krai and the Republic of Adygea (Savva and Savva, 2002, pp. 73–4). The legacy of communist ideology is still powerful and commerce is seen as shameful and parasitical (Kaneff, 2002, p. 40). The word spekuliant (profiteer) remains the scornful name for private traders everywhere in the post-Soviet space (Humphrey, 2002, p. 59). The ability of migrants to buy and sell everything at a profit is exaggerated in xenophobic hate speeches, where the threat is that strangers (migrants are usually assumed to be ethnically different from the locals) will buy up the local land or, as in the Greek case, obtain Greek identity, by bribery.

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Transnationalisation, Materialisation  105

The Emigration Business of Greek National-cultural Societies The Greek national-cultural societies which claim to be the sole representatives of the local Greeks and more generally Greek-ness in the political field take an active part in the management of Greek migration to and from Greece. The conflict between the Greek national-cultural organisation and the Greek Consulate mentioned above indicates their rivalry for control over the movement of the postSoviet Greeks between Greece and Russia. In this competition, Greek ethnicity is employed by both sides as an instrument by which to impose this control and as a commodity for use in the accumulation of social and economic capital. The Greek organisations in Russia maintain the ideology of pan-Hellenism which represents Greece as the historic homeland and the cultural centre for the Greek diasporas all over the world. At the same time, because it is critical for the construction of ethnic and national identities among the former Soviet Greeks, the connection with Greece has always been important for the economic survival of the Greek cultural revivalist movement everywhere in the former USSR. Financial and material support for cultural projects run by Greek organisations in the former Soviet Union have been received from governmental institutions working with the Greek diaspora as well as from the non-governmental Pontic cultural associations in Greece. Teachers and textbooks for Modern Greek language classes and illustrated handbooks on Pontic folklore have been sent from Greece to the Greek societies in Russia. Humanitarian aid directed from Greece to support the needy Greek population in the former Soviet Union is also distributed through the network of these organisations. This cross-border collaboration at the institutional level has gone hand-in-hand with the re-establishment of contacts with relatives who emigrated to Greece before WWII and their descendants at the individual level. This Greek renaissance has been accompanied at both levels by economic activities which vary from petty shuttle trade and seasonal labour performed by post-Soviet Greeks in Greece while visiting their relatives, to the establishment of joint venture enterprises with business partners from Greece by the leaders of Greek national-cultural organisations. A similar process is documented by Georgios Agelopoulos (2007) among the ‘Krasiot’-Greeks in postsocialist Bulgaria in their relations with their relatives from ‘Nea-Krasia’ across the border in Greece. In the case of the Bulgarian Greeks, due to certain structural reasons (Bulgarian and Greek state policies and the size of the diaspora populations) as well as the limited exchange value of Greek ethnicity at the level of individual actions, the initial euphoria of the ‘revival’ soon died out and cross-border relations between ‘Krasiot’ communities have become institutionalised and state-controlled. In southern Russia, the Greek revival movement apparently continues to play an important role in the economic, political and cultural activities of the local Greek population. The relative success of the Greek identity revival in Russia (commoditisation of this identity might be seen as one of the side effects and indicators of this success) cannot be attributed solely to the importance of Greek ethnicity for navigation of the transnational circuit by former Soviet Greeks that has been outlined above. The local context in which meanings of Greek ethnicity are (re-)produced and (re-)interpreted

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106  Transnationalisation, Materialisation also has to be taken into account. It seems that, as in the case of the failure of the Greek revival in Bulgaria, the analysis of its sustainability in Russia also reveals the process of identity construction as a complex intersection of structure and agency. The involvement of Greek revivalist organisations in the transnational migration of the former Soviet Greeks is a good illustration of Bourdieu’s idea that ‘practical classifications [Bourdieu sees ethnicity as one such classification] are always subordinated to practical functions and oriented towards the production of social effects’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 220). In southern Russia local Greeks find it practical to use Greek national-cultural organisations – which constitute a semi-controlled and state-manipulated form of post-Soviet civil society4 – in their cross-border movement to Greece. The Greek organisations have become channels for the transnational flow of ideas and goods as well as people. The management of this movement is now the most important part of these societies’ activities. Using established contacts with governmental agencies and Pontic associations, the local Greek societies regularly send children to summer camps in Greece and enlist their young members into the student exchange programmes for enrolment in Greek universities. The Greek national-cultural organisations also help people with visas and transportation to Greece. Assisting in migration to Greece, the Greek national-cultural organisations gain both social and economic capital. In the early and mid-1990s, the Greek societies in southern Russia were commissioned by the Greek Embassy in Moscow to collect the passports of those local Greeks who wished to obtain visas for visits to the country. Migrants who applied for visas via these societies had to pay additional money to the Greek organisations as compensation for transport and other expenses alongside the visa fee. This mediating service proved to be quite a profitable business, which significantly improved the financial situation of Greek non-governmental and non-commercial organisations. Sometimes, visa issues overshadow other activities (social and cultural) on the agenda of the Greek societies. This produces rumours and suspicions within the Greek revivalist movement that some organisations are ‘trading’ Greek ethnicity to outsiders. In May and July 2002, strong criticism was expressed by the leaders of the Greek national-cultural organisations of the North Caucasian region towards the visa-issuing policy of the General Consulate during the meetings of the Russian Association of Greek Public Organisations (AGOOR). The same conferences accused some chairmen of Greek societies from Stavropol’ Krai of reducing the functions of their organisations to visa affairs and of supporting the General Consulate (Evksinos Pontos, 2002d, p. 3). On the contrary, the local Greek societies in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii emphasise the social importance of their engagement

4 Anthropologists have criticised civil society debates as being ‘too narrowly circumscribed by modern western models of liberal-individualism’ (Hann, 1996, p. 3; see also Hann, 2006, pp. 153–76; Hann and Dunn, 1996; Kalb, 2002; Layton, 2006; Mandel 2002). I discussed the ethnic NGOs, as a form of post-Soviet civil society, using as an example Greek ethnic associations in southern Russia somewhere else (see Popov, 2008).

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Transnationalisation, Materialisation  107 in migration activities. For example, Argo and Gorgippia are mediators between the local Greek population and Greek tourist firms which organise a regular coach service between southern Russia and Greece.5 They keep in touch with the owners of these firms, inform local Greeks about the schedule of coaches and reserve seats on board for them. On the way back to Russia, the Greek organisations also collect the parcels sent by the emigrant Greeks to their relatives. These societies distribute visa application forms among the locals who intend to visit Greece and help them to fill out these forms correctly. They claim that by doing this they pursue the public interests of their communities without any financial benefit to themselves: Here we only fill out applications for receiving tourist visas . . . Simply if they [the local Greeks] fill out this application in the Consulate, they are charged 250 roubles for each application. Because [the Consulate clerks] complete these applications on their behalf. We lighten this burden on our citizens, we do all this free of charge . . .  (Andrei, born 1950, Vitiazevo) Even if the local Greek national-cultural organisations do not make money from their assistance to migrants, they undeniably increase their political influence on the local community by providing facilities for transnational migration, a service which is important for the economic practices of many Russian Greeks (see also Chapter 3). The Greek societies’ assistance with migration to (and contact with) Greece is often seen by the local Greeks as their most valuable activity, although facilitating the repatriation of the Greek diaspora is never mentioned in the official programmes of the Greek national-cultural associations. AP: I am interested in the [Greek] society. What do they do? What are their main activities? Gavriil: There are activities . . . From time to time they help people, they send children to Greece, for example. Such things as visas, well, they help with these things . . . I turned to them [only] once. It was when I sent my passport for a [Greek] visa through this society. (Gavriil, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) AP: Have you ever been in contact with the [Greek] society? Lazar: I went to Greece via this society two years ago. They helped and gave me money to pay visa expenses. AP: Well, what are their other activities? Lazar: I don’t know. Ask them what their duties are, what they do. (Lazar, born 1923, Vitiazevo) 5 These tourist firms were founded and are run by the Greeks who emigrated from the former Soviet Union. Before the Russian annexation of Crimea and eruption of an armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine in Spring 2014 after which the on-land route from southern Russia via the territory of Ukraine has been disrupted, the cheapest way of travelling from the Northern Caucasus to Greece was by coach.

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108  Transnationalisation, Materialisation This close association of the Greek societies with Greece and migration makes them popular among people who plan to make the journey to Greece. The educational programmes of the Greek organisations, such as the lessons in Modern Greek, are viewed as useful for cultural adaptation in the ‘historical homeland’. The members of ethnically mixed families, or people with a Russian ethnicity record in their Soviet passports, see their enrolment in the Greek national-cultural organisation as the public declaration of their self-identification with Greeks. Membership of a Greek society might also be considered as the first and necessary step on their way to Greece.

Conclusion The informants’ experiences of dealing with citizenship and immigration regimes demonstrate that the ethnic and national identities of Greek transnational migrants are constantly being negotiated and contested in the course of their migration to Greece. The Greek-ness of the repatriates is shaped by the immigration bureaucracy. Passing through official immigration procedures, this Greek ethnicity is manifested in the form of different documents, and is sometimes seen as a commodity by people involved in transnational migration. The formal requirements of citizenship and visa regimes are fulfilled or overcome by the Greek migrants using informal approaches and connections which include local Greek organisations, friends and family. Participating in the transnational circuit, the migrants customise and reinterpret meanings of citizenship and nationality in such a way that they can more or less successfully adapt to, and utilise for their own benefits, new regimes of international frontiers which have been emerging since the collapse of the Soviet Union and with the enlargement of the European Union. The outcomes migrants anticipate from their actions are deeply rooted in their structural positioning by the nation-state as ‘diaspora’, ‘repatriates’ and descendants of Greek nationals.

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6

The Transnational Family Re-shaping Kinship and Genealogy

Introduction The family network is one of the main channels for the migration of the Greeks from southern Russia to Greece. At the same time, the maintenance and reestablishing of ties with relatives in Greece provide a strong moral justification for the transnational activities of the former Soviet Greeks. This chapter aims to shed light on several issues which emerge from this transnationalisation of Greek families. Bryceson and Vuorela define ‘transnational families’ as ‘families that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely “familyhood”, even across national borders’ (Brysceson and Vuorela, 2002, p. 3). Transnationalisation of family implies changes in existing patterns of family relations that due to their relative temporal stability and being historically and culturally contingent, are sometimes defined as ‘traditional’. One of the aims of this chapter is to move away from this distinction between transnational and traditional. The chapter is outlining the historical and cultural premises for the development of established patterns of family relationships into effective networks that were utilised for re-emergent transnational mobility of Pontic Greeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Crucially, I will argue that the (re)creation of family connections with relatives in Greece interlaces with the (re)construction of national and ethnic identity on the part of Greek migrants.

The Kinship and Migration: From the ‘Traditional’ to the ‘Imagined’ Family Bourdieu (1998) sees the family as one of the key sites of the accumulation of capital in its different forms and its transmission between generations (cited from Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002, p. 23). Caucasian Greek extended families can be seen both as a social phenomenon which is culturally and historically grounded and as a constantly renegotiated and instrumentally used source of social, economic and cultural ‘capital’. The patrilineal kinship with its extended family ties and patrimonial rights of inheritance as a distinctive aspect of the traditional social organisation of the Greeks in the Caucasus can be traced from eastern

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110  The Transnational Family Anatolia and the Pontos at least as far back as the late Byzantine period. In his work on the history and identity of the Pontic Greeks before their mass exodus from the Pontos, Anthony Bryer shows how Pontic ‘clannishness’ had been used by the local elite for the development of their authority in the region, as well as in the imperial centres of the late Byzantine and the early Ottoman Empires (Bryer, 1991, pp. 321–6). The dramatic events in which the Pontic Greeks were involved in the twentieth century affected the traditional kinship structure and altered the social meaning of family relations among them. Unlike economic migration from the Pontos to the Caucasus in the nineteenth century, when men left for seasonal work abroad while their families remained at home, the mass exodus of the Pontic Christians from the Pontos to Russia during the First World War and, after the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), to Greece, kept Greek families divided between different countries for a long time. During the Soviet period, contact between members of extended families separated by the Iron Curtain became extremely difficult and often impossible. The family histories of Vitaizevo and Gaverdovskii residents give an insight into the historical account of Pontic Greek kinship structure and the transformations it went through in the course of Greek migrations in the nineteenth and twentieth century. For example, the S-ov family is regarded in Vitiazevo as one of the oldest Greek families who founded the village in the nineteenth century. As discussed in Chapter 3, the exact date of Vitiazevo’s foundation as a Greek village is a matter of some political dispute between the Greek national-cultural society, which insisted on the Greek presence in the place of the contemporary town of Vitiazevo even before this territory was taken from the Ottomans by the Russian Empire in 1828, and the local Cossack activists who claim that Greeks resettled into the existing Cossack village (stanitsa) in the second half of the nineteenth century. The oral family histories of the local Greeks also suggest a later date for their appearance in the area. The oldest grave of the S-ovs’ ancestors in the local cemetery is dated 1896. The quasi-patronymic structure of the local Greek kinship provides another indirect evidence of relatively recent resettlement of the Greek families. In the contemporary Vitiazevo, there are two branches of S-ovs’ family which constitute a separate patronymics which are known in the town under their family nicknames, which for the purpose of anonymity I shall refer to as ‘A-l’ and ‘K-l’. According to the S-ov family legend, these two nicknames were given to two brothers who were ancestors of these two patronymics within the S-ovs. The A-ls and K-ls consider themselves distant relatives who, however, are close enough to prevent intermarriage, which is condemned by the local Greeks if the bride and groom belong to the families who trace their common patrilineal ancestry less than seven generations back. My informant, Mikhail S-ov (born 1975) is the fifth generation of the ‘A-l’ branch of the S-ov family, suggesting the S-ovs split into two patronymics in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is probable that the brothers who became the first ‘A-l’ and ‘K-l’ were the first generation of the S-ovs resettled in Vitiazevo. Only old Greek families have the so-called ‘family nicknames’ (semeinye prozvishcha) in Vitiazevo.

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The Transnational Family  111 The similar patrilineal kinship system is even more prominent among Turkishspeaking Tsalka Greeks in Gaverdovskii. Names of these patronymics (which usually have Turkish suffix-gil) originate from the names of ancestors who, according to the family histories, were heads of the first families resettled from Turkey to the Caucasus. Sometimes, but not always, the members of different patronymics trace their common ancestry to legendary brothers in the past. For example, C-ov is quite a common family name among the Tsalka Greeks in Edikilisa. There are some C-ovs in the villages of Tsalka and Beshtashen, but the Edikilisa C-ovs do not consider them relatives. At the same time, the Edikilisa C-ovs are divided into several patronymics (e.g. Khristadagil, Chakalgil, Nazilgil and Salmangil) which are seen as distant relatives. The relations are so distant that marriages between representatives of different patronymics are acceptable. Some Vitiazevo nicknames point out the place in the Pontos where the first Greek settlers came from, for example, ‘Santa’, or ‘Stavretsil’. It is interesting that the members of the families with such toponymic nicknames often do not understand their geographical meanings and know nothing about the old Pontic Greek villages of Santa and Stavri. If people remember the place of their ancestors’ origin in the Ottoman Empire they do not use them as their nicknames. Thus all the local Greeks know that the P-ovs’ ancestors were refugees from Kars Oblast’ who resettled in Vitiazevo in 1917–1919, but it is also common knowledge in the town that the P-ovs do not have a nickname because they were not among the first settlers. The S-ovs remember that their family as well as several of the other oldest Vitiazevo families originated from the area next to the town of Platana in the Pontos. According to Yannis, Mikhail’s father, his maternal ancestors from the I-in family were from the same area in the Pontos with the S-ovs. The father of his maternal grandmother was, however, a seasonal worker, who came to Vitiazevo from either Bulgaria or Greece and had a Russified Turkish surname U-ov. This U-ov great-grandfather of Yannis was perhaps among the first who navigated the migration routes between southern Russia and Greece (if indeed he actually was from Greece). In 1919, the reverse trip was undertaken by another S-ovs’ relative, Yannis’ uncle, in a desperate attempt to avoid conscription in the White Army. He embarked a Greek steamer in the Novorossiisk port; it was the only foreign ship leaving the port and this uncle did not care about its destination, his only concern was to escape from the Civil War in southern Russia. He later returned to his native Vitiazevo in the 1960s as a Greek Communist Party-member in exile. In point of fact, the stories about the relatives from the maternal side of Yannis’ family dominate in the S-ovs’ family mnemonic narratives. Such prevalence of matrilineal family history is something unexpected in the Greek patriarchy, and might be explained by the fact that Yannis is a stepson in the S-ov family. Yannis was born in 1948, his biological father was a Greek refugee who arrived in Vitiazevo from Kars Oblast’ in 1919. He left Yannis’ mother when his son was still an infant. In truth, Yannis only learned that his real father was not a S-ov when he was 10 years old. Despite this complicated history, there are strong family ties between him and his S-ovs’ step- and half-brothers. Both his sons, Mikhail and

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112  The Transnational Family Konstantin, consider themselves to be the ‘proper S-ovs’ from the A-l branch of the family and this is accepted by the rest of the extended S-ov family as well as by their neighbours. In the 1960s–1970s, the search for family members was usually initiated by relatives in Greece through the International Red Cross network and was mostly sporadic. The emigration in the 1960s–1970s of several hundreds of Greeks who were exiled in Central Asia made it easier to re-establish contact between relatives in Greece and the Soviet Union. A Vitiazevo woman, Evdokia recalled that time: All this time, I wrote to [my relatives in Greece], but I wrote in Greek. They answered me [in Greek as well]. Then I noticed that their letters started to be written in Russian. I understood later that the Greeks, who went there [to Greece] from Kazakhstan, from Alma-Ata, after the war, in the 1960s, helped to write these letters in Russian. (Evdokia, born 1922, Vitiazevo) Some informants remember that period as the time when the families divided by borders had their first chance to visit each other for many years. The family of Nadezhda (born 1970) from Vitiazevo, initially emigrated in the 1960s but returned to the Soviet Union after a few years in Greece. These unique cases of cross-border movement by Soviet Greeks and the rare visits of their emigrant relatives were very important for maintaining family contacts under the conditions of Soviet isolation from the West during the Cold War. Often it required substantial courage on the part of the Soviet Greeks who had recently experienced deportation to Central Asia and Siberia as ‘foreigners’ to maintain contact with relatives abroad: My uncle searched for us through the Red Cross. He found his nephew, Fedor D. But he [this nephew] was a member of a [Communist] Party. When this [request] came from Greece he was afraid and didn’t accept. At that time, you could not admit [that you had relatives abroad]. [Then] they [people from the International Red Cross] approached me and said: ‘Do you know a person called Dmitrii . . . [the name of the informant’s uncle]?’ . . . I answered immediately: ‘He is my uncle’. [Then they said]: ‘Well, he is looking for you. Do you deny [that he is your relative]?’ I said: ‘No, he is my uncle! Why should I deny this?!’ . . . They [the Red Cross] gave me his address, and I wrote him a letter straight away. (Maria, born 1917, Severskaia) The family connections with relatives in Greece were maintained chiefly through the memory of the elder members and family histories. Due to lack of information about family members in other countries, the expression ‘relatives in Greece’ had a general and symbolic meaning which did not require any further concretisation. The Soviet Greeks were thus aware of their families abroad but these family relationships were largely things of memory and imagination.

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The Transnational Family  113

‘Relativising’ the Transnational Family For the Caucasian Greeks new opportunities for contact with relatives in Greece emerged with the liberal changes in the domestic and international policy of the late Soviet Union at end of the Cold War. Re-establishing family ties with relatives in the West was seen by many (ex-)Soviet Greeks as a way of escape from socioeconomic and political problems in the aftermath of socialism (see Chapter 4). In the former Soviet Union, people who found themselves on the edge of economic survival, often associated the image of relatives abroad (especially in such a ‘Western’ country as Greece) with prosperity and welfare. Informants always emphasise in their narratives the economic wellbeing of their distant family members in Greece, dwelling on their ‘big houses’, ‘good salaries’ or ‘profitable business’: Both my aunties lived in Athens . . . Of course, they didn’t live in poverty. They lived very well. One of my aunts was a dressmaker, she sewed and knitted very well, that’s why she had [a good income]. (Evdokia, born 1922, Vitiazevo) I found them [relatives in Greece] . . . Their house was [such a big] two-storey building, it was empty at that time, because the children had gone away, some lived in Greece, others in Germany. Well, they may be not very rich, but their life is fine, even excellent. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) From the early 1990s, interest in their genealogy increased among the Greeks as they tried to trace their family connections with Greece. People started to recall the names of family members who had emigrated many years ago. The re-establishment of relationships with distant relatives in Greece has become very important for Greeks living in the former USSR. The newspapers of the local Greek organisations publish letters from their readers who are looking for their relatives in Greece (see for example Kotridi, 1995; Chubardia, 1995; and Pozachidi, 2000). These letters are often accompanied with a short recollection of family histories and old photographs (see Pozachidi, 2000). A similar phenomenon has been noticed by De Rapper in post-socialist Albania among the Christian Albanians living on the border with Greece. These Albanians often had relatives across the border during the pre-socialist period and they are eager to re-establish these family ties in the course of their cross-border migration. De Rapper writes that ‘while making efforts to obtain visas and documents, people tend to take advantage of relatives and kinship relations which might not be considered relevant in the local kinship system, such as relations on the mother’s side . . . ’ (De Rapper, 2004, p. 172). In the case of post-Soviet Greeks in southern Russia, migrants’ relativisation strategies may have influenced the prioritisation of the father’s side in the ‘traditional’ kinship system. In the S-ov family, Mikhail’s mother Elena first went to Greece with her younger son Konstantin in 1996. They obtained Greek repatriation visas which allowed them to apply for Greek citizenship. They received

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114  The Transnational Family Greek passports within two months after their arrival in the country. Elena’s and Konstantin’s naturalisation as Greek citizens was relatively easy because Elena’s father was a Greek citizen. Elena was born in 1953 in Northern Kazakhstan, where her parents were exiled by the Stalinist regime as ‘unreliable foreigners’ in 1942 from the village of Erivansk in the Abinsk district of Krasnodar Krai. Elena’s grandparents resettled in Erevansk from the Pontos in the late nineteenth century. Living in Russia, they remained subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and their children received Greek citizenship in the 1930s in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne signed between Turkey and Greece in 1923. Elena’s family returned from exile in 1971, they chose Vitiazevo because relatives of Elena’s older brother’s wife were living there. Elena met Yannis S-ov in his stepbrother’s house where her parents rented rooms during their first few months in Vitiazevo. In fact, Elena’s role in her family emigration business was to prove the blood relations between her father and her son. It would have been much more difficult for the S-ovs if they had used their paternal lineage (that is through Yannis’side of the family) to prove their Greek national identity, since the S-ovs were subjects of the Russian Empire before 1917 and had never held Greek citizenship. Elena was entitled to Greek citizenship as a daughter of a Greek citizen and Konstantin received his Greek passport as her son. Bryceson and Vourela offer the term ‘relativising’ to refer to the ways in which individuals establish, maintain or curtail relational ties with other members of transnational families. They consider that transnational family relations ‘are created by active pursuit or passive negligence of family blood ties and the possible inclusion of non-blood ties as family members’. Therefore, ‘relativisation refers to modes of materialising the family as an imagined community with shared feelings and mutual obligations’ (Bryceson and Vourela, 2002, p. 14). Navigating their ways to Greece, the Greeks from the former USSR have materialised their family relations with relatives abroad who had existed for a long time only in their imagination and collective memory. The reunion with relatives in Greece is often mentioned by informants as a reason for their first journey to Greece in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, which sometimes became the first step on their way to emigration: We, [my brother and me], didn’t know anything about each other for more than 30 years. And he came here [from Greece] suddenly. He spent some time here, we received him very well, organised a feast for him and so on. Then my daughter went there [to Greece]. Of course, he helped her with accommodation and so on. Then my second daughter moved there, she was helped by both of them, my brother and my other daughter. To cut a long story short, now they are more or less fine there. (Panaiot, born 1927, Vitiazevo) At the time when Greek Consulates had not yet issued repatriation and tourist visas to the (former) Soviet Greeks, an official invitation letter from a Greek citizen, the ostensible ‘call’ (vyzov), was their only chance of going to Greece. Therefore,

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The Transnational Family  115 developing contacts with relatives in Greece had practical significance for the migration activities of the Soviet Greeks. However, it would perhaps be an oversimplification to state that family connections with Greece are only seen and used by the Greeks of southern Russia as an effective instrument for their transnational migration. Searching for their relatives in Greece, former Soviet Greeks are moved by emotional feelings of kinship which are sometimes mixed with the anticipation of the economic benefit of such family reunion: My relatives lived in Katerini [in Northern Greece]. I found them there. I found my father’s brother and his nephews. [My uncle] had two daughters and two sons, but his wife didn’t accept me. She thought that I only wanted [my inheritance]. I told them: ‘No, no, I don’t need anything. I just wanted to find my relatives and I don’t need anything more’ . . . What a fool I was, I blame myself that I didn’t [demand my part of my father’s inheritance]. My daughter-in-law’s uncle was a lawyer. He helped a lot of people to find their relatives there [in Greece] and to get their inheritance if they had a right to it . . . But I was the fool that didn’t appeal to him. (Maria, born 1917, Severskaia) These ambivalent attitudes towards the re-establishment of ties with relatives in Greece are spoken of by informants in terms of a moral dilemma between the economic rationale of transnational migration and values of kinship: The brother of my grandmother, when he got old, wrote to us from Greece and asked us to visit him. He wanted to introduce us to his children . . . My mother and uncle told me to go together with my cousin, my uncle’s son. If I could have spoken Greek, I would have gone. But I didn’t speak their language . . . At that time, I was afraid [that I would not understand them] and I decided not to go . . . But I had to go later when this Russian-Soviet revolution [sic] happened . . . The Soviet Union was crushed and all [borders] were opened. Well, I went there [to Greece] in 1993. I went to search for [my relatives], but I didn’t do this because I wanted to get something from them. Certainly not. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) My informants viewed the maintenance of family connections as a morally justified value which aims to sustain and reproduce social solidarity. At the same time, the Pontic Greeks have already exploited the family network for their migration within the borders of the former Soviet Union, whether they return from exile to the North Caucasus or resettle from Transcaucasia to southern Russia. The family network provides an effective tool for Greek migration and the re-creation of their compact settlements in the new place. The moral principle of mutual help and togetherness within the family makes it easy for the migrants to adjust economically and psychologically to the new social environment. Not surprisingly, the Greek emigrants from the former Soviet Union often prefer this effective and

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116  The Transnational Family informal support from their relatives to the slow bureaucracy of the official Greek institutions working with repatriates (Il’ia, born 1967, Gelendzhik).

Gifts, Relatives and Rituals: Family Life as a Transnational Exchange The contacts within the family which extend from Greece and Russia are maintained via regular international telephone calls and the transnational circuit of money, objects and peoples. As Bryceson and Vourela (2002, p. 10) note, membership in the imagined transnational family can be altered, renewed and confirmed ‘through various exchanges and points of contact’. Apart from remittances, which are routinely sent or brought by those who are working in Greece or Cyprus, members of transnational families are involved in various exchanges of gifts, favours and visits to each other and across borders. The range of gifts from Greece has a symbolic or even sacred meaning, for example, the migrants bring different souvenirs displaying Greek national symbols or Orthodox icons and religious calendars purchased in Greek monasteries. Garments of European or Western brands, which are considered to be fashionable or of high quality are also often brought from abroad. Greek brandy (grecheskii kon’iak) is usually presented to elderly male relatives. Relatives living in the Caucasus send parcels with Russian products or homemade food to their family members in Greece, such as homemade cheese from Gaverdovskii or dry salty fish from Vitiazevo. Although there is no shortage of Russian products in Greece, where the network of so called ‘Russian shops’ operates widely, these parcels are an emotional connection with home and family for migrants who experience homesickness. The transnational migration of the Greeks alters the structure of the nuclear family as well as the relationships between members of the extended family. Due to their active participation in migration abroad, younger generations often become separated from elderly parents or from their children, who remain at home. In such a situation, siblings or distant relatives take over the care of the very old and very young members of migrants’ families. Family ties and distance between members of the transnational family are negotiated via the process of relativisation. One case is Iosif C-ov; he was 73 years old when he resettled to Gaverdovskii from his native village of Edikilisa in the Tsalka district in Spring 2002. He lived with his wife Sarra in the house of his daughter, who had emigrated with her family to Greece in 2000. In 2002, Iosif helped his youngest son, Sergei (born 1972), to build a new house and spent most of his days there (we will revisit the complex property relations in the C-ov family in the next chapter). Iosif and Sarra had four children and all of them left Tsalka. His eldest daughter was unmarried and lived in St Petersburg, but in 2002 she came to Greece to work and stayed with her younger sister in the town of Drama. This sister, a second daughter of Iosif and Sarra, was the one in whose house they were living. She married a man from the village of Tsintskaro in the Tetritskaro district of Georgia and their first child, Tamara, was born there in 1988. In 1993, they resettled in Gaverdovskii where Iosif’s elder son had been living since 1987. They built their

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The Transnational Family  117 family home in the village using money which Tamara’s father earned working in Greece. In the late 1990s he received a permanent job in Greece and Tamara’s mother with her two younger daughters joined him there in 2000. Tamara also went to Greece, but after a few months she returned to Gaverdovskii. In 2002, the teenager Tamara was living in the village of Gaverdovskii in the house of her maternal uncle, Sergei C-ov. There were several reasons for Tamara’s separation from her parents. First of all, her family did not want to interrupt her education until she had obtained the official certificate of secondary education (svidetel’stvo o nepolnom srednem obrazovanii). Secondly, at the time, the wife of Tamara’s uncle was working in Greece (and living with Tamara’s parents), and hence the uncle himself, with whom Tamara lived, needed her help in the household and for looking after his two young children. Furthermore, Tamara had to help her uncle take care of his elderly parents, Iosif and Sarra, who had recently resettled from Georgia and were living in the house of Tamara’s parents. Tamara joined her parents in Greece after she graduated from school in the summer of 2003. Her uncle, Sergei, however, saw two options for her in her future: that she could marry in Greece or come back to Russia in order to continue her education at one of the colleges in Tiumen’ (Western Siberia) where she had other relatives (Sergei, born 1972, Gaverdovskii). The social solidarity between members of the transnational family is constantly renewed in the course of their participation in ‘life cycle rituals’, such as the baptising of children, weddings and funerals. These rites of passage symbolise changes in the social status of the individual, and are enacted to ensure the recognition of his / her new social position in society (Turner, 1969). As collective acts, these rituals reflect the feelings of solidarity among members of the family and recreate family unity through symbolic interactions. Relatives who are separated by national borders plan their visits to each other to take part in these family rituals. Those relatives who cannot physically be present have an opportunity to watch a video recording afterwards. In the 1990s and early 2000s, videocassettes of weddings and baptisms were circulated between Greece and Russia. Usually people kept their own video archives, which consisted of such records of family celebrations, or they borrowed videotapes to watch from their relatives. Family rituals strengthen relativisation and bring a sense of involvement in each other’s lives to dispersed family members. People feel interdependence with relatives from whom they are separated by thousands of kilometres and several national borders. The events experienced by Greek migrants in Greece might shift the life trajectory of their relatives in the Caucasus and vice versa. For example, in Vitiazevo, Mikhail S-ov (born 1975), was planning his marriage when his uncle suddenly died in Salonica. Although this bereavement happened almost six months before the date of the wedding, Mikhail’s parents were planning to postpone the wedding and organise a less extravagant ceremony not least because this might be seen as a respectable reason for reducing the wedding expenses. In accordance with the Orthodox religious canon, the Greeks in southern Russia continue mourning for their dead relatives for one year, with commemorations of the deceased on the third (tretii den’), ninth (deviatyi den’), and fortieth days

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118  The Transnational Family (sorok dnei), together with six-month (polgoda) and twelve-month (godovshchina) commemorations of the death. The popular tradition also imposes certain restrictions on the clothing (by wearing black or dark blue colours) and behaviour of close relatives of the deceased, who should avoid taking part in family celebrations, especially wedding parties, and public entertainments. These restrictions become less strict after the ‘forty days’ − young people can stop wearing black, male members of the family can shave − and after the sixth months’ commemoration, participation in amusements is permitted for close relatives of the deceased. However, the elderly relatives as well as the mother and / or wife have to continue to observe mourning for the whole year and sometimes they may do this for the rest of their lives (see also Popov and Tortopidi, 1997, pp. 166–7). Mikhail’s mother was the sister of the deceased; therefore, Mikhail as a close relative had to reconsider his wedding plans. The initial wedding arrangements for Mikhail were left intact only after approval from his cousin, the uncle’s son, who was living in Greece. The development of contacts with family members, whether they emigrated to Greece in the 1920s–1930s or moved there during the last decade of the twentieth century, provides the social network for the economic migration of the Greeks from southern Russia. At the same time, the circulation of gifts, goods and people within the transnational family circle creates an emotional image of Greece as a country where ‘our relatives’ are living and to which migrants are attached through their genealogies and family ties.

The Genealogy and the National Identity of the Greek Transnational Migrants The search for relatives in Greece has the moral meaning of recreating the family unity which had been broken. The Pontic Greeks’ reunion with their family members in Greece may be seen as a journey in time as well as in space. They describe their visits to emigrant relatives as a return to their family roots, to some point in the past when their imagined kinship had not yet been divided by national borders and family members had not been split up. Therefore, ancestors are always present in informants’ narratives about their relationships with their relatives in Greece. The old photos of emigrant ancestors taken before their departure from the Caucasus or southern Russia are brought by the Greeks from the former Soviet Union to Greece in order to trace their family connections. Vuorela (2002, p. 76) also names family photographs among objects which help members of transnational families to keep a sense of togetherness and belonging. In the case of the former Soviet Greeks, such photographs are ‘material evidence’ that is required to prove and materialise imagined family ties between them and their ‘rich relatives’ in Greece. When they first arrive in Greece the former Soviet Greeks actively trace their ancestors. For instance, in their narratives, migrants often mentioned their visits to their great-uncles / aunts’ graves as an important moment in their return to their ‘family roots’. It seems that the Greek migrants reconnect to their kin through a

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The Transnational Family  119 reproduced memory of their common ancestry. Thus Efim conveys the critical role that ancestors play in re-establishing family relationships across national borders: My great-uncle was a good man. I was in his village [in Greece], I came to the [local] cemetery and found his grave. I asked some local men and they pointed out his grave. [They told me] that my [great-] uncle was a very kind man, he was a rare man to find . . . I found not only him, but also [relatives] from my mother’s side, from the side of my mother’s father. It was my grandfather from the mothers’ side. He had already died. I had the [old] photos, and I showed them to [his children]. They looked at [these pictures] and immediately recognised me. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) These references of Greek migrants from the Caucasus to their ancestral roots on Greek soil bring a sense of belonging to the Greek nation which they experience through their relatives who are by now second- or third-generation Greek citizens. Analysing the interconnections between reburial practices in the post-socialist context with the growth of nationalist ideologies in Eastern and Central Europe after the collapse of the communist regimes, Verdery (1999, p. 41) makes an important point that ‘nationalism is a kind of ancestor worship, a system of patrilineal kinship’. Ancestral graves are a critical landmark for both nationalist geography and historiography, which bind the national genealogy and the national territory together. The Greeks from the Caucasus and southern Russia relocate their genealogies on the territory of Greece by their ‘relativisation’ of ancestors buried in Greek soil. Hence, the social identities of the migrants are renegotiated in the course of their reunion with family members in Greece. The identification with one’s kin in an imagined community overlaps with Greek ethnicity and with identification with the Greek nation. The meanings of national identity, citizenship and kinship become closely linked. One’s genealogical connection to Greek citizens is often a prerequisite of an individual’s migration that implies confirmation of national identity via ‘blood relations’ or belonging to Greek diaspora. The migrants expect that their genealogical research will eventually result in them obtaining a Greek citizenship.

Conclusion The construction of the Greek national and ethnic identity of the migrants is coupled with the (re)creation of their family network in time and space. This gives new meaning to the migrants’ Greek-ness as belonging to the family rather than to some ‘imagined’ Greek nation. It also assumes that the family itself is rethought, for it now includes relatives who are remote historically and geographically. The goal of migration to Greece could be economic, but the way to it lies through rethinking Greek identity and creating new meaning for the family and the homeland. This

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120  The Transnational Family route extends across generations, and Greek migrants have to rethink their journey both in space and time from the departure onwards in order to find their way back to Greece. They leave for Greece under the pressure of economic difficulties, but arrive there to meet their families, both imagined and actual. This chapter outlinesd the different aspects of Pontic Greek transnational family such as kinship, genealogy, family memory, and mobility. While discussing a transnational family network we should remember that although family connections are often starting across borders and thousands of kilometres, people who constitute these families are living in particular geographical locations with their cultural, political and economic contexts that inevitably impact on the nature of contacts, movements and exchanges that occur as part of the transnational family network. Within ethnographic perspective, the study of transnational families is the research of different localities where such families have attachments and presence. Moreover, localities are essential for reproduction of emergent transnational families. Thus, the family relationships as well as social identities of the Greek migrants are altered by the transnational circuit and might be characterised as translocal. The next chapter will discuss the effect which this translocality of my informants’ lives and identities has on the social construction of home as a localised and rather territorialised property composed of house and land.

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7

A Place Called ‘Home’ Property Ownership, Legitimacy and Local Identification of Migrants in Home Communities

Introduction As has been shown in the previous chapters, the idea of ‘homeland’ is a social construct which is constantly re-negotiated and relocated by the Greek migrants in the course of their cross-border migration. Although the ‘diaspora consciousness’ of some ex-Soviet Greeks pushes them to start their transnational circuit, they do not cut their ties with their places of origin. Moreover, even if they see Greece as their ‘historical homeland’, very often they complete their transnational circuit by returning to places in Russia which they call their ‘home’. As Flynn states, the idea of ‘home’ is located in the site of the everyday experience of migrants and has a particular importance for the construction of migrants’ social identities (Flynn, 2001, pp. 242–4). The social meaning of ‘home’ is also constituted by the relations of people to material objects such as houses, land, or more generally to property. Being both a social and a material phenomenon, ‘home’ embodies people’s sense of belonging to a particular place. This chapter aims to examine the role which property ownership plays in the social identification of Greek transnational migrants in their home community.

The Social Meaning of Property The impact of property and property relations on the cultural process is difficult to overemphasise. Property relations are essentially social relations. Thus, Hann states that the social concept of property ‘is best seen as directing attention to a vast field of cultural as well as social relations, to the symbolic as well as the material context within which things are recognised and personal as well as collective identities made’ (1998b, p. 5). Land and house property have always occupied a significant place in the social identification of the Greeks in southern Russia. In the past, the physical shape of the house, its size, and the materials used for its construction were determined by the social status of its dwellers and were the subject of state regulations. Thus, in the late nineteenth century, those Greek migrants from the Pontos who became subjects of the Russian Empire were obliged by special instruction of the Governor of Kuban Oblast’ to construct houses of the same type as the Russian and Cossack

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122  A Place Called ‘Home’ population of the region (Kocheridi, 2000, p. 2). The Greek settlers, who remained Ottoman subjects, continued to build their houses in the ‘traditional manner’ even after their resettlement in southern Russia (Sysoev, 1901). Traditional Pontic architecture is difficult to define as a particular type, however. In fact, even in the past, there was a wide regional variety of domestic buildings in the Pontos, which were also differentiated according to the socio-economic status of their inhabitants. Thus, Torlakyan (2002) mentions that the houses of Armenian farm labourers who rented their land from local landlords (aghas) were wooden, while the Armenians who lived on their own land built their dwellings from stone. The social meaning of house and land is also inseparable from the family. In their everyday speech, the Gaverdovsk Greeks refer to the family by the Turkish term ‘odzhakh’ that has common origin with the Russian word ‘ochag’ and means ‘family’, ‘home’ and ‘hearth’ (as the central part of a house) simultaneously. The ties which connect a family to its land are represented by the Vitiazevo Greeks as the origins of their community as a social entity. According to local legend, the ancestors of the Vitiazevo Greeks arrived on the territory of presentday Vitiazevo when it still belonged to the Ottoman Empire (before 1828). They worked as hired labourers in the Turkish quarry near the fortress of Anapa, while their families remained in their home villages in the Pontos. After the annexation of the area by the Russian Empire, as Christians they had the opportunity to settle on ‘liberated territory’. Agricultural lands and housing lots, however, were provided by the Russian administration only for families. In order to prove their marital status, couples had to appear at the administrative office together. At the time, there was only one woman among these Greek settlers. In order to fulfil the administrative instruction therefore, all the men came to claim for their land with the same woman, who temporarily substituted for their actual spouses (Yannis, born 1948, Vitiazevo). The Soviet policy towards land and housing property relations of allocating subsidiary plots and houses to households rather than individuals (Hivon, 1998, p. 37) also enhanced the traditional identification of a family with its house and land. At the same time, the collectivization of individual plots and the work of villagers in the fields of collective and state farms introduced the principle of identification with the local land via work in the collective enterprises which possessed this land (see also Kaneff, 2000, p. 7). Members of a collective enterprise established relations of quasi-ownership of the property allocated to them, while the state / collective farm was the real owner. Hivon notes that, under the Soviet regime, when subsidiary plots were allocated by collective enterprises to households, the system was established of land-holding in ‘vladenie’. This meant that villagers had the ‘right to work the land’, but could not buy, sell, mortgage or lease it, although the subsidiary plots could be inherited from the member of the collective enterprise by their direct relatives (Hivon, 1998, p. 38). So in Vitiazevo, in 1929, all the agricultural lands were collectivised, but families kept limited plots next to their houses. Later these personal plots were redistributed by the state farm in order to provide the growing population with housing lots. The most common practice was the redistribution of subsidiary plots within

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A Place Called ‘Home’  123 every big family in order to give individual lots for house-building to newly married family members. Ekaterina, who married in 1970, describes the situation: At that time, I worked in the local administration and they let me apply for allocation of a land lot. But where did they take this lot from? My father-inlaw had ten children and had a [big] subsidiary plot. So they cut three sotkas [0.03 hectares] off his lot, and cut two sotkas off each of two neighbours’ lots. But it was done with their consent. So seven sotkas of the land were given to us. They gave it because my husband had just come back from the army, and he was a member of a big family. Then a father could give up some land from his own plot to his son but not [a non-relative]. (Ekaterina, born 1954, Vitiazevo) Such practices led to the establishment of the kinship based structure of the settlement in Vitiazevo, where households populated by representatives of relatives’ families constituted one neighbourhood. This social solidarity based on the relation between families and land is maintained through the mutual help which is provided by neighbours during the construction of new abodes (see plates 7.1–7.2): I remember when we arrived [here] in 1955 how people built their houses at that time . . . We held a subbotnik1 on a certain day. Everybody gathered, Greeks and Russians, those who [were locals], and mixed the clay, then made the mud bricks (saman). These bricks were dried then for three months. After that, on one weekend, people would gather once again and erect the walls. The third stage was another collective effort to daub the walls. That’s it − the house is ready! That was how people helped each other. It was a collective. (Kuz’ma, born 1949, Vitiazevo) The local community has been constructed quite literally in the process of the collective building of houses for neighbours. Appadurai sees the material production of locality, including house construction, as ‘a moment in a general technology (and teleology) of localisation’ (1997, p. 180). This production of locality assumes that not only are local subjects and the very neighbourhoods which encapsulate their subjectivity created, but ‘space and time are themselves socialised and localised through complex and deliberate practices of performance, representation, and action’ (Appadurai, 1997, p. 180). The individual and families are identified through their property, while houses and land are 1 This mutual aid in the construction of houses was usually provided during weekends and referred to as subbotniki, which is a word from the Soviet thesaurus, meaning collective voluntary work for putting in order some area of the community. Interestingly, the same Soviet term subbotnik continues to be used by the locals of both Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii in the post-socialist context for their collective work in the construction of village churches.

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Plate 7.1  Building a ‘family home’. Vitiazevo, 1950s. Source: Photograph from a family archive of E. Papadopoulos.

viewed as being indistinguishable from their owners. Thus, three families from the Greek village of Edikilisa in Georgia, whose houses were situated next to each other, continue to consider themselves neighbours even when one family now lives in Vitiazevo, another has migrated to Gaverdovskii, while the third resettled in Gelendzhik (southern Russia) 10 years ago (Iosif, born 1929, Gaverdovskii; Lazar, born 1923, Vitiazevo). Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that the social and economic life of Greek migrants is structured around property issues. Money which is brought from Greece or Cyprus finds its real use as capital invested in the construction of housing in the home settlement, which is the main purpose of most of the trips: [My siblings] went to Greece to earn, we might say, because my sister received a land lot here and she [needed money] for building . . . (Alexander, born 1957, Vitiazevo) In the course of their transnational circuit, people also import imaginative and symbolic objects such as Orthodox icons or tourist souvenirs representing Greece. The architectural projects inspired by their trips physically reshape their property;

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Plate 7.2  Housing construction. Gaverdovskii, October 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

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Plate 7.3 Greek ethnicity reflected in local architecture: a house with columns in the ‘Ancient Greek style’. Gaverdovskii, October 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

while icons, calendars and miniature sculptures à la Ancient Greece decorate their interiors and respond to the spiritual demands of the owners (see Plate 7.3). Finally, property has a sacred connotation for the local Greeks. The land is seen as a place where people dwell and live: in everyday speech, people use the word ‘land’ (zemlia) with the meaning of ‘a land lot for personal housing construction’ (zemel’nyi uchastok pod individual’noe zhilishchnoe stroitel’stvo). But the land is also the place where they find ‘their last rest’ when they die. The land links living members of a family with their ancestors who have been buried in the local cemetery. Village cemeteries in Gaverdovskii and Vitiazevo represent a kind of subterranean reflection of people’s relations to their land and property. The graveyard is also divided into family lots where members of the same kin have been buried together for generations. The cemetery, as a place which keeps the remains and memory of dead ancestors, plays a significant role in the maintenance of relationships between living members of the community and those who have died. During the annual commemoration day, which is in Krasnodar Krai the second Monday after Easter, all the villagers gather at their family graves. They bring food and drink for a commemorative meal and go to visit the family plot of their friends and neighbours as if they were visiting their houses in the neighbourhood. As Verdery points out: Burials and reburials serve both to create and to reorder the community. They do so in part simply by bringing live people together to eat, drink, gossip, and exchange gifts and information, and in part by setting up exchanges (usually

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A Place Called ‘Home’  127 of food and objects) with the dead, whom they thereby bring as ancestors into a single community with them. ( Verdery, 1999, p. 108) The local Greeks pay particular attention to their family graves which are cared for in a similar way to their houses. When people work for a long time or resettle in Greece visit their native settlements, the care of the family lot in the cemetery is one of their essential obligations. Sometimes, significant sums are spent on the reconstruction of old tombs. Once again, money and materials are brought from abroad. Consequently, the styles of Greek and Russian graves are different. Among the most visible differences are the special containers for candles which are often installed on Greek but never on Russian tombs. Perhaps the tradition of placing candles on tombs can be traced from the Pontos and Eastern Anatolia. The oldest Pontic Greek tombs in the North-Western Caucasus were cut from stone sometimes in the shape of miniature Orthodox churches, and usually had special niches for candles. These first tombs are dated to the end of the nineteenth century. So this style was brought from the Pontos and then maintained in places of resettlement. During the Soviet period, this tradition was interrupted, and people started to use different objects as containers for candles. Buckets without bottoms standing upside-down were at this time very often utilised for this purpose. Such simple containers can still be seen on Greek graves. The modern design of these containers varies; they can be anything from empty tins for marinated olives to miniature Byzantine churches or ancient Greek basilicas (see Plates 7.5–7.6).

Plate 7.4  A   grave with a candle holder in the shape of a Byzantine chapel brought from Greece. Gaverdovskii, October 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

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Plate 7.5 A grave with a candle holder in the shape of an Ancient Greek basilica. Vitiazevo, October 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

Plate 7.6 A grave with a candle container made from a tin of Greek olives. Vitiazevo, August 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

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A Place Called ‘Home’  129 In other words, the graveyard is a part of the idea of ‘home’ in the same way as a house is. Sometimes it is the family graves which indicate the location of the family home. The recent Greek migrants from Georgia, for instance, continued to bury their deceased in their home villages in the Tsalka region, even five years after their resettlement to Gaverdovskii. They started to use the local cemetery only when their decision to settle in southern Russia became final. Coincidentally, the Gaverdovsk village cemetery has been closed since 1996, and the local Russian population have begun to bury their dead in a new cemetery far from the village. Meanwhile, Greek migrants continue to use the village graveyard, despite the official prohibition of burials. Thus, the local cemetery signifies the reproduction of locality in the new place which they view now as their own. The pattern of local identification via the land-family connections outlined above is both ahistorical − deeply embedded in, and reproduced through, the cosmology of ritual − and shaped by historical changes. Pine points out the importance for household community of locating ‘the ideal of house continuity’ in the broader contexts of the changes inspired by the state and other external structures (Pine, 1996, pp. 445–6). Therefore, the local techniques of reordering society and the socialisation of place have to be seen in the light of the contemporary state approach to property and migration.

Provincial Citizenship Regimes and Property Ownership In the contemporary Russian Federation, all operations with land lots intended for personal dwelling constructions and with housing property are heavily regulated by federal and regional laws which have gradually changed over the post-Soviet period. Local property policy also depends upon the local registration system or so-called ‘propiska’, the Soviet term which is still used in everyday speech (see Chapter 2). These registration regimes demonstrate the tendency to close a region to external migration flows in all locations in post-Soviet provincial Russia (Humphrey, 1999, pp. 31–2; Pilkington, 1998a, pp. 40–42). In accordance with Russian land legislation (The Presidential Edict No. 1767 of 27 October 1993), non-agricultural land in rural areas belongs to the state (although state lands are subdivided into federal and regional areas); local administrations provide the land for individual housing construction on behalf of the state. People can officially institutionalise their ownership rights by privatising houses and subsidiary plots. However, in Krasnodar Krai, several Governor’s decrees (No. 428 of 16 November 1993 and No. 146 of 17 March 1994) and the regional land law (No. 47–KZ of 21 November 1996) imposed a so-called ‘special order of landuse’ (osobyi poriadok zemlepol’zovania) in the region. These legislative acts have determined the conditions and the order of distribution among citizens, as well as their acquisition of land lots. Under this regional legislation system, individuals’ property rights are directly dependent on their registration status in the territory of Krasnodar Krai or even their actual place of residence. For instance, land lots could be distributed among

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130  A Place Called ‘Home’ and bought by citizens of the Russian Federation who came from outside Krasnodar Krai, as long as they had received permission for permanent residence on the given territory of the region. All transactions with land were prohibited to non-citizens of Russia. The Governor’s decrees defined a settlement qualification which was required in order to give newcomers the rights to local land-use. This was set for citizens of Russia at five years of residency in a given place after the receipt of permanent registration, and ten years for non-citizens who had already received Russian citizenship. In fact, the Land Law of Krasnodar Krai introduced the concept of ‘local residents’ (mestnye zhiteli) as a category of citizens who have privileged rights to receive and buy local land. Due to the contradiction between the local land legislation and the Constitution of the Russian Federation, some amendments have been made in the Provincial Land Law leading to the abolition of articles discriminating against non-local Russian citizens in 1999 in accordance with President Putin’s programme of so-called, ‘harmonization of Federal and regional legislative systems’ (Pravovaia Kuban’, 1999). The new Land Law of the Russian Federation (adopted in 2002) officially permits the selling and buying of land. However, this liberal law has a significant amendment allowing provincial legislative assemblies to adopt local laws in order to limit the commercial selling of land. This amendment has been enacted as a law in Krasnodar Krai and Adygea. At the grass-roots level, the mechanism of distribution of land lots among the population still remains strictly related to local propiska.

Local Predicaments of ‘Transnational’ Citizenship The engagement of the local Greeks in transnational migration to and from Greece and / or Cyprus makes their socio-economic status rather complicated, given the strict anti-migrant regimes remaining in southern Russian provinces. Navigating their routes to Greece in the early to mid-1990s, Greek migrants obtained socalled ‘repatriation visas’ in order to receive Greek citizenship upon their arrival in Greece. Although the possession of a Greek national passport did not deprive them of Russian citizenship, the Russian emigration regulations in practice obliged people intending to leave the country for permanent residence abroad to cut all official connections with the place of their former residence in the Russian Federation. They also had to submit their internal passports and trudovaia knizhka (a booklet documenting their work record and giving entitlement to a pension). A person emigrating had to de-register (vypisat’sia) from his household; and if the whole family was leaving, the household account (litsevoi schet) had to be closed and the house had to be sold.2 As a matter of fact, the only document confirming

2 According to expert information received in the General Consulate of Greece in Novorossiisk, following an agreement with the Russian authorities, Greek Consulates refused ‘repatriation visas’ to those repatriates who failed to fulfil all emigration regulations (Expert interview, Novorossiisk, 12 September 2003).

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A Place Called ‘Home’  131 the Russian citizenship of a Greek migrant on their departure from the country was an external passport, which was issued to Russian nationals travelling abroad and had to be renewed every five years. These regulations began to be liberalised significantly at the end of the 1990s when the submission of internal passports and the sale of houses were no longer required for emigration from Russia. At the same time, Greece stopped issuing repatriation visas to the Russian Greeks in 2000 (see Chapter 5). However, the peak of the repatriation of the former Soviet Greeks from the Russian Federation to Greece occurred at the beginning of the 1990s, and these people would have been likely to leave the country, losing their local propiska.3 The possession of both Greek national and Russian external passports is not recognised as dual citizenship either in Greece or in the Russian Federation. On the border checkpoints, the Greek citizenship of migrants returning to Russia is simply ignored by the Russian border guard officers as soon as migrants show their Russian external passports. This ultimately facilitates the cross-border economic activities of the Greek transnational migrants. At the same time, the lack of internal passports and local propiska put them in a very vulnerable position in the eyes of the regional authorities. In fact, on their return from their trips to Greece, migrants have to obtain temporary registration for six months at the local police station, and if they fail to do so they can be fined. Temporary registration does not provide them with the right to dispose of a house and other property at the household where they are registered. The procedure of receiving permanent local registration is very complicated, as well as a drain on time, money and energy. First of all, they have to exchange their external passports for new Russian internal passports (they have to apply for new external passports after their permanent registration). Then, they submit the necessary documents for local permanent registration to the police department dealing with migration issues. In Krasnodar Krai, as a rule, the police send their cases for final decision to district migration commissions (public institutions representing the local population) which are infamous because of their strong anti-migrant and anti-minority attitudes. If these commissions reject the migrant’s applications, he / she can appeal to the court which can grant the individual a local propiska.4 If people decide to undertake such a long and uncertain enterprise as applying for permanent registration, they risk losing their external Russian passport which is absolutely vital for migration to and from Greece and Cyprus, and thus for economic survival. This is why, unsurprisingly, many people prefer to live without local registration. Instead they are integrated into the local community through informal networking, which allows them to bypass the constraints of the anti-migrant provincial regimes. 3 The maximum figure for annual emigration from the Russian Federation to Greece in 1990 was 4,184. During the following four years these figures decreased gradually: 2,089 (in 1991); 1,873 (1992); 1,792 (1993), and 1,006 (in 1994) (Goskomstat Rossii, 1995, p. 43). 4 Information on Greek migrants’ experience of obtaining permanent registration was received from an officer in the Vitiazevo town administration.

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‘We are Local Greeks’: Propiska, Privatisation and the Localisation of Identity The Greeks living in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii often define themselves via the expression ‘we are local Greeks’ (mestnye greki). The concept ‘locals’ suggests a personal attachment to a place. It assumes that the territorial and social locations of the individual are indistinguishable. This local community, which embodies the territory and collective simultaneously, is generalised in the bureaucratic formula ‘local residents’. As Humphrey points out, an emotional identification with place goes alongside the registration system, which is one of the most important instruments of ‘the emerging citizenship regimes’ in post-Soviet provincial Russia (Humphrey, 1999, p. 32). Local Greek identity is constructed via the opposition of ‘local residents’ to Greek migrants from the ex-Soviet republics, the so-called ‘newcomers’ (priezzhie). In other words, the attachment to the local community and territory as a central notion of regional identity is articulated through reference to outsiders who are seen as the Other (Hall, 1996b, p. 344). The presence of newcomers demarcates the borders of the local community in space and time. In Vitiazevo, for example, Greek migrants from Georgia settle mainly in the upper part of the town, the so-called novostroiki (newly constructed town), which has been taken from the lands of the local state farm for housing construction. The local Greek population of the town define this area as ‘New Vitiazevo’ which is differentiated from the ‘Old Vitiazevo’ of the central neighbourhoods. In the everyday narratives of the town’s geography, the locals continue to locate novostroiki in the margins or even outside the borders of the settlement when they emphasise the fact that ‘there was nothing but the state farm’s vineyard’ where the newcomers’ households now stand. The spatial separation of newcomers from the locals is also enhanced by the fact that the Georgian Greeks use only the new town cemetery, which is situated close to the upper neighbourhoods. The local Greeks continue to bury their dead in their family plots at the ‘old cemetery’ in the centre of Vitiazevo, while they refer to the new cemetery as ‘not ours’ (ne nashe) (Anton, born 1959, Vitiazevo). Newcomers and locals are also divided by temporal boundaries. Although migration has characterised the Greek population in both Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii throughout the history of these settlements, only recent, post-Soviet, migrants are considered ‘newcomers’. Hence, Ekaterina, who was born in Kazakhstan, returned from exile with her parents in 1960, and moved to Vitiazevo only in 1970, clearly identified perestroika as the time when differentiation between the ‘local’ Greeks and ‘newcomers’ appeared: AP: Do you consider yourself a newcomer? Ekaterina: No, I think that I am a local. Do you know who are newcomers for us? The mass migration was during perestroika, those people are newcomers, though, I think, they have lived here for 10–15 years already.

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A Place Called ‘Home’  133 AP:

But, look, the mass return from Kazakhstan was even bigger in the 1970s, wasn’t it? Ekaterina: Of course, of course, it was. It was like that in the 1960s as well, yes. [But] they [who arrived at that time] are like locals already. (Ekaterina, born 1954, Vitiazevo) Emerging from the political and economic transformations of Soviet reality, these social boundaries between the ‘locals’ and ‘newcomers’ reflect the opposition between the ‘indigenous population’ and ‘migrants’ which is promoted by the regional citizenship regime. Therefore, the anti-migrant system of registration and land-use reshapes the local Greek identity, emphasising the strong bond between the local territory and the collective. As a consequence, the relationship of ‘locals’ to their land and housing property plays an important role in the process of social identification with a place. The following passage from an interview with Ekaterina who is also an officer of the Vitiazevo administration, shows how the distinction between the locals and Greek migrants is created through the post-socialist practices of distributing and privatising housing lots among the members of the local community: Ekaterina: Well, when the period of perestroika started and when the Russian-speaking population began to leave Georgia, when they left Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, there was an influx of people at that time. Many came here, and we gave a propiska to all of them. This happened even when Kondratenko [the former governor of the Krai] strictly prohibited granting propiska in Krasnodar Krai . . . We even passed our own decree in order to give propiska to all individuals who had Greek nationality (natsional’nost’) then. It was done even despite the law of Krasnodar Krai. Well, but as a rule, all those who had arrived from other regions, non-locals, all of them left for Greece. Because it was very difficult for them to adapt, to buy property and to get the same social status as they had had in their previous places of residence. Because land lots were not distributed at one time; people were standing in a queue to receive land. There were also some restrictions, like a person should have had a local propiska for at least five years, and only after this could he be enrolled in the list for land lots . . . AP: In other words, land lots were not distributed among newcomers? Ekaterina: No, at that time we put their names on the list for obtaining a land lot, but, as a rule, it was the beginning of the process of distributing land, and it was also [short pause] very difficult for newcomers to get this land. Because, as they say, the local population applied [to take land lots]. There were big families among them who had five, six or two [sic] children, and all of them, as a rule, lived together − an adult son with his own children lived

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134  A Place Called ‘Home’ with his parents − because the land had been never distributed before. These big families made official applications . . . Yes, in other words, the land was distributed for the first time in Russia in 1989–1990, and it was astonishing. I had been working at the state farm (sovkhoz), and people discussed this issue on state farms, in collectives. And at one time you need the collective to support your application for allocation of a land lot . . . (Ekaterina, born 1954, Vitiazevo) The distribution and privatisation of land and housing property have an ambiguous effect on property relations and social identification in the local community. The established Soviet pattern, which provided members of the working collective with quasi-ownership status, was challenged; however, the importance of family ties with the local state farm, which embodied the town community in the Soviet past, increased. Only people with family connections to the state farm have priority rights to acquire their portion of collective property, although, in accordance with regional regulations, anyone who has a propiska in the town has legitimate reason to be allocated a land lot. Greek newcomers, for instance, obtained local registration due to the ethnonationalist policy of the town administration, but they failed to secure their property ownership rights and were not allocated land lots for housing construction because they were not recognised as members of the local collective. Indeed, the local registration of newcomers to some extent even contributed to their alienation from the local community, because the locals viewed newcomers who obtained local propiska as rivals in an ongoing competition over land resources. Furthermore, a local propiska had the paradoxical effect of speeding up the departure of newcomers, because it constituted a compulsory condition for the issuing of the required documents for emigration to Greece. Since ‘newcomers’ inevitably lost their local registration when they ‘repatriated’ to Greece, their departure from Russia became final, because they had no house or land in the local community to return to. Possession of property demarcates the boundaries between the local community and newcomers. From the locals’ point of view the newcomers’ lack of ownership rights has been predetermined by their migration from outside the local community and is the main reason for their mass exodus to Greece in the early and mid-1990s. Simultaneously, in Gaverdovskii as well as in Vitiazevo, it is taken for granted that only a tiny minority of the local Greeks ever follow these ‘migrants’ and resettle in Greece permanently: AP: Vasilii: AP: Vasilii:

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Did many people leave Gaverdovskii for Greece?) Yes, 50 per cent of the population [left]. 50 per cent is quite a lot, isn’t it? Basically, those people left, who came from Georgia. But only a few locals left, maybe just 10 per cent. The locals, I mean those who are long-time residents, who were born here. (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii)

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A Place Called ‘Home’  135 In fact, the survival strategies of the local Greeks revolve around the provincial property regulations and registration policy. The fear of losing the local propiska and right to acquire local land for housing sometimes forces locals to stay at home rather than migrate to Greece. The locals’ attachment to their birthplace is expressed through both emotional narratives of local patriotism and a rational calculation of the potential risks and benefits of emigration as this interview extract illustrates: AP: Why didn’t you go to [Greece]? Mikhail: My homeland is here. Well, of course, I probably will go. Simply, there were such circumstances that [I was busy] in the institute and so on and so on. AP: Didn’t you want to go instead of serving in the army? Mikhail: I went to the army here, because I wanted to take land here. Well, now I’ve got the land. AP: Was your military service a compulsory condition for obtaining your land lot? Mikhail: Well, it was not because of the army. If I had gone to Greece, let’s imagine, it would have been the end, it meant that I would have lost my propiska and then that would have been it with the land . . . Well, non-citizens [sic] cannot take lots for housing construction, that’s for definite. (Mikhail, born 1975, Vitiazevo) In fact, the ‘local’ Greeks join the migration to Greece to the same degree as newcomers do. However, due to the ‘traditional’ identification with the local community via family ties, the emigration of the locals is treated differently from the newcomers’ resettlement to Greece. As the following passage from the interview with Ekaterina shows, the ‘local’ emigrants are seen as members of local families, which as collective entities are not detachable from their home place: [My brother-in-law] he went away and has been living there now since 1990. They have adapted there somehow. They live in Larisa. They have bought a house for themselves. In 1994, their son was born there. An elder daughter, who was born in 1981, got married to a pure Hellene (vyshla za chistogo ellintsa) there, and now they are expecting a baby . . . These are, well, the locals, I shall say, the locals, but they are a single case, they are like an exception . . . So, Pavlik, the elder son [of my parents-in-law], he left for Greece as well, God rest his soul, he died there in Salonika in 1990 . . . Then my husband’s sister also got married to a Vitiazevo German, she lives in Germany now. Well that’s just how it is. But I have to say, as a rule, there is no single local family or ‘clan’ [sic] that has left. Look, of our family of 10 people, only two of us are there. But these newcomers, who were from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, they were only registered here. (Ekaterina, born 1954, Vitiazevo)

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136  A Place Called ‘Home’ Thus, the ‘household’ identification of the local Greek population may be seen both as a product of provincial anti-migrant policy, which institutionalises discriminatory property regulations; and as a strategic use of the regional propiska system and land-use regime to secure their property ownership to the local land in the uncertain conditions of the socio-economic transformation of a post-socialist society. The emerging local identity is discursively constructed within the dichotomy between the ‘indigenous population’ and ‘migrants’ or ‘newcomers’, which is also a product of post-Soviet regionalism and the fragmentation of social identities. At the same time, this local identification with a home territory is developed within an informal network of relatives and neighbours and through the personal emotional attachment to local land and family houses.

Purchasing ‘the Land’: Morality and the Economy of the Property Market Why is the rather ‘traditional’ household ideology of the local Greeks, with its focus on the connections between the family and its house / land property, so viable and effective under the shifting socio-economic conditions of post-socialism? To answer this question, we have to examine how the local community copes with the new market economy in post-Soviet Russia. Verdery points out that an especially challenging area of post-socialist transformations ‘concerns privatisation, [and] the (re)creation of private property rights from the collective property of socialism’ (1998, p. 160). It also seems that post-Soviet privatisation could undermine the basis of household identity by the introduction of the free market into property relations. Due to the development of the tourist industry on the Black Sea coast, the land and houses in the coastal settlements of the region, including Vitiazevo, have become a very profitable commodity. Nonetheless, in the local property market, the main demand for land has been created by the non-local population. Property buyers chiefly come from other regions of the Russian Federation. They are rich businesspeople from the capital cities, such as Moscow and St Petersburg, or retired workers from Siberian oil and gas corporations who have some savings because of high ‘northern’ wages. These purchasers are predominantly Russian. The skyrocketing prices of property exclude a significant proportion of the local population (Greek and Russian) from the property market. In 2003, the price for a land lot with or without buildings ranged from 30,000 USD to 130,000 USD (and even higher); the average annual income of a local family of four working adults who actively participated in the tourist business and received remittances from relatives in Greece and Cyprus was around 10,000 USD. Land lots, which are distributed by the local administration, are given mainly to the local population, and the Greeks are privileged in the allocation of this land. However, the most profitable land lots, which have been provided in the ‘lower’ (central) part of town, have been (somewhat predictably) allotted to relatives of the local administrators. The rest have received land at the ‘upper’ end of Vitiazevo. Although property in the ‘upper’ neighbourhoods is liable to the same high tax as

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A Place Called ‘Home’  137 houses closer to the beach, if it is used in the tourist business it yields less profit. Therefore, the local Greek families of Vitiazevo are eager to keep their ‘ancestral’ houses in the central neighbourhoods, since they are situated relatively close to the beach zone and can be intensively exploited as accommodation for holidaymakers during the tourist season. These properties are usually handed down within the family. They are passed from parents to children as an inheritance or legalised via judicial agreements of gift-making between relatives (dogovor darenia sobstvennosti). As a consequence, the close bonds between local families and town locations have become even stronger under the unfavourable competition of the property market. Examining the role of the household in the social and economic life of Gorale society, Pine also comes to conclusion that the role of ‘house ideology’ as a source of identity increases during periods of poverty or social transformation ‘providing the balance to the effects of fragmentation and marginalisation’ (Pine, 1996, p. 456). At the same time, the disadvantaged economic position of the locals on the property market makes their attitude towards the purchase of local land generally quite hostile, and the stereotypical perception of buyers is one of an affluent non-Greek outsider, eager for local land, aggressive and unfair in his economic strategies: They say to us now: ‘Let Muscovites build their hotels here. They are rich and will buy your land, while you will work for them’.5 But I might want to build my own hotel on my own land! Well, the Muscovites walked around and asked people to sell their land − nobody sold them anything. Now they have started to shout that there is cholera, plague and flood here in order to force people to leave.6 They are undermining our business. This is how it works in Moscow: those who are stronger push the weaker players out, but they have money as well. So they go to the South. (Mikhail, born 1975, Vitiazevo) The local residents’ bad feeling about the property market has a strong moral imperative. Land and property are seen as entities in which local families are rooted via generations of ancestors; hence local property is inextricably bound up with local family genealogies. Inheritance is the only correct way to acquire it; while selling it to outsiders uproots people and detaches them from their ancestral land and the local community. Scott (1998) notes that ‘purchase’ and ‘inheritance’, as the principal means by which rights to land and property are established, represent

5 In this quotation, the informant hints at the words of the former head of the town administration who was accused by the locals of having taken bribes from outsiders to sell them municipal land intended for housing construction. The circumstances of this conflict between the local Greek elite and the former mayor of Vitiazevo were described in Chapter 3. 6 This interview was recorded in August 2002 when the Northern Caucasus was hit by major floods. In the Black Sea resorts of Krasnodar Krai, more than 100 people, mainly holidaymakers, were killed by this disaster. The epidemiological conditions in the territory affected by the flood were hazardous.

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138  A Place Called ‘Home’ countervailing trends. While ‘inheritance’ marks ‘a continuous relationship over generations and blends closely with [the] idea of ‘original’ ownership’, ‘purchase’ is associated with ‘a discontinuity and change of direction’ (Scott, 1998, p. 146). In the opinion of the Vitiazevo Greeks, the selling of local land or property is a violation of the social order which threatens the wealth and existence of the entire community. It is assumed that the selling of land and property produces new owners who are detached from the local community. At the same time, since they are inescapably engaged in commercial operations with property, the locals consider that it is better to sell houses to, or buy them from, ‘one’s own people’ (svoim; u svoikh). Sometimes, property is transferred within a family but legalised via a purchase agreement (dogovor kupli-prodazhi) between relatives in order to avoid the high tax which is paid if a house is inherited or received as a gift. In the regional context, property relations are viewed through the prism of the ‘national order of things’ (Malkki, 1996). In one of his public speeches, the former Governor of Krasnodar Krai linked migration and ethnic minorities with the criminalisation of the property market in the region: You know that the property [market] is an area where 90 per cent of activities are criminal (na 90 protsentov deistvuet kriminalitet). Tell me, can you gamble on property with hard-earned money? No! . . . Let’s imagine that someone from the so-called ethnic minorities is hunting for property. But if the head of a district police unit, who has at least 600 policemen, creates such conditions that, at each corner, a policeman stands and stops newcomers, and tells them: ‘Guys, you will not have soil [sic] here. You’d better go back to your home’ then of course [these newcomers] would go away. (Kondratenko, 2000b, pp. 1–2) In this very figurative speech, the Governor used the metaphor of ‘soil’ for the territory of the region and created the image of ethnic minorities as uprooted migrants. In Malkki’s opinion, such ‘botanic metaphors’ in ordinary language, as well as in nationalist discourses and the scholarly studies of nation, nationalism and refugees, serve to establish links between people and places and demonstrate a particular way of thinking about identity and territory. At the same time, narratives of ‘rootedness’ literally represent territorialised identity as something natural, while the situations of displacement and ‘uprooted’ people have come to be perceived as a pathology (Malkki, 1996, pp. 434–42). The locals’ hostility towards the property market is enhanced by these regional anti-migrant and xenophobic discourses. The Greeks in Vitiazevo express their fear that their land in the town will be bought by Armenian migrants (in fact, Armenians constitute only a tiny minority among property buyers) and that locals will be pushed out: These Armenians who descended on us (naekhali) here pretend that they are refugees (bezhentsy). Excuse me, are they refugees? Refugees are not like them. They are the oligarchy (oligarkhia) who had grabbed [everything]

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A Place Called ‘Home’  139 already there [in their homeland] and had to run away; so they came here. The Armenians already comprise two thirds of the population in Vitiazevo.7 We live peacefully so far, but God protect us if they started something against the Greeks. (Matvei, born 1924, Vitiazevo) The locals thus question the labelling of Armenians as ‘poor refugees’ and judge their ability to possess property despite their dispossessed and displaced status as evidence of cheating, and a violation of their initial trust and sympathy for their suffering.8 The locals see participation in the property market as a suspicious activity and doubt both its morality and its legality. The Armenians, for instance, are often accused of having bought their dwellings illegally with ‘criminal’ money through bribery and connections with corrupt bureaucrats. They believe that, for migrants, bribery is the only way to acquire permanent registration and the opportunity to purchase houses in the town under the regional conditions of heavily restricted migrant property rights. Thus, the property market and related activities are viewed as untrustworthy and have low social validity in the eyes of the locals. As a consequence, the local community suspects the legitimacy of ownership rights to property bought via this market. Meanwhile, the ownership of houses and land acquired via family networks, even if the property has been bought from relatives or neighbours, is fully credible and ethical.

Legitimacy of Ownership and the Local Identification of Transnational Migrants People form their ideas about the state regulation of migration and residence and about the emerging property market as a product of their own encounters with the everyday structures governing them. Knowledge of the rules and constraints imposed by the structure has allowed people to build their own lives in accordance with their expectations and the values of the society. The final section highlights the strategies developed by Greek migrants as they deal with the restrictions and obstacles of regional registration and property policy. Three examples demonstrate 7 The informant overestimated the actual number of Armenians in the town. According to the information of the local administration, there were 460 Armenians, while the whole population of Vitiazevo totalled 8,200. Although the Armenians constitute the third biggest ethnic minority group in the settlement after Russians and Greeks, they make up much less than one third of the town’s population, even allowing for the sceptical speculation that many of the Armenians live without registration and for this reason are not present in the statistical data. 8 In fact, the overwhelming majority of Armenians who now live in Vitiazevo came from the Armenian earthquake zone in December 1988 and the Armenian-Azeri conflict zone in the Nagornyi Karabakh autonomy during 1988–1994. Hence, they have never received refugee status and can be seen as forced migrants who resettled within the state borders of the USSR. See also Pilkington (1998a, p. 35) for a discussion on the problem of the term ‘refugee’ in the Soviet Union.

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140  A Place Called ‘Home’ how household ideology and informal family networks make it easier to legitimise the ownership of property by migrants in the home community, and also to recreate their local identification. Vasilii’s Help It is, perhaps, going too far to suggest that competition over property creates an impenetrable wall between the local residents and newcomers. In fact, family ties (the majority of newcomers have distant or close relatives among the local Greeks), friendships and business partnerships provide newcomers with opportunities to overcome bureaucratic restrictions and to obtain local registration as well as property. In Gaverdovskii, the practice of registering migrants from Georgia in the households of their local relatives was widespread. After registering as permanent residents, migrants could apply to the administration for lots in order to build their own houses, thereby causing regional registration regimes to have an ambiguous effect on the life of local communities. They intensify the dichotomy between locals and migrants as alienated others, but strict anti-migrant registrations and property policies also promote the practices of mutual help and collaboration between locals and newcomers in finding and using loopholes in the defensive walls around the ‘local’ territory. In these uncertain circumstances, when people’s property transactions are not protected by the law or may not even exist, in spite of regional legislation systems, such moral values as trust constitute the basis for everyday interactions.9 In Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii, the concept of ‘help’ (pomoshch’) is used to describe the trusting relationships between people in property matters. Vasilii (born 1949), a long-time resident (starozhil) in Gaverdovskii, has frequently helped the families of his relatives to resettle from Georgia using the ‘housing space’ of his house: [The newcomers] came here and asked for help. Well, we helped them to get a propiska, to receive land lots; helped them to build their houses, to get a job. At one time, I was able to help in this way. And Vitalia [a friend of mine] had an opportunity, he also registered people in his house (propisyval). I did that many times. Look, I have my household book (domovaia kniga), it is full . . . He [a newcomer] had been registered in (propisyvalsia) my house, then he took his own land lot for house construction and deregistered (vypisyvalsia) from here, because the housing space in the house was needed to register someone else. So we helped many people. (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii)

9 This moral character of the post-socialist micro-economies has been highlighted in several anthropological works on the post-socialist market and society (see for example Mandel and Humphrey, 2002; Kaneff, 2002; Humphrey, 1999 and 2002).

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A Place Called ‘Home’  141 The expression ‘housing space’ (zhilaia ploshchad’) is a bureaucratic term taken from the Housing Code of the Russian Federation. According to this bill, 12 square metres per person is the limit of the housing space which can be provided by the state as a free municipal dwelling. Meanwhile, in southern Russia, the regional authorities use these 12 square metres per person as a sanitary norm which restricts the number of people registered in one dwelling. If the housing space is not sufficient, migrants can only be registered in the property of their local relatives through the district / city migration commission (Osipov, 1999, p. 103). As a matter of fact, Vasilii and his friend Vitalii have relatively big houses and, what is more important, some ‘connections’ with the authorities (or ‘opportunities’ in Vasilii’s terms). This explains why many Georgian Greeks have become residents of Gaverdovskii due to their help. Informal ‘connections’ (sviazi) constituted the core of the Soviet economy of favours, or blat. Ledeneva shows that blat, unlike bribery, was seen as an illegal but socially acceptable means of acquiring goods from the state under the conditions of an economy of shortage. The development of the market economy and the increasing consumerism of post-socialist society have changed the economic environment and squeezed out blat relations from social interactions (Ledeneva, 1998, p. 175). However, the regional registration and property regulations in southern Russia create a situation where the local propiska is ‘in short supply’ and can effectively be obtained via informal connections with the authorities. In societies where the state aspires to control all spheres of life, connections with the state bureaucracy play a significant role in social integration. In her work on the cultural values of property in Northern Cyprus, Scott argues that by using ‘connections’ for a particular goal, the individual mobilises social capital. Therefore, ‘achieving a favourable outcome brings not only the satisfaction of attaining the desired objective, but also confirmation of one’s place in society’ (Scott, 1998, p. 152). These two friends were deeply involved in the process of Greek resettlement from Tsalka at the beginning of the 1990s, and their help brought them not only the symbolic capital of public respect but economic dividends as well. During the 1990s, Vasilii was quite successfully engaged in business. His most famous commercial operation was the buying of abandoned railway carriages, which were then sold to arriving Greek migrants as temporary dwellings in newly acquired land lots. The interdependence of registration and house property leads to the transformation of a house into a ‘housing space’. Bureaucratic jargon enters into the everyday speech of ordinary people when they discuss their property affairs; and it imposes a bureaucratic view of property relations. In fact, different aspects of Russian economic and social life can be divided into the realms of official documentation and actual practices. These two realities are interlaced and affect each other in an almost surreal way. Sergei’s House Household registers (pokhoziaistvennye knigi), which are the main source of official documentation at the grassroots level, reflecting the registration statuses and

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142  A Place Called ‘Home’ property rights of local residents in rural settlements, provide interesting information on the interaction of actual registration-property relations and their official representation. In Gaverdovskii, for example, on numerous occasions registration in the village took place long before an actual resettlement from Georgia. Let us revisit the case of the C-ov family. Iosif C-ov (born 1929) received local permanent registration in the household of his elder son in 1996, in accordance with his inheritance rights after the death of this son in an accident. However, he continued to live permanently in his native Edikilisa (Georgia) until the spring of 2002. Meanwhile, Iosif’s younger son, Sergei (born 1972), has been living in this house with his family, since his resettlement in Gaverdovskii from Georgia in 1992. According to the Gaverdovskii household register, only Iosif has permanent registration in this house. Sergei, his wife and their two children are also mentioned in the register, but next to their names, there is a note in pencil ‘not registered’ (ne propisany). Nonetheless, Sergey considers himself the owner of the house, which he has recently started to rebuild. Iosif has never lived in the house where he has had a propiska for almost eight years. After his resettlement from Georgia, he settled with his wife (who is not mentioned in any local official documents at all but is registered in St Petersburg at the flat of their eldest daughter) in their daughter’s house, who had emigrated to Greece in 2000. This house is described in the Gaverdovskii register as ‘abandoned without supervision’ (bez prismotra). At the same time, Sergei had already acquired his own land lot for house-building because the old house (before rebuilding) had become too small for his growing family: after the birth of his youngest daughter in 1999, there was less than 12 square meters per person. Of course, this calculation of the ‘housing space’ had included Iosif, even though he was not present in Gaverdovskii in 1999. In the village household register, Sergei and his family were noted as ‘not registered’ because he formally received his own land, albeit without any building on it. At the same time, this note in an official document freed a valuable housing space for the purpose of registering other relatives. There is a big room which is constructed as a separate building in Sergei’s yard. It is classified in the household register as a summer kitchen (which is traditional in southern Russian rural architecture), but Sergei speaks about it as a guest house which is always ready for newcomers, perhaps on their way from Georgia to Greece. Elena’s Fear Situations which are similar to those of Iosif and Sergei C-ovs are numerous in both Gaverdovskii and Vitiazevo. Among people who are listed in local household registers, there are many who have never lived in the house where they are registered, while those who consider themselves and are recognised by neighbours as the actual owners of this property are absent from the register. Such misleading records reflect property relations which emerge as a result of the Greeks’ involvement in transnational migration. For instance, owners who

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A Place Called ‘Home’  143 have decided to emigrate to Greece and have had to sell their houses prefer to sell them to their next of kin in order to maintain links with their former property. Sometimes the sale of property is fictitious rather than actual; people who have received Greek citizenship come back and continue to live in their houses as owners, although the property does not officially belong to them. The local authorities are aware of the situation on the ground. In fact, the comments in pencil in the local household registers are a compromise between actual, albeit informal, property ownership and its officially documented status; they can easily be erased or made permanent with ink if necessary. The notes in pencil in registers are effectively the semi-official recognition of informal property relations within the local community. At the Vitiazevo local administration the notes in pencil are used in household registers for updating information about people and their property, which is often based not on documents but on the common knowledge of local clerks about their neighbours. Thus, in autumn 2003, Elena S-va (born 1953) was very much surprised and became anxious when she discovered that her son’s name had been noted in pencil in the register with reference to a land purchase. In fact, the land lot had been bought by her 26 year old son, Konstantin, but officially registered in the name of her husband, Yannis. As has been explained in Chapter 6, Konstantin and she had left for Greece in 1996. Although she had come back after six months and he had returned after two years, they had lost their propiska in their Vitiazevo household, as they had decided to take Greek citizenship. Therefore, their names should have disappeared from the household register, while the records of Yannis and her elder son, Mikhail, who had remained at home, were left. The land lot had been bought in 1998 using money earned by Konstantin in Greece, but due to his non-local status, it had been registered in Yannis’s name. Yannis also had taxation privileges as a veteran of the rescue operation in the Chernobyl nuclear power station. In Vitiazevo, where property tax is very high, a 50 per cent reduction makes a significant difference. Elena was afraid that the whole complicated mechanism of property purchase, the legality of which in her opinion might have been doubted, would be discovered. As a mother, she was also afraid that the records of Konstantin, who had so far avoided conscription to Russian military service due to his ‘emigration’ to Greece, might be traced by the local conscription commissariat. It is well known in the town that information from the household register is used to draft local young men into the army. Additionally, by writing Konstantin’s name in the register the local administration acknowledged the existing informal identification of an individual with the local community via his household. The family links of Konstantin with the local community provided him with an opportunity to own a house and land with social recognition of his property rights. This informal social legitimacy of ownership leads to the semi-official legitimisation of the socio-economic status of the migrant and his property. Land and house property is the ultimate and the most effective argument used by many Greek migrants to secure their links with the place which they consider

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144  A Place Called ‘Home’ their home and to avoid social marginalisation. The following passage from an interview recorded in 2002 with Foma, a former resident of Vitiazevo, who was than a permanent resident in the city of Salonica (Northern Greece), demonstrates how desperately migrants need their property in order to have a home: I was born in the Urals, in 1955. In 1956, my parents came here after the rehabilitation. My parents were from here, from Vitiazevo. So, from 1956 until 1995, I lived here in Vitiazevo. I have my roots here. Though I was against resettlement in Greece, but . . . it was my fate that I had to go . . . But I didn’t sell anything here. I will come back to my roots anyway. (Foma, born 1955, Vitiazevo) Indeed, since 2013, Foma has been living mostly in Vitiazevo (see Chapter 4). Ironically, though, in the eyes of his neighbours he does not return for good and has become already rooted in Greece because he owns a flat in Salonica and two of his grown up children live there. Thus, the migrants’ idea of ‘home’ is reconstructed through property relations. Indeed, the ways in which Greek migrants connect themselves to their houses and land play an important role in the formation and constant negotiation of their social identities.

Conclusion The ‘traditional household ideology’ of Greek transnational migrants in southern Russia which emphasises the interconnections between the family and its house / land has survived the tremendous impact of Soviet modernisation on rural society. These ties between the family and its land lot constitute the basis for one’s personal identification both with the place and the local community. To some extent, this local identification with the place (the household and / or its land) was conserved and even strengthened by the practice of redistributing the land of the family subsidiary plots as personal lots for housing construction among members of the collective / state farms, who became the real owners of the local land during the Soviet period. The local identification with and through property rights to the houses and land is imposed by the post-Soviet citizenship regimes in southern Russia, which exclude from ownership rights those people who have no local permanent registration. The post-Soviet privatisation of land and houses in addition to the emerging property market increases the competition between the groups of ‘locals’ and ‘newcomers’, while regional property regulations are used by the local Greeks to their advantage. Furthermore, such anti-migrant property regulations put many Greek transnational migrants under threat of social and economic marginalisation in their home communities, since many of them lost their local ‘propiska’ in obtaining Greek citizenship. In these conditions, the ‘traditional’ ties between the family and the local land are strategically employed by migrants in their struggle for social recognition and integration

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A Place Called ‘Home’  145 into the local community. To overcome the constraints of the regional antimigrant regime, Greek migrants rely on the trusting relationships and informal networks of friends and relatives when dealing with property related issues. This informal identification of migrants with the local community may lead to the semi-official acceptance of their emotional, social and economic attachment to the place which they call their ‘home’.

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8

Becoming Pontic Greeks

Introduction In the summer of 1994, an elderly Greek woman from the Black Sea coastal village of Kabardinka was surprised when an ethnographer asked: ‘Do you speak Pontiaka [the Pontic Greek dialect]?’ She was amused and almost insulted: ‘What! Pontika, that’s a mouse!’1 She obviously confused the Greek linguistic term for the Pontic dialect with the Greek word for a mouse.2 The absurdity of this dialogue, however, shows how little most of the Greeks in the former Soviet Union at the time identified themselves with Pontic Greeks. In everyday life, they continued to define themselves in the old Byzantine-Ottoman way as romeoi (literally, Romans) and their language as romeika, or preferred to use Russian concepts of greki (Greeks) for their ethnicity and grecheskii (the Greek language) for their language.3 Ten years later, almost all my Greek informants considered themselves Pontians or Pontic Greeks and some of them called their Greek language pontiaka. Such considerable changes in local Greek identity coincided with the development of mass migration by former Soviet Greeks to Greece and Cyprus, where their ‘Ponticness’ was cited to attest to their otherness, as culturally different from Greek citizens born in Greece or Cyprus. The Pontic identity of the Greek migrants also suggests their identification with Russia in particular, and the former USSR in general, as the territory of their origin (see Chapter 4). Thus the cultural identity of the Greeks of southern Russia is constructed through the transnational circuit of ideas, things and people. In the course of this circuit, the meanings which have been produced in geographically and culturally different locales become constitutive elements of the individual and collective identities of the Russian Greeks.

1 This dialogue took place during one of my earlier fieldwork trips. The participant who was confused by my question about her Pontic identity, Anastasia P, then in her eighties, was born in the Black Sea region of Turkey, that is, the Pontos. 2 The Greek word for ‘mouse’ is pontika. 3 The early version of this chapter was previously published as Chapter 10 ‘Are Greeks Caucasian? The Multiple Boundaries of Pontic Greek Life in Southern Russia’ in B. Grant and L. YalçınHeckmann (eds), Caucasus Paradigms: Anthropologies, Histories, and the Making of a World Area, Münster: LIT Verlag (Halle Series in the Anthropology of Eurasia), 2007.

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  147 The question of Pontic Greek cultural identity raises the issue of cultural boundaries. The notion of cultural boundaries is often employed in anthropology to explain the existence of cultural differences between communities and ethnic groups (Bashkow, 2004). However, the nationalist and ‘folk’ perception of cultures as coherent and stable entities which are isolated from each other by national borders or ethnic boundaries complicates the use of ‘cultural boundaries’ as an analytical category. Indeed, some postmodernist critics doubt the analytical validity of the concepts of ‘cultural borders’ and ‘culture’ itself; suspecting essentialism in ‘the theory of culture’, they suggest instead investigating how links between community, land, identity, particular cultural ‘traits’ and so on are constructed as political representations (Rosenblatt, 2004, p. 464). All this leads us to a critical rethinking of the concept of ‘cultural boundaries’. Ira Bashkow, for instance, emphasises the difference between a theoretical understanding of cultural boundaries and ‘folk’ ideas about cultural barriers separating communities or ethnic groups. While cultural boundaries are seen as external borders which separate communities in the popular imagination, from the academic point of view, their effect is seen as inclusive. Thinking of cultural boundaries as a difference between ethnic groups, people evaluate, map and delimit their culture and, at the same time, ‘project it onto the foreign other, ethnocentrally, in the form of the projecting culture’s values and self-conception’ (Bashkow, 2004, p. 453). Thus, cultural boundaries are a part of ‘our’ culture which organise and give meaning to people’s lives through a distinction from the ‘other’. The focus of this chapter, thus, is the forms and meanings of the production of Pontic Greek cultural boundaries in post-Soviet southern Russia and the conditions affecting it.

Spatial and Temporal Boundaries of Pontic Identity in Southern Russia In southern Russia, Pontic Greek identity is constructed through demarcating cultural boundaries both in space and in time. The term ‘Pontic Greeks’ has geographical as well as ethnic meanings. Colourful maps of the Pontic territory hang in practically every Greek national-cultural society’s office in southern Russia, yet popular ideas about the location of the Pontos are quite different from its actual historical geography. The post-Soviet Greeks trace their origin to the ancient Greek name for the Black Sea, Euxinos Pontos, which they find in Soviet textbooks in their history lessons: Many people don’t understand what ‘Ponti’ means . . . ‘Ponti’ [means] a sea [sic]. The Pontic Greeks, they are the ‘overseas (zamorskie) Greeks’. That’s it . . . I have known this, since we started to read the History of Ancient Greeks in the sixth or seventh grade [at school] . . . (Akim, born 1937, Gaverdovskii) This reference to ‘Ancient Greek History’ also imposes temporal boundaries for the Pontic Greek presence in the Black Sea region. In Greek cultural revivalist discourse in southern Russia, the Pontic Greeks are seen as the descendants of

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148  Becoming Pontic Greeks the legendary Argonauts who came to the Caucasus for the ‘golden fleece’. The Gaverdovskii Greek society, for instance, is called Argo after the legendary ship which delivered the ancient Greeks across the Black Sea to the coast of the Caucasus. An ancient Greek galley, presumably the ‘Argo’, is also pictured in the logo of the largest Greek newspaper in the region, called The Euxinos Pontos, which is published by the Russian Association of Greek Public Organisations (AGOOR) in the Black Sea coastal city of Novorossiisk. The idea that they are the direct heirs of ancient Greek civilisation and culture is very popular among the Caucasian Greeks. From the perspective of panHellenism, this idea brings new meaning to the cultural boundaries between the Pontic Greeks and the Greeks from Greece, or Hellenes. Paradoxically, it turns the marginal status of the former Soviet Pontians into purity and true ‘Greekness’. For instance, the distinctiveness of the Pontic Greek dialect, which is incomprehensible to speakers of Modern Greek, is interpreted by informants as an archaic relic of the Ancient (meaning ‘proper’) Greek language: Pontic [Greek] is the Ancient Greek [language]. Pontic [Greek] is the most ancient [language] and the Hellenes’ language [he means Modern Greek] has developed from it later. The Pontians are more ancient [a people than the Hellenes]. (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii) Such a representation of the Pontic Greeks as a people deeply-rooted in the land next to the Black Sea is also driven by the regional cultural politics and the antimigrant discourse of ‘indigenisation’ in southern Russia, which opposes the socalled Slavs and / or Cossacks (referred to as the ‘native population’) to other ethnic groups, who are labelled ‘migrants’. Thus, Fedor, a Vitiazevo local amateur historian and activist in the Greek cultural revival in the town, emphasised in his interviews the political implications of the Greeks’ rootedness in this region and the Caucasus in general. Striving to prove that Greeks are an indigenous people in the Caucasus, he rejected the concept ‘Pontians’ as too narrow to describe the whole complexity of Greek history in the region. Instead of ‘Pontic’, he suggested the term ‘Ionian Greeks’ (ioniyskie greki), which would include all the descendants of the ancient Ionian Greeks who used to live in Asia Minor and on the Black Sea coasts (the Pontians being among such). At one point, Fedor cited some passages from the manuscript of his book about the history of the Vitiazevo Greeks which demonstrated the effect of the provincial migration policy on the construction of the Pontic Greek ‘indigenousness’ in the Black Sea region: Contemporary studies of the settlement of the Greeks of Asia Minor in the Caucasus and the north Black Sea region have strengthened the misconception, which is quite widespread in the history of the Greeks of Russia and the whole former USSR, that the Greeks resettled in Russia from the Ottoman Empire in the mid nineteenth century, [and] that, during WWI, southern Russia was full of Greek refugees from Turkey . . . The biggest danger of this

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  149 nonsense is not that someone wants to oppose us to the majority of the population, to the Russians, Belorussians and the Ukrainians. No. It will not work with the Greeks. But the biggest danger is that someone wants to represent us as rootless people who have no links to this land where we are living . . . Let us make a short historical digression . . . As is well known, the Greeks founded their colonies on the Bosphorus and the Black Sea coasts in the sixth century bc [sic]. However, the emergence of these Greek cities was not a spontaneous act of colonisation. Despite the historical darkness of the ancient Greeks’ perceptions of the Caucasus, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, they felt some distant attachment to these places. Prometheus was chained here . . . His son Deucalion, who renewed humankind, came from here . . . Jason and the Argonauts sailed to the Pontic coast for the ‘golden fleece’ . . . All this points to the ancient attachment of the Greeks to . . . the coasts of the Black Sea. This is the main argument which runs through my entire book. (Fedor, born 1947, Vitiazevo) Archaeological findings of ancient Greek settlements on the Black Sea shores of Krasnodar Krai are utilised in regional cultural politics by the Greek revivalist movement. Some ethnic minorities (such as Adygs-Shapsugs) who are struggling for recognition of their ‘indigenous’ (korennoi) status raise the issue of their ‘cultural heritage’ in the region in response to the ‘indigenisation discourse’ of the provincial regime (Sapsugia, 1995, p. 1). The Greek national-cultural organisations also claim their right to the cultural heritage of the ‘Ancient Greek civilisation’ in the Black Sea region. The ‘ancestral’ rights to the history and the territory of the region are seen as compulsory conditions for the survival of the Pontic Greeks as an ethnic group in southern Russia. Thus Fedor writes in his unpublished book: Today we have come to the point where we will cease to exist as an ethnic group; a group which used to be the most gifted, patient, human, peaceful and proud people, the most entrepreneurial and cultured people. The history of our people, the history of the Greeks of the Pontos, is in every potsherd washed up by the Black Sea, in every piece of land on the coasts of the Euxinos Pontos. This is our history which we can and must be proud of. (Fedor, born 1947, Vitiazevo) Such a discursive construction of the Greek ‘indigenousness’ through the ‘privatising’ of the ancient Greek ruins and potsherds found in the region is understood quite literally by the leaders of the Greek national-cultural organisations and by ‘ordinary’ Greeks. In August 2002, a group of archaeologists from St Petersburg renewed the excavation of the ancient settlement of ‘Labrit’, which was probably founded by the Milesian (Ionian) Greeks in the sixth century bce, but was later populated and governed by a Hellenised Sarmatian-Meotian population. This ancient city was situated only 35 km from Vitiazevo. Archaeologists had known that Vitiazevo was a ‘Greek’ town and therefore asked the local Greek society for financial support for the excavation. Naturally, the support was given and Greek

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150  Becoming Pontic Greeks leaders visited the archaeological site. On their way back to Vitiazevo, they were joking that they should declare this place their ancestral land and demand it for housing construction. The quotation from the fieldwork diary demonstrates that this joke reflected the Krasnodar Krai nationality policy and its bitter implications for ethnic minorities in the region: . . . [The chairman of the Greek society] walked amazed around the excavation site. From time to time he bent over to pick up pieces of ancient ceramics, which had been scattered about everywhere in the field surrounding the excavation site, repeating with irony in his voice: ‘You see, what a smart [people] the Greeks were’. He asked the leader of archaeologists in jest, if only they could find some ruins of ancient Greek towns under Gaikodzor or Rassvet [the Armenian villages in the Anapa district which are situated near Vitiazevo]. Then he continued with the same joking intonation: ‘Now they teach us that the Cossacks were here before the Greeks, but the land keeps its [true] memory. (Fieldwork Diary, 13 August 2002, Vitiazevo) In Vitiazevo, consciousness of the historical succession from the ancient Greek population of the region is embodied in the name of the local Greek society, Gorgippia, which is the name of the ancient Greek settlement on the place of the district capital Anapa. This pursuit of historical memory is also projected onto the contemporary representation of the Greek heritage in the regional politics of culture. During the Soviet period, the excavated ruins of ancient Gorgippia became an archaeological museum and the image of the ancient Greek galley (was it the ‘Argo’?) was incorporated in the Anapa district’s coat of arms. Thus, the Pontic Greeks’ representation as people historically and culturally rooted on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus is developed within diverse and unrelated discourses, such as a pan-Hellenic movement for Pontic Greek cultural revival and the post-Soviet regionalism in southern Russia. At the same time, such heterogeneity in the discursive construction of Pontic rootedness in southern Russia corresponds to the transnational character of the Pontic Greek identity, which acquires its meanings through the exchange and interpretation of discourses and practices which originated from different places. In fact, emerging from the intersection of such dissimilar ideologies, the notion of Greeks’ indigenisation in the region is a new one. But does it really suggest that the Greeks of southern Russia consider themselves to be a Caucasian people?

The Caucasian Identity of Pontic Greeks in Southern Russia? The Pontic Greeks’ cultural attachment to the Caucasus is challenged by regional nationality politics. In southern Russia and Krasnodar Krai in particular, the quasi-ethnic concepts of ‘Caucasians’ (kavkaztsy) or ‘individuals of Caucasian nationality’ (litso kavkazskoi national’nosti) operate extensively within provincial

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  151 migration discourse, creating the image of migrants as ethnically, or culturally, alien to the local, or ‘native’ population, who are ethnically Russian. Therefore, the association of the Pontic Greeks with the Caucasus could make them vulnerable to both institutionalised ethnic discrimination and the anti-Caucasian attitudes of the Russian majority. Identity politics in southern Russia have an impact on different aspects of everyday life. The regional anti-migrant (anti-Caucasian) discourses have shaped and have also been reproduced through, micro-political processes, property relations and migrants’ strategies. The cultural boundaries, or ‘cultural distance’, between the ‘local’ Greeks and the ‘Caucasian migrants’ are also structured to a significant extent by official xenophobic discourse. Fedor, for example, described the border between the local Greeks and the ‘population arriving from Transcaucasia’ in terms of ‘cultural incompatibility’ (kulturnaia nesovmestimost’) and ‘ethnic conflict’: You understand that the Greeks of Russia are all Russian subjects [sic] . . . All of us are Russian citizens . . . The officials always tell us that we are all Russian citizens and there is equal treatment for all Russian citizens . . . Our relationships with the authorities always were normal, loyal relationships. In fact, here in Kuban, there never was any conflict between the Greek and the Russian population, or the Slavic population . . . There have been no conflicts. Here the main conflict . . . might be with that population which is coming from Transcaucasia. Well, because they [the people from Transcaucasia] have an absolutely different character, their nature is different. Let’s say, their values are different, their culture is different . . . It is incompatible with the attitudes of the Russian and the Greek population in the region. (Fedor, born 1947, Vitiazevo) In fact, the local Russians have in general a rather racialised perception of the so-called ‘Caucasians’ as people with darker skin and hair than their own. And the local Pontic Greeks are often ‘confused’ with other Caucasians, such as Armenians. The following illustrative quotation comes from a speech by the deputy head teacher of the Gaverdovskii secondary school, who is herself Russian, at the round table ‘The Greeks in Adygea’ in October 2002: . . . You know, our school is full of very beautiful children today, they are Greeks . . . You know, we come in [to the class] and look [at them] . . . At the beginning, we thought that they were Armenians, they look a little bit similar [laughing]. But then we saw that their surnames sounded Russian . . . (Fieldwork Diary. Round Table ‘The Greeks in Adygea’, 3 October 2002, Gaverdovskii) Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate the Tsalka Greeks from Russians by their surnames alone because typical Russian family names, such as Afanas’ev, Mikhailov or Popov, are common among the Greeks from Georgia. However, the Gaverdovskii Greeks often have surnames with a Turkish stem and Russified

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152  Becoming Pontic Greeks endings-ov/-ev. For the deputy head teacher of the Gaverdovskii school, these surnames also ‘sound Russian’ because of their contrast with the ‘stereotypical’ Armenian surnames with the endings-ian, which, perhaps, she expected from the somewhat Caucasian appearance of her Greek students. Nonetheless, the Tsalka Greeks’ family names may be interpreted as ‘Turkish’ and ‘Muslim’ in the context of other ethnic / cultural boundaries as I will show later in the chapter. In southern Russia, the Armenians are seen as ‘stereotypical Caucasians’. Furthermore, the regional anti-migrant policy is often accompanied by the anti-Armenian rhetoric of the officials (see Beketov, 2001; Kondratenko, 2000b; Osadchii, 2002; Kubanskie novosti, 2000c), which has contributed to the growth of antiArmenian attitudes among the local population. The Greeks in Vitiazevo – like the locals – distance themselves from the Armenians living in the town, who are mainly recent migrants. At the same time, they are aware that the ethnic and cultural borders existing between these two groups are rather blurred for outsiders and the Russian majority. Anti-Armenian feelings are often projected onto the tragic events in Pontic Greek history when they are being reinterpreted. Thus, on occasion, my Vitiazevo informants, Matvei (born 1924) and Yannis (born 1948) explained that the persecution of Greeks at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Ottoman authorities and their mass exodus from the Pontos were a result of associating with and helping their Armenian neighbours. The Greek informants fear that their mistaken identification with Armenians both as ‘Caucasians’ and as a people who have been involved in migration throughout their history might provoke xenophobic attacks upon them by radical Russian nationalists. This concern was expressed by Foma (born 1955), who had been a permanent resident of Greece since 1995, but regularly visited his native Vitiazevo. He told me with deep sadness in his voice that once before the (Pontic) Greeks had lost their homeland because of Armenians and it could happen again. The Greeks’ sensitivity to the issue of cultural differences from the Armenians is perhaps rooted in religious differences between the two groups. Despite disagreement over a dogma between the Greek Orthodox and the Armenian Gregorians which can be traced back to the early Middle Ages (see Kartashev, 1994), the ‘folk’ understanding of the religious differences between these two groups is more symbolic than actual. Despite the fact that in the past as Christians the Armenians and the Pontic Greeks occupied the same subordinate social status in the Ottoman ethno-religious realm, the Greeks did not see the Armenians as proper Christians. The old Greek proverb says that a Turk might be converted to Christianity if he were christened once, but an Armenian has to be baptised seven times to become a proper Christian. These rather ‘traditional’ Greek suspicions towards their Armenian neighbours have been accentuated recently by anti-Caucasian discourses in post-Soviet southern Russia. Ideologists of the Pontic Greek revival are concerned that the authenticity of the Pontic Greek culture could be corrupted by Armenian influences. The ‘cultural traits’, or even vocabulary common to different ethnic groups across the South Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia are being reassessed now by the Greeks in

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  153 southern Russia as culturally alien borrowings from the Armenians and / or Turks. For example, Fedor criticized some ethnographic accounts of the ‘Pontic Greeks’ in the North Caucasus published by ethnologists of the Krasnodar-based Centre for Pontic and Caucasian Studies (Kuznetsov, 1997 and Popov, 2000) for the use of terminology which from his point of view is ‘Turkish or Armenian’. At the same time, contrasting their ‘traditional’ culture with ‘the Caucasian (Armenian, Turkish, or Muslim) influence’, the Vitiazevo Greeks position themselves closer to the Russian majority or ‘the local Slavic population’. This relocation of the ‘Pontic culture’ from the Caucasus was conveyed by Fedor in his comments on my ethnographic description of the Pontic mourning customs published in an earlier article (see Popov and Tortopidi, 1997): You write that people dressed in black at the funeral. But I’ll show you the [old] photos where the women wore white shawls, absolutely white, without a spot. Do you know the word ‘pechalnik’ [literally, ‘the grief-marking’]? Don’t you? This is the name for these white shawls. The word is Russian, but the Russians borrowed this [shawl] from the Greeks later. In the past, the Greeks wore all white during funerals. In general, white was a colour of mourning for the Greeks. Black is [used by] Muslims [sic]; the Greeks took it from the Turks. The Turks prohibited them [from wearing white during funerals] and they [the Greeks] retain the white shawls for women as a symbol. (Fedor, born 1947, Vitiazevo) For the Gaverdovskii Greeks, however, their Caucasian identification has a rather different and much more acceptable meaning in their own eyes. The majority of the Greek residents in Gaverdovskii were born in Georgia and for them ‘Caucasians’ mean ‘we’ rather than ‘they’. Unlike their Vitiazevo counterparts, the Gaverdovskii Greeks, especially those who are migrants themselves, underline their ‘Caucasian-ness’. As expressed by Efim, this allows them to connect themselves with other Caucasian peoples and to explain their cultural differences from the Russian majority and ‘Europeanised’ Greece: I came here in 1973 . . . If it is possible say so, I think here, the South of Russia, is the best place because of both the climate and the human relationships . . . In some places people have no modesty; in Europe, for example, they are completely open, you know, they walk around there almost naked. Here [in Russia] people still keep themselves within limits. [Our people] are not like in Islam, you know, [but] the Caucasian (kavkazets) is always a Caucasian. You know, of course, that Georgia and Armenia, it is not Islam, it is Christianity. We have the same laws in our society as there [he meant in the Caucasus in general]. I think this is very good. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) The Caucasian-ness of the Gaverdovskii Greeks is also more welcomed in the Republic of Adygea because the regional ethnonationalist regime promotes the

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154  Becoming Pontic Greeks rights of the Adygeans as a titular nationality ‘native’ to the North Caucasus, at the expense of the Russian majority. Therefore, Greeks here are represented as Caucasian people who have a long relationship with the indigenous Adygs. The leaders of the Greek national-cultural organisation in Adygea trace their history in the region from the ancient Greeks via the so-called Circassian Greeks who, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, lived among Adygs, had customs similar to theirs and spoke the Temergoi dialect of the Adygei language, but considered themselves to be Greek Orthodox Christians. The last compact settlement of the Circassian Greeks from the territory of Adygea was the aul (village) of Bzhedugkhabl’, where several families of their Russified descendants still live (Kuznetsov, 1997; Kolesov, 2004). At the round table conference ‘The Greeks in Adygea’, the case of the Circassian Greeks was presented as an example of ‘Greek-Adygean cultural syncretism’ (Round Table ‘The Greeks in Adygea’, 3 October 2002, Gaverdovskii). At the same event, the chairman of the republican association of ethno-national societies, The League of Peace, stated that the village of Gaverdovskii had inherited its role of ‘the Greek centre in Adygea’ from Bzhedugkhabl’. The Turkish language is another aspect of the Gaverdovskii Greeks’ cultural identity, which puts them closer to the stereotypical ‘Caucasians’ than to the local Slavs. The Turkish language of the ‘Tsalka Greek’ migrants is also a critical mark of the ‘internal cultural boundary’ between them and the local Greeks. Indeed, the phenomenon of the Greeks’ Turkophonism becomes a core issue for Pontic cultural identity in southern Russia.

The Internal Other: Turkish-ness and the Pontic Cultural Identity The Turkish language is the mother tongue for many ‘Pontic’ Greeks in the Caucasus. As has been mentioned already, in southern Russia, the Turkish-speaking Greeks are usually associated with recent migrants from Georgia and more precisely from the Tsalka district. The ‘local’ Greeks in southern Russia are mainly Hellenophones, or rather the old and middle-aged among them speak Pontic Greek, although Turkish was used until the beginning of the twentieth century as a lingua franca by their ancestors, who themselves were newly-arrived migrants from the Ottoman Empire at the time. The Turkish language was spoken more extensively by those Pontic Greeks who resettled from the western Pontos (the Samsun and Bafra areas) and the Greek refugees from Kars Oblast, who fled this former Russian territory in north eastern Anatolia after it had been recaptured by the Turks in 1919. In the north Caucasus, the representatives of these groups retained the Turkish language longer than the Greek settlers from the eastern Pontos, especially the Trebizond area. In Krasnodar Krai, there are still some Samsolidhes families who are trilingual: as well as Russian, they use Pontic Greek to communicate with other Greeks and speak Turkish as a home language (Popov and Tortopidi, 1997, p. 156). In Vitiazevo, for example, several ‘local’ families who are identified by other locals as ‘Kudakoy’ continue to use Turkish as a home language. These

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  155 families had settled in the town after their return from exile in Kazakhstan where they were sent from the village of Grecheskii (now Novo-Krymskii) in Krasnodar Krai, which was founded in 1865 by Greek settlers mainly from the Samsun area (Gololobov, Girnik, Kolesov and Popov, 1997, p. 145). This village is sometimes called by its old Circassian name Kudako, pronounced Kudakoy in the Turkish way by its Greek residents. Thus, Pontic cultural identity in southern Russia is contested by the linguistic differences between Turkish- and Greek-speaking ‘Pontic’ Greeks, which is further complicated by the post-Soviet ‘migration policy’ and cultural politics in the region. In (post-)Soviet society, the primordialist understanding of the ethnic group (or the ethnos) as a human collective with its own unique cultural traits and its own language has become deeply rooted within the institutionalised ethno-territoriality and Soviet nationality policy. Not surprisingly, the nationalist principle ‘one people, one nation, one language’ is highly influential among the Greeks in contemporary southern Russia. Hence, the Turkish language spoken by some Caucasian Greeks is seen as a sort of cultural deviance both by those who consider themselves Hellenophones and the Turkish-speakers themselves. The ‘Greek-speakers’ often make the arrogant comment towards their Turkishspeaking neighbours that the latter are not ‘proper Greeks’ but rather ‘Turks’. This popular opinion about ‘Tsalka Greeks’ was graphically expressed in an interview conducted in Vitiazevo with Nikolai, a ‘Georgian Greek’ who himself originated from a (Pontic) Greek-speaking village in Georgia (the Tetritskaro district): . . . The Tsalka’s, Tsinstkaro’s [the Turkish-speaking Greek village in the Tetritskaro district] Greeks . . . Well, it is between us and without offence, I can say to them [to the Tsalka Greeks] right to their face: ‘You are Turks’. Why? Look, I have lived among Muslims. I worked twenty-three years in Tajikistan . . . So, the customs of our Greeks, those who call themselves Greeks, are Turkish ones! Everything is the same; even their way of life is Turkish. They lived under them [the Turks] for a long time and because of this they probably took everything from them . . . They even think in Turkish! (Nikolai, born 1944, Vitiazevo) Unsurprisingly, Turkish-speakers regard such comment as deeply offensive, not only because it challenges their Greek-ness but also because it calls into question their religious identification as Christians. As in the above quotation, the ethnic category ‘Turks’ was, and still is, often used by people in the Caucasus and southern Russia as a synonym for ‘Muslims’. This ‘folk’ association of Islam with Turks was, perhaps unintentionally, strengthened by Soviet ethnos theory which incorporated ‘traditional religion’ into the ethnic classificatory grid (Bromley, 1973). Thus, essentialists’ statements that religion and language are fundamental to ethnic identity led to the confusing assumption that the language, ethnicity and religion of a particular group are always interdependent. Another aspect of (post-)Soviet institutionalised ethnicity was a ‘personal nationality’, which was manifested through the records of the individuals’ ethnicity

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156  Becoming Pontic Greeks in Soviet passports and other personal documents (Brubaker, 1996, p. 31). In Soviet popular discourse, ethnicity was a compulsory personal property which had different external indicators, such as surnames which are typical (or stereotypical) of a particular ‘nationality’. Therefore, surnames with a Turkic stem and Russified ending-ov/-ev, which are common among the Turkish-speaking and some Greek-speaking Greeks from Transcaucasia, are considered by the majority of the post-Soviet population to be ‘Asian’ or ‘Muslim’. Perhaps these Turkish-like family names of the Tsalka Greeks (and some other groups of Greeks from Georgia and Armenia) make the Greek-speakers even more doubtful of the Greek-ness of the Turkish-speaking Greek migrants from Transcaucasia. Thus, a question about the number of ‘Tsalka Greek’ families in the town during a conversation with Elena (born 1954) and her son Mikhail (born 1975), who are ‘local’ Pontic Greekspeakers, provoked the following comments: . . . Elena Grigor’evna added: ‘They call themselves Greeks, but their family names are sort of Muslim ones. [She mentioned a couple of the Tsalkalis’ family names as examples]. Okay, I understand they are Greeks and speak Turkish, but their surnames ought to be Greek’ . . . (Fieldwork Diary, 13 August 2002, Vitiazevo) Their complex linguistic, religious and ethnic identification sometimes appears to disorient the Turkish-speaking Greeks themselves. In Gaverdovskii and Vitiazevo, for instance, they call themselves Urums (urumlar) which is the Turkish (Ottoman) word for Orthodox Christians (presumably Greeks) living in Anatolia and they use the Turkish word Musulmandzha (the ‘Muslim language’) for their language (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii; Efim, born 1956, Gaverdovskii; Aphrodita, born 1960, Vitiazevo). The story told by 73 year old Iosif shows how Urums struggle to explain and justify such a controversial identification: Once I was travelling to Armenia and met an Armenian on the train. He seemed to be a scientific worker or something. He asked me: ‘What is your nationality?’ I answered: ‘[I am] an Urum’. ‘That’s not right’, he said, ‘The Urum is [a word which has] some Roman origin. You are not Urums, but Greeks’ . . . Now I don’t know whether it is right that we [pause] that they call us Urums? Are we right or [wrong] when we call ourselves Urums? In fact, we are Greek in origin, though we speak the Turkic [sic] language. But our ancestors knew . . . and when they lived in Turkey they knew the Greek language. Eventually, they were forced to leave, to reject this language. But our [people] kept the faith. We decided that it was better to lose our language than our faith. We remain Christians . . . (Iosif, born 1929, Gaverdovskii) In order to underline the distance between the standardised Turkish language and its East-Anatolian dialect which is spoken by the Tsalka Greeks (see Yeloeva, 1995), Iosif deliberately used the academic term ‘Turkic languages’ for his mother

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  157 tongue. On many other occasions, the Turkish-speaking Greeks emphasised these dialectical peculiarities, when they wanted to insist that their language was not ‘pure Turkish’ or that they could not understand the ‘real Turks’ completely. The Turkish-speakers see their mother tongue as a shameful stigma and a painful aspect of their identity. At the same time, their Turkish language acquires a symbolic meaning: the collective memory of the Greeks’ suffering for their Christian faith. The legend about the exchange of Greek for Turkish as the linguistic cost of preserving their Christian faith is often recounted by the Turkish-speaking Greeks as an excuse for their ‘wrong’ language. This legend also hints at a latent conflict between (Pontic) Greek-speakers and Turkish-speakers. Paradoxically, the Turkish-ness of the Urums is an accusation directed at the ‘Hellenophones’ whose ancestors saved their Greek language, but at a price: Well, there were also others, who didn’t speak [Turkish] like us. They seemed to speak some sort of Greek. They lived in the villages of Iraga and Ivanovka [the Pontic Greek-speaking villages in the Tetritskaro district of Georgia] . . . It happened like this. When we lived in Turkey, the Turks told us: ‘You have to change either your tongue or your faith’. We saved our Christian faith, but changed our language. And those [who lived in Iraga and Ivanovka] saved their language, but the faith . . . I don’t know, they say that they are Greeks. But my father says that they may not even be Christians and not Greeks . . . (Aphrodita, born 1960, Vitiazevo) Interestingly, similar stories are told by the Greeks from Armenia as an explanation of their ‘Turkish’ surnames, although they speak Pontic Greek (Svetlana, born 1963, Vitiazevo). Perhaps it would be an oversimplification to state that their Turkish mother tongue is altogether rejected by the Turkish-speaking Greeks. In fact, the Turkish language remains at the centre of their cultural identity and, moreover, it opens new opportunities for adaptation to both a new cultural environment as migrants and to the shifting socio-economic conditions of a post-Soviet people. The Turkish linguistic identity of the ‘Tsalka’ Greeks was mobilised during their commercial trips to Turkey in the early 1990s. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, for many in the former Soviet Union shuttle-trading across newly opened borders with neighbouring countries has become the only way to survive economically. The simplified visa regime and relatively cheap transport make Turkey very attractive for post-Soviet shuttle-traders. Knowledge of the Turkish language was used by the ‘Tsalka’ Greeks to their advantage in overcoming the hazards of crossing borders and travelling on Turkish territory. Their identification as Turkish-speakers suddenly became useful and even desirable: As you [cross the border], they [the Turks] ask you your nationality. Let’s say, [you answer] ‘Urum’. Then, you are stopped by the police or even some private [Turkish] drivers stop you and ask: ‘What is your nation?’ You answer: ‘Urum’. They say: ‘You are our man. Your people have your own land here.

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158  Becoming Pontic Greeks You are ours . . .’ If they hear ‘Yunan’ [the Turkish word for Greeks who are citizens of Greece], you are in trouble . . . (Gavriil, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) The use of the Turkish language demarcates a private space in the cultural practices of Turkish-speaking Greeks. While Russian is the language of majority and the state in southern Russia and Greek is associated with external pan-Hellenic nationalist discourses and the public representation of their ethnicity, Turkish remains the language of everyday communication between family members, relatives and neighbours. In Gaverdovskii, Turkish is the language of pleasure and entertainment for recent Greek migrants from Georgia. The Gaverdovskii Greeks watch Turkish television via satellite and listen to Turkish pop records. Furthermore, they invite Meskhetian Turk musicians from the neighbouring Belorechensk district of Krasnodar Krai to play at their weddings. Thus, the Turkish language and the cultural practices which are associated with it constitute intimate aspects of the Turkish-speaking Greeks’ everyday life, although public anti-Caucasian discourses and Greek ethnonationalism enhance negative perceptions of their mother tongue.

Cultural Boundaries of Pontic Identity and the Diversity of Greek Experience in Southern Russia The linguistic heterogeneity and diversity of the Pontic Greek communities in the Caucasus and southern Russia challenges the essentialist perception of Pontic culture as having boundaries fixed in space and time. The tensions between the Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking Greeks indicate that the cultural boundaries of Ponticness are floating rather than fixed. The Gaverdovskii Greeks put their ‘Turkish characteristics’, such as language and their surnames, at the centre of their identity as Pontians, while they consider the ‘local’ Greeks from the neighbouring city of Maykop, who have ‘Greek’ surnames and speak (Pontic) Greek dialect, to be Hellenes: Well, here we all consider ourselves to be Pontians . . . Well, I know a little bit about this matter; so I heard, the Pontians are those who were sort of refugees from Turkey. But [those who have] such pure [Greek] family names as V-di and so on . . . they are from the coast [of the Black Sea] and they are not Pontians. To cut a long story short, they are Hellenes . . . (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii) Later in his interview, Vasilii speculated that the language spoken by the Gaverdovskii Greeks might be not Turkish at all but the ‘Pontic language’. Thus, the Gaverdovskii Greeks accept Pontic identity because they find in it an explanation for their cultural difference from the ‘rest of the Greeks’ and a way out of their marginality within ‘global Hellenism’. In becoming Pontians, they redefine their Turkish-ness. It could be argued that for the Urums, to be Pontian

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Becoming Pontic Greeks  159 means to be Greek. At the same time, the meaning of Ponticness is also changing in the context of the Greek cultural revival in the Republic of Adygea, where the Gaverdovskii Greeks now play a central role. Those Maykop Greeks who do not identify themselves with the Georgian Greeks may reject Pontic identity altogether because of its association with the Turkish-speaking Greeks of Gaverdovskii. For instance, at the time of his interview in 2001, Oleg was living in Maykop, but his family originated from Bhzedughabl’, the Circassian Greeks’ stronghold in Adygea. During the interview Oleg was asked whether he identified himself as a Pontian. He answered with a smile: ‘No, I am a Greek. What sort of Greek, I don‘t know. But definitely I am not a Pontic Greek’. He called the activists of Argo, the Maykop Greek national-cultural society, ‘the Greeks who speak Turkish’ and contrasted them with the distant relatives of his wife in Gelendzhik (a town on the Black Sea coast), ‘whose grandmothers spoke Greek’ (in fact, they almost certainly spoke the Pontic dialect) (see also Popov, 2003). On the Black Sea coast, however, Turkish-speaking Greek migrants from Georgia saw Pontic Greek cultural identity from a different perspective. So, in Vitiazevo, where the ‘local’ Greeks are mainly (Pontic) Greek-speakers and Pontic identity is promoted by the Greek society Gorgippia, orientated towards the ‘locals’, a Turkish-speaking Greek woman, Aphrodita, who resettled in the town from Tetritskaro (Georgia) in 1993, was not absolutely sure whether her people (meaning Turkish-speaking Greeks) were Pontians or not: Aphrodita: They, the locals, call themselves this when they go to Greece. They are called ‘Russians’ or ‘Ponti’ there. So, they call themselves ‘Pontic’, that is, ‘from here’. AP: Are your Greeks from Georgia Pontians as well? Aphrodita: Well, . . . [long pause] . . . Probably, we are Pontic Greeks as well. (Aphrodita, born 1960, Vitiazevo) An understanding of Pontic culture is dependent on different historical, linguistic and social factors and on the life trajectories of the individuals who do, or do not, consider themselves to be Pontic Greeks. It is difficult, if not impossible, to map the Pontic cultural boundaries, which could ultimately and unambiguously include the whole diversity of the Greek cultural and social experience in the region. Therefore, to use Bashkow’s metaphor, the cultural boundaries of Pontic Greek identity in southern Russia can be seen as similar to isoglosses in linguistics because they are ‘irreducibly multiple and reflect different criteria’ (Bashkow, 2004, p. 456). In southern Russia, the boundaries of Pontic cultural identity are (re-)created in conditions when there is a complicated intersection of different languages, cultures, histories, political discourses, economic strategies and individual experiences. Since the Pontic Greek identity is a product of the transnational circuit of culture, the configuration of its boundaries is perpetually renegotiated through the exchange of meanings as part of people’s cultural, economic and political practices, which often stretch across national and ethnic borders.

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160  Becoming Pontic Greeks

Conclusion Rather than ‘being’, the Greeks of southern Russia are at present ‘becoming’ Pontians. Their Pontic Greek identity is a product of their transnational circuit. Being imported from abroad, the cultural representation of Pontic identity becomes part of that broader cultural process which is an exchange of meanings between members of society (Hall, 1997). Making sense of emerging Pontic cultural identity in their home communities, the Greeks of southern Russia contest their other and earlier social identities. Pontic cultural representation is thus produced through, and within, power relationships, and the meaning of Ponticness is shaped to a significant extent by post-Soviet identity and cultural politics, which impose a particular vision of ethnic / cultural boundaries in this region. Thus, under conditions of the regional anti-migrant policy and dominant discourses of ‘indigenisation’, Pontic identity is reinterpreted by the Greeks of southern Russia as their rootedness in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. At the same time, representing their culture, the local Greeks tend to distance themselves from other Caucasian peoples who are cast by the regional regimes as ‘migrants’ and ‘non-native ethnoses’. The process of translation of this new Pontic Greek cultural identity leads also to the renegotiation of the intra-group boundaries; the Greek migrants from Georgia are rethinking their Turkish language as a central aspect of their Ponticness, for example.

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9

The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival A Global Network and Local Concerns

Introduction In the previous chapters the construction of Pontic Greek identity in southern Russia has been discussed as a ‘boundary process’ (Barth, 1969). Importantly, the demarcation of Pontic cultural boundaries is occurring within discourses of regional cultural and identity politics. At the same time, Pontic cultural identity in southern Russia is a post-Soviet phenomenon and the ideology of the Pontic Greek cultural revival has been imported by the Russian Greeks in the course of their transnational migration to and from Greece. Arguably, Pontic cultural identity is produced within a new ‘global ethnoscape’ of the Greek cross-border movement, but it is reproduced within and through the local socio-political discourses of southern Russia. Thus, to paraphrase Appadurai (1996, p. 33), the ideology of Pontic cultural revivalism has been transmitted through the globalised network and ‘becomes inflected by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of the local actors’. This final chapter focuses on local concerns in the representation of the ‘globalised’ Pontic Greek culture and its political implications in the region.

‘Pontic Myth’: The Death and Rebirth of Pontic Greek Culture in Post-Soviet Russia In her article about ethnic identity among the Pontic Greek refugees and their descendants in Greece, Fann (1991) argues that the ideology of the Pontic ethnonationalist movement and the Pontic cultural revival is founded on a supposed ‘Pontic myth’ which imposes the archetypal idea of the death and resurrection of Ponticness. This myth is manifested by the phrase which the Pontic ethnicists borrow from the old folk song: ‘Even though Romania has passed away, it will flower and bear again’ (I Romania ki an perasen, anthei kai ferei ki allo). In the context of the Pontic myth, Romania shifts its Byzantine meaning as a realm of Greek Orthodoxy and is now understood geographically as the Pontos and virtually as Ponticness, or the ‘Pontic culture’. This ‘catchphrase of the Pontic myth’ promises the resurgence of Ponticness as a glory of the Byzantine past, in addition it differentiates the Pontic community from the rest of the Greeks (Fann, 1991, p. 341).

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162  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival Thus in the Pontic myth, the Pontians are represented as ‘a group yet in a liminal position’ (Fann, 1991, p. 355). Although Fann’s research was focused on ethnic identity among those Pontians who had lived in Greece since their arrival in 1923 as refugees from the Pontos, this ‘Pontic myth of Homeland’ has been imported to Russia since the first contacts between the Greek national-cultural organisations and the international Pontic movement were established in the late 1980s (Dmitriev, 2000). In 2003, for example, the yellow banner with a black Pontic eagle, and the ‘catchphrase’ about the resurrection of Romania was hanging on the wall in the office of the Vitiazevo Greek society Gorgippia. However, in the conditions of post-Soviet transformation and identity crisis, the discourse of the Pontic resurgence shifted and the mythic pattern received new meanings in narratives of the Greeks in southern Russia. Now the post-Soviet Greek national-cultural organisations commemorate 19 May as the ‘Day of Pontic Greek Genocide’. In the memory studies literature, the role of calendars in the construction of national identities has been discussed as an example of the existing connections between nationalism and social memory. Calendars map the basic temporal structure of the societies, ‘enabling and constraining their abilities to remember different pasts’ (Olick and Robbins, 1998, p. 116). 19 May is central for the Pontic myth because it symbolises the death of the Greek Pontos which has yet to be resurrected. In post-Soviet Greek revivalist journalism, however, the Stalinist persecution of the ‘Soviet’ Greeks is represented as a continuation of this ‘Pontic Greek genocide’ (Khatzaras, 2002, p. 15). Almost every issue of the Greek newspapers in Russia contains several articles dedicated to tragic events in Pontic Greek history: from the legendary fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 via the ethnic persecutions of the Greeks in the Pontos during WWI and their consequent exodus in 1923, to the Stalinist repressions of 1937 and Greek deportation from southern Russia in the 1940s (see, for example, Evksinos Pontos, 1999; Ioanidis, 1995, p. 2; Papanikolaki, 1995, pp. 6–7). Thus, the contemporary historical imagination of the post-Soviet Greeks is shaped by the narratives of Pontic suffering in the past. In the collective memory of the Greeks in southern Russia, the fall of mythic Romania and the tragic events which preceded the Greek exodus from the Pontos merge with the recollections of their grandparents about the Stalinist repressions and their exile to Siberia and Central Asia. The Russian Greeks represent their deprivation as the glorious and holy mission of ‘a chosen People’ who suffered for their loyalty to Christianity and Hellenism. This topic emerged during one conversation with my Vitiazevo informants: Yannis touched upon this theme first. He recounted how, once, in conversation with another [Greek] man, he complained that although the Greeks were the first Christian people, they suffered so much: Their sufferings started almost 700 years ago when the Byzantine Empire fell. At first, they were deprived of everything in Turkey and then they came to Russia, only to be deported from there to Kazakhstan. From Kazakhstan they went to Greece

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  163 . . . Yannis continued his story: This man replied that so many ordeals had been included in the fate of the Greeks because they were close to God. God tries the Greeks! (Fieldwork Diary, 3 September 2002, Vitiazevo) These narratives of martyrdom and holy suffering convey the idea of the inevitable salvation and resurrection of the Pontians. Fann notes that the revival of Pontic culture is often described in religious terms and thus ‘Pontos’ and ‘Ponticness’ acquire their holy meanings (Fann, 1991, p. 346). The Soviet Greeks’ ‘return’ to their Ponticness in Greece is seen as an almost religious act of purification, or ‘re-baptism’ as ‘proper’ Pontians. They rediscover their ‘true’ identity and culture, which was hidden or lost by their ancestors during the ages of persecution and deprivation. For some Turkish-speaking Greek informants, for instance, the Greek language which their children now learn on their trips to Greece or in optional Greek classes at the local schools, is the forgotten language of their forefathers: . . . They, the Gunia-Kala people [a village in the Tsalka district], speak only Turkish [now]. Although their old people knew Greek, the young people don’t know Greek at all. But there is this movement now that many people go to Greece and Greek is even learned at school . . . My son, he knows Greek . . . He has travelled to Greece for one or two years now and can speak Greek just like I can speak Russian. (Efim, born 1957, Gaverdovskii) The idea of the rediscovery of ‘truth’ – ‘the truth about the Pontic Greeks’ persecution’, ‘our true culture’, ‘our true language’ – is central for the Pontic Greek national-cultural revival in contemporary Russia. It also resonates with the public discourses of historical and cultural revisionism dominant in post-socialist societies. The mythic pattern, which implies a liminal state for Pontic culture, acquires new functional meanings in the uncertain conditions of the post-Soviet social, political and economic transformations.

The ‘Pontic Spectacle’: Cultural Representation, Continuity and Transformation The revival and preservation of ‘traditional culture’ is one of the main objectives for the Pontic Greek ethnicist movement in Greece. From the perspective of the Pontic myth, such cultural activities as the collection and publication of Pontic folklore or ethnographic theatre are seen as sacred rituals of the Pontians’ ‘re-baptism’ in their tradition and as a celebration of their cultural rebirth (Fann, 1991, pp. 346–52). Being transferred to the specific social and cultural environment of southern Russia, these canonical forms of Pontic representation challenge local traditions and raise issues of the continuity, innovation and transformation of the Greeks’ cultural practices in their home communities.

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164  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival Pontic folk music and dance have become perhaps a true trademark of the Pontic Greek cultural revival. Researchers of Greek folklore agree that ‘Pontic music and dance differ from Greek music and dance in all their basic structures’ (Kilpatrick, 1980, p. 5). Being distinctive from Greek and Balkan dance and music, Pontic Greek dance remains a part of the Black Sea music tradition and has many similarities to the dance and music of the Pontic Turks, the Hemshils and the Hamshen Armenians (Gololobov, 1997; Kilpatrick, 1980). The cultural boundary which separates the Pontians from the rest of the Greeks is also demarcated by means of folk music that is symbolised by the kemenche, or the Pontic lira (the type of violin distinctively specific to the south-east Black Sea region, see also Plate 9.1) and Pontic Greek male dancers dressed in the professed Laz costume that is also traditional for several ethnic groups in the western Caucasus (Kuznetsov, 1995). In post-Soviet Russia, the Pontic kemenche can often be seen hanging on the walls in the premises of the Greek national-cultural societies. This association of the kemenche with ‘old Pontic culture’ was stressed by my Gaverdovskii informant, Sergei (born 1971), who brought an audiotape with kemenche music from Greece. In fact, being involved in the international Pontic Greek movement, the Tsalka Greeks, who had never had a tradition of the kemenche, now accommodate this symbol of Ponticness as their ‘ancient music tradition’.

Plate 9.1 Old and new kemenches and a case decorated with old family photographs and the ‘Pontic eagle’ belonged to a kemenche-maker from Vitiazevo, July 2006. Source: Photograph by author.

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  165 For the Vitiazevo historian, Fedor, this musical instrument is an attribute of the tragic Pontic Greek fate: I have a lira [at my home]. I can show you . . . No, I can’t play, but all Pontians have to have a cartwheel and a lira . . . This is compulsory, because it is [our] main instrument. It has to be with us in sorrow and in joy. (Fedor, born 1947, Vitiazevo) The Pontians believe that Pontic music and dance are rooted somewhere deep in their soul and that only people of Pontic Greek descent can play the kemenche and dance energetic Pontic dances properly (Kilpatrick, 1980, p. 16). Thus, Foma (born 1955), who was probably the last lirichi (lira-player) and kemenche-maker in Vitiazevo, compared the dying tradition of kemenche music among the Russian Greeks with the death of the Pontians themselves: ‘If we lose the lira, we lose everything, the Ponti will be finished’. Hence, ‘in order to learn his roots’, Foma’s son has been attending the kemenche classes since he was teenage in one of the Pontic clubs in Salonica, where Foma’s family emigrated in the mid-1990s. During his frequent visits to Vitiazevo, he continues to practise, using the sheet music which his Salonica teachers gave him (see Plate 9.2). The locals are amused that such a young boy can play an instrument which is associated with the past and the older generation. For most Greeks in southern Russia, a young boy playing kemenche embodies the revitalisation of their ‘Pontic culture’, although the style of his music, brought from Greece, is alien to the kemenche music which the Pontians used to play in the Caucasus. Foma defined this difference in styles as a distinction between professional musicians in Greece and amateur ‘popular’ lira-players in Russia: [The Russian and Greek] styles of [kemenche] music are different, the colour [of the music] is different. I can identify whether it is played by a Russian . . ., by a Greek from Russia or from Greece. [You] hear the difference . . . Since [this] music came here from Turkey, it has remained untouched; it has not been developed . . . But [the music] has been developing there [in Greece], they have composers and singers there. All these new songs which come [from Greece] are played here but in a different way, they are like different things. (Foma, born 1955, Vitiazevo) This coalescence of the transnational Pontic style imported from Greece and the increasing ‘professionalism’ of Pontic Greek cultural production is highly noticeable in the growing popularity of Pontic folk dances among the Greeks in southern Russia. The Greek national-cultural societies have promoted Pontic dance in the former Soviet Union since the early 1990s.1 In Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii, the Greek 1 The descriptions of several Pontic dances from some encyclopaedias of Pontic Hellenism, which were printed in Greece in the late 1980s and the early 1990s (Egkuklopaidheia, 1988; O Pontos, 1991), have been translated into Russian and published in the local Greek newspaper (see, for example, Evksinos Pontos, 2002c, p. 3; Pontos, 1995, p. 7).

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166  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival

Plate 9.2 A teenage boy playing the kemenche using sheet music brought from Greece. Vitiazevo, August 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

organisations sponsor amateur ensembles where the local youth, dressed in Laz costumes, perform Pontic Greek dances (see Plate 9.3); the choreographers are usually young women who visited Greece and learned the dances in the Pontic Greek cultural clubs. On their return to Russia, they bring Pontic dance handbooks as teaching materials. The Vitiazevo Greek society Gorgippia also invited a

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  167

Plate 9.3 A performance of a Pontic Greek folk ensemble. Vitiazevo, September 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

professional teacher of Pontic dance from one of the Salonica-based Pontic organisations to visit the town in August 2001 and again in September 2003 to hold masterclasses for the local Pontic ensemble. Thus, the Russian Greeks are learning their ‘traditional culture’ via imported handbooks from teachers who were trained abroad, or from foreigners, sometimes even via interpreters. Linguistic difficulties, for example, emerged during lessons from the Greek choreographer in Vitiazevo: the young dancers’ knowledge of Pontic Greek was too poor to understand their Greek teacher, who could speak Pontic Greek but knew almost nothing in Russian. Hence, some local men, who had mastered Modern Greek during their seasonal migration to Greece, were asked by the Gorgippia to act as interpreters. Such cross-border movement of cultural production results in the unification of the Pontic dance culture in southern Russia and in Greece. Il’ia, the activist of the All-Russian Greek Association, called this phenomenon ‘Pontic globalisation’: The standard Pontian has already been worked out. A Pontian is someone who wears Pontic costume and dances 46 [Pontic] dances . . . If you want to know the list of dances, you can get it [in Greece] . . . Since the beginning of all this [Pontic] revival, every [Greek] society can afford to have its own Pontic ensemble. It means you have to buy costumes. Where do you buy them? [You] have to go to Salonica. Who makes these costumes in Salonica? Someone who knows how.

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168  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival Where do they take sketches [for these costumes]? In the society where these sketches have already been prepared. Everything becomes unified . . . So, this is, indeed, a transfer [from Greece]. At the end of the day, Pontic globalisation will come here. Ultimately, the [Pontic] standard, in which all local peculiarities will disappear, will dominate. (Il’ia, born 1967, Gelendzhik) Gillian Bottomley notes that in professional folk ensembles, ‘[the] differences that mark one village from another; or even one dance from another are homogenised for the performance’ (1992, p. 76). It is arguable that in southern Russia Greeks view their Pontic revival as a performance with all its necessary elements: a popular repertoire, dedicated actors and a receptive audience. The resurrection of Ponticness constitutes the plot of the Pontic performance in accordance with its mythic pattern. The regeneration of the old tradition is a central idea here. Therefore, the actors in the ‘Pontic spectacle’ are almost always young people or even children performing in the old ‘grandparents’ tradition’. Hence, the Pontic dances have become a sort of popular form of youth culture among the Greeks in the region. The repertoire of some pop groups in the Greek settlements in southern Russia includes Russian or Western pop music as well as the Pontic circular dances (horons) which they play in discothèques with the traditional kemenche equipped with high-tech sound devices (see Plate 9.4).

Plate 9.4  Teenagers dancing Pontic Greek dances at a discotheque. Vitiazevo, September 2002. Source: Photograph by author.

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  169 The adults are mainly passive, albeit interested, spectators in this contemporary Pontic performance. Bottomley points out that ‘folk dances’ performed on the stage by dancers who have been trained for years becomes an art form, ‘removed from those who used to dance something like them in villages. The rural people are represented in these dances, where their cultural practices become a spectacle, generalised for consumption’ (1992, p. 76). Furthermore, my older and middle-aged informants often contrast the colourful choreography of the ‘true Pontic dances’ performed by their children and grandchildren with the ‘primitive’ or ‘monotone’ dances which they learned from their parents (Elena, born 1953, Vitiazevo). Thus, paradoxically, the local cultural practices are not transmitted from the old to young but rather interrupted by the touch of professionalism and the foreign (Greek) origin of the Pontic performance in southern Russia. This discrepancy between the revitalised Pontic culture and local tradition is especially visible in Gaverdovskii, where the mainly Caucasian music and dances of the Tsalka Greeks contrast with the Hellenised Pontic folklore which is performed by the village’s ensemble. Moving on the stage, even if it is only a wooden platform made by a village carpenter, the dance is disconnected from its socio-cultural context. For example, the sexual code of the dance is very important, especially during wedding rituals: traditionally, some dances were restricted to men only, but there were also primarily women’s dances (Kilpatrick, 1980, p. 132). This gender division loses its actuality when the dance is performed on the stage without any connection to the ritual. As a result, the sexual meaning of the dance disappears and, indeed, the gender of the dancers has little significance during the staged performance. Therefore, in the local ensembles, which are often devoid of men, girls dance wearing men’s Laz costumes. Moreover, the local choreographers easily introduce male dancers, or rather male-dressed female dancers, into what were ‘traditionally women’s dances’ to make the performance more spectacular (Alena, born 1978, Vitiazevo). Thus, despite its patriarchal traditions, the transnational Pontic ethnonationalist movement pushes women to the forefront of Pontic cultural revival. In conditions when the older generation is largely removed from the process of cultural (re-) production, young women and girls specialising in Pontic performance become the main carriers of the knowledge and skills which are associated with ‘Pontic traditional culture’. Although the image of Pontic men dancing a war dance is usually depicted as a symbol of Pontic cultural resurgence, in southern Russia, it is teenage girls from the local ensembles who know how to dance and who teach Pontic dances to their male and female friends in discothèques. The ethnographic spectacle, however, is not a novelty for the post-Soviet population. In the USSR, folk dances became a state-sponsored art form which celebrated Soviet-style multiculturalism. In the Soviet Union, such ethnographic performance delineated the ‘imagined communities’ of the ‘Soviet nationalities’ and it also imposed a particular form of ethnic imagination and representation. The Greeks in the USSR, who until recently associated themselves with the Greek nation rather than with the Pontians, represented their ‘Greek culture’ in accordance with Greek national iconography. For example, at the beginning of

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170  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival the twentieth century, photos of Greek men wearing traditional male dress from Central Greece, which was also associated with the Greek uprising against the Ottomans in the early nineteenth century, were popular among the Greeks in southern Russia. These photos were sent by relatives who had emigrated to Greece in the 1920s, or were taken in the photographic studios of Black Sea cities with significant Greek populations, such as Sukhumi, Novorossiisk or Odessa (see Plate 9.5). In Vitiazevo in the 1920s–30s, the actors of the Greek popular (narodnyi) theatre, played in productions about the liberation of Greece from the ‘Turkish

Plate 9.5 A man in Greek ‘national’ costume. The photograph was taken in Greece and sent to relatives in Russia, 1920s. Source: Photograph from a family archive of E. Papadopoulos.

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  171

Plate 9.6 Actors in an amateur Greek theatrical production in stage costumes. Vitiazevo, 1920s. Source: Photograph from a family archive of E. Papadopoulos.

yoke’ wearing these ‘canonical’ Hellenic costumes (see Plate 9.6).2 Some middleaged informants recalled the similar Hellenic dress of the local folk ensemble in the 1960s (Andrei, born 1950, Vitiazevo). Now the Laz costumes of the Pontic ensembles may relocate the ethnographic imagination of the post-Soviet Greeks from Greece to the Caucasus, as happened during this dialogue between a mother and a son in Vitiazevo: Criticising the leadership of the local folk ensemble, Kostia mentioned that they were not happy with the costumes which the Greek society had bought for them. He said that they were wrong, because they were given ‘proper Pontic Greek costumes’. He added that the Pontic male costume was similar to the dress of the Georgians, because ‘the Greeks used to live in Turkey and Armenia and Georgia were somewhere close’. Elena Grigor’evna said: ‘Maybe our ancestors were neighbours and visited each other’. (Fieldwork Diary, 16 August 2002, Vitiazevo) 2 During the 1920s and the early 1930s, ethnographic theatres, or popular (narodnyi) theatres, were at the forefront of the Bolsheviks’ struggle against the ‘cultural backwardness’ of the ethnic minorities from the outer reaches of the former Russian Empire (Slezkine, 1996).

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172  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival In the conditions of cultural diversity of the Greek communities in southern Russia, the new Pontic performance could even come into conflict with memories of previous forms of Greek cultural representation in the region. In Gaverdovskii, for instance, the old man, Feodosii (born 1927), who was born into a Pontic-speaking family in Krasnodar Krai, rejected the Pontic dances performed by the local ensemble as ‘not truly Greek’. Feodosii kept the photo of his father in traditional Hellenic costume which had been taken when he studied in Athens before the First World War. Contrasting this photo with the stage Pontic dress of the Gaverdovskii ensemble, Feodosii argued that his ‘pure Hellenic’ ancestry was different from the Pontic origin of the Turkish-speaking Gaverdovskians. The emergence of the transnational Pontic identity has a significant impact on the reproduction of local cultural practices. The traditional roles of the generations and genders in the transmission of cultural knowledge in Greek communities of southern Russia have been redrawn by the spread of theatrical enactments of Pontic culture. The Pontic cultural revival appeals to the imagination of the younger generation, while the elderly and middle-aged become removed from the process of cultural production. Performing Ponticness, the ex-Soviet Greeks release their ‘true identity’ and learn their ‘traditional culture’ simultaneously.

Pontic Cultural Representation and Relations of Power In southern Russia, the resurgence of Pontic Greek cultural identity has appeared historically during a period of fundamental transformation of (post-)Soviet society. Although the folkloric and theatrical representation of the Pontic culture imported from Greece appeals to ‘unchanging tradition’, in the Russian Federation, the Greeks see it as a manifestation of the shifting political and social conditions in which they are living. Thus, Pontic dance and Greek ethnographic theatre in Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii have to be situated in the context of the broader political process in post-socialist Russia. As Bottomley argues, such cultural practices as dance and music are reproduced within relations of power and may ‘reveal some of the conflicts and resistance in cultural production’ (1992, p. 72). In the post-Soviet North Caucasus and southern Russia, ethnonationalist ideologies and the discourses of ‘indigenisation’ affect the regional cultural politics in as much as the provincial authorities direct their financial support mainly to the ‘titular ethnoses’. For example, the amount of money allocated from the Krasnodar Krai budget to the Cossacks in 1994–2001 was significantly greater than the amount allocated to all activities grouped under the heading ‘national policy’. This ‘national policy’ budget refers to the organisation of folklore festivals or expeditions and similar projects aimed at supporting the ‘traditional’ cultures of the various ethnic groups living in the Krai. Most of even this money, however, was also used to support ‘Cossack culture’. Thus, money allocated in the regional budgets for the cultural activities of the nontitular ethnic groups is a scarce resource which can be given only to those ‘national’ collectives which are recognised by provincial officials. In Krasnodar Krai, the

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  173 recognised ethnic art collectives are awarded the title of ‘popular (narodnyi) ensemble / theatre’; their ‘popular’ status is renewed every three years via the review panels of the Commission from the Department of Culture of the Krai administration. This introduces a competitive aspect into cultural production and ethnic representation in the region. In Vitiazevo, for instance, the town’s amateur theatre and the Pontic dance ensemble ‘Gorgippia’ have been granted ‘popular’ status. In competing for official recognition however, the folk collectives have to adjust their programmes to make them more attractive and understandable to the mainly Russian audience, which is outside the cultural context of these ethnographic spectacles. This inevitably leads to further transformation in the performance of traditional cultural practices. Indeed, as the choreographer of ‘Gorgippia’ stated, the aim is not the preservation of Pontic culture any more, but recognition from officials and the non-Greek audience: It was some festival in the town [of Anapa] and I brought [my ensemble] for a preview there . . . I brought our circular dances – all movement was in a circle . . . The [festival’s] leading choreographer said to us [after the preview]: ‘Girls, you will dance your circular dances at home out there at your birthday parties. [Here] we have to show something interesting, because we are actors’. Well, we were so ashamed. I replied that the circle was characteristic of the Pontic dance. How could I break it? No, you have to turn [the dancers’ faces] towards [the audience]. You have to deviate from the theme and do something interesting for the public. (Alena, born 1978, Vitiazevo) Supporting the local ensembles and the popular theatres, the Greek national-cultural organisations employ a practice which was already developed within Soviet cultural politics, when ethnographic performance was used as a public statement of ethnicity. In post-Soviet southern Russia, where the discourse of ‘inter-ethnic relations’ dominates in regional politics, ethnic elites use ethnographic performance as an instrument in their political struggle. The right to public representation of the ethnic group even via folk dances is a subject of bitter political struggle. In Krasnodar Krai, discrimination against ‘unwanted’ ethnic groups is often accompanied by a ban on the public performance of their folk ensembles. The Krai officials use ‘public’ protests of the ‘Slav population’ as a reason for banning the folk festivals of some minority groups, citing the potential for ethnic violence. For instance, in 1992, the Krai authorities satisfied the demands of the Cossack protesters and cancelled the Festival of Armenian Culture in the city of Krasnodar; or in 2004, they prohibited the concerts of the Meskhetian Turks’ ensemble, in the territory of the Abinsk and Krymsk districts (Karastelev and Karasteleva, 2005, p. 6). Therefore, the promotion of minority culture becomes a form of latent rejection of the Russian chauvinism of the regional regime. In this respect, it is very significant that the confrontation between the non-Greek mayor of Vitiazevo and the local Greek elite,

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174  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival mentioned in previous chapters, reached its culmination when the mayor suggested that instead of Pontic Greek dances, Cossack folklore should be performed during the celebration of the Vitiazevo anniversary in 2002. On the regional level, cultural politics overlaps with the discursive construction of so-called ‘inter-ethnic relations’ as ‘ethnic conflict’ in Krasnodar Krai or ‘inter-ethnic tolerance’ in the Republic of Adygea. Therefore, the leaders of the minority organisations promote the idea of folkloric festivals as forums where the anticipated ‘ethnic conflict’ is mediated through the introduction of the different ethnic groups to one another’s ‘culture’. For example, in the Gaverdovskii secondary school, the headmaster, who was also an activist of the local Greek society Argo initiated such festivals for children of different ethnic groups (Vadim, born 1954, Gaverdovskii). Although the cultural activities of the ethnic organisations simplify and reduce the culture to the production of folkloric performance, such cultural representation becomes both political capital for the ethnic elites and a form of minority latent resistance to the regional cultural politics supporting discriminatory practices against these minorities. Yet the folkloric representation of ethnic minorities reproduces the very same ethnicist discourses as those employed by the ruling regimes to justify ethnic discrimination. Originating in and imported from abroad, the Pontic Greek cultural revival may be seen as a globalising process among others, but being customized, translated and interpreted in the local context, it becomes part of the local ‘meaningful worlds’ reflecting concerns which are specific to the formation of identity in post-Soviet southern Russia. One of these aspects of Russian contemporary life is a general trend of religious revivalism in post-Soviet society and a resurgence of the Orthodox Church in particular.

The Orthodox Revival and Ethnicity in Southern Russia The revival of Pontic Greek cultural identity in contemporary southern Russia is accompanied by a growing influence on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church among the Greek population of the region. Orthodox Christianity has always been central to the identity of the Greeks from Asia Minor (Bryer, 1980d, p. 36; Hirschon, 1998, p. 19). At the same time, a religious revival is one of the most visible features of social and cultural transformations everywhere in post-socialist societies. Being suppressed under socialism, religion has been put on the banners of the post-Soviet ethnonationalist movements as an aspect of ethnic and / or national identity (Dragadze, 1993; Yemelianova, 2002). Yet in conditions of an ideological rivalry in the aftermath of socialism, people turn to religion in their search for moral foundations, while the morality which had been imposed by the Communist regime is replaced with a new order of things emerging from the postSoviet transition to the market economy (Verdery, 1996, p. 192). The Russian Orthodox Church, which was pushed out to the margins of social and political life during the Soviet period, now in post-Soviet Russia enjoys

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  175 state support and protection (Sobranie zakonodatel’stva, 1997, p. 7666; Dadasheva, 2004, p. 132; Kalinin, 2004, p. 165). Furthermore, being preoccupied with the construction of a new national idea which might fill the vacuum left after the demise of Communist ideology, the ruling political regime sees Orthodox Christianity, or, to be precise, the institution of the Moscow Patriarchy, as a spiritual base for the nation’s unity (Abdulagatov, 2004, p. 71). Therefore, in contemporary Russia, Orthodox resurgence is often to be found alongside and within the discourses of state patriotism and Russian nationalism. In southern Russia, for instance, nationalists, such as Cossack organisations, claim that the revival of Orthodox Christianity, as a traditional religion of the ‘native’ Slav population, is their priority. Thus, in regional public discourses, the ethnic and religious identities of the Russian majority are conflated. This has inevitably had an impact upon the religious representation and practices of non-Russian minorities in the region. Although Orthodox Christianity has always been an important aspect of Greek ethnic identity in the region, the current coexistence of the Orthodox revival with (ethno)nationalist ideologies in Russia brings even more attention to religion as a feature demarcating ethnic and cultural boundaries in society. Hence, the Greeks have become sensitive to the ‘ethnic’ peculiarities of their religious practices and rituals, which acquire new interpretations through comparison with the dominant Russian-style Orthodox tradition. Thus, in Gaverdovskii, the place of the cross (or grave stone) on a grave became the focus of sharp disagreement between the ‘locals’ (Russians and Greek long-time residents) and Greek ‘newcomers’ from Georgia. The former contrast the ‘Russian style’ – the cross at ‘the foot’ of the grave and the obelisk at ‘its head’ – to the ‘Georgian style’ of the latter, where both the cross and the obelisk are put at the grave’s head: The proper way is when the obelisk is at ‘the head’ and the cross at ‘the foot’ [of the grave]. So we had an argument with newcomers. [We always act] in accordance with the Bible and we ask the priests’ advice. [That’s why] at the funeral, I have always known that the cross is put at ‘the foot’. But [the newcomers] scold me as if I were wrong. They say: ‘In Georgia, we put the cross at “the head”!’ I reply: ‘Listen, that is in your Georgia [not here] . . .’ (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii) The ‘Georgian’ Greeks, for their part, accuse the ‘locals’ of being too Russified and of having lost the Greek tradition (Sergei, born 1972, Gaverdovskii). Although both Russians and Greeks are Orthodox Christians, among the Greeks of southern Russia, the opinion is widespread that the Russians received Christianity from the Greeks or from Byzantium and this seniority of the Greeks as Christians is reflected in their religious practices. For instance, in Vitiazevo, Fedor (born 1946) saw the location of the cross at the ‘head’ of the Greek graves and at the ‘foot’ of Russian ones as an indicator of the ethnic boundary between the

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176  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival Russian and Greek communities in the town and explained it through the seniority of Greek Orthodoxy (‘Greece – as the head of Orthodox Christianity’) to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Panayia: ‘Indigenisation’ of Pontic Orthodoxy in the Local Landscape Religious rituals have become incorporated into the ethnonationalist representation of the Pontic Greek identity. Thus, as Fann notes, ‘the Pontians have claimed the feast day of the Dormition of the Mother of God for their own’ (1991, p. 347). The day of the Dormition of the Mother of God, or the Panayia, is one of the dates in the Orthodox Church calendar most revered by the Pontians alongside Christmas and Easter. In the Pontos, the monastery of Soumela, near Trebizond, which used to be one of the biggest and richest landowners in the region, was dedicated to the Panayia. For centuries, this monastery was the religious, cultural and economic centre for the local Pontic Greeks (Bryer, 1980c, p. 238). The icon of Panayia Soumela is considered a miracle-working icon in the Orthodox tradition. It is attributed to St Luke and had been given to Old Soumela monastery by the Trebizond emperor, Manuel III, in the fourteenth century (Bryer, 1988b, p. 326). During the Panayia, the famous icon attracted pilgrims from all around the Pontos. After their exodus from the Pontos in the 1920s, the Pontic refugees brought this icon to northern Greece and there founded New Soumela, near Kostania in Veroia. Now, thousands of Pontic pilgrims gather there every 15 August (the day of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Gregorian calendar tradition) in order to join the procession carrying the icon of Panayia Soumela. This religious procession is usually accompanied by Pontians dressed in ‘traditional’ Laz costumes (Fann, 1991, pp. 347–8). In Russia, the Greek Panayia or Russian Uspenie Bogoroditsy is celebrated on 28 August in accordance with the Julian calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church. In southern Russia, the Pontic Greeks living there gather on the eve of the feast-day in a forested gorge called Grushovaya Balka, in the mountains near Novorossiisk. In this gorge, there are several springs dedicated to different Christian saints (see Plate 9.7). The Mother of God’s spring is called the Spring of the Holy Hand (Sviataia Ruka), because in the past people could see a stone in the shape of a hand (presumably, the hand of the Virgin) from which the spring gushed. The local population of Greeks and Russians believe that the water of all these Grushovaya Balka springs has healing qualities, but the Spring of the Holy Hand is regarded as exceptionally miraculous. The Greeks believe that the spring gushes from the place which the Mother of God herself visited and its water is her tears shed in grief for Jesus; hence, the spring is sometimes called in Greek ‘the Panayia’s tears’ (ti Panayia ta dhiakria) (Popov, 1997). During the Panayia, the local Greeks ask the Mother of God for health for their sick relatives, sacrifice young rams and cocks (gourpan) and tie pieces of fabric from their clothes to the trees around the spring. The water collected from the Spring of the Holy Hand during the day of the Dormition of the Mother of God is

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Plate 9.7 An Orthodox cross and candles on the rocks in Grushovaia Balka, the gorge where the Russian Greeks celebrate Panayia. August 2013. Source: Photograph by author.

brought back home as a medicine and is shared with old and ill relatives and neighbours who were unable to visit the spring this time. This tradition of worshipping the ‘holy’ springs dedicated to the Christian saints is widespread everywhere in the Caucasus and common to both Christian and Muslim groups there. Describing the religious situation in nineteenth century Pontos, Bryer writes: In this land there are grey areas, particularly in the mountain pastures where local cults bridged the official Christianity and Muslim Orthodoxies. The local Turkmens tend to be Alevi, traditionally secretive about their real beliefs. Soumela monastery in particular was visited by thousands of Muslim (or crypto-Christian?) pilgrims in the nineteenth century, performing an unofficial hadj and its shrine of the Meryamana is venerated by Muslims to this day. (Bryer, 1988d, p. 23) During my own fieldwork in the Pontos in 1997, I was told by the Pontic Greekspeaking Muslims (Rumlar) of Hamsi-Koy that they regarded the water of the Soumela monastery springs as healing (Popov, 2002). This curious symbiosis of local (‘pagan’) cults with Christian and Muslim religious practices has become part of the local landscape and gives sacred meaning to the land itself.

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178  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival In the case of the Greeks in southern Russia, the Holy Hand celebration is in a way the continuation of the Pontic cult of the Panayia Soumela. The local Greeks claim that they saw the icon of Panayia Soumela under the Spring of the Holy Hand (Popov, 1997, p. 112). The springs which gush from the rock of the Soumela monastery are also regarded as healing. Thus, the ancestors of the Greeks in southern Russia reproduced their native Pontos in the new geographical location through the introduction of their religious practices in the local landscape. Given the fact of such quick adaptation in the new territory of the Pontic cult of saints’ springs and sacred ‘knowledge of the land’, it could be argued that Greek migration from the Pontos to the Caucasus (which gradually increased throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century) had no devastating impact on the continuity of Pontic cultural practices. As Bryer notes, the Pontians who emigrated to Russia and the Caucasus ‘remained very much part of the Greek Pontic world until the 1940s’. Thus they continued to support Pontic monasteries, sending their donations there. In 1904, for example, 200,665 piastres of the total income of 414,262 piastres of Soumela came from donations collected in Russia (Bryer, 1980e, p. 179). The landscape in the North-Western Caucasus, which is quite similar to the forested mountains and narrow vales of the Pontos, allowed the Greek settlers to extend their pattern of small settlements scattered over hills. In these conditions, religious gatherings near ‘holy’ springs also had an important social function, providing people from different farmsteads with an opportunity to communicate, and socialise, with each other. The pressure of Soviet modernisation on the Pontic Greeks’ traditional cultural and religious practices increased from the 1930s when the inhabitants of mountain farmsteads were forced to join newly-created collective farms and were resettled in larger and mainly Russian-populated, villages. The most devastating effect on the Greek cultural connections to the local landscape, however, was their deportation to Kazakhstan and Siberia in the 1940s. With few exceptions, the local Greeks do not now use their own ‘folk’ names for the places and settlements in the region. This lack of local knowledge about their land is especially striking in comparison with the rich toponymic tradition of the local Hamshen Armenians who appeared in the North-Western Caucasus about the same time as their Greek counterparts, migrating from the same region (the Pontos) and settling in the neighbouring or even the same villages with them. Unlike the Greeks, however, the Hamshen Armenians did not suffer mass repressions and deportation during the Stalinist period and had their own national district in Krasnodar Krai from 1926 to 1953 (Tveretinov, 1992).3 Many saints’ springs in the mountain zone of Krasnodar Krai were abandoned during the 1940s and people who returned from exile in the 1960s–70s seem to have forgotten about their existence or have very blurred memories of their location and which saints they were dedicated to. Most of the returnees were

3 This comparison of the two toponymic traditions in the region – Pontic Greek and Hamshen Armenian – was prompted by the Krasnodar-based anthropologist, Igor Kuznetsov, during a conversation with him in Krasnodar in August 2002.

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  179 either born in exile or, at the time of their deportation, were too young to learn from their elderly relatives about these springs. In the 1990s, for instance, only a few of my elderly informants in the Severskii district of Krasnodar Krai remembered that before WWII their parents used to go to some ‘healing springs’ dedicated to saints somewhere in the mountains near the village of Derbentskaia. The tradition of the pilgrimage to the Spring of the Holy Hand has survived to these days, not least because this spring is situated in relative proximity to the three oldest and biggest Greek villages in the region – Kabardinka, Merchanskoe and Vitiazevo. By the 1940s, the Greek population of these settlements were mainly Soviet citizens and were, therefore, not touched by mass deportation. Nonetheless, until the late 1980s, the Soviet authorities tried to prevent the annual pilgrimage to the Spring of the Holy Hand by blocking the main routes to this remote gorge with police posts. The renewal of these sacred ties with the local territory became a live issue again as part of the revival of Pontic ‘traditional culture’ in the aftermath of socialism. The re-emergence of traditional religious practices by the local Greeks, however, cannot be understood fully outside its context, which is characterised by a revision of Pontic Greek history, the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church and the regional cultural politics of ‘indigenisation’. The Pontic Greek cultural revival is closely connected to the Orthodox Church. Since the early 1990s, the Greek national-cultural organisations in Krasnodar Krai have taken under their patronage and control the annual pilgrimage to the Panayia in the Grushovaia Balka. Indeed, the Panayia celebration has become an annual festival of Pontic Greek culture.4 Greek societies from as far as North Ossetia and Stavropol’ Krai bring their folk ensembles to perform there on the eve of the feastday. Pontic music does not subside for several days and Greek flags hang on the trees everywhere in the gorge, which is crowded with Greek pilgrims. As a result, some Russians in the region see the Panayia as a ‘Greek festival’ rather than as an Orthodox Christian feast-day (Kaimos, 1999, p. 75). In 1998, a new church was constructed near the so-called ‘lower spring’ of St Nicolas in the Grushovaia Balka. The Spring of the Holy Hand, or ‘upper spring’, is cut off from other springs by the railway which goes across Grushovaya Balka to the oil terminal at the upper end of the gorge. Now the railway is so close to the spring which gushes from the steep slope of the mountain that it is impossible to build a church there. In 2002, the slope around the Spring of the Holy Hand was cleared of trees and covered with concrete; as a result, the spring reappeared in an artificial cave where icons and a cross were placed. The construction of the St Nicolas church was initiated by local Greek organisations, while money for the building came from pilgrims’ donations and the sponsorship of Greek businessmen and national-cultural societies. This church has become the centre for pilgrimage during the Panayia (Kaimos, 1999). According to information published by

4 The newspapers of the local Greek organisations usually dedicate the front pages of their August issues to veneration of the Panayia Soumela by Pontians in Greece and Russia (see, for example, Apostolov, 2002, p. 1; Lukash, 2000, p. 2).

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180  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival Georgii Kaimos, an active member of the Committee for church construction, painters from Greece were invited to depict the icon of Panayia Soumela on the wall of the church (Kaimos, 1999, p. 50). Moreover, despite the Russian Orthodox priests’ condemnation of ‘Pontic paganism’, the Greek pilgrims continue to bring animals for the gourpan around the Spring of the Holy Hand and to tie pieces of their clothes to the surrounding trees. In 2002, my Vitiazevo informants told me that during one Sunday sermon a few weeks before the day of the Dormition of the Mother of God the local priest, who is an ethnic Russian, condemned the animal sacrifice (gourpan) and the tying of cloth strips on the trees as sinful and pagan. Before the feast day someone then cut the low branches of the trees around St Nicolas’ spring and the newly-built church in Grushovaya Balka, where pilgrims usually hang strips of cloth.5 The booming construction of new churches is perhaps the most visible evidence of the Orthodox Christian revival everywhere in contemporary Russia. Local Greek national-cultural organisations are among the initiators and / or the main sponsors of church (re-) building in the Greek settlements in the region. The church as a religious landmark provides sacred meaning to the local land and people’s relationships with it. Greek ethnonationalists also connect the Orthodox revival with the historical revision of Stalinist repressions against the Greeks. The new churches are usually built in the places where old churches had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The Vitiazevo church (see Plate 9.8), for instance, is re-built on the site of the old St George’s church, which was destroyed during collectivisation in the 1930s to use its stones to build stables for the collective farm. Thus, the rebuilt churches become ethnonational memorials which connect the present-day Greek population of the region with memories about their ancestors, confirming Assmann’s (1995) observation that cultural memory ‘revolves around fixed events in the past, and is perpetuated through particular sites, monuments, texts and practices’ (cited from Pine et al., 2004, p. 5). Building churches, the Caucasian Greeks rediscover the ‘sacred knowledge’ of the local landscape, which they associate with their ancestors. In Gaverdovskii, for example, in 1993, the place for the construction of the church dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God was revealed in a dream to a local businessman by a mysterious female voice. He had already started to build a church when his elderly relative recalled that the first settlers, the Tsalka Greeks, celebrated

5 The influence of the mainstream Russian Orthodox tradition on the local Greeks’ ritual practices seems to have become stronger in recent years. During the celebration of the Panayia in August 2013, the Krasnodar ethnographer, Vladimir Kolesov observed a conflict between a group of young ‘local’ Greek men from Gelendzhik, a town on the Black Sea coast about 50 kilometers from Grushovaya Balka and Tsalka Greeks who recently resettled to the region from Georgia. The local youth protested against the animal sacrifice (gourpan) performed by the Tsalka Greeks on the site as non-Christian and ‘against Greek tradition’ (email correspondence with Vladimir Kolesov). The very concept of gourpan becomes gradually forgotten by my Vitiazevo informants who in 2013, 10 years after my main fieldwork in the town, prefer the Russian word ‘zhertvaprinoshenie’ to ‘gourpan’ because they associate the latter with a ‘Muslim tradition’ and the term ‘kurban’ to which it is linguistically indeed related.

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Plate 9.8 A memorial to the victims of the Stalinist repressions in 1937–38 from Vitiazevo next to the building site of the St George church. Vitiazevo, July 2006. Source: Photograph by author.

the Meriamana, which is the Turkish name for the Panayia, near a spring which gushed out just under the hill where the church was to be built: One night I was helping my brother and was watching over some of his property up there [he meant a field on the top of the hill next to his house]. And it was almost dawn when I heard some voice. I don’t know whether I fell asleep or just dozed. And this female voice told me in our [language, that was Turkish] that you, it called my name, would build a church . . . I woke up immediately, but nobody else was there. It was already dawn. I started thinking where this voice could have come from [smiling]. I tried to remember whose voice it was, but I didn’t understand at that time. Then, when we had started to build the church, my cousin came to make a donation and she told me that her mother, my aunt, who used to live near there, told her: ‘There is a holy spring here, well, it is regarded as a sacred one, [because] the Mother of God is in it’. Can you imagine that! I say [laughed], it seems that something has been left to [us] . . . (Vasilii, born 1949, Gaverdovskii) Vasilii’s story has some similarities with the personal myths of post-Soviet Siberian shamans which Humphrey sees as examples of an ‘auto-account that gives

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182  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival validation to the claim to be a shaman: it describes extraordinary episodes really experienced by the person, magical events that happened in places everyone knows, yet it also conforms to the cultural standards of shamanic illness, struggles with spirits and eventual acceptance of the role of shaman’ (Humphrey, 2002, p. 207). Despite the apparent differences between the experience of a shamanic initiation and the Mother of God’s blessing of this local businessman which turned him into the church-builder, in both cases, there is found the idea of the person as a medium between the mundane and sacred. In fact, just like modern shamans in Siberian cities, the Gaverdovskii church-builder is revitalising the spiritual connections between people and places as well as between descendants and ancestors. Allocating sacred meanings to the local landmarks, the Greeks claim this land for their own. In the context of regional cultural politics, which promotes the idea of rootedness for some indigenous groups, this symbolic demarcation of the ‘native’ territory becomes the ground for rivalry between ethnic communities. For instance, in the regional media, the building of the church near the Spring of the Holy Hand was claimed as an exclusively Cossack project. The local Cossacks, who, in fact, actively participated only at the initial stage of this building, neither refuted this information nor acknowledged the significance of the Greeks’ contribution. The Greeks became very upset with this media coverage and Cossack reaction to it (Kaimos, 1999, p. 11). Thus, the contemporary development in religious practices as part of a broader cultural process among the Greeks of southern Russia reflects the complex intersection of the international movement for the Pontic Greek cultural revival with such contemporary phenomena of life in post-Soviet Russia as Orthodox revivalism. In the regional context of southern Russia’s cultural politics, religious practices are built into the local landscape, providing a symbolic connection between the Greeks’ cultural identity and the territory where they live. Meanwhile, this intertwining of religious and ethnic representations corresponds to a moral dimension in the construction of Greek cultural identity in the region.

Capitalism, the Church and the Communalist Morality of Ethnonationalism The popular resurgence of religious practices and institutions (such as the Orthodox Church, the communities of ‘new Muslims’, the Jehovah’s Witnesses ‘sect’, shamanism and ‘neo-paganisms’) in the aftermath of socialism is sometimes discussed as a quest for moral foundations and social trust as well as psychological comfort in societies which have lived through the shock of social, political and economic transformations (Humphrey, 2002, p. 207; Yemelianova, 2005, pp. 66–7). The political and economic transformations have brought the new ideologies of a free market society. In these new conditions, the Communist morality of social equality has been rejected as the legacy of an inefficient state-planned economy and an ideological device employed in the interests of the totalitarian Soviet regime. Moreover, by the late 1980s, the public belief in the socially-orientated moral principles of socialism was undermined by the hypocrisy of the corrupt

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The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival  183 Soviet nomenklatura. Implementing such economic policies as shock therapy, the post-Soviet leaders and their Western advisors believed that these were painful but necessary measures for the transition from socialism to capitalism. As Burawoy and Verdery (1999) argue, the post-socialist economic transformations often had unpredictable and unintended effects on societies ‘in transition’. The growth of social inequality, a widening gap between the rich and poor and the crises of social infrastructure are just a few of these side-effects. All these provide grounds for the hostile public perception of the official economic reforms by a population experiencing social and economic marginalisation. They see the new capitalist order as materialistic and individualist and oppose it to Soviet sociallyorientated morality as antisocial and, therefore, immoral. In this context, when they collect donations for the construction of churches, the Orthodox revivalists appeal to a nostalgia for feelings of social unity, security and trust that are, ironically, associated with the Soviet past. In his published diary of ‘the church-builder’, the chairman of the Holy Hand church Committee, Georgii Kaimos, outlines this idea of moral recovery from the suffering of economic hardship and social disintegration via the unity around the construction of a ‘temple’: Everyone sees and understands what a hard time Russia and its people are living through. Crime is rampant. Deception is masked by lies. The elderly and disabled people, who looked after every penny and therefore had some savings, find themselves now on the edge of economic survival. The young and middle-aged people, who are full of creativity, have to remain jobless. And yet during such times, which are difficult in both the material and moral senses, people help and encourage us [to build the church]. Everyone who trusts the builders of the Temple, thank you very much for your help! (Kaimos, 1999, p. 7) If survival in times of economic hardship is represented in the informants’ narratives as a threat to social solidarity because it forces them to ‘think only about themselves’ in a desperate search for employment and money, donations and collective work to construct a church bring people together and display such moral values as generosity, cooperation and equality. In this respect, the building of churches reflects the people’s concern with morality in shifting economic conditions. By sponsoring the construction of churches, local businessmen receive social recognition of their capital which otherwise, given the increasing economic inequality and demonetarisation of rural society in post-Soviet Russia, is seen by the community as immoral and illegitimate. Thus, using Bourdieu’s terms, financial capital is converted into social capital when money is donated to church construction. Greek national-cultural organisations, which play an important role in connecting local business with the authorities and in maintaining the socio-cultural infrastructure as well as communal solidarity, become the agencies which accumulate financial, material and labour resources for the construction of churches. In Vitiazevo, collecting money for the church from local businessmen is one of the central activities of the Greek society Gorgippia. It also collects donations from

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184  The Pontic Greek Cultural Revival those Vitiazevo Greeks who have emigrated to Greece. In the eyes of the local community, these donations by its wealthy members (like private entrepreneurs, emigrants are considered to be better-off) are a contribution to the public wealth because the church belongs to the whole community. This financial support for the construction of the local church imposes a feeling of belonging to the community, despite its increasing social stratification and geographical separation. Overseeing the church building, the Greek societies acquire the moral authority and trust of the local population. The preoccupation of the Greek national-cultural organisations with the Orthodox revival and their appeal to a communalist morality, corresponds to a quasireligious halo of Greek ethnonationalism itself. In the houses and cars of my informants, Orthodox religious objects such as icons and crosses were often put next to Greek national symbols (miniature Greek or Pontic flags, souvenirs brought back from Greece or Cyprus). Religious ceremonies, rituals and Orthodox Christian ideology had been constitutive elements of Pontic Greek ethno-nationalism before it became known to the Russian Greeks. In Russia, however, these religious overtones to Pontic revivalism have merged with the growth of popular interest in religion and the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Conclusion The imported forms of representation of Pontic Greek culture are seen by the Russian Greeks as part of their post-Soviet experience. Therefore, the Pontic myth of the death and rebirth of Pontic traditional culture is understood, in accordance with the historical revisionism of post-socialism, as a rediscovery of the true Greek identity, culture and language which had been suppressed during the ages of persecution first in the Ottoman Empire and later in the Soviet Union. The new iconography of Pontic culture (folk dance and music, traditional costume) replaces the existing perception of the Greek culture in the public imagination and challenges local cultural practices. Newly acquired Pontic cultural forms are performed predominantly by young people in semi-professional ‘popular’ ensembles and theatres, further disrupting the inter-generational transmission of locallydeveloped cultural practices. This folkloric performance to represent Pontic Greek cultural identity is also part of the local and regional politics of representation, since the revival of Pontic Greek culture is monopolised by the Greek nationalcultural organisations in their struggle for the power to represent the local Greek communities. The ideology of Pontic cultural revival influences different aspects of everyday life and also brings the ethnonationalist agenda to the Greeks’ religious practices. Ordinary people closely associate their new Pontic identity with Orthodoxy and a communalist morality. Although Orthodox Christianity was already an integral part of Pontic revivalism, in the contemporary Russian Federation these religious overtones have been strengthened because they coincide with the current resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church and public quest for a moral foundation in the uncertainty of post-Soviet ‘transition’.

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Conclusion Local Lives of Transnational Migrants

The collapse of state socialism meant for many in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union the rapid disappearance of their ‘meaningful world’ (Verdery, 1996). The post-socialist transformations inevitably led to very radical changes in meanings and practices that constituted the everyday construction of ethnicity, reproduction of culture, navigation and maintenance of migration routes by the ordinary people in this volatile and shifting context. Throughout this book I have been arguing that the cultural identity of the Greek population of southern Russia, the emergent post-Soviet Pontians, is both a product of their experience of transnational migration to Greece and Cyprus and an effect of the post-socialist transformations which influence the everyday life, economic practices and political situation in their home communities. The (Pontic) Greek ethnicity of my informants is employed often in very industrious and creative ways as symbolic capital available for investment in transnational migration as they navigate shifting postSoviet social and economic conditions. Simultaneously they rework their practices of family networking, property relations and political participation in ways which strengthen their attachment to the local territory. The new Pontic Greek identity is constructed and reproduced by the local Greek population through a constant renegotiation of their ‘traditional’ values of home, family and nation. This identification combines a ‘diaspora consciousness’ of attachment to Greece as an ‘historical homeland’ with a cultural representation of the Pontic Greeks as an ‘indigenous population’ rooted in the Black Sea and North Caucasus regions of the Russian Federation. Greek identity in the post-Soviet Russian Federation is reproduced through a ‘transnational circuit of culture’ that is a complex interplay between agents’ practices and structural elements of the society in which they participate. The post-Soviet Greeks’ motivations for ‘repatriation’ to Greece as their ‘historical homeland’ are often determined by the ‘push-and-pull’ forces of post-Soviet economic and political transformations. At the same time, the cultural, social and economic differences between the former-Soviet Greek migrants and the nativeborn population of Greece and Cyprus results in the emergence of a Pontic Greek cultural identity which emphasises migrants’ connections with the former USSR. However, the Greek transnational migration to Greece and Cyprus is not entirely about economic advantage; it also has very significant emotional and ethical

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186 Conclusion aspects. Navigating their routes to the ‘historical homeland’, migrants use their family network as a channel of cross-border movement which strengthens their emotional attachment to their relatives. The Russian Greeks effectively become connected to the imagined community of the Greek nation via their transnational families. Furthermore, the migrants ‘naturalise’ their Greek national identity by re-establishing family connections with Greek nationals. Simultaneously back in the ‘home’ communities in southern Russia, the Pontic identity of migrants acquires new meanings of rootedness to the local territory, as the Russian Greeks negotiate the conditions of regional citizenship. The provincial citizenship regimes in Krasnodar Krai and the Republic of Adygea promote an (ethno-)nationalist policy which accords privileged social status to the ‘local, or indigenous population’ and ‘native’ ethnic groups at the expense of migrants and minorities. In the conditions of institutionalised discrimination against migrants and ethnic minorities originating from the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Greeks, who have been involved in migration throughout their history and have been associated with other ‘Caucasian peoples’, find themselves in a vulnerable position in terms of their economic, political and cultural activities. For instance, the Greek migrants, who in their pursuit of ‘homeland’ in Greece often have to give up their Russian residence permits, are deprived of their right to own the houses which they consider their ‘home’. To counteract such discriminatory regulations, migrants emphasise their family roots in the local communities. On the one hand, the division between ‘migrants’ and ‘locals’ constructed by regional ideologies is reproduced as recognition for Greek migrants within their ‘home’ communities on the grounds of their ethnicity and family connections. On the other, the regime’s discriminative policy is adapted and resisted by individual migrants’ recreating their sense of ‘home’ in the local community through a network of their family, neighbours and friends. The key argument of this book is that, rather than ‘being’ Pontic Greeks, the Greeks of southern Russia are ‘becoming’ Pontians. Representing themselves as Pontians, the Russian Greeks are reclaiming their history. They redraw the boundaries of ‘Pontic culture’ both in space and time, tracing their presence in the Caucasus back to the legendary Argonauts and using the ruins of the Ancient Greek cities on the Black Sea coast as evidence for their right to call this region their ancestral home. Pontic identity is constructed through the demarcation of ethnic boundaries from ‘others’, but also through the renegotiation of intra-group cultural division. There is no single meaning of Ponticness in southern Russia. The individuals’ understanding of their Pontic identity is determined by their life trajectories as well as by the different historical, linguistic and social factors which influence their social identities. So, by becoming Pontians, the Turkish-speaking Greeks, many of whom recently resettled from Georgia, secure their identification as Greeks, which might otherwise be questioned by the local (Pontic) Greek-speakers in southern Russia. At the same time, from the vantage point of the Turkish-speakers, it is the ‘Hellenophones’ who are doubtful Pontians.

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Conclusion  187 The book has sought to demonstrate the post-Soviet character of Pontic Greek identity in southern Russia. The notion of the revival of Pontic culture as a ‘truth’ held by the Greeks of Russia resonates with public discourses of historical and cultural revisionism dominant in post-socialist societies. Although Pontic cultural revivalism appeals to unchanging ‘tradition’, promoting the iconographic forms of Pontic Greek folklore, for many Russian Greeks their Pontic identity is one of the signs of the dramatic changes which they have been living through since the demise of communist ideology. In fact, the importing of ‘Pontic traditional culture’ from Greece challenges local cultural practices and, indeed, the previous forms of people’s representation and perception of their Greek identity. At the same time, being a transnational phenomenon, this folkloric representation of Pontic Greek identity is interwoven in the complex power relations between ethnic minorities and regional regimes. Therefore, the local Greek elites use the theatrical representation of Pontic folklore as a public statement of their right to control political, cultural and economic processes in their communities. The production of Pontic Greek cultural identity in southern Russia takes place alongside and within religious practices which have themselves been affected dramatically by the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Greeks’ relationship with the local landscape is becoming increasingly ritualised as they restore old churches in their villages and revitalise the Pontic tradition of the worship of sacred springs dedicated to Christian saints. This suggests strengthening the Greeks’ perception of themselves as ‘indigenous’ to the region. Participation in religious ceremonies under the banner of Pontic Greek cultural revival is also instrumental for maintaining the sense of community solidarity of these ‘transnational locals’ in the shifting realm of post-Soviet Russia. Thus Pontic self-representation implicitly combines a local self – via the discursive construction of the Pontic Greeks as an ‘indigenous people’ in south Russian regions – and a global self, which is reproduced through the transnational circuit of the Russian Greeks.

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200 Bibliography Oushakine, S. (2004) ‘The Flexible and the Pliant: Disturbed Organisms of Soviet Modernity’, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 392–428. Palgrave, G. (1881) ‘Otchet o provintsiakh Trapezonskoi, Sivasskoi, Kastamuniiskoi i chasti Angorskoi konsula Gifforda Palgrave’, Izvestiia Kavkazskogo Otdela Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Prilozhenie), pp. 1–87. Papadakis, Y. (1998) ‘Greek Cypriot Narratives of History and Collective Identity: Nationalism as a Contested Process’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 149–65. Papanikolaki, K. (1995) ‘ “Zabyt’ etu tragediiu nevozmozhno!”’, Pontos, No. 5–6 (47–48), p. 6. Pashaeva, L. (1972) ‘Poriadok razdela v sem’e urumov v proshlom’, Kavkazskii etnograficheskii sbornik, Tbilisi, Vol. 4, pp. 93–103. Pashaeva, L. (1977a) ‘Etnicheskie protsessy v Trialeti’, Izvestiia Akademii Nauk Gruzinskoi SSR. Seriia istorii, arheologii, etnografii i istorii iskusstva, Tbilisi, No. 1, pp. 84–92. Pashaeva, L. (1977b) ‘Nekotorye kalendarnye prazdniki urumov’, Izvestiia Akademii Nauk Gruzinskoi SSR. Seriia istorii, arheologii, etnografii i istorii iskusstva, Tbilisi, No. 1, pp. 100–112. Payin, E. (1996) ‘Settlement of Ethnic Conflict in Post-Soviet Society’, in K. Rupesinghe and V. Tishkov (eds), Ethnicity and Power in the Contemporary World, New York: United Nations University Press, pp. 69–82. Peel, J. (1989) ‘The Cultural Work of Youruba Ethnogenesis’, in E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman (eds), History and Ethnicity (ASA Monographs 27), London: Routledge, pp. 198–215. Perrotta, L. (1998) ‘Divergent Responses to Land Reform and Agricultural Restructuring in the Russian Federation’, in S. Bridger and F. Pine (ed.), Surviving Post-Socialism: Local Strategies and Regional Responses in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, London: Routledge, pp. 148–69. Petrosian, A. (2002) ‘Etnicheskie chistki po-kubanski. Mestnye vlasti pytaiutsia vygnat’ inorodtsev’, Izvestiia, 30 March, p. 4. Petrov, V. (2003) ‘Etnicheskie migranty i polietnichnaia prinimaiushchaia sreda: problemy tolerantnosti’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, No. 7, pp. 84–91. Pilkington, H. (1998a) Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge. Pilkington, H. (1998b) ‘Going Home? The Implications of Forced Migration for National Identity Formation in Post-Soviet Russia’, in K. Koser and H. Lutz (eds), The New Migration in Europe: Social Constructions and Social Realities, London: Macmillan Press Ltd, pp. 85–108. Pilkington, H. and Flynn, M. (2001) ‘Chuzhie na rodine? Issledovanie “diasporal’noi identichnosti” russkikh vynuzhdennykh pereselentsev’, Diasporas, No. 2–3, pp. 8–34. Pine, F. (1996) ‘Naming the House and Naming the Land: Kinship and Social Grouping in Highland Poland’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 443–59. Pine, F. (2002) ‘Dealing with Money: Zlotys, Dollars and Other Currencies in the Polish Highlands’, in R. Mandel and C. Humphrey (eds), Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism, Oxford: Berg, pp. 75–100. Pine, F. and Bridger, S. (1998) ‘Introduction: Transition to Post-Socialism and Cultures of Survival’, in S. Bridger and F. Pine (eds), Surviving Post-Socialism: Local Strategies and Regional Responses in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, London: Routledge, pp.1–15. Pine, F., Kaneff. D. and Haukanes, H. (2004) ‘Introduction. Memory, Politics and Religion: A Perspective on Europe’, in F. Pine, D. Kaneff and H. Haukanes (eds), Memory, Politics and Religion: The Past Meets the present in Europe, Münster: Lit Verlag, pp. 1–29.

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Bibliography  201 Plummer, K. (2000) Documents of Life 2. An Invitation to a Critical Humanism, London: Sage. Polian, P. (2001) Ne po svoei vole . . . Istoriia i geografiia prinuditel’nykh migratsii v SSSR, Moskva: O.G.I.-Memorial. Polyakova, T. (2002a) ‘Adygea Relies on Old Traditions to Build New Self-Governments’, in V. Tishkov and E. Filippova (eds), Local Governance and Minority Empowerment in the CIS, Budapest: Open Society Institute, pp. 193–200. Polyakova, T. (2002b) ‘Adygea’, Ezhigodnii doklad Seti etnologicheskogo monitoringa i rannego preduprezhdenia konfliktov, 2001, Moskva: IEA RAN. Pontos (1995) ‘Pontiiskie tantsy’, Pontos, No. 5–6 (47–8), p. 7. Popadius, A. (1994) ‘Geografiia poselenia, ekonomicheskoe polozhenie, byt, nravy i prichiny pereselenia Grekov Sherii v Rossiu v 60-e gody 19 v’., in Voprosy istorii pontiiskikh grekov v Rossii. Vyp. 1, Piatigorsk: Nauchnyi tsentr pontiiskikh issledovanii. Popov, A. (1997) ‘Legenda pontiiskikh grekov o proiskhozhdenii istochnika “Sviataia Ruka” (semanticheskii analysis)’, in I. Kuznetsov (ed.), Studia Pontocaucasica 3. The Pontic Greeks. Krasnodar: Tsentr pontiisko-kavkazskikh issledovanii, pp. 107–16. Popov, A. (2000) ‘Pontiiskie greki’, Center for Racial, Ethnic & Linguisti Minorities Rights. Bulletin, Krasnodar, No. 2, pp. 102–16. Popov, A. (2002) ‘Iz zhizni grekoiazychnykh musul’man Ponta (po materialam etnograficheskoi ekspeditsii v Turtsiiu)’, Diaspory, No. 1, pp. 188–212. Popov, A. (2003) ‘Becoming Pontic: “Post-Socialist” Identities, “Transnational” Geography, and the “Native” Land of the Caucasian Greeks’, Ab Imperio, No. 2, pp. 339–60. Popov, A. (2004) ‘From Pindos to Pontus: the Ethnicity and Diversity of Greek Communities in Southern Russia’, Bulletin: Anthropology, Minorities, Multiculturalism, No. 5, pp. 84–90. Popov, A. (2007a) ‘Crossing Borders, Shifting Identities: Transnationalisation, “Materialisation”, and Commoditisation of Greek Ethnicity in Post-Soviet Russia’, Anthropology of East Europe Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 29–41. Popov, A. (2007b) ‘Are Greeks Caucasian? The Multiple Boundaries of Pontic Greek Life in Southern Russia’, in B. Grant and L. Yalçın-Heckmann (eds), Caucasus Paradigms: Anthropologies, Histories, and the Making of a World Area, Münster: LIT Verlag (Halle Series in the Anthropology of Eurasia), pp. 219–46. Popov, A. (2008) ‘Ethnicity and Civil Society after Socialism: the Politics of Representation among Greek Communities in Southern Russia’, in M. Flynn, R. Kay and J. Oldfield (eds), Trans-National Issues, Local Concerns and Meanings of Post-Socialism, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, pp. 195–212. Popov, A. (2009) ‘Ethics, Identities and Economics of Fieldwork: Reflection on Ethnography in Southern Russia’, Ethnologia Actualis Slovaca, Vol. 9, pp. 86–96. Popov, A. (2010) ‘Making Sense of Home and Homeland: Former-Soviet Greeks’ Motivations and Strategies for a Transnational Migrant Circuit’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 36, No.1, pp.67–85. Popov, A. (2012) ‘Re-making a Frontier Community or Defending Ethnic Boundaries? The Caucasus in Cossack Identity’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 64, No. 9, 1739–57 Popov, A. and Kuznetsov, I. (2008) ‘Ethnic Discrimination and the Discourse of “Indigenisation”: the Regional Regime, “Indigenous Majority” and Ethnic Minorities in Krasnodar Krai’, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May 2008), pp. 243–72. Popov, A. and Tortopidi, I. (1997) ‘Greki Severskogo raiona Krasnodarskogo kraia’, in I.V. Kuznetsov (ed.), Studia Pontocaucasica. 3. Pontiiskie Greki, Krasnodar: Tsentr pontiiskokavkazskikh issledovanii, pp. 155–72.

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202 Bibliography Portes, A., Guarnizo, L. and Landolt, P. (1999) ‘The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 217–37. Pozachidi, E. (2000) ‘Pomogite naiti rodstvennikov’, Pontos, No. 1 (42), p. 4. Pravovaia Kuban’ (1999) Zakliuchenie na Zakon Krasnodarskogo Kraia ot 08.08.95 No. 13–KZ “Ob osobom poriadke zemlepol’zovania v Krasnodarskom krae” (v redaktsii Zakona Krasnodarskogo kraia ot 13.05.99 No. 181–KZ) za No. 10 ot 29.05.1999, Krasnodar: Pravovaia Kuban’. Press-sluzhba administratsii kraia (2004) ‘Turki-meskhetintsy pereseliaiutsia v Ameriku’, Vol’naia Kuban’, 23 July, p. 4. Rabinow, P. (1977) Reflection on Fieldwork in Morocco, Berkeley: University of California Press. Rabinow, P. (1986) ‘Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in Anthropology’, in J. Clifford and G. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkley: University of California Press, pp. 234–61. Rakachev, V. and Rakacheva, Y. (2003) Krasnodarskii krai: etnosotsialnye i etnodemograficheskie protsessy (vtoraia polovina 1980-kh – nachalo 2000-kh gg.), Krasnodar: Kubanskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet. Richmond, A. (1994) Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism, and the New World Order, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roberts, B. (2002) Biographical Research, Buckingham: Open University Press. Rogozina, N. (2001) ‘Biudzhet priniat i zhdet zhivykh deneg’, Kubanskie novosti, 1 March, p. 1. Rosenblatt, D. (2004) ‘An Anthropology Made Safe for Culture: Patterns of Practice and the Politics of Difference in Ruth Benedict’, American Anthropologist, Vol. 106, No. 3, pp. 459–72. Rouse, R. (2002) ‘Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism’, in J. Inda and R. Rosaldo (eds), The Anthropology of Globalization. A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 157–71. Rozhkova, V. (2000) ‘Migratsia: poriadok neobhodim!’, Vol’naia Kuban’, 15 August, p. 2. Rudianov, G. (1994) ‘K voprosu o pereselenii grekov na Severnyi Kavkaz vo vtoroi polovine 19 veka’, in Voprosy istorii pontiiskikh grekov v Rossii. Vyp. 1, Piatigorsk: Nauchnyi tsentr pontiiskikh issledovanii, pp. 36–41. Rutherford, J. (1990) ‘A Place Called Home: Identity and the Cultural Politics of Difference’, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 9–27. Said, E. ([1979]1995) Orientalism, London: Penguin Books. Sanjek, R. (2001) ‘Ethnography’, in A. Barnard and J. Spencer (eds), Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, London: Routledge, pp. 193–8. Savva, M. (2000) ‘Nas khotiat postavit’ v ochered’ na voinu’, Krasnodarskie izvestiia, 21 June, p. 3. Savva, M. (2001) ‘Problema. Ekonomicheskaia migratsia’, Vol’naia Kuban’, 17 May, p. 2. Savva, M. (2002a) ‘Mezhnatsional’nye otnoshenia: ne “karaul!”, a “chto delat’?”’, Krasnodarskie izvestiia, 31 August, p. 4. Savva, M. (2002b) ‘Shest’ let po puti . . . kuda?’, Krasnodarskie izvestiia, 2 March, p. 6. Savva, M. and Savva, E. (2002) Pressa, vlast’ i etnicheskii konflikt (vzaimosviaz’ na primere Krasnodarskogo kraia), Krasnodar: Kubanskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet. Scott, J. (1998) ‘Property Values: Ownership, Legitimacy and Land Market in Northern Cyprus’, in C. Hann (ed.), Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 142–59.

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Bibliography  203 Sideri, E. (2006) ‘In Quest of Eastern Europe: Troubling Encounters in the Post-Cold War Field’, Anthropology Matters, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1–9. Shamai, S., Ilatov, Z., Psalti A. and Deliyanni, K. (2003) ‘Acculturation of Soviet Immigrant Parents in Israel and Greece’ in T. Horowitz, B. Kotik-Friedgut and S. Hoffman (eds), From Pacesetters to Dropouts: Post-Soviet Youth in Comparative Perspective, New-York: University Press of America, pp. 103–33. Shami, S. (1998) ‘Circassian Encounters: The Self as Other and the Production of the Homeland in the North Caucasus’, Development and Change, No. 29, pp. 617–46. Shapovalova, L. (2002) ‘Nelegaly dolzhny vyekhat’ iz kraia’, Kuban’ segodnia, 13 March, p. 3. Shapsugia (1995) Shapsugiia, No. 19 (78), p. 1. Shirokov, O. (1973) ‘Dialekt grekov Alaverdy’ in Soveshchanie po voprosam istorii yazyka. Tezisy dokladov i soobschenii, Moskva. Shostak, M. (1981) The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Simonian, H. (2007) The Hemshins. People of the Caucasus and the Black Sea Series, London: Curzon. Skeggs, B. (1997) Formation of Class and Gender. Becoming Respectable, London: Sage Publications. Slezkine, Y. (1996) ‘The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism’, in G. Eley and R. Suny (eds), Becoming National. A Read, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 202–38. Smith, A. (1986) The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sobranie zakonodatel’stva (1997) Sobranie zakonodatel’stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii, No. 35, 29 September. Sokolovski, S. (2004) ‘Deja-vu, ili eshche raz ob etnichnosti’, Bulletin: Anthropology, Minorities, Multiculturalism, No. 6, pp. 132–9. Sokolovski, S. (not dated) OP. No 272: Structure of Russian Political Discourse on Nationality Problems: Anthropological Perspectives [online]. Available at [Accessed 29 November 2004]. Sørensen, N. (1998) ‘Narrating Identity Across Dominican Worlds’, in M. Smith and L. Guarnizo (eds), Transnationalism from Below (Comparative Urban and Community Research, Vol. 6), London: Transaction Publishers, pp. 241–69. Staring, R., Kalb, D., Van der Land, M. and Tak, H. (1997) ‘Localizing Cultural Identity’, Focaal, No. 30–31, pp. 7–21. Suny, R. (1993) The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sysoev, V. (1901) ‘Po goram Kubanskoi oblasti. 4. Sredi armian i grekov. Ot st. Elisavetpol’skoi do Kurinki’, Kubanskie Oblastnye Vedomosti, No. 28, 33, 35–7. Thomas, W. and Znaniecki, F. (1958) The Polish Peasant in Europ and America. New York: Dover. Thompson, P. (1981) ‘Life Histories and the Analysis of Social Change’, in D. Bertaux (ed.), Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences, London: Sage, pp. 289–306. Tishkov, V. (1989a) ‘O novykh podkhodakh v teorii i praktike mezhnatsionalnykh otnoshenii’, Sovetskaia etnografiia, No. 5, pp. 3–4. Tishkov, V. (1989b) ‘O kontseptsii perestroiki mezhnatsionalnykh otnoshenii v SSSR. Redaktsionnyi komentarii k rubrike “Navstrechu Plenumu po sovershenstvovaniyu mezhnatsionalnykh otnoshenii v SSSR”’, Sovetskaia etnografiia, No. 1, pp. 73–89.

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204 Bibliography Tishkov, V. (1996a) ‘Ethnic Conflict in the Context of Social Science Theories’, in K. Rupesinghe and V. Tishkov (eds), Ethnicity and Power in the Contemporary World, New York: United Nations University Press. Tishkov, V. (1996b) ‘Post-Soviet Nationalism’, in R. Caplan and J. Feffer (eds), Europe’s New Nationalism. States and Minorities in Conflict, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23–41. Tishkov, V. (1997) Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame, London: Sage Publications. Tomlinson, K. (2004) ‘Meskhetian Turks: Displacement, Self-Perception, and the Future’, Bulletin: Anthropology, Minorities, Multiculturalism, No. 6, pp. 11–38. Torlakyan B. (2002) ‘Etnografiia amshenskikh armian. Glava 1. Mestnost’ i Naselenie (Perevod na russkii yazyk)’, Amshenskaia biblioteka, 1. Krasnodar: ANIKTs ‘Amshen’, pp. 31–127. Tsygankov, V. (2003) ‘Gubernator Tkachev pokhvalil armian i grekov. No vyrazil nedovol’stvo agrarnym lobbi v Gosdume’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, No. 61 (2894), 28 March. Tur’ialai, S. (2003) ‘Rezhimnye pansionaty. Kubanskie vlasti pervymi v strane sozdaiut departatsionnye lageria’, Izvestiia, 19 April, p. 10. Turner, V. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Tveretinov, I. (1992) ‘Natsional’no-territorial’noe stroitel’stvo v Severnom Prichernomor’e i na Kubani’, Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, No. 1, pp. 19–28. Upourgeio Makedhonias-Thrakis Geniki Grammateia Palinnostounton Omegenon (1999) Epilegmenoi Pinakes Stoixeion Apogragis Palinnostounton Omogenon apo tin T. Essd Pou Irthan Stin Elladha Kata tin Periodo 1989–1999, Thessaloniki. Velikaya, N. (2001) ‘ “Verkhnekubanskie kazaki: byt, kul’tura, traditsii. Cherkessk, 1999” (M.F. Kurakeeva)’, Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, No. 3, pp. 141–2. Verdery, K. (1993) ‘Ethnic Relations, Economies of Shortage, and the Transition in Eastern Europe’, in C. Hann (ed.), Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and Local Practice, London: Routledge, pp. 172–86. Verdery, K. (1996) What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Verdery, K. (1998) ‘Property and Power in Transylvania’s Decollectivization’, in C. Hann (ed.), Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 160–80. Verdery, K. (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change, New York: Columbia University Press. Vergeti, M. (1991) ‘Pontic Greeks from Asia Minor and the Soviet Union: Problems of Integration in Modern Greece’, Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Special issue. The Odyssey of the Pontic Greeks), pp. 382–94. Vertovec, S. (1999) ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 447–60. Volkova, N. (1975) ‘U grekov Gruzii’, in V.N. Basilov (ed.) Polevye issledovaniia Instituta etnografii. 1974, Moskva: Institut etnographii i antropologii AN SSSR. Volkova, N. (2000), ‘Greki Kavkaza’, Center for Racial, Ethnic & Linguisti Minorities Rights. Bulletin, Krasnodar, No. 2, pp. 15−43. Voronkova, O. (2001) ‘Moiia militsiia. Est’ uspekhi, no net kadrov’, Vol’naia Kuban’, 14 April, p. 3. Voutira, E. (1991) ‘Pontic Greeks Today: Migrants or Refugees?’, Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Special issue. The Odyssey of the Pontic Greeks), pp. 400–420.

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Bibliography  205 Voutira, E. (1997) ‘Population Transfers and Resettlement Policies in Inter-war Europe: The Case of Asia Minor Refugees in Macedonia from an International and National Rerspective’, in P. Mackridge and E. Yannakakis (eds), Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity Since 1912, Oxford: Berg, pp. 111–31. Voutira, E. (2011) The ‘Right to Return’ and the Meaning of ‘Home’: A Post-Soviet Greeks Diaspora Becoming European? Berlin: Lit Verlag Dr. V. Hopf. Vuorela, U. (2002) ‘Transnational Families: Imagined and Real Communities’, in D. Bryceson and U. Vuorela (eds), The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks, Oxford: Berg, pp. 63–82. Wæver, O. (1995) ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in R. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 46–86. Williams, R. ([1958] 1963) Culture and Society 1780–1950, Harmondsworth: Pinguin. Williams, R. (1961) The Long Revolution, London: Chatto and Windus. Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. and Liebhart, K. (1999) The Discursive Construction of National Identity, (Critical Discourse Analysis Series), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Xanthopulou-Kyriakou, A. (1991) ‘The Diaspora of the Greeks of the Pontos: Historical Background’, Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Special issue. The Odyssey of the Pontic Greeks), pp. 357–63. Xanthopulou-Kyriakou, A. (1994) ‘Metavasteusei Ellinon ston Kaukaso kata tov 19o Aiona’, Antupo apo to Delpo Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon, Athina, T. 1. Yeloeva, F. (1995) Turkoiazychnye pravoslavnye greki vostochnoi Gruzii ( Tsalkinskii i Tetritskaroiskii raiony), St. Peterburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet. Yemelianova, G. (2002) Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey, New York: Palgrave. Yemelianova, G. (2005) ‘Kinship, Ethnicity and Religion in Post-Communist Societies’, Ethnicities, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 51–82. Ziemer, U. and Popov, A. (2014) ‘Research Ethics and Moral Dilemmas of Social Research in Post-Socialist Europe and Beyond. Introduction’, Sociological Research Online, Vol. 19 (4), No. 17 [online]. Available at [Accessed 4 August 2015]. Zaikovskaia, T. (1989) ‘Tradizionnye verovania i predstavlenia grekov Adjarii (antichnye istoki obrazov sviatogo Il’i i sviatogo Georgia)’, Sovetskaia etnografia, No. 2, pp. 105–14.

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Index

Abinsk (district), Russia 60, 114, 173 Abkhazia, conflict violence 82; independence, declaration 31; mass deportations 60 absent others, social interaction 25 Achkva (village), Georgia 65 active interviewing 9 additional papers, evidence 101 Adygean ethno-nationalism 70–3 Agelopoulos, Georgios 105 agency/structure, interplay 28 agricultural lands, collectivization 122–3 Ajaria 65 All-Russian Greek Association, activism 167–8 All-Russian Population Censuses 91 All-Union Convention of Soviet Greeks 61 Althusser, Louis 18 Anapa (district), Russia 61, 62, 74, 76, 83, 91, 122, 150, 173 Anatolian Turkey, Greeks (migration) 58 ancient Greek civilization, heirs/heritage 148–9 Ancient Greek History, reference 147–8 ancient Greek population, historical succession (consciousness) 150 ancient music tradition 164 Anderson, Benedict 20 anthropological research 14 anti-migrant legislation 30, 41 anti-migrant policy (Krasnodar Krai) 33 Appadurai, Arjon 27, 38, 123, 161 Argo (Republican Greek national-cultural organization) 65, 71, 73 Armenia 80, 81, 133, 153, 156, 157, 171 Armenians 32, 36, 40, 48, 53, 56, 58, 61, 62, 71, 74, 75, 76, 80, 104, 122, 138, 150, 151, 156, 164, 173, 178; antiArmenian feelings, projection 152;

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cultural differences, Greek sensitivity 152; identification, mistake 152; migrants, Kubanian Armenians (cultural differentiation) 49; poor refugee label 139; retailers, ethnic definition 68; speakers 54; stereotypical Caucasians, perception 152; traditional Greek suspicions 152–3 Artvin (province), Turkey 54 Assyrians 54, 56 Athens, Greece 56, 113, 172 Avranlo (village), Georgia 65 avtonomaia oblast 70 Baphra 58 Barth, Fredrik 21 Bashkow, Ira 23, 147, 159 Beissinger, Mark R. 35 Beller-Hann, Ildigo 77 Belorechensk (district), Russia 65, 158 Benedict, Ruth 20 Beshtashen (village), Georgia 111 bez prismotra (house abandoned) 142 blat (favors) 141 bolee vysokii uroven’ konfliktogennosti 45 Bolshevism, ideologists/apologists (perspective) 34 Bondar’, Nikolai 48, 49 Bosnia Fallacy 38 Bottomley, Gillian 168 bounded culture, perception 21–2 Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 22, 70 Boyarin, Jonathan 52 Bridger, Sue 6 Bromley, Yulian 36 Brubaker, Rogers 34 Bryceson, Debora 27, 109, 114, 116 Burawoy, Michael 8, 183 Butler, Judith 18

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208 Index Byzantine Empire 52–3 Bzhedugkhabl’ (village), fieldwork location 8, 154 capitalism 182–4 Caucasian Greeks: repatriation 99; usage 5 Caucasian influence, traditional culture (contrast) 153 Caucasian migrants, structure 151 Caucasian-ness 153–4 Caucasian Wars, defeat 58 Caucasus: Pontic Greek migration, map 57; voluntary migrations 56 Central Asia: deportation / exile to 4, 10, 35, 60, 61, 64, 79, 80, 82, 100, 112, 162, 186; Greek migrants from 74; peoples of 48 Chaykara (district), Turkey 54 Chechnya, conflict violence 82 chelnok (shuttle-trader) 89–90 cherkesskie greki (Circassian Greeks) 76 churches 182–4; construction: donations 183; increase 180; religious landmark 180 Circassian Greeks, evidence 76, 77–8, 154, 159 citizens, ethnic self-identification (institutionalisation) 34–5 citizen subjectivity, construction 28 Civil War: Kuban Cossack autonomy 47; Red Army 59–60; White movement 46 classification, struggle 22–4 Clifford, James 21 collectivization 64 colonisation 58–63 communist ideology, legacy 104 conceptual framework 5–6 conflict: generation 45; language, usage 38; prevention 42 Cossacks: classification 47–8; indigenisation 46–8; military semiprivileged estate 46; organisation, leader (impact) 76; paramilitarism 47; revivalism 46–7; stanitsy (villages) 46 C-ovs: existence 111; family 142 cross-border movement 86–7 crypto-Christians 54–5, 177; communities, anecdotal accounts 55 cultural analysis 16 cultural boundaries: cognitive value, defense 23–4; concept, rethinking 147; Pontic identity 158–9; representation/ interpretation, challenge 24 cultural code, following 3

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cultural differences, objectification/ naturalisation 24 cultural distance 151 cultural homogenisation 26; scenario, opponents 25–6 cultural hybridity 26–8 cultural identification, investigation 27 cultural identity 13–19; anthropological perception, critical reassessment 23; bounded communities, association 20; naturalistic understanding 22; predicaments 19–24; primoridalist understanding, discrediting 21–2 cultural imperialism, globalisation (relationship) 25–6 cultural mediation 18 cultural processes 13–19; expression, usage 14 cultural projects, financial/material support 105 Cultural Studies 14–15 cultural suppression 34 cultural turn, intervention 14 culture: category 45; defining 13–14; globalisation/modernity, relationship 24–6; locality, globalisation (impact) 26–7; nation/ethnicity, relationship 19–24; process, understanding 14; questions 19–20; transnational circuit 6, 15; conceptual framework 19–20; framework 24 Day of Pontic Greek Genocide, commemoration 162 demotiki 60 De Rapper, Gilles 113 Derbentskaia (village), healing springs 179 diaspora identity 56, 93–4; emergence 85; impact 81–2 differences, homogenisation (contrast) 24–6 discourse, identity (objectification) 23 discursive constructions 19–20 dispossessed, production 82–6 distanciated relations 25 Djiginka (village), Russia 74, 76 dogovor darenia sobstvennosti (giftmaking, judicial agreements) 137 Drama (town), migration 116 Dzhinis (village), Georgia 65 East-Slavic ethnos 48 economic crises (2008) 91

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Index  209 economic migration, expectations/ disappointments/opportunities 86–92 economic rationale/kinship values, moral dilemma 115 economic shock, hardships (avoidance) 94 economies of shortage 81 Edikilisa (village), Georgia 63, 64, 65, 111, 116, 124, 142 edinnoe etnokul’turnoe prostranstvo (single ethno-cultural space) 46 emigration, bureaucracy 100–3 Erzerum province, Ottoman Empire 64 ethnic aggression 32 ethnic borders (nationality borders), mapping 34 ethnic boundaries: construction 20–2; demarcation 186 ethnic classifications: analysis 22; development 35–6 ethnic collectives, connections 21 ethnic conflict 174; change 38; concept, development 45; exploration 45–6 ethnic diasporas, assimilation 49 ethnic discrimination (Krasnodar Krai) 33 ethnic group, understanding 155 ethnic identities: basis 21; focus 162 ethnicity: academic discourse/ conceptualisation 43–4; commoditisation 96; culture/nation, relationship 19–24; discussion 71–2; materialisation 96; post-Communism ethnicity/migration 30; representation 22; social transformation/violence, impact 38; transnationalisation 96; use/ abuse 22 ethnic Jews, repatriation 1 ethnic migrants, description 48–9 ethnic migration, problem 42 ethnic minorities, criminalisation 42 ethnic policy, securitisation 37–8 ethnic representation, politics 22–4 ethnic self-identification, institutionalisation 34–5 ethno-cultural space, consolidation 46 ethnographer, positionality 7–8 ethnographic knowledge, production 8–10 ethnography: audience, shift 8; Malinowskian ethnography 2–3; meaning 2; trans-local practice 7 ethno-national character (Gaverdovskii) 70–3 ethno-national federalism, institutionalism 34–5 ethnonationalism, communalist morality 182–4

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ethno-nationalism, elevation 37 ethnonationalist ideologies 172 ethno-political Cossack revivialist movement 46 Ethnos (thinking/making) 33–8; theory 35–6 etnicheskoe samosoznanie (ethnic identity) 36 Eurozone, Greece (joining) 91 Euxinos Pontos (the Black Sea) 147, 148, 149 exile 58–63 expansive civilization 25 External threats, buffer zone creation 99 face-to-face contact 25 family: home, construction (photograph) 124; land: relation 123; ties 122; life, transnational exchange 116–18; names, Hellenisation 102; networking, usage 27–8; nicknames 110; reunion, economic benefit 115; rituals, impact 117–18; roots, return 118–19; traditional values, renegotiation 185 family members: contacts, development 118; economic well-being, narratives 113; search 112 Fann, Patricia 161, 162, 163, 176 Federal legislative systems, harmonization 130 Federal Security Service (FSB) 10 Ferguson, James 20, 27 field, multi-sited ethnography 7–8 Flynn, Moya 93–4, 121 foreigners, Stalinist regime fear 60–1 Foucault, Michel 3, 18, 42, 44 free market society, ideologies (introduction) 182–3 Gabrium, Jaber F. 9 Gaikodzor (village), Russia 74, 150 Gaverdovskii (Greeks): ancestors 53; appearance 63–4; Caucasian-ness 153–4; ethnicity, mobilisation 71; ethno-national character 70–3; ethnonational character, development 72; graves, cross (placement) 175; informants, family histories 64; Maykop candidates, relationship 72; migrants: community 63–6; registration 140; resettlement 129; settlement 73; Turkish characteristics, importance 158–9; Turkish-speakers, majority 65–6; village cemeteries 126

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210 Index Gaverdovskii (village), fieldwork location 52–8, 63–6, 67, 70–3, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 89, 102, 106, 110–11, 116–17, 124, 126, 129, 132, 134, 140, 141, 142, 151, 153, 154, 156, 158–9, 165–6, 169, 172, 175, 180 Gelendzhik (town), fieldwork location 8, 61, 102, 116, 124, 159, 168, 180 Georgia: former Soviet republic of 30; Greeks in 4, 53, 56, 63–6; migrants from 90, 117, 129, 132, 140, 142, 154, 158, 159, 175, 186; independence from 31; population of 32 Georgian(s) 40–1, 48, 53, 81; Greeks 65, 73, 90, 132, 141, 155, 159, 175 gender relations, reversal 88–9 genealogy, re-shaping 109 Germans 48, 58, 60, 74, 135; Greek protection 62; migration 84, 91, 113, 135; presence (Uzbekistan) 80; repatriation 1 Giddens, Anthony 16, 25, 85 gifts, impact 116–18 global cultural flows 13 global ecumene, cultural identities 24–8 global ethnoscape 6, 161 global interconnectedness, intensification 24–5 globalisation: cultural imperialism, relationship 25; impact 26–7; modernity/culture, relationship 24–6; processes, local (impact) 28 globalised communities, dispersion/ interpenetration (awareness) 27 Gorgippia 63, 68–9, 159; activists, impact 74; interpreter, role 167; marketplace, hiring 76; rent 69; Vitiazevo Greek society 162 gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost (national security) 41–2 governmentality, relations 3 grave, candle holder (photograph) 127, 128 Gray, Ann 7 grecheskii (Greek language) 146 grecheskii kon’iak (Greek brandy), presentation 116 Greece: education, impact 83–4; gifts, symbolic/sacred meaning 116; historical homeland 61, 86; homeland, possession 82–6; migration: assistance 106; reasons 83–4; Pontic Greek migration, map 57; relatives, reunion 114; socio-economic conditions, changes 90–1; strategic national interests 99

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Greek citizens: diaspora identity, emergence 85; military service, requirement 84–5 Greek citizenship: absence 114; obtaining 100 Greek collective memory 162–3 Greek consulates: practice 102–3; repatriation issue 98–9 Greek diaspora 79–80 Greek emigrants, impact 64 Greek ethnic identity, Stalinist repressions/ deportation (impact) 61 Greek ethnicity: exile, trauma (association) 61; forging 58–63; issue 3–4; local architecture, relationship (photograph) 126; proof 102; southern Russia, representation (politics) 66–77 Greek ethnic/national identities, materialisation 100–3 Greek ethno-national character, development 72 Greek exodus, initiation 4–5 Greek experience, diversity 158–9 Greek identity revival, success 105–6 Greek labor market, non-competitive sectors 87 Greek migrants: ambivalent attitudes 86–7; arrival, cultural differences 92; homeland 86–94; Pontic Greek identification 5; Pontic identity, construction 93; resettlement, facilitation 98; social/economic life, structure 124–5 Greek national costume, photograph 170 Greek national-cultural organisations: comparison 67; leaders 154; political influence, increase 107; post-Soviet institutions 66–70 Greek national-cultural societies, emigration business 105–8 Greek national district, existence 35 Greek national identity: proof 114; spread 56–8 Greek nationalism, peculiarity 98 Greek nationality: acquisition 103; Soviet passports insertion 102 Greek national state, emergence 56 Greek nation, ethnic alienation (escape) 80–2 Greek-ness, commodity 103–4 Greek newcomers, local registration 134 Greek order 73–7 Greek population, academic investigation 3

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Index  211 Greek resettlement, Programme (usage) 98–9 Greeks: repatriation 1 Greek Socialist Party (PA.SO.K.), national government formation 99–100 Greek societies: business projects, impact 69; local community attitudes 69; socioeconomic ladder, migrant position 89 Greek-speakers, comments 155 Greek surnames, obtaining 101–2 Greek theatrical production, actors (photograph) 171 Greek transnational communities, microlevel 6 Greek transnational migrants, genealogy/ national identity 118–19 Greek transnational migration 116–17; emotional/social aspects 185–6 Greek Turkophones, existence 3–4 Green, Sarah 89 greki (Greeks), Russian term 5, 146 Grossberg, Lawrence 19 group identity, officialisation 22 Grushovaia Balka, cross/candles (photograph) 177 Grushovaya Balka, Panayia 176, 179 Gunia-Kala (village), Georgia 163 Gupta, Akhil 20, 27 habitus 16, 17 Hall, Stuart 13–14, 17, 19, 22, 27 HamshenArmenians 164, 178 Hann, Chris 77, 121 Hannerz, Ulf 13, 16, 26 hard labor, money (earnings/benefits) 90 Hellenes 92–3 Hellenic Pontic Kingdom 52–3 Hemshin (Hemshil) 54 Hivon, Myriam 122 Holstein, James A. 9 home 121; communities 13, 186; diaspora, family networking connection 27–8; migrants, legitimacy/local identification 121; graveyard, relationship 129; home-located fieldwork, authenticity 7–8; multi-sited ethnography 7–8; recreation 93–4; rethinking 92–4; traditional values, renegotiation 185; understanding 78 homeland: adaptation 4; concept 6; economic expectations, migrant disillusionment 87; idea: appeal 82; social construct 121; military experience 85; national homeland, impact 85;

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possession 82–6; pursuit 186; rethinking 92–4; understanding 78 homogenisation, differences (contrast) 24–6 Hopa (district), Turkey 54 house property: bez prismotra (abandoned property) 142; registration, interdependence 141; significance 121–2 housing: construction, photograph 125; property: distribution/privatisation 134; Soviet policy 122; space, usage 140 humanity, members (ethnic label differences) 22 Humphrey, Caroline 39, 83, 102, 132, 181 identification 17–19; process 17–18 identities, production 26–8 identity: absence 83; construction, interplay 28; cultural production 15–17; discursive construction 17–19; localisation 132–6; questions 19–20; study, cultural phenomenon 18–19 identity crisis, survival 79–86 illegal migrants, deportation 42 imagined family, kinship/migration 109–12 imagined political communities 20–1 Imera (village in Trabzon province) 58 imperial project, non-Muslims (involvement) 54–5 Inda, Jonathan Xavier 24 indigenisation 33–4, 58–63 indigenous peoples, territory (discursive link) 20 informants, meaningful worlds 24 inheritance, impact 138 interesy natsional’noi bezopasnosti (national security, interests) 38 inter-ethnic relations 45; discourse 173–4; discursive construction 174; post-Soviet securitisation 37–8; regulation 42 inter-group tensions, example 76–7 internal other 154–8 interpellation, practice 18 interviews, unstructured life stories 9–10 Ionian Greeks, appearance 52 ioniyskie greki (Ionian Greeks) 148 Iron Curtain, fall 78 iuridicheskie litsa (legal entities) 68–9 Kabardinka (village), Russia 101, 146, 179 Kaimos, Georgii 183 Karabakh, ancient population (consideration) 36

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212 Index Karachai-Cherkess, national republics 31 Karadeniz 53 Karakom (village), Georgia 65 Karslidis 58 Kars Oblast’ 58, 111, 154 Karsskie greki 58 Katerini (town), Northern Greece 115 Kazakhstan: deportation / exile to 60, 62, 114, 132, 155, 162, 178; Greeks 62 Kazakhstan Greeks 62 kemenches (photograph) 164; playing 165–6 Kiariak (village), Georgia 65 Kingdom of Hellenes 64, 100 kinship: migration, relationship 109–12; patrilineal kinship system 111; re-shaping 109; values, transnational migration (moral dilemma) 115 knowledge, archaeology (Foucault) 44 Kokand, Uzbekistan 79 kommentarii eksperta 44 konfliktogennyi faktor 45 korenizatsiia (indigenisation) 33–4; policy 59–60; abolishment 35; project, analysis 34 korennoe naselenie (native/indigenous population) 46 korennoi (indigenous) status 149 korennye zhiteli (native residents), defining 47–8 kraia 82 Krasiot-Greeks (post-socialist Bulgaria) 105 Krasnodar (city), fieldwork location 8, 97, 173 Krasnodar Krai (province) 30; anti-migrant policy 33; birth/death rate 33; ethnic aggression 32; ethnic discrimination 33; Greeks: national-cultural organization meeting, description 96; presence 82; illegal migrants, deportation 42; individual nationalities, proportion 32; map 30; migrants/natives, construction 39–41; multinational status 32; No. 9-KZ, movement/residence 40; nonSlavic ethnic groups, perception 49; population 32; raion (existence) 35; regional legislation 39–41; registration regime 39–40; tourist infrastructure 62 Krymsk (district), Russia 60, 173 Kritskii, Evgenii 48 Kuban 32 Kuban ethno-cultural space 49 Kuban Oblast’ 46, 59, 121

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Kubanian Armenians, Armenian migrants (cultural differentiation) 49 Kuban Oblast 46, 59 Kuban regional identity, concept 46–8 kubantsy (Kubanians) 46 Kudako (Kudakoy, Grecheskii, NovoKrymskii; village), Russia 154, 155 kurortnyi poselok Vitiazevo 62 Kurum (Krom; village) 55 Kymlicka, Will 37 labor market, social inequality (competition) 86–7 Labrit, ancient settlement 149–50 Lacan, Jacques 18 Lacanian discovery 18 Laclau, Ernesto 22 land: distribution/privatization 134; local land legislation, Russian Federation Constitution (contradiction) 130; lots, distribution 136–7; purchase 136–9; significance 121–2; Soviet policy 122 Laz (folk definition) 53, 54, 164, 166, 169, 171, 176; costume 164, 171 Lazi-speakers 54 Lazistan 53 Ledeneva, Alena V. 141 legal entities 68–9 libidinal normalization, cultural mediation 18 life story interviews 8–10; techniques, rethinking 9 life story, product 9 Liga Mira (League of Peace) 71; creation 67 lirichi 165 litsa bez grazhdanstva (stateless people), treatment 41 litsevoi schet (household account) 130–1 local community: construction 123–4; Greek national-cultural organisation, political influence 107–8 local Greeks, identity (localisation) 132–6 local identification 139–44 local land legislation, Russian Federation Constitution (contradiction) 130 local landmarks, sacred meanings (allocation) 182 local landscape: Pontic orthodoxy, indigenisation 176–82; sacred knowledge, Caucasian Greek rediscovery 180–1 local population, migrants (boundaries) 40 local residents, bureaucratic formula 132

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Index  213 locals: concept 132; disadvantaged economic position 137

multi-sited ethnography 7–8 Musulmandzha (Muslim language) 156

Machka (district), Turkey 54 Malinowskian ethnography 2–3 Malkki, Liisa 20 Marcus, George 8 materialisation 96 Maykop, ethnic candidates 72 Maykop (city), fieldwork location 8, 53, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73, 158, 159 Maykopskii otdel Kubanskogo kazach’ego voiska (Kuban Cossack Host) 71 meaningful worlds, reordering 36–7 Merchanskoe (village), Russia 179 Meriamana 181 Meskhetian Turks 41, 49, 158, 173; problem 41; situation, publicity 41; special regime 41 mestnye greki (local Greeks) 132 mezhnatsional’nye otnosheniia (interethnic relations) 45 migrants: activities, morality (question) 87–8; category, juridical definition clarity (absence) 40; construction 39–41; criminalisation 42; ethnicisation 40; Greekness 93; identity, interconnections 91–2; legitimacy/ local identification 121; relativisation strategies 113–14; Slavs, cultural differences (construction) 48–50; social status, changes (perception) 88; socio-economic marginality 89; Soviet identity, replacement 93; status, impact 88–9; temporary registration, obtaining (requirement) 131; work, dependence 90; xenophobic attitudes 104 migration: academic discourse 43–4; conceptualisation 43–4; kinship, relationship 109–12; morality, question 87–8; motivations 79–86; policy 39–50; post-Communism ethnicity/migration 30 mikroraion 65 military service, duty 84–5 millet system 54 modernity, globalisation/culture (relationship) 24–6 Moscow 69, 96, 100, 136, 137: Greek Embassy 98, 104, 106; Greek (General) Consulate 10, 96, 98, 101, 104, 105, 106; Patriarchy 175 Mother of God, blessing 182 multi-sited ethnographic research 8

Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, historical rights (claims) 36 narody (peoples), change 34 nation: culture/ethnicity, relationship 19–24; traditional values, renegotiation 185 national autonomies, political/ administrative structures 34 national homeland, impact 85 national identities, basis 21 nationality: borders (ethnic borders), mapping 34; engineering 60; policies 33–8; question 33–4 national’nyi raion (Greek national district) 59–60 national order of things 20–2 national policy: budget, reference 172; impact 42 national security 41–2; ideas 43; undermining 42–3 nation-state 26–8; citizen subjectivity, construction 28 native population, ethnic migrants (contrast) 43 natives, construction 39–41 natsiia (nation), defining 37 natsional’naia politika (national policy) 42 natsional’nye raiony (administrative unit) 35 natsional’nye sel’sovety (administrative unit) 35 natural links 19–20 Nea Democratia, accusations 100 neblagonadezhnyh 60–1 Neon-Kharaba (village), Georgia 65 ne propisany (not registered) 142 new ethnicities 22 non-Armenians, treatment (unfairness) 80–1 non-maleficence, principle 10 non-Muslims, imperial project involvement 54–5 non-native ethnic groups 40 non-natives (inorodtsy), classification 3 non-Slavic ethnic groups, perception 49 non-titular ethnic groups 81 non-titular nationalities 80 North Caucasus 31–2 Novorossiisk (city), fieldwork location 8, 31, 64, 96, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 111, 130, 148, 170, 176 novostroiki (location) 132

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214 Index oblasti 82 Occitans, example 23 ochag (term, usage) 122 odzhakh (term, usage) 122 Off (district), Turkey 54 old Pontic culture 164 Oliank (villiage), Georgia 63, 64, 65 ordinary people, worldview 22 Ordu 58 Orthodox Christianity, importance 175 Orthodox Christians, Pontic populations (religious identification) 53–4 Orthodox revival/ethnicity 174–6 Osipov, Alexander 38, 39 osobyi poriadok zemlepol’zovania (landuse, special order) 129 Ossetia, conflict violence 82 other: discursive construction 17–19; ethnic boundaries, others 186; internal other 154–8; relationship, importance 18 Ottoman Empire: ancestors, origin 111; population, division 54 Oushakine, Sergei 34 ownership, legitimacy 139–44 Panaiya 176–82 Panaiya Soumela 178 pan-Hellenism, ideology (Russian maintenance) 105 passport reform, challenge 102 patrilineal kinship system 111 People-as-One 37 people, transnational movement 26 perestroika: ethnic conflict, change 38; identification 132; impact 4 peripheral circuits 26 personal nationality 155–6 Petrov, Vladimir 48 Pilkington, Hilary 81 Pine, Frances 6, 51, 129, 137 Platana (town) 58, 111 pokhoziaistvennye knigi (household registers) 141–2 polikul’turnost’ i polietnichnost’ (society, polycultural/polyethnic characteristics) 45 political community, moral basis 37 political/economic relationships, postSoviet transformation 39 politicheski neblagonadezhnye elementy 60–1 Pontic Greeks, Western scholarship 4–5 Pontians, genocide 56 Pontic cultural identity 154–8

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Pontic cultural representation 172–4 Pontic culture, preservation 173 Pontic globalisation 167–8 Pontic Greeks 2; becoming 146; case study, emphasis 5; Caucasian identity 150–4; concept, interpretation 93; continuity/transformation 163–72; cultural identity: production 187–8; question 147; cultural representation 163–72; cultural revival 161; Orthodox Church, connection 179; culture: death/ rebirth 161–3; production 26; dances, photograph 168; deep rootedness, representation 148; definition 34; ethno-national revivalism (ideology), Pontian genocide (impact) 56; family members, reunion 118; folk ensemble, performance (photograph) 167; genocide 162; history, complexity 51; identification 5; identity: construction 161; meanings, focus 15; indigenousness 148–9; mass exodus, outbreak 82; migration, map 57; representation 150; self-disorientation 156; Soviet modernization, pressure 178–9; tombs, creation 127 Pontic identity: construction 93; cultural boundaries 158–9; spatial/temporal boundaries 147–50 Pontic kemenche (symbolism) 164 Pontic myth 161–3 Ponticness, resurrection 168 Pontic Orthodox Christians, Greek national identity (spread) 56–8 Pontic orthodoxy, indigenisation 176–82 Pontic populations, religious identification 53–4 Pontic spectacle 163–72 Pontos: Greeks, presence 52–8; map 52; town stadium, entrance 68 poriadok (order) 69 post-Communism ethnicity/migration 30 postmodernism, social space 25–6 post-national world 28 post-socialism: conditions 6; ethnography 5–6; socio-economic conditions 136 post-Soviet civil society, semi-controlled/ state-manipulated form 106 post-Soviet diasporas, emergence 79–80 post-Soviet ethnic discourses/nationality policies 33–8 post-Soviet Greeks: migrant relativisation strategies 113–14; national-cultural organisations, commemoration 162

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Index  215 post-Soviet institutionalised ethnicity, personal nationality 155–6 post-Soviet institutions, Greek nationalcultural organisations 66–70 post-Soviet population, ethnographic spectacle 169 post-Soviet Russia: dispossessed, production 82–6; Pontic Greek culture, death/rebirth 161–3 post-Soviet society, ethnic group understanding 155 post-Soviet southern Russia, inter-ethnic relations 173–4 post-Soviet space, ethnic diversity 36–7 P-ovs (existence) 111 power, relations 172–4 practices, set 13–14 predotvrashchenie konfliktov 42 predotvrashchenie mezhanatsional’nykh konfliktov (inter-ethnic conflicts, prevention) 38 predstaviteli nekorennykh etnosov (nonnative ethnic groups) 40 priezzhie (newcomers) 132 primordial givens, rejection 21 privatisation 132–6 Programme (the National Foundation for the Reception and Resettlement of Repatriated Greeks), usage 98–9 property: ownership 121; provincial citizenship regimes, relationship 129–30; possession 134; relations: perspective 138; records, problem 142–3; social meaning 121–9 property market: local hostility 138–9; local residents, feelings (moral imperative) 137–8; morality/economy 136–9 propiska (registration) 39, 129; allowance 74; local Greeks, relationship 132–6; loss 131; fear 135; supply, problem 141 provincial citizenship regimes, property ownership (relationship) 129–30 pustit’ kozla v ogorod 75–6 quasi-Slavic nationality 48 Rabinow, Paul 3 Rassvet (village), Russia 150 reburial practices, interconnections 119 refugeehood, notion 56 regional budgets, money allocation 172–3 regional citizenship regime 133

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regional ethno-cultural space, consolidation 46 regional legislation, body 39–40 regional legislative systems, harmonization 130 regional normative acts 40–1 regional particularism 47 registratsia po mestu zhitel’stva 39 regulirovanie mezhnatsional’nykh otnoshenii (inter-ethnic relations, regulation) 42 relatives, impact 116–18 relativisation (strengthening), family rituals (impact) 117–18 relativising, term (usage) 114 religious identification, impact 54–5 repatriation: dilemma 82; Greek Consulate issue 98–9; visas: acquisition, investigation 104; application opportunity 98; receipt 100 representation: history 51; politics 51, 66–77 Republic of Adygea 30; map 30 researcher/researched, collaboration 9 residence, special regime 41 Richmond, Anthony H. 85 rituals 116–18; family rituals, impact 117–18 Rize (province), Turkey 54 romeoi 5, 146 rootedness, narratives 138 Rosaldo, Renato 24 Rouse, Roger 25, 78–9 RSFSR, Russian regions 82–3 Rum 54, 56 Rumlar 177–8 Russia: Greek identity revival, success 105–6; socio-economic conditions, changes 90–1 Russian Association of Greek Public Organisations (AGOOR), visa-issuing policy 106–7, 148 Russian Empire, advancing borders 56 Russian Federation: Administrative Code, amendments 40; Constitution, local land legislation (contradiction) 130; ethno-national organisations, impact 66–7; federal center/subjects, political/ economic relationships (post-Soviet transformation) 39 Russian Greeks, everydayness 15 Russian Orthodox Church, social/political margins 174–5 Russian shops, network 116

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216 Index russkii narod (Russian people, existence) 102 Russo-Ponti (term, usage) 93 sacred meanings, allocation 182 sacred ties, renewal 179 Said, Edward 3 St Nicolas, lower spring 179–80 Salonica, Greece, migration 83, 91, 117, 144, 165, 167 Samsolidhes families, trilinguality 154–5 Samsun 58, 154, 155 Santa (village), Georgia 55, 65, 111 Santa (village in Trabzon province) 58 Savva, Elena 45 Savva, Mikhail 44, 45 Scott, Julie 137, 141 securitisation discourses 47 self: construction 18; technique 18 sel’sovet (in relation to ethnic minority village) 36 sel’sovets (rural administrative units) 60 semeinye prozvishcha (family nicknames) 110 Severskaia (village), fieldwork location 8, 93, 100, 112, 115 Shipiak (village), Georgia 65 Siberia deportation / exile to 4, 10, 35, 60, 112, 162, 178; Greeks in 64, 112 Slavic population, term (usage) 47–8 Slavs: migrants, cultural differences (construction) 48–50; term, usage 47–8 social actors, meaning 24 social construction process, incompletion 19 social inequality, labor market (competition) 86–7 socialism, identity crisis/socio-economic hardship (survival) 79–86 social marginalisation, avoidance 144 social reality, perception 36–7 social sciences, focus (redirection) 15–16 social solidarity: basis 123; renewal 117 social transformation, impacts 38 society, polycultural/polyethnic characteristics 45 socio-cultural anthropology 14–15 socio-economic conditions, changes 90–1 socio-economic hardship 79–86 Soiuz slavian (Union of Slavs) 71 Sokolovski, Sergei 34 Sørensen, Ninna Nyberg 28

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Soumela (monastery), dedicated to the Panayia 176, 177, 178, 179 Southern Russia: Greek ethnicity, presence 41; Greek experience, diversity 158–9; identity politics, impact 151; migration/ethnicity, academic discourse/ conceptualisation 43–4; Orthodox revival/ethnicity 174–6; Pontic Greeks: Caucasian identity 150–4; migration, map 57; Pontic identity, spatial/temporal boundaries 147–50; post-Soviet Greeks, migrant relativisation strategies 113–14; regional political regimes, migration policy 39–50; representation, politics 66–77 Soviet enterprises, bankruptcy 83 Soviet ethno-national federalism, conditions 80 Soviet Greeks: diaspora, Greek policy 99; repatriation 4, 98–9; return 163; voluntary economic migration 81–2 Soviet life, collectivist principles (adaptation) 70 Soviet modernity: idea 34; titular nationalities, creation (impact) 33–5 Soviet modernisation, pressure 178–9 Soviet nationality policy, changes 35 Soviet passport, usage 101 sovietskii narod (Soviet people), ideological construct 80 Soviet Union: domestic/international policy 113; ethno-nationalism, emergence 37; Greek population, academic investigation 3 S-ovs: branches, existence 110; family: example 113–14; mnemonic narratives 111–12 space, questions 19–20 spekuliant (profiteer), name (connotation) 104 Spring of the Holy Land 179–80 Stalinist deportation, impact 61 Stalinist regime, fear 60–1 Stalinist repressions: impact 61; memorial, photograph 181 stanitsa (Cossack village) 110 stateless people, treatment 41 state socialism, collapse (impact) 185 Stavri (Istavri; village) 55, 58, 76 Stavropol’ Krai 63, 64, 106, 179 structural resources, describing 16 structuration process 85–6 subsidiary plots, redistribution 122–3 Suny, Ronald Grigor 34

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Index  217 svidetel’stvo o nepolnom srednem obrazovanii (secondary education certificate) 117 symbolic objects, importation 124, 126 Takkilisa (village), Georgia 65 Tarson (village), Georgia 65 Tatar’ia (family) 54 Tetritskaro (district), Georgia 65, 116, 155, 157, 159 theory of practice, application 15–17 titular ethnoses 172 titular nationalities: creation 33–5; political domination 81 Tkachev, Alexander 47 Tonya (district), Turkey 54 Torlakyan, Barunak 122 tourist industry, development 136 Trabzon (province), Turkey 54, 56, 58 traditional culture 67 traditional ethnographic approach 2–3 traditional family: kinship/migration 109–12; subordinate female role 89 transitional migration, difficulty 97 transnational citizenship, local predicaments 130–1 transnational communities, exist 28 transnational experience, hybridity 27 transnational families 26–8, 109; defining 109; relativisation 113–16; social solidarity 117 transnational identities, construction 27 transnationalism: characterisation 25; ethnography 5–6; experiences 26–8 transnationalisation 96 transnational locals, cultural production 13 transnational migrants: circuit, motivations/strategies 78; ethnography 1; local identification 139–44; local lives 185; ownership legitimacy 139–44; social identification, exploration 1–2 transnational migration 24–8; economic rationale/kinship values, moral dilemma 115; representation 87–8 transnational Pontic ethnonationalist movement, patriarchal traditions 169 transnational Pontic identity, emergence 172 transnational public space 27 Treaty of Lausanne 57–8, 100, 110; accordance 114 Trebizond 56 trudovaia knizhka (work record) 130

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Tsalka (district), Georgia 53, 63, 64, 65, 66, 72, 81, 163; Greeks 111, 151–2, 154, 155, 156, 157, 164, 169, 180; migrants from 65, 72, 89, 116, 129, 141, 154 Tsalka Greeks: family name 111; Turkish linguistic identity, mobilisation 157–8 Tsarist colonial administration, cultural suppression 34 Tsinskaro (village), Georgia 65 Turkey, voluntary migrations 56 Turkish language, usage 158 Turkish mother tongue, rejection 157 Turkish-ness 154–8 unreliable foreigners, parent exile 114 unstructured life stories 9–10 uprooting, narratives (impact) 81–2 urumlar 5, 54, 156 Uspenie Bogoroditsy 176 USSR: collapse 31, 35, 39, 61, 80; families, division 60; folk danaces, state-sponsored art form 169; Greek cultural revivalist movement, economic survival 105; Greek migrants, country identification 146; Greek population, defining 5; Greek repatriates, relocation 93; Greeks, mass immigration 99; migrants, name identification 92; national administrative-territorial units 34; non-Cossack Russians/Ukrainians, resettling 46; perestroika, impact 4; population, mobility 78; post-Soviet migration 1; Soviet enterprises, administrative functions 63 Uzbekistan 41, 79, 80, 133, 135 Uzbekistan, Germans (presence) 80 Verdery, Katherine 14 Vergeti, Maria 87 village: cemeteries, reflections 126; political life, ethnicity (core aspect) 72 violence, impacts 38 visa application forms, distribution 107 Vitiazevo 58–63; administrative borders, change 91; differentiation 132; emigration, example 112; exodus (WWII) 60–1; family histories 110; foundation 110; genealogies 55; identity, Stalinist repressions/deportation (impact) 61; indigenous political regime 73–7; local administration, notes usage 143; nicknames 111; Russian colonisation 58–9; Russian majority 63;

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218 Index upper neighborhoods 136–7; village cemeteries 126 Vitiazevo (town, village), fieldwork location 8, 10, 52–6, 58–63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68–70, 73–77, 79, 82, 84, 90, 91, 101, 106, 110, 111, 114, 116, 117, 122, 123, 124, 126, 132–3, 136–7, 138, 140, 142, 143–4, 148, 149–50, 152–3, 154–5, 156, 159, 162, 165–7, 170–1, 172–4, 175, 179, 180, 183–4 voennyi bilet (Soviet Army service card) 101 voiska (hosts), administrative functions 46 vozrozhdenie kazachestva (ethno-political Cossack revivialist movement) 46

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Vuorela, Ulla 27, 109, 118 vypisat’sia (de-registration) 130–1 Williams, Raymond 13 world, nationalist vision/division 21 xenophobic discourse 151 Yuzhnyi Federal’nayi Okrug (Southern Federal District) 31 zemlia (land), term (usage) 126 zhilaia ploshchad (housing space) 141 ZSKK, special Committee on Cossack Affairs 47

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