18 Facts About Caucasus Greeks

Caucasus Greeks, known as the Greeks of Transcaucasia and Russian Asia Minor, are the ethnic Greeks of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia in what is southwestern Russia, Georgia, and northeastern Turkey.

Greek settlers in the Caucasus generally became assimilated into the indigenous population, particularly in Georgia, where Byzantine Greeks shared a common Christian Orthodox faith and heritage with the natives.

Nevertheless, in general terms Caucasus Greeks can be described as Russianized and pro-Russian empire Pontic Greeks in politics and culture and as Mountain Greeks in terms of lifestyle, since wherever they settled, whether in their original homelands in the Pontic Alps or Eastern Anatolia, or Georgia and the Lesser Caucasus, they preferred and were most used to living in mountainous areas and especially highland plateaux.

In broad terms, it can be said that the Caucasus Greeks' link with the South Caucasus is a direct consequence of the highland plateaux of the latter being seen and used by the Pontic Greeks as a natural refuge and rallying point whenever North-eastern Anatolia was overrun by Muslim Turks in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods.

Large number of Caucasus Greeks who settled in Georgia became referred to as Urum and speak a Turkish dialect with a large admixture of Pontic Greek, Georgian, and Armenian vocabulary.

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Nevertheless, most Caucasus Greeks had never had to face this predicament of having to choose between their Christian Orthodox faith and their Pontic Greek language and so were able to retain both, although when in Russian territory they eventually came to adopt Russian as their second language for public and educational purposes.

Caucasus Greeks often maintained some command of Turkish as more or less a third language, thanks to their own roots in north-eastern Anatolia, where they had after all lived alongside Turkish-speaking Muslims since the Seljuk-backed Turkish migrations into 'the lands of Rum' or Anatolia during the 11th and 12th centuries.

Pontic Greeks in Georgia and the Russian Caucasus maintained this command of Turkish so as to communicate with their Muslim neighbours living in the region, most of whom used Turkish as a lingua franca or even adopted it as their first language irrespective of actual ethnic origin.

In terms of population, the areas in both Georgia and Kars province inhabited by the Caucasus Greeks tended to be those that had large concentrations of Armenian population - one well-known product of this Greek-Armenian mix being the famous mystic and theosophist George Gurdjieff.

In towns like Kars, Ardahan, and Sarikamish ethnic Caucasus Greeks constituted only a small minority of the inhabitants, most of whom were Christian Armenians, Kurdish Muslims, or smaller numbers of Orthodox Georgians, while even many of the mainly ethnic Greek villages still included small numbers of Armenians, Georgians, and even Kurds, employed by the Caucasus Greeks to look after the sheep, cattle, and horses.

Caucasus Greeks were often multilingual, able to speak, read, and write Greek and Russian and speak Eastern Anatolian Turkish, and sometimes basic Georgian and Armenian.

However, the Caucasus Greeks had had to become fluent Russian speakers, as a result of the schooling and education policies implemented by the Russian Imperial government, although at home and amongst themselves they continued to favour Greek.

Caucasus Greeks had close social links with the Greek Orthodox Russian settlers of Kars Oblast through worshiping in each other's churches as well as marrying partners of Russian Caucasus origin.

However, like many other Greeks of Pontus and north-eastern Anatolia, significant numbers of Caucasus Greeks who wanted to remain in what was now Turkish territory at any cost chose to convert to Islam and adopt the Turkish language for public purposes so as to be exempted from the population exchange.

Those Caucasus Greeks who had remained in north-eastern Anatolia, like the many other Pontic Greeks who had converted to Islam and adopted the Turkish language, subsequently became assimilated into the wider Turkish-Muslim population of the provinces of Trabzon, Sivas, Erzurum, Erzinjan, Kars, and Ardahan.

Caucasus Greeks have generally assimilated well into modern Greek society, being successful within a broad range of trades and professions.

However, it is generally the ethnic Greeks who came to Greek Macedonia from Georgia and southern Russia in the mid-1990s rather than the Caucasus Greeks who came shortly after 1919 that other Greeks often accuse of among other things being involved in organised crime in northern Greece and the wider Balkans and creating a kind of parallel, underground society.

The aspect of Pontic Greek culture most apparent to the outside observer is their traditional food, costume, music, and dance, with those of the Caucasus Greeks reflecting heavier Russian, Georgian, and Armenian influences.