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Russian Map of the Caucasus and north-eastern Anatolia, 1903
The Caucasus Greeks (Greek: Έλληνες του Καυκάσου or more commonly Καυκάσιοι Έλληνες, Turkish: Kafkas Rum), also known as the Greeks of Transcaucasia and Russian Asia Minor, are the ethnic Greeks of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia in what is now southwestern Russia, Georgia, and northeastern Turkey. These specifically include the Pontic Greeks, though they today span a much wider region including the Russian north Caucasus, and the former Russian Caucasus provinces of the Batum Oblast' and the Kars Oblast' (the so-called Russian Asia Minor), now in north-eastern Turkey and Adjara in Georgia.[1]
Greek people migrated into these areas well before the Christian/Byzantine era. Traders, Christian Orthodox scholars/clerics, refugees, mercenaries, and those who had backed the wrong side in the many civil wars and periods of political in-fighting in the Classical/Hellenistic and Late Roman/Byzantine periods, were especially represented among those who migrated.[2] One notable example is the 7th-century Greek Bishop Cyrus of Alexandria, originally from Phasis in present-day Georgia. 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.[3]
Official Russian Empire coat of arms of Kars Oblast (1881-1899).
The vast majority of these Greek communities date from the late Ottoman era, and are usually defined in modern Greek academic circles as 'Eastern Pontic [Greeks]' (modern Greek - ανατολικοί Πόντιοι, modern Turkish 'doğu Pontos Rum'), as well as 'Caucasus Greeks', while outside academic discourse they are sometimes defined somewhat pejoratively and inaccurately as 'Russo-Pontic [Greeks]' (modern Greek - Ρωσο-Πόντιοι).[4] 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.[5] 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.[5]
The CaucasusGreeks (Greek: Έλληνες του Καυκάσου or more commonly Καυκάσιοι Έλληνες, Turkish: Kafkas Rum), also known as the Greeks of Transcaucasia and...
The peoples of the Caucasus, or Caucasians, are a diverse group comprising more than 50 ethnic groups throughout the Caucasus. Caucasians who speak languages...
former Russian Caucasus are in contemporary Greek academic circles often referred to as "Eastern Pontic [Greeks]" or Caucasian Greeks. The Turkic-speaking...
'Migration and Settlement in the Caucasus and Anatolia' (Variorum, 1988), as well as works listed in CaucasusGreeks and Greeks in Georgia. Crețulescu, Vladimir...
made up the Russian Caucasus province of Kars Oblast, in which Pontic Greeks, northeastern Anatolian Greeks, and CaucasusGreeks who had collaborated...
province of Kars Oblast are usually referred to as CaucasusGreeks. There were over 500,000 Greeks in the Russian Empire prior to the Russian Revolution...
of the broader, historic community of Pontic Greeks or—more specifically in this region—CaucasusGreeks, is estimated at between 15,000 and 20,000 people...
Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically been considered as a natural...
The GreekCaucasus Division (Greek: Ελληνική Μεραρχία του Καυκάσου), was a division of the Russian Army composed of ethnic Greeks from the Caucasus and...
of Eastern Europe and West Asia, straddling the southern Caucasus Mountains. The South Caucasus roughly corresponds to modern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan...
Pontic Greeks from Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia who settled in Greece in large numbers in the same period. The older generation of CaucasusGreeks settled...
The Greeks in Kazakhstan are mainly the descendants of Pontic Greeks who were deported there by Joseph Stalin, from southern Russia and the Caucasus region...
of Kars. At the same time, many Armenians and Pontic Greeks (here usually called CaucasusGreeks) migrated to the region from the Ottoman Empire and other...
Kush mountains were also designated as the "Caucasus" in parallel to their Western equivalent, the Caucasus Mountains between Europe and Asia. Alexander...
of the Greek language by many with Greek ancestry in these areas and who therefore are not classified as Greeks in official censuses. Most Greeks in Ukraine...
Armenía), like the other groups of CaucasusGreeks such as the Greeks in Georgia, are mainly descendants of the Pontic Greeks, who originally lived along the...
community of CaucasusGreeks from the Tsalka region of central Georgia and ethnic Greeks from southeastern Ukraine who arrived in Northern Greece as economic...
northern Greece. Its speakers are referred to as Pontic Greeks or Pontian Greeks. It is not completely mutually intelligible with modern Demotic Greek. The...
romanized: Kavkazskaya voyna) or Caucasus War was a 19th-century military conflict between the Russian Empire and various peoples of the North Caucasus who resisted subjugation...
Stavridakis, who has left for the Russian Caucasus and Ukraine to help the CaucasusGreeks and Ukrainian Greeks who were facing persecution from the Bolsheviks...
timeline of the Greek genocide CaucasusGreeks Fire of Manisa Greeks in Turkey Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey Mariana...
'Migration and Settlement in the Caucasus and Anatolia' (Variourum, 1988), and other works listed in Caucasian Greeks and Pontic Greeks. Norwich 1998, p. xxi. Harris...
region prior to the Ottoman conquest, including Pontic Greeks, CaucasusGreeks, Cappadocian Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Zazas, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians...
The Lesser Caucasus or Lesser Caucasus Mountains, also called Caucasus Minor, is the second of the two main ranges of the Caucasus Mountains, of length...
The history of the Caucasus region may be divided by geography into the history of the North Caucasus (Ciscaucasia), historically in the sphere of influence...
The Anatolian Greeks, also known as Asiatic Greeks or Asia Minor Greeks, make up the ethnic Greek populations who lived in Anatolia from 1200s BCE as...
Greek Macedonians residing in Czechoslovakia were actually Pontic Greeks and CaucasusGreeks and so somewhat more comfortable with the Pontic Greek dialect...
Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, Caucasus, Greece, and elsewhere in Eurasia. In medieval and early modern European tradition...
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