The Caucasus Greeks ( or more commonly , ), 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.Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, Introduction.
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.Browning, Robert, p. 82. 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.Browning, Robert, p. 76.
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 - , modern Turkish ''), as well as 'Caucasus Greeks', while outside academic discourse they are sometimes defined somewhat pejoratively and inaccurately as 'Russo-Pontic [Greeks]' (modern Greek - ).Koromela and Evert, 1989 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.See Michel Bruneau, 'The Pontic Greeks: from Pontus to the Caucasus' 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.
Ancient and medieval history
Although large numbers of Greeks live in parts of Ukraine and southern Russia, such as Mariupol and Stavropol Krai, the term Caucasus Greeks strictly speaking should be confined to those Greeks who had settled in the former Russian Transcaucasus provinces of Batum and Kars Oblast, parts of Georgia such as the region around Tsalka, central Abkhazia and other localities of the Black Sea Russian Riviera.
Following the Ottoman conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461 large numbers of Pontic Greeks left the Pontic Alps region as refugees and resettled in parts of the South Caucasus, and particularly Georgia. Even the son of King David of Trebizond's son George had fled there with his retinue and married a Georgian princess of the Gurieli dynasty.Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou, p. 53. However, the numbers of these early Pontic Greek refugees to Georgia were in any case probably fairly small, and so although some of the refugees managed to retain their Pontic Greek language and identity, others assimilated through intermarriage into the other Christian communities of the South Caucasus region, particularly their fellow Christian Orthodox Georgians but also those Armenians or Ossetians who were Orthodox.Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou, p. 64.
Early modern period To complicate matters further, many so-called "Ottoman Turks" who settled in Georgia and the South Caucasus following Lala Mustafa Pasha's Caucasian campaign of the 1570s were actually Pontic Greeks from northeastern Anatolia who had adopted Islam and the Turkish language for official purposes but continued to use Pontic Greek in their daily lives, with one prominent example of an Ottoman Muslim Georgian of Pontic Greek origin being Resid Mehmed Pasha. These Greek Muslims who adhered to Islam in Georgia also either eventually assimilated with the Turkish-speaking Muslim population of southern Georgia usually defined as Meskhetian Turks, returned to parts of eastern Anatolia such as Kars following the Russian annexation of Georgia in 1801, or reverted to their Greek Orthodoxy following the annexation and reintegrated into the Greek Orthodox population of the country.Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, p. 73. Finally, according to available historical evidence we know that thousands of Pontic Greeks from Ottoman north-eastern Anatolia and especially the Gümüşhane (Greek Argyroupolis) region of the Pontic Alps are known to have gone to Georgia in 1763 on being invited by King Heraclius II of Georgia to develop silver and lead mining at Akhtala and Alaverdi (in present-day Armenia).Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, pp. 54-62. Many of their descendants survive in Georgia’s Marneuli district and Armenia's Akhtala region, although most immigrated to Greece, and particularly Thessaloniki (Salonika) in Greek Macedonia in the mid-1990s.Eloyeva, p. 87.
It is difficult to verify the numbers of all such waves of Pontic Greeks from the Pontic Alps region to Georgia and the South Caucasus between circa 1520 and 1800, which according to Anthony Bryer is the most obscure period in the history of Pontus and the Pontic Greeks, owing to the scarcity of contemporary Greek and Ottoman Turkish sources on the subject.Anthony Bryer, 'The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontus' (Variourum, 1980), XI., p. 199. Modern historians suggest that following the Ottoman conquest of 1461, many, if not most Pontic Greeks retreated up into the highlands, where it was easier to maintain their culture and freedom from the encroachments of the Ottoman authorities. This movement was reinforced in the early 1600s by the growing power along the coastal valleys districts of the derebeys ('valley lords'), which further encouraged Pontic Greeks to retreat away from the coast deeper into the highlands and up onto the eastern Anatolian plateau, before some moved further east into the neighbouring Lesser Caucasus around Kars and southern Georgia.See also Anthony Bryer, 'The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontus' (Variourum, 1980), V., p. 142. Modern historians also suggests that a major migratory movement of Pontic Greeks onto the eastern Anatolian plateau and the Lesser Caucasus occurred in the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV (1648–87), during which a common pattern was initiated in Ottoman history: the Ottomans and their clients the Crimean Tatars suffered a string of severe defeats at the hands of the expansionist Russian Empire and so followed this up with a wave of repression against the Greeks of both the southern Balkans and the Pontic Alps region, on the pretext that Greek statesmen and traders had colluded with the Tsar. As a result, many Pontic Greeks felt pressured into following their cousins who had left Pontus as refugees in previous generations, and so they too decided to migrate to southern Russia or neighbouring Georgia and the South Caucasus.See also Anthony Bryer, 'The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontus' (Variourum, 1980), XI, p. 42.
However, the largest number of Pontic Greeks from north-eastern Anatolia who settled in Georgia, according to extant historical evidence, were those who fled Ottoman reprisals following the 1768-74 Russo-Turkish war, the Greek War of Independence, the 1828-29 Russo-Turkish War, and the war of 1853-56, which unlike earlier such movements are more widely attested in documentary evidence and traditionally cited by many Pontic Greeks themselves.Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, p. 29. In the war of 1828-29 many north-eastern Anatolia Greeks welcomed, collaborated with, or fought in the Russian Army that occupied Erzurum, Gümüşhane, Erzinjan, and Kars (all now in north-eastern Turkey).Anderson, 1967Coene (2011), p. 67. Most of their descendants settled in Georgia (in areas such as Tsalka and Samtskhe-Javakheti), the Russian Trans-Caucasus, and other parts of southern Russia. A smaller number of such Pontic Greeks had of course settled in Georgia and the Russian Caucasus well before the Russo-Turkish wars, most notably those belonging to noble and landowning families from the pre-Ottoman Empire of Trebizond.Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, p. 28. These included several members of the late Byzantine Komnenos or Comnenid dynasty and collateral branches, who often married into princely families from neighbouring Georgia, including those of the Bagrationi and especially the Gurieli and Andronikashvili.Browning, p. 119. Among those who remained in the Pontic Alps and north-eastern Anatolia some led local revolts against the Ottomans, while many others actually intermarried into the Ottoman ruling elite, thereby converting to Islam and joining the Turkish millet.Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou, p. 66.
Several Ottoman-era sources tell us, however, that even among Pontic Greeks belonging to local noble families - such as those of Gavras, Doukas and the Komnenoi - who had turned Turk, many remained Crypto-Christian (in north-eastern Anatolia often referred to as Stavriotes), openly renouncing Islam and taking up arms against Ottoman troops based around Gümüşhane and Erzinjan during the Russo-Turkish wars, before following the Russian army back into Georgia and southern Russia.Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, p. 88. It was some of these Pontic Greek community leaders that claimed noble lineages extending back to the Empire of Trebizond who subsequently became officers in the Russian Imperial army, as many Armenian and Georgian princes such as Ivane Andronikashvili had previously done.Mikhailidis, Christos & Athanasiadis, Andreas, p. 33. These Caucasus Greek officers, whether of noble Byzantine or more humble Pontic Greek origin, played a significant role in the 1877 Russian conquest of Kars and Ardahan, where many of them settled with their families and other displaced Greeks from northeast Anatolia and Georgia (the latter themselves the descendants of pre-1877 Greek refugees and exiles from northeast Anatolia now re-settled in Kars by the Russian Imperial government).Eloyeva, p. 27.
Language A large number of Caucasus Greeks who settled in Georgia became referred to as Urums (from the Turkish word for '[Byzantine] Romans') and spoke a Turkish dialect with a large admixture of Pontic Greek, Georgian, and Armenian vocabulary.Eloyeva, 1994 According to local Greek legend, after the suppression of their revolt against Ottoman rule, these Turkish-speaking but Christian Orthodox Caucasus Greeks had been given the choice by Sultan Selim I either to accept Islam but continue to use their Greek mother tongue, or to use the Turkish language but retain their Christian Orthodox faith.Topalidis, p. 98. Selim I had been based in the Trebizond region before he became Sultan in 1512, since he was himself of partly Pontic Greek origin on the side of his mother Gülbahar Hatun.Koromela, p. 43.Bryer, The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontus, (Variorum, 1980), XI., p. 41.