5XVVLDQ*UHHNV*UHHN5XVVLDQV 3DUDPHWHUVRI,GHQWLW\ $OH[DQGHU0DQX\ORY Dissertation for the degree of philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of Bergen Dissertation date: $XJXVW 2 3 To my dear wife, close friend, and colleague Alexandra Kasyanova and to our children Artemiy and Beata 4 5 Contents Acknowledgements 7 Abstract 8 GeneralIntroduction 11 DiscoursesonGreekidentities 11 GreekEthnicIdentitiesinRussia 13 TheConceptualBasisofPartOne 17 RussianGreeksinGreece 20 ConceptualUnderpinningsofPartTwo 27 FieldworkandMethodologies 31 PARTONE.RUSSIANGREEKS Chapter1 RussianGreekness:AMosaicofPopulationsandDiscourses 34 Introduction:DemographyofEthnicGroupsofGreeksinRussiaand theUSSR 34 GreeksandtheSovietState 55 TheSecondWorldWar 66 ReformsandLiberalizationintheUSSR:TheRiseofGreek Associations 69 GreekEthnicityundertheAttentionofSovietandPostͲSoviet Anthropology 75 Conclusion 86 Chapter2 RepresentationsofPontiannesinaGreekVillageinRussia 89 TheFirstMeeting 89 TheHotel 94 TheVillageandtheGreekSociety 103 RepresentationofHistory 122 6 Conclusion 133 Part2.GREEKRUSSIANS Chapter3 UnͲRepatriatableCapitalsandIdentityCrisis:ExͲSovietÉmigréin GreekSociety 137 Problematization 137 GeorgiosfromGeorgia 140 TheFieldofEducationandtheIssueofEthnicity 145 WeakSymbolicCapitalandItsMigratoryAdvantages 152 Conclusion 155 Chapter4 MigrationofWomenfromRussiatoGreeceasanAppropriationof DiscoursesandPractices 157 AnnaandIrina:LifeinRussia 158 FirstExperienceofLifeinGreece 164 ToBeorNottoBeaGreekWoman 168 ComparingVariantsofAppropriationofGreekness 171 EPILOGUE Chapter5 Conclusions 176 MetamorphosesofGreekidentity 176 ComparisonsofDestinies...VariationsinIdentities... 177 ReasonsforMigration 181 FormationofaNewIdentityDiscourse 182 References 187 7 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to everyone I met during my fieldwork in Greece and Russia for their hospitality, friendship and help in my research. I also want to say thank you to many colleagues of mine from the Department of Social An- thropology, University of Bergen but first and foremost to my supervisor professor Leif Ole Manger and previous supervisor professor Andrew Lattas. I am very grateful to professor John Chr. Knudsen and his indispensable seminars on text production which were typically filled with discussions, reflec- tions and new ideas. It was impossible to produce even a chapter without useful debates with my colleagues Hege Toje, Samson Abebe, Tord Austdal and many others. I cannot imagine my fieldwork in Athens without the help and support of John Nikolopoulos, director of the Greek Research Foun- dation, expert on Russian-Greek relationships, and my old friend. Thank you very much, Giannis! My fieldwork in Russia and Greece was supported at different times by various organizations, and I would like to express my gratitude to them – the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda- tion and, personally, its Moscow Office director Tatiana Zhdanova; the Lauritz Meltzer høyskolefond; the Department of Social Anthropology and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Bergen. 8 Abstract This thesis investigates how the ex-Soviet Greek populations used the reforms in Russia and the re- patriation policy of Greece emerging in the 1990s in order to form a new discourse on Greek identity. This new understanding of the Greek identity was marked by the term “Pontians.” The populations (in a Foucauldian sense) known in Russia and the Soviet Union as Greki, “the Greeks”, were never presented as a unified group nor even as a conglomerate of interacting groups. The new identity discourse that emerged, the discourse on Pontianness, was formed after the Gorbachev perestroika and directed not only towards the Russian Government and the general public in Russia, but also to Greece where many ex-Soviet Greeks found a new “homeland” from the end of the 1980s. In this new, post-Soviet situation, people who in the Soviet Union would be identified as Greeks would now be identified as Russians or Russian Pontians in Greece. People holding this identity gained access to different social (and national) fields in Greece, and were allowed the possibility to cross borders as Schengen/EU citizens who could thus choose their places of work and residence in Europe. Thus, the main argument of my thesis is that the identities of various ex-Soviet Greek populations changed and were homogenized after the perestroika. The new Greek identity “Pontians” changed the status of Greek populations in Russia and was simultaneously accepted in Greece as an identity expressing Greek descent. Geographically, the thesis focuses on the southern territories of the Russian Empire (from southeast Ukraine, Crimea and North Caucasus to Abkhazia, Georgia and the Kars region of contemporary Turkey) and is based on fieldwork undertaken between 2006 and 2011 in Russia and Greece. It is the existence of different historical discourses available in Russia and the Soviet Union for establishing “Greekness” and “Pontianness” that is the focus of the two chapters in Part One. My aim with this overview is to document some discursive facts as they appeared at the crossroads of Greekness and Russianness and to show their “constructedness” and in what ways the construction was linked to prior notions of Greekness. Although my historical discussion argues in favor of mosai- cism and plurality in Greek identities, there was an attempt within the USSR in the 1920-30s towards a unification of discourses on Greekness. This was a result of a general ethnic policy according to which any ethnic group was to have its own ethnic territory. However, when the political situation changed, the process of unification/homogenization stopped to be continued only after perestroika 9 as a grass-root initiative among the Greeks. During this period the mass repatriation of ex-Soviet Greeks to Greece influenced significantly the process of homogenization. Therefore, the formation of the new identity was a discursive process that combined two concerns: 1) to establish a new identity in order to claim autonomy and territory; and 2) to establish a new identity to correspond with the new repatriation criteria in order to be recognized as Greek by the Greek authorities and the popula- tion in Greece. The focus of the Part Two is on the Russian Greeks who have opted to move to Greece. This part of the thesis draws mainly on ethnographic material and interviews of informants collected dur- ing fieldwork in Greece. The new possibilities of Russian Greeks moving to Greece created new con- sequences also for the Greeks back in Russia, and it is an aim to compare the two situations: Greeks or Pontians in Russia and Russian Greeks in Greece. Chapters Three and Four present analyses of the problems repatriates face in Greece. I argue that only a few forms of symbolic capital (for example, matrimonial strategies) are able to be “repatriated” with the migrant, while education and work ex- perience prove more difficult. This difficulty is connected not only with language barriers but also with closeness of social fields, in particular, the field of education in Greece. Herefrom, together with de-skillization and de-classization, a crisis of identity appears that is expressed as nostalgia for Russia. I also characterize two women’s biographies in comparative perspective. Both women migrated from Russia to Greece and were quite successful in their appropriation of Greekness. My main argument here is that the appropriation of Greekness may take place (and be used) in contrasting ways with the causes of those contrasts rooted in pre-emigration experience. The last chapter, Chapter Five, sums up the historicizing and theorizing focuses of the thesis and concludes the argument and findings of the thesis. My main argument is that the identity of Greek migrants from ex-Soviet countries to Greece has not always been based on their common identity (as the Pontians, for example). This is a consequence of the more recent periods of migra- tion. Although being labelled “Greeks” in post-Soviet countries, those labelled also maintained their local identity markers, such as Mariupol’skie Greki, Tsalkintsy, Rumei, Urum, Rum, or Romaikos. The post-perestroika mass migration to Greece introduced to these various populations the understand- ing that they all were “Pontians”, or “Helleno-Pontians”, or “Rousso-Pontians”, depending on the dominating discourses provided by the Soviet and Greek states. Although both states sought to unify identities, such efforts failed in Russia as well as in Greece. Their Greekness in Russia (or Pontianess in Greece) has always been “under construction.” The mosaic character of the discourses on Greek- ness in Russia and corresponding populations is a result of the failure of those state discourses. Ra- ther than a unified state discourse, ethnic identity is connected with issues of citizenship, territory, 10 community, origin, marriage, family, education, and so on. In other words, my argument is that the identity of Greek-migrants may be constructed by state discourses, but that the populations of Greeks only adopt it if they deem it profitable. Now the situation is that for many it is more profitable to be Russian Greeks and to leave Greece for Russia. The thesis is a contribution to the anthropology of migration and takes its place in a line of anthropological research from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union that explores identity changes and their ways. 11 GENERAL INTRODUCTION Discourses on Greek identities The