Greeks in Azerbaijan are one of the national minorities of Azerbaijan, the number of which is relatively lower than the corresponding minorities in Georgia and Armenia . It is composed mainly of the descendants of the Pontic Greeks who left the Ottoman Empire. According to incomplete community statistics, in Azerbaijan there are 535 people who call themselves Greeks by nationality or of Greek origin (a total of 176 families). Mostly they live in Baku , but there are also families in Sumgayit , Khachmas , Cuba , Kakh , Ganja [1] .
Content
History
Russian Empire
The first Greek settlers of Azerbaijan appeared in Karabakh in the village of Mehman on the coast of the Terter River . On May 23, 1830, the Georgian exarch appointed Archpriest Vasily Andrianov as the head of the parish of the Greek community [2] . In 1851, a native of Trebizond , master Kharlampiy Kundurov (aka the mouth of Allahverdi) built two copper smelters near the city of Ordubad , equipped according to a primitive local model - Pirdaudansky (in the upper reaches of the Okhchi-chai river) and Kavartsky (on the slope of Mount Sayad-dash). Mostly Greeks from Trebizond worked for them. In the 1860s, he also built a school and a church there for charity. The priest was Nikolaos Lavos. The sons of H. Kundurov improved the plants and became their owners until the October Revolution [2] .
Local Greeks were engaged in the construction of various structures, including Orthodox churches, in the middle of the XIX century. So, in Baku in 1850-1857, the Nikolaev Cathedral was built for 400 people inside the fortress at the Shemakha Gate , the Greeks Semyon Giter and Charalampy Palistov were engaged in its construction.
In the village of Alti-Agach , another church of St. Nicholas was built in 1854-1855 by the residents of the city of Shemakha - the Greeks Murad Kharlamov, Dmitry Ilyev and Vasily Egorov [2] .
The Greeks moved to Baku only at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries: according to the data of 1886, no residents of Baku were mentioned who called themselves Greek by nationality, but already in the census of 1897, 278 Greeks lived in the Baku province , and 658 in the Elizavetpolskaya (against 102 in 1886). The immigrants were mainly workers, among whom were both residents of Greek settlements in the Caucasus and those who left Turkey [2] .
In 1907, there were already 800 Greeks in Baku, many of whom left Asia Minor , but could not attend church services, since the service was conducted in Church Slavonic, and most of the Asia Minor Greeks did not know Russian. The Greek Philanthropic Society submitted a request to the city government on December 7, 1907 to open the Greek Church and to allow the poor members of the community to be helped, which was granted [2] . From that moment, society began to help the ethnic group in every way possible in order to preserve its language, customs, traditions, and the people themselves, to provide material assistance to the poor from auctions, charity performances and donations from large entrepreneurs [2] .
The Greek population of Baku did not change significantly until 1917 [3] . According to the data of the ethnographer Andrei Popov, 2161 Greek lived in eight cities of Baku and Elizavetpol provinces [4] .
USSR
A new wave of Greek migration came after the end of the First World War and the Civil War. In 1923, 1168 Greeks lived in Azerbaijan only among the urban population, 58 of them in Mehman. By the efforts of the Greek Philanthropic Society, a Greek theater, a church, a library and a four-year primary school with 89 students (43 boys and 46 girls) were built by that time in Baku; there was also an Embros football club. The building of the company was located at 22 Millionnaya Street (now F. Amirov Street). Of all the foreign nationals living in the USSR in 1937, it was the Greeks who made up the vast majority (95%) [2] .
In December 1937, the center of Pontic culture in Baku was closed, which marked the beginning of repressions against the Greeks. The first was the arrest of pianist Janis Karayanidi (he spent 18 years in the camps). From December 11 to 25, 1937, 35 people from 904 Greeks living in Azerbaijan were arrested, many of whom were shot on false charges of counter-revolutionary activity. Some of the families left the USSR through Batumi and Odessa. Some families were evicted to Northern Kazakhstan and Siberia in 1942 at the height of the war , and in 1949, on the night of June 13-14, tens of thousands of Greeks of the Caucasus were deported to South Kazakhstan. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) substantiated this βwith the aim of cleaning the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus from politically unreliable elementsβ [2] .
Independent Azerbaijan
The turbulent situation in Azerbaijan led to the mass emigration of the Greeks: in 1990-1992, about 100 people left Baku and Sumgait to Greece, and almost the entire village of Mehman was empty during the days of the Karabakh war . The coming to power of Heydar Aliyev managed to stabilize the situation, and diasporas of national minorities intensified in independent Azerbaijan and the opportunity to create communities appeared. The Greek Embassy in Azerbaijan was opened in 1993, and in July 1994 the Greek Cultural Center appeared on the initiative of the Greek Ambassador P. Caracasis. Sunday Greek language, song and dance courses were founded, a music library and a library with books about Greece were assembled, and Greek radio and television broadcasting was arranged. By 1997, the center had about 100 families and was transformed into the Greek society "Argo".
Today, the Greek diaspora has at least 535 people according to community statistics. Most live in Baku (although there are families in Sumgayit, Khachmaz, Cuba, Kakha and Ganja). Many of the representatives of the diaspora grew up in mixed families, and according to the passport their names are different from Greek and written in Russian. Although the Pontic language is almost completely lost, each of the representatives of the community officially recognizes himself as a Greek by nationality and a citizen of Azerbaijan. The Diaspora is an integral part of the population of Azerbaijan, which contributes to the development of the Republic [2] .
See also
- Azerbaijani-Greek relations
Notes
- β Diaspora News - Greeks in Azerbaijan Archival copy of April 9, 2016 on Wayback Machine (Russian)
- β 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Ivan Pilidzhev. Greeks in Azerbaijan (inaccessible link) . Council of Greeks Abroad. Date of treatment March 28, 2016. Archived January 27, 2015.
- β Subad Zeynalov. ETHNO DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES IN THE CAUCASUS: FORMATION OF EUROPEAN ETHNIC COMMUNITIES (XIX - THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY) (rus.)
- β Andrei Popov. Pontic Greeks (Russian)