page_title: Caucasus Greeks
section_title: Role in Russian conquests
hierarchical_section_title: Caucasus Greeks / Role in Russian conquests
caption_attribution_description: English: Pontic Greeks of Georgia, Kostas Konstantinidis from Sourmena: seated from left: Panagiotis, Savvas and John, standing from left: Jordan, Dimitris Anestis and Theodore, in Batumi, Georgia Ελληνικά: Ελληνοπόντοι, Τα παιδιά του Κώστα Κωνσταντινίδη από τα Σούρμενα: καθιστοί από αριστερά: Παναγιώτης, Σάββας και Γιάννης, όρθιοι από αριστερά: Ιορδάνης, Δημήτρης, Ανέστης και Θεόδωρος. ქართული: ბერძნები საქართველოში, ბათუმი, საქართველო.
context_page_description: The Caucasus Greeks, sometimes known as the Greeks of Trans-Caucasus and Russian Asia Minor, are the historically Greek-speaking peoples 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 Batum Oblast' and Kars Oblast', now in north-eastern Turkey and Adjara in Georgia.
  Greeks spread into these areas well before the Christian/Byzantine era, especially as traders, Christian Orthodox scholars/clerics, refugees, or mercenaries 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. One notable example of such pre-modern Caucasus Greeks is the 7th-century Greek Bishop Cyrus of Alexandria, originally from Phasis in present-day Georgia. However, these Greek settlers in the Caucasus generally became assimilated into the indigenous population, and in particular that of Georgia, with whom Byzantine Greeks shared a common Christian Orthodox faith and heritage.
context_section_description: The 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty of San Stefano and Treaty of Berlin that brought it to a close led to the Russian Empire making permanent gains at the expense of the Ottoman Empire in north-eastern Anatolia.  These centred around the fortified city of Kars in historical northern Armenia, which Russia now administered as Kars Oblast, i.e. the militarily administered province of Kars, which also included the towns and districts of Ardahan and Sarikamish. As in the 1828-29 war, many Greeks of north-eastern Anatolia and Pontus fought in or collaborated with the Imperial Russian Army in the 1877-78 war against the Ottomans, often serving as soldiers and officers in an army that included large numbers of Georgians, Armenians, Ossetians and Cossack, as well as Russians proper - the Georgians and Armenians in particular being represented among the senior ranks. Although the Ottoman province or 'vilayet' of Kars already had several Greek villages dating back to 1830 or sometimes even earlier, most of these later pro-Russian Greeks of north-eastern Ottoman Anatolia settled in Kars province after it was incorporated into the Russian empire in 1878.
  It was precisely because most of the Greek settlers in Kars Oblast had entered the region with the Russians from the direction of Georgia, that contemporaries - and academics later on - came to define them as Caucasus Greeks or Russianized Pontic Greeks, in contrast to those Greek who had never left Ottoman-ruled North-eastern Anatolia. Even in Russian occupied Georgia, however, these Greeks had generally lived in the southern areas of the country which - like the Kars-Ardahan region - were part of the Lesser Caucasus highland plateau, rather than among the deep valleys and jagged mountain peaks of the High Caucasus range in northern Georgia. In terms of population, the areas in both Georgia and Kars province inhabited by the Caucasus Greeks tended to be those that also had large concentrations of Armenian population - one well-known product of this Greek-Armenian mix being the famous mystic and theosophist George Gurdjieff. Another well known, although more recent Caucasus Greek with roots in these areas but born in Tbilisi was Yanis Kanidis, a Russian PE instructor and hero of the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia. These same areas now in Georgia also had various pockets of Muslims of Turkish and non-Turkish (convert) ethnic origin - though the latter had generally become Turkish in speech and culture.
  
   
  The Caucasus Greeks of Kars Oblast were mainly concentrated in around 77 towns and villages as part of official Russian government policy to people a traditionally Turkish, Kurdish, Georgian-Muslim (here often called Chveneburi) and Laz-Muslim or Christian but generally non-Orthodox Armenian area with a staunchly pro-Russian Christian Orthodox community. In general they were settled on grassy highland plateaux, such as the Gole/Kiolias plateau of present-day Ardahan province, since these resembled their original lands in the Pontic Alps and later ones they had settled on in Georgia. In towns like Kars, Ardahan, and Sarikamish ethnic Greeks constituted only a small minority (10-15%) 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 (including Greek Orthodox Armenians), Georgians, and even Kurds, employed by the Greeks to look after the sheep, cattle, and horses. The Caucasus Greeks of Kars Oblast were generally reasonably well educated, every village having its own school, although most were involved in farming, horse breeding, or mining for their livelihoods. A smaller but still significant number did, however, work outside the agricultural and mining sectors. In particular, many pursued careers as regular soldiers and officers in the Russian Imperial Army, in the regional police force,  as clergymen, or even within the provincial Russian administration. Unlike the Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea coast
caption: Pontic Greek leaders from Georgia
exif: {}