Black Sea Diaspora. The Greek settlements in the northeastern regions of the Black Sea

The Greeks of Mariupolis – like all the expatriates who inhabited the northeastern coast of the Black Sea – are one of the least studied groups of the Greeks of the Diaspora in Greek historiography. This fact raises legitimate questions and raises questions that historical science must answer. Until the early 1980s, references to this particular part of the Greek diaspora were limited…

This study, along with other research attempts, aims to investigate precisely these “blank pages”. It seeks the historical data that form the basis for the study of Greek communities on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea, i.e. in the former Soviet Union. He tries to identify the causes of their creation, their internal differentiations, the impact on them of the major upheavals in both the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the first quarter of the 20th century, and their relationship with the Pontian movement aimed at creating a second Greek state, their ideological pursuits, both nationalist and socialist, the identification of the overt and subterranean relations that linked them to events in Greece, the forms of their participation in the effort to realize the demand for national integration and their deviations from the dominant choices of the Greek leadership. At the same time, it examines their attempt to survive in the Soviet period through the integration of their leadership group into the ideological system of Bolshevism, documents their cultural successes, their printed production and explores their political demands. It presents the Stalinist persecutions that followed, the renaissance with perestroika, the re-emergence of the Greek movement and finally the fragmentation of the Greek diaspora in the states that replaced the unified Soviet Union. It also studies the ideological trends that characterized the Greek communities during their Soviet journey, their concerns about the language issue, their identity, their conflicts with the authorities, their efforts to move to Greece, and the attitude of the Greek state. In following this complex path, the decisive element that determined the course and fate of the Greek population emerged: the lack of a territorial reference area on the Greek coast. An element and a demand that has been constantly recurring in all phases of its history.