Crossing borders, shifting identities, transnationalisation
Anton Popov - 29.07.2011 23:30
CROSSING BORDERS, SHIFTING IDENTITIES:
TRANSNATIONALISATION, ‘MATERIALISATION’, AND
COMMODITISATION OF GREEK ETHNICITY IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA
Anton Popov
University of Warwick
 read by Michel Jacobs -
read by Michel Jacobs -
On Thursday, 9th November 2000, the
Krasnodar Greek national-cultural organisation
(society) held its usual weekly meeting. What was
unusual was that the office was full of people; it was
too small to accommodate all those who had turned
out that evening and the overflow had to stand in a
dark corridor. It was obvious that they were waiting
for something. When I entered the office the
chairperson of the society was speaking on the
telephone; he was quite nervous, even annoyed. He
almost shouted into the telephone: ‘Yes, we are
waiting for him! He promised to be here by 6.30…’
Listening to conversations in the room, I realised that
the office was overcrowded because the people were
all waiting for their passports to be returned from the
Greek Consulate in Moscow, complete with visas.
Since 1999, when the Greek General Consulate in
Novorossiisk had stopped issuing visas, people from
southern Russia and the North Caucasus had had to
apply for Greek visas in Moscow. The crowd at the
meeting was very upset over this inconvenience and
people were complaining to the chairperson. He
replied that from 2001 onwards they would once
again be able to obtain their visas from the
Novorossiisk Consulate. Moreover, it would even be
possible to apply for Greek citizenship there
(everyone called it ‘dual citizenship’, meaning that
they were planning to retain their Russian passports
as well). The people were very pleased to hear this
and, although their passports did not arrive that
evening, many went home in a better mood.
When the meeting was almost over, an old
man and two women in their late thirties entered the
room. The old man asked the chairperson:
Is it possible to join your society?
Chairperson: Possible for whom?
Old man: Here are my daughter and daughter-in-
law – they want to join.
Chairperson: But who are you?
The old man’s daughter: Well, I am the
daughter…
Old man: [My] surname is Popandopulo.xvii
Chairperson: No. I mean: are you Greeks? … [I
ask] this because if you then [want to] apply for
‘dual citizenship’, only Greeks can obtain it.
You, Popandopulo, what [ethnicity] is recorded
in your passport? Are you a Greek?
Old man: ‘Russian’ is recorded there, but I have
the birth certificates (metriki) of my parents [and
my] grandfather which show that they were
Greeks. And my daughter can prove that she is a
Greek by these certificates. Well, as for my
daughter-in-law, there is my son…
The old man’s daughter-in-law: Yes, first of all,
my husband has to…
Chairperson: Okay.
The old man’s daughter: Where should we write
our names and how much shall we pay for
membership? … (Fieldwork Diary, 9th
November 2000, Krasnodar)
This story from my fieldwork diary offers a
snapshot of practices among former Soviet Greeks
who, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, have become
involved in transnational migration between Russia
and Greece as they deal with the nation-state’s
attempts to regulate their cross-border movement.
The focus of this article is on the impact that
bureaucratic regulations governing transnational
migration – covering matters such as passports, visas,
invitation letters and documents proving the
national/ethnic identity of citizens – have on identity
construction among the Greeks of Russia. The article
also examines how the meanings of citizenship,
national and ethnic identity are changed and
reinterpreted by people crossing national borders in
the shifting conditions of the post-Soviet era.
The article draws on fieldwork research
conducted in 2000-2003 among the so-called ‘Pontic’
Greek population of the two North Caucasian
provinces of the Russian Federation – Krasnodar krai
and the Republic of Adyghea.xviii The main fieldwork
sites were the town of Vitiazevo and the village of
Gaverdovskii, which are the largest settlements of
concentrated Greek populations in Krasnodar krai
and Adyghea respectively. I also extended my
ethnographic investigation to study Greek national-
cultural organisations in the provincial capitals of
Krasnodar and Maykop and to interview officers in
the Greek General Consulate in Novorossiisk. Some
interviews and observations were recorded when I
visited my informants’ families in the village of
Severskaia and the town of Gelendzhik in Krasnodar
krai and the village (aul) of Bzhedugkhabl’ in
Adyghea.xix
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